Dos

I don't honestly believe in Fate, or some sort of predestination. It seems more likely to me that we make our own luck. It may be in tiny infinitesimal ways, but that with a little bit of coincidence thrown in can be read by different people in different ways.

I do believe we can influence our own way of thinking and being, in either good or bad ways, so it makes sense to try and be as positive as possible.

Still, someone can do everything right. Think good thoughts. Be positive and end up with a not so great out come. When that happens?

It's just sad.

We don't live in a vacuum. Other people do touch our lives and then we just have to do the best we can.

Life in the computer age

Sometimes it is the simplicity of life that feels like a gift.

My new computer died last Tuesday and I bought a new one the next day. There is a whole story around that, but it isn't very interesting -- just frustrating. I received an email offering to set up my new computer and walk me through all the new changes so I called and made an appointment.

I didn't really think I needed that kind of help, but it was free and I thought there was the off chance that professionals might be able to salvage my Microsoft word program. In the end all they did was have me leave my new computer with them with a promise to return it in two or three days.

Four days later they called! I have my new computer! It has Word! No more copying and pasting an "A" or "S" every time I need one! (Because Sharp Keys will no longer work on the one remaining computer I have left from before.)

I have bookmarked all my favorite places. Picked a picture off of Facebook for my screen and now typed this blog without banging my head against any wall, virtual, or otherwise.

Everything feels easier even if it wasn't associated with the computer, or really inconvenienced by it being down.

I am sighing a huge sigh of relief and going out to take a walk.

Just Married

I really only had two friends when I lived up in the mountains of North Carolina. I had family, but I didn't get out much other than with them, so the only two people I really got to know were my dog groomer and my people groomer. The woman who cut my hair.

Both were interesting people, but the stylist was more interesting by far.

She was a large woman with hair that was red by genetics and helped long by modern day science. she was married to a Native American who was about a decade older than she was and who was the love of her life. He had a bad heart and she worried about him all the time.

That didn't stop them from having fun though. Once a month they rode their motorcycles a hundred miles to Knoxville to party with friends who were also motorcycle afficiandos for just one night.

She bought an old house filled with what was listed as trash and managed to get three truckloads of  sell-a-ble antiques out of it to help with the remodel, which she did herself. She left the trap door in the kitchen floor. It was there from the days before electricity and refrigeration. There was a creek running under it where you could have kept milk and such.

In her spare time, she was a member of the Roller Derby, planted fairy gardens, painted Pysanky eggs and could tell you the history of each design. She made fancy hand lettered cards, jewelry, and she took every free class she could at the university while making sure her boys grew up making good grades in school and knew how to work.

This year she skimped and saved enough for her and her husband to take their first big vacation.  It was  supposed to be on their motorcycles, but he wasn't well enough for that. Instead she reconfigured it so they could camp as much as possible and followed Route 66 across the country as much as they could with a sign on their car that said, Just Married, 30 Years, July 17th. 

They have stopped at all the right places, played like they were twenty and had a ball. I think she is my new role model.