Poop Asses

One of these lovely ladies coined the term "poop asses" during a moment of intense "65" play.

Now, we've said that what happens at Cousins Day stays at Cousins Day, so I won't point fingers, mother, but suffice to say that the word got plenty of use.

Yes, after four months, Cousins Day has happened again. There were lots of reasons why we have put of this for so long. Travel, health, and other issues came up, but we all were in desperate need of a Cousins Day, and it filled the bill.

Kathy and Peach were prompt when they picked me up at 10 a.m. and we got on the road instantly. I was so eager to get going that I left giving goodbye treats to the dog for Walt to do for me.

We got to my mother's in time for coffee and catch up, which is pretty much how we start every Cousins Day.

Then it was time for lunch--my mother had made potato salad, but said she had forgotten how to make what has been for decades her "signature dish." I can't figure out what she left out,but she left out something. But it didn't matter. It still tasted good.

Of course after lunch we broke out the cards and started playing 65. Over the two days my mother, Kathy and I each won one game and Peach won 3. Show off.

In the middle of the afternoon, Kathy went to take a nap so the rest of us switched to Canasta. The last game looked like was going to be a runaway for either Peach or my mother, but a particularly good last hand gave the game to me.

We woke Kathy to make appletinis for us while I brought out the spinach balls that I had made for hors d'oeuvres. Walt and I had been to a dinner party the night before and the hostess makes those all the time and I finally asked her for her recipe. So easy!

thaw 2 packages of spinach and wring all the moisture from them
Mix with 2 cups of Italian flavored bread crumbs and 1 cup Parmesan cheese
Add 2 eggs and knead with your hands until all is mixed

Bake at 350 for 15-20 minutes. Cool on rack. Serve with a sweet mustard (I used Mendocino mustard, which I love). Really delicious.

Over drinks and spinach balls we played another couple of games and then Peach served her chicken almond casserole for dinner.

We decided we were "65'd out" after dinner, so we sat and visited, enjoying leftover Superbowl cake that had been made by my mother's stepson. We all went to bed at 11.

Walt had called earlier to let me know that we were having another brown/blackout and that 24 might not get recorded so I recorded it on my mother's DVR. I woke up at 4 a.m. and watched it then. So I've at least seen it. I may have to find it on the computer so Walt can watch it!

In the morning we had a game of 65 before breakfast, and then a pancake breakfast and a game afterwards. Then we had DVR lessons, which my mother had been dreading. I think she actually learned something. I didn't try to show her everything,but just the very basic stuff. I also set up a series recording of a couple of shows for her and showed her how to find free movies On Demand. We'll see how she does.

In coming months we are going to take the pot of money we've saved and the four of us go out to dinner. My mother is going to get fresh crab and we're going to have a crab feed. And we are going to go searching for the land on which the house my mother lived in when she was about 2 years old is. We know the house has been torn down (we visited it while it was still standing). We are also trying to get a supplemental Cousins Day to include Peach's sister, to be held at Peach's house.

So it appears the poop asses are back on track and ready to face 2010 head on!

Obsessive Writer

I recently added two girls to my Compassion Family, Esther from Indonesia

and Pross from Uganda.

Pross is healthy, though she lives in an area which is affected by AIDS. Compassion has a special "AIDS initiative" for such areas, which includes education, treatment, home-based care and "income-generating activities for the affected person and his or her caregiver." Sponsoring a child in an AIDS-affected area is a little more expensive, with $7 of your sponsorship going to support the whole commuinity.

But I'm not sponsoring either of the girls; their sponsors don't write to them, so I have volunteered to be their correspondence sponsor, like I am the correspondence sponsor for Fred in the Philippines. Obviously writing to someone is a good job for me.

Up to now, I've been keeping all the information on the kids in a drawer of my desk, but with the addition of two more...and with the prolific art work from Fred, I was running out of space, so I decided to set each child up with a file folder in my file cabinet. This meant cleaning out a drawer that hasn't really been touched in years. Many, many years!

I had a great time when I found folders for copies of newsletters I've written over the years. Perhaps my life career has really been "newsletter editor."

I don't remember the very first newsletter I ever edited. I don't think we had anything like that in grammar school, but I was on the staff of the school newspaper and also yearbook editor for 3 years in high school. When I got th UC Berkeley, I worked on (I don't know if I edited or not) the newsletter for the Newman Center.

But it was after we got married and started having kids that I really went crazy with newsletters. I remember for a time there was a family newsletter, because it seemed that, with 7 people in the house, I was always telling somebody something twice and forgetting to tell someone else (it was during this time that the "Don't tell Paul Sykes things he already knows" came to be a family watchword). I would post the newsletter on the fridge and everyone was responsible for remembering what was in it.

It was called either The Sykes Family Newsletter or The Saturday Evening Post (because I posted it on the fridge on Saturday night, of course) but the masthead changed often and I loved this one.

That issue also contained the news, "Yesterday our mother, Bev Sykes, went out and bought a new $30 computer program. This program is used to make newspapers. Actually, this new program was used for this very newspaper."

When we moved to Davis, Char & Mike moved to Palo Alto, Pat & Rich moved to Sacramento and the others in the Pinata Group stayed in the BayArea, I decided we needed a newsletter to keep us as close as we were when we all lived in the same area, so I started The Pinata Papers, which I published monthly. My favorite newsletter.

I edited the newsletter for both the elementary and middle schools that the kids attended.

I was the editor for the California / Nevada / Hawaii newsletter for La Leche League, which ultimately caused a lot of hurt feelings when they used the income from the newsletter to let the PREVIOUS editor go to a big meeting and forbade from going. But who's bitter?

When several people I knew either face to face or through letters (this was 1991--the era before the Internet), were all bemoaning their lack of success in staying on a diet, I started "The Fat Fax, The Newsletter for Closet Thin People." It appears to have lasted about two years. In May of 1991 (Vol. 1, No. 11), I did a breakdown of our demographics: "Our group ranges in age from mid-30s to mid-50s, with more of us to the 50s side than the 30s side. We have 25 children, ranging in age from 1 to mid-30s. Three have one child, three have three, two have four and I supposed I should be embarrassed to have the most at five. Seven of us are married. All of us work outside the home (though two of us are seriously considering retirement)." This was an international group, since one of the women was Siobhan, Walt's relative in Dublin.

When I began volunteering at The Lamplighters, Gilbert & I started Cock and Bull, the Lamplighters newsletter, which is still being written today (but not by me). In the family newsletter folder, I also found a one sheet called The Unexpurgated Lamplighter, written in June 1985. Did I do a Lamplighter staff newsletter? I don't remember, but it contained only Lamplighter news.

When I was working for Women's Health, I wrote a weekly office newsletter called Hot Flashes (an appropriate title for an ob/gyn office!). I had such fun doing that newsletter. When we became part of Sutter West Medical Group, that morphed into The Well, a newsletter that went to each of the (five? eight?) offices in the group.

I was asked if I would edit the PFLAG newsletter the day I joined Yolo County PFLAG, which I did for a few months until it became obvious that the older woman who had written it for years didn't really want to let someone else do it.

I wrote the volunteer newsletter for the Davis Community Meals Shelter, where I volunteered for awhile. The newsletter was called Many Hands and one of the other contributors to the newsletter was Ruth Chambers, whom I interviewed recently for an upcoming article about the book she's just written.

The last newsletter I was involved with was the SPCA's, but somehow that never gelled. They had a really good working team and I felt superfluous. I'm sure we're all happier that I'm no longer working on the staff, though once in a great while I might write an article.

I don't really do newsletters any more (now). But I guess my articles the newspaper (I've written several columns there, including a mental health column--what a farce that was!) and my journal have taken its place. I guess no matter what I do, I just can't stop writing.

Cousins Day today...tomorrow's entry will be late

Progress

I have heard more than once in the past 3 days the question "why do things have to change? Why can't things stay the way they used to?"

This morning, after she read my journal entry, Jeri (who rarely watches TV and still uses VHS tapes when she does need to record something) wrote, "I find it very frustrating how technological advances are forced on everyone, whether they want them or not."

I got to thinking a lot about that. It seems that we really aren't very realistic about our anger at "change," especially as we get older.

I have loved all the changes in PhotoShop because I use it every day and so I try to keep up with all the advances that I can see myself using. It's important to me that I know what fun new stuff it will do.

BUT, I am still using a very old version of Front Page to write my journal every day and still "can't" understand the new way that the program works, making a unifying web page that is easier to update. I say "can't" (in quotes) because if I really wanted to, I could probably spend time slowly going through a manual or a tutorial and learn how to do it, but I don't see it necessary for what I use it for 99% of the time.

When Ned started making really good movies with Adobe Premier Elements, I was jealous of what he had learned and got the program for myself, but I'm overwhelmed with the amount of learning there is to do. He doesn't want to let me watch him work and tells me I need to learn it myself, and I react the same way my mother does--I know that it's "too complicated" for me to learn. Obviously it's not too complicated for me to learn, obviously I just am not willing to put in the time to actually do the work. I want someone else to do it for me and then show me how.

Jeri asks why things have to change because she doesn't watch TV, can't see any value in it, and sees no reason why she should learn about a DVR. BUT, she composes music on her computer. She doesn't use paper and pen. The program she uses is very complicated and I couldn't even imagine learning it. But then, I don't write music and I have no need for some new technology which will let me do it more easily -- she does.

Tom hasn't weighed in on the subject, but since he works with computer programs which make doing calculation for employee benefits for corporations much easier and faster, I suspect he'll agree with me.

But it's always been that way hasn't it? If it weren't for "progress," we'd all still be riding horses instead of riding in cars. One of the stories my mother is fond of telling is of her mother, being given a car by one of her kids, and trying to learn to drive it out in a field and then slamming the door and saying she could never learn it. And she never did. But she didn't have to. She lived out in the country and had others in the family to take her places. Those "others" made the move from horses to horseless carriages and learned how to drive because it suited them.

How many people know how to drive a stick shift -- and how many people sit around bemoaning the invention of the automatic transmission. I learned to drive a stick shift (Jeri still drives a stick shift), but when it's bumper to bumper traffic as far as the eye can see, I am very grateful for my automatic transmission.

It's not true that we become "too old" to learn something new. I know a man, nearly my mother's age, who started making videos for the first time and posting them to YouTube a couple of years ago. He has literally thousands of followers and has taught several generations of young people about life in Britain during WWII. He has made nearly 100 videos. Yet his very first video was halting and he admitted he wasn't sure what he was doing. It was important to him, so he took the time to learn how to do it.

There has to be "progress" because we are human beings and we are always trying to make things better. If there were no "progress" we might still be walking around with our knuckles dragging the ground. Imagine the kid who first realized that he could do more if he stood tall on 2 feet. I can just hear his parents grunting about that damn kid, how weird he was and how difficult it was to learn how to keep your balance if you didn't use your knuckles to help you. Now we all walk tall on 2 feet.

I wonder if Mrs. Og complained when her husband brought home that stone he'd carved into a round shape and showed her how she could add an axel and another round shape and attach it to an animal to make carrying things and ploughing the fields easier. Did she tell him it was way too complicated and she'd never be able to learn it and ask why familiar things have to change?

If there were no progress, my mother would still be running her clothes through the ringer of a washing machine and then hanging it all out to dry on the clothes line instead of pushing the complicated buttons on her automatic washer and dryer (heck, if there were really no progress, she'd be down at the lagoon scrubbing her undies on a rock!). It's all relative. What you want to use, you'll find a way to learn how to use.

When I sit and try to explain that to my mother, I see that look come into her eyes, the look that tells me she's disagreeing with me and that it's not fair that things have to change, but she will be polite and listen to what I have to say and then do whatever she damn well pleases. I also recognize that I give that same look to Ned when he talks to me about Adobe Premier Elements and tells me how easy it would be for me to go through tutorials and learn it on my own.

Sooner or later, my mother is going to figure out how to use her remote and I predict that within a year she'll be amazed at how easy it is, compared to the complaints she's had about her VCR over the past few years. And yes, sooner or later I will get tired of complaining about it and learn how to use Premier Elements on my own.

Another Day, Another Comcast Rep

I spent the morning putting together a how-to book for my mother, so it would be easier for her to do what she needs to do on her new DVR, assuming Comcast actually came through with a working box for her. It looked something like this:

I went through all of the functions I thought she might ever actually use and I was quite happy with it when the 12-page document was all finished.

At 11, I left for her house, just me and Harry Bosch again (what will I do when I am out of Harry Bosch books, which isn't going to be too long from now!) I got there in time for lunch and then we sat and talked while waiting for the Comcast guy to show up. I was falling asleep (remember I'd been up for a couple of hours around 2 a.m., when the power came back on last night). I finally agreed with my mother that I should take a nap, and so I did, waking up shortly after 2, when a rep from Comcast called.

I took the call and he asked what the problem was (again!). I explained it. He asked if they had tried a re-set from the office, I said they had. He said that he guessed we needed a new box and that, surprise, surprise, he could have someone there before 4.

And a young man did, indeed, arrive shortly before 4. We explained the problem. He explained that he wasn't sure he could help, that Comcast never gave the guys on the truck a new box, but merely boxes that had been returned, and that they had "fixed" at the headquarters. He didn't sound hopeful that he could get what he had in the truck to work, and said that if it didn't work, my mother would have to go into town, get a new box from Comcast, bring it home, install it herself and if she couldn't get it installed, pay a technician to come out and install it.

I...um...did not take kindly to that suggestion! I played the "c'mon...she's 90, for Pete's sake! and I can't be driving 80 miles every day to check on whether or not her box works!" card. He said he would go out to the truck and get what he had and that we would hope for the best. I have to admit that he really seemed like a very nice, likeable guy. I came to like him more as time passed.

He brought in a box that looked identical to the box he had just taken out. He hooked up to some gizmo and watched it go through all sorts of tests, then he installed it. One of the problems with the old box was that if you pushed the number buttons, nothing happened, so the only way to change channels was by cycling through the on-screen menu, which could take a bit of time if, for example, you wanted something on channel 109 and were starting on channel 2!

The numbers now worked on this box. Yay!

But it still did not show a space for "scheduled recordings" or that anything that was recorded actually could be played. He explained that this would not work until 45 minutes had passed, time for all the stations to reload all of their programs. I was skeptical because it seemed that we were back at square one, but he assured me that within 45 minutes, it would all work.

But better than that, he gave my mother his name and his cell phone number and told her that if it didn't work, to call him directly and he would see if he could get a new box from the main office.

That sounds good, but we won't know for sure. We left it that since Cousins Day (remember Cousins Day? We haven't had one since October) is this coming Monday and since my mother could now at least change channels and get to all of her favorite programs (and, more importantly, would be able to watch the Super Bowl on Sunday), we would leave the "recording" until Monday when we arrived and if it still didn't work, we would call the guy and see what he could do.

We still aren't completely set up, but things are better than they were yesterday, at least. AND, the instructions I made seemed to be something she could understand, so between now and Monday I'm going to make another set of instructions so she can find my journal on her WebTV. If that happens, I will really feel like I've succeeded!

The Failure of Technology

It was an interesting and not successful trip to my mother's.

I left at 9 a.m., eager to get there early, so I could also get home early. I thought about taking my bluetooth (I'm really getting into this bluetooth technology!) but decided that my mother wouldn't be calling me, at least not on my cell phone, so I left it at home.

Sure enough, I was about halfway to her house when the cell phone rang. I don't answer the phone when I'm on the freeway, so I let it go, but pulled off at the next stop to call her back.

It turned out that the place where I could pull over was some sort of truck place, with nobody around except me and this lovely egret. I took the opportunity to take a lot of photos of him.

But first I called my mother, who said she had hoped to catch me before I left the house and that a friend of hers had stopped by for coffee that morning and had fixed her television.

Since I was already halfway there, I decided to continue on down to her house anyway and have lunch, since I hadn't seen her in a couple of weeks.

First, I took several more photos of the egret, who finally decided that I was somewhat suspicious and flew away.

I continued on down the freeway to my mother's and got there around 10:30, I guess. The TV was, indeed, fixed and she didn't know what her friend had done to fix it. But I learned one thing--she now has the same Comcast box that we do, which greatly simplifies things because now I know what she's looking at when she is using her remote. She seemed surprised to know that I didn't know she had gotten a new box. She was also, as I suspected, in over her head as far as how to work the thing.

Well, THIS was something I could do. I have worked with a few technophobic people and I know how to be very patient and I am usually successful in teaching them. The problem was that in setting the box up so I could show her how simple it was, I ended doing so many things that she already felt she would never learn it. I told her to totally ignore me, that she would never need to do the things I was doing, and that, trust me, when I was finished it would be very, very simple. The skepticism was writ large on her face.

As it turned out, it was not as simple as it should have been. I'm sure a lot of you have ComCast. When you press the "MyDVR" button...

...this is the menu you are supposed to see:

Only with my mother's box, you didn't get this screen. All you got was a screen which said (I think) "scheduled recordings." I tried recording something, the box showed it was recording, the "scheduled recording" screen shows a percentage of the DVR had been filled, but nowhere did it show any program that had been recorded. I also scheduled a series recording and there was no place that would show that recording.

So, I called Comcast, thinking that this was going to be a horrendous hassle because--face it--calling ANY business these days is a horrible hassle. It wasn't a horrendous hassle, but even though I had not indicated that I wanted a Spanish speaking customer service rep, the one I got was Spanish speaking. I managed to explain my problem clearly enough that she told me she would have to transfer me to a technical rep.

The next rep spoke English, but after I explained my problem, he told me he would have to transfer me to a technical rep. I told him I thought I had been transferred to a technical rep.

The next rep also told me that I needed to speak with a technical rep. By now I felt like I was trapped forever in a pool of incompetent, albeit very polite and trying-to-be-helpful customer service reps, but finally I did get connected to a bona fide technical rep.

He reset the system, which meant we had to wait 20 minutes for all the channels to load again. He promised to call me back and, God bless him, he actually did. But the problem still existed. He finally gave up and said that he thought she needed a new box and scheduled another rep to come out tomorrow to bring a new box. I am going back to her house to be there, because I know what it should look like and can tell if there is going to be a problem, which she can't.

Interestingly, my mother told me that the first rep had installed THREE boxes before he found one that worked (and obviously it didn't work either). She also asked him to please show her how to work the remote but he said he was late for his next appointment, handed her a book that was waaay too complicated for her to understand, and left. The woman is 90 years old, for Pete's sake. Would it have killed him to show her how to find her soap opera and record it? (If he had, he would have discovered the problem that I did!)

I hope I made her feel a little better because she kept saying she was stupid-stupid-stupid and I told her about a couple of appliances that I had purchased and then felt overwhelmed when looking at the instructions and so had not used them until I finally decided to sit down and really READ the instructions step by step. That seemed to help a bit when she realized she wasn't the only one overwhelmed by having to learn new stuff.

Written at 10 p.m.

Around 4:45 this afternoon apparently a transformer blew up somewhere in the neighborhood and plunged us into a brownout. The computer and TV went off and would turn on, but would not power on (no whirring in the computer, TV would start and then stop again).

I didn't realize it was a brownout until I realized that the lamp in my office was not as bright as usual and then saw that everything was very dim, especially the lights inside the refrigerator.

When Walt got home, he called PG&E and found out that they were aware of the problem and that it would either be fixed by 7:45 or there would be an update. The TV in my office, which apparently doesn't pull much energy, still worked so we waited until Jeopardy was over (it went in and out, but we got about 80% of the show) and then went downtown for sushi, this being David's birthday.

By the time we got home, the brownout had become a blackout and the dogs were very confused. We were trying to stumble around with flashlights and get candles lit. Walt was just going to go to bed. Me, of course, being antsy until I've posted this, had to go back to Mishka's (which is open until 11 p.m.), to get something posted.

I did get an entry posted and when I got home we were all still in darkness, which lasted until 2 a.m. It is now 2:20 and I am revising what I posted from Mishka's

My task for the evening was going to be to put together a VERY SIMPLE how-to book for her, complete with illustrations and step-by-step instructions for how to do the most simple of things and then be sure I don't leave her house tomorrow until I'm convinced that she knows what she is doing, that she can at least turn on the TV, find the channel she wants to watch and, if she wants to record something, know how to record it.

Because of the black-out that didn't happen. but I hope I'll have a chance to do it before I leave later in the morning. For right now, I'm going back to sleep!

Frustration

I had a frustrating telephone call from my mother this evening.

The change from analog to digital TV has been very difficult for her. She has ComCast so she didn't need to get one of those digital boxes and things should have gone smoothly, but there are a few things that are different.

For one thing, she used to record one program while watching another and she can't do that now. I don't know why, but apparently this is a known problem with the change over. She adjusted to that, though she's not happy about it.

But tonight she called in a panic because "it says 444 but it's supposed to say 4 and I can't get it to say 4, so what do I push?" Whatever the problem is, she cannot find any program she wants to watch and she doesn't know what to do.

I have tried to tell her over and over again that all TVs are not alike and that I can't tell her what to do without being able to see her remote controls and what she is seeing on her TV. She can't understand why "they" can't make all TVs the same so all you have to do is push one button.

The advances in modern technology are not easy for older people. Heck, I'm getting there myself. I can't even imagine how I'll cope when/if I'm 90.

One big problem with my mother is that she is terrified of anything at all different when it comes to her machines. She was adamant that she wanted NOTHING to do with a computer because she knew she'd never be able to use one. She did finally agree to WebTV, which we got for both her and Walt's mother at the same time. Walt's mother is 5 years older than my mother and she was surfing the web in no time, reading the Washington Post on line and checking out "what this internet porn is all about." We laughed at her for that.

At the same time, my mother could just barely read e-mail and despite my setting her WebTV up with ONE bookmark, my journal, and leaving her printed instructions for how to press TWO buttons, she has been unable to find this journal unless I send a notify (which is why I started the notify list...she hadn't been reading it for awhile anyway, so those of you who are on the notify list will notice that I've been rather slack about sending out notifies. I figure that by now people who read this journal KNOW that I publish every day, so don't really need a notification.)

She can read e-mail, but she can't write e-mail, she can only answer e-mail. When she was in her 70s, I had hope that she would eventually learn this, but she never has. I pay $20 a month for her and she gets maybe 3 or 4 e-mails a month, if that (and those may be forwarded jokes), and never writes any, but I want her to HAVE it so that in case her grandchildren or her in-laws in Holland want to write to her, they can.

I have long wanted to get her a new TV and a new VHS/DVD recorder so she can watch movies on her TV, which she seemed to have missed at some point, but I knew that changing anything, even to something which might work better for her, will throw her into a panic. I also considered getting basic expanded cable for her because it would simplify her options, but she insists she won't ever use it, can't learn how to use it and wants no part of it. Given the cost ($60+ a month) and how much I'm already spending on WebTV that she won't use, I gave up that idea.

But it's so frustrating for me not to be able to answer her questions by telephone and have it be so frustrating for her. She doesn't watch much TV, but what she watches she really likes. I can't see her giving up CSI or 49er games or golf tournaments (though without Tiger Woods, that might not be as big a loss as it would have been a year ago), and her soap opera (which she insists she has been "watching" since the 1940s, even though we didn't have a TV until 1953!)

So anyway, I'm making an emergency house call tomorrow to see if I can figure out how to help her figure out her TV problem. I sincerely hope it's a simple fix or that I can get help from ComCast (which I realize is a fantasy!) or, if all else fails, a call to Ned, who will then be in the same position that I am right now--trying to diagnose something over the telephone when he can't see what I'm working with. At least I should be able to describe things a bit more clearly to him than she can to me.

I just wish I could buy her a new TV and a new recorder, but I fear that would end her TV watching altogether because she'd be so afraid of it that she wouldn't watch it at all.

Thursday Thirteen

Jobs I've Had

1. campaign literature distributor (in grammar school)
2. Babysitter
3. test tube washer
4. Biller-clerk
5. Private Secretary
6. Mother (didn't pay much, but the perks were great)
7. Entertainment editor for local newspaper
8. Typesetter
9. Typist
10. Author
11. Transcriptionist
12. Medical office manager
13. Theater critic