The foibles of technology.

I think it’s been a long summer for everyone. Not that King and I spend a lot of time socializing, but an entire summer of social distancing and finding things to fill our time meant we spent a lot of time on social media. Facebook is my social media site of choice and when I tallied my time spent on the site (they actually have a tool that tells you how much time you spend scrolling through junk) I decided it was time to disable the Facebook app on my phone. That way, I reasoned, I would have to consciously think about getting on Facebook. It would mean pulling my laptop out of the closet where it is kept, plugging in, booting up, wait for pages to load (it’s an old laptop) and – in short I’d have to REALY REALLY want to see what is happening in the Facebook world.

But getting Facebook off my phone was easier said than done. For me, the latest and greatest in cell phones is not a priority. My son was telling me he is coveting an android that comes with a $900 price tag. I’d rather have new tires on the trailer. My cheap, less than $150 phone came with Facebook pre-loaded so uninstalling the app was not an option. Turns out I had to disable it. When I clicked on the disable button I got a warning that disabling the app could cause other apps to “misbehave.” What does that even mean? In the end, I reasoned I had dealt with misbehaving children so how difficult could a misbehaving app be?  I bit the bullet and disabled the app. So far I’ve not seen a difference. No untoward behavior. Should bad behavior rear its ugly head, I’ll be stuck with a misbehaving phone.

Of course, I could have just stayed off Facebook but I have to be honest; I don’t have the willpower to just quit. The temptation was very, very strong. Sneaking one little glimpse into the Facebook world couldn’t possibly hurt, right? So I’d tell myself I would spend just a few minutes checking out my newsfeed. An hour later, with eyes blurring, I’d put my phone down.  It’s like eating just one potato chip.  It’s never going to happen. (I recall the time my sister-in-law told me about a new product she found in the dairy section of the grocery store. Philadelphia Cream Cheesecake bites. “They are so tasty,” she said. “One little square just hits the spot and takes the edge off hunger.” Really? One little 1 x 1 square satiates your need. Sure. I believe you).

But I digress.

 My son was telling me about a documentary he watched on Netflix about how much Facebook spies on us.  Then a few other people started talking about the same documentary, “Social Dilemma.” It would seem Big Brother (or a nefarious business) IS watching us. Now, I don’t have any deep dark secrets so no worries, right? I pretty much share everything on Facebook anyway, however, every time I drive past Walgreens I get a text message telling me what is on sale.  I know it’s not Facebook narcing on my location, but still. And I suppose it could be a coincidence, who knows?  Pretty sure it’s Google sharing my location.  But since Google Maps is such an integral part of our travels, Google has to stay.

King is cautious with sharing data but only if it is his idea. Most of the time he tends to think it is much ado about nothing. His attitude is so what? That is until the time our bank account was compromised and then he was concerned with “how did this happen?”  Telling him it could be any number of things did not help. Our next to non-existent online banking center help desk was actually a “no help desk.” We eventually gave up and switched banks.  It had taken me months to convince King direct deposit was the way to go. He REALLY wanted that paper check. When I pointed out to him it is rather hard to track us down while traveling he finally did acquiesce. Then the account was compromised, the bank shut it down and we were stuck with three direct deposits with no place to go. It literally took a call to our state representative (a former student) to get his pension check.

Technology is great when it works. When it doesn’t it is a nightmare. When they spy on us it is something else altogether.

 

Endings/beginnings

 The calendar says summer officially ends (this year) September 22,  and fall will continue  through December 21st. We all know that is not true. Summer ends the day everyone goes back to school. Winter begins with the first snowfall – unless it happens before Halloween, then it’s a fall snowstorm.

Or at least that is what it has been in the past. This year the recurring theme – rather than lamenting the end of summer -- is:  “What is going to happen when the kids go back to school?”

Tuesday, September 8, is the first day of school for our grandchildren in Grand Haven. The district had postponed an August start. The grandchildren in Paw Paw started August 31, and the grandchildren in California started (online) August 24. A niece who teaches in Spring Lake started a hybrid classroom August 26. Colleges are dealing with the spread of the COVID  virus among students and at my alma mater in mid-Michigan students are protesting face-to-face classes. It’s not your typical start to the school year.

I will confess both King (a retired school administrator) and I have a lot of reservations about the start of school. King is glad he does not have to deal with it on a professional level and we are both concerned for our children and grandchildren.

Meanwhile our life at the campground continues.  King and I are watching the weekend numbers slowly dwindle. I think the few trailers that are still here during the week are workers who travel the country to work when nuclear plants have their “outages” or maintenance on the facilities. Specialists come in to work the “outages” – traveling from nuclear plant to nuclear plant and living in the area for the month or two the plants are down/out/not powering or whatever you want to call it. The Palisades plant in South Haven is currently having an “outage.”  The plant is actually closing permanently at some point but that date appears to be a moving target. Since I no longer work in a newsroom I don’t pay much attention. Maybe that makes me uncaring? Or maybe I’m distracted by other things.

Ahh life goes on.

On a personal level, just as school resuming has caught us by surprise, so too has the reality that in two months King and I will be on the road again. We are waiting for the official date of the last golf scramble to determine our actual departure date. Retirement allows for that kind of flexibility.

But it is not as if our pending departure has taken us totally by surprise. There has been some planning, albeit it's been done in a haphazard sort of way. (My sister Donna, the perpetual planner, would be in full panic mode were she still with us).  In July I went online at the Secretary of State website to make an appointment for the trailer title transfer and discovered the earliest I could get in was November. That’s kind of not acceptable. I’ve been told I can call the day before I'd like to go in and try for a next day appointment. I keep putting it off a day of being on hold – I guess I’d better get to it.

The trailer also needs tires. King doesn’t think so. In the past I would just get up one day (preferable a golf day), hook up the trailer and have it done.  Unfortunately it’s no longer something I can just drive off and do. If we still had a backyard with a trailer in it, I might get away with it. As it is now he might notice the trailer missing or it moving down the road while he is sleeping in it. Small details, but I’ve always been able to figure a way around things or do what I want and listen to him complain about it in a off-handed way: “We could be going out to dinner tonight but you spent our money on new tires.” Those who know King see the humor in that statement. We never go out to dinner. My daughter has to tell him, “Take Mom out for dinner on Mother’s Day. Big Boy or McDonald’s does not count.”

And the truck … the “Check 4-wheel drive” light has been on since the fuel pump went out in Tulsa on our way home this spring. At the insistence of our son, and against the wishes of King, I took it in to have the differentials checked in June. The repair person said the differentials were fine and he was pretty sure the warning light was something that had been disconnected when they dropped the engine to replace the fuel pump. I’m guessing that light can’t be ignored much longer either. Points, plugs and warning lights are also on our “to do” list.

In the grand scheme of things these are small, petty annoyances. There are so many worse things going on right now. By the end of October they will be taken care of or we will have justified not doing them. It will all work out in the end.

In the meantime enjoy what is left of your summer, or fall, or whatever you wish to call it. And may all your annoyances be small ones.

 

 

 

 

But it's not enough for a garage sale

I am probably the Mrs. Kravitz (of the original Bewitched TV sitcom fame) of the Kal Haven Outpost campground.

Our home is parked next to the main entrance of the campground so I often sit in the “living room” and watch the comings and goings of fellow campers.

Last night a huge fifth-wheel trailer pulled in. I watched as first the truck appeared in my view and then the trailer, and the trailer and the trailer. Today, I can lean back and look out the window and watch as they continue to set up their camp.  The trailer was a “toy hauler” and this morning they backed a gator/golf cart thing out of the back end. The ramp then becomes a sort of outdoor seating area. They also set up a free-standing canopy. It’s a nice setup.

Before the pandemic shut things down last winter, King, our daughter and I took an afternoon and looked at new travel trailers. I have to confess we didn’t bother looking at the bigger models or the fifth wheels. It wasn’t so much the price tags as it was the length. Neither one of us has a desire to pull (and park) anything longer than 20 feet. That pretty much puts us in what manufacturers label as the “Weekender” category.  Evidently they don’t think one can live full-time in small spaces.  It takes some compromise,  but it is doable.

We are enjoying our life in our “weekender” and we continue to work to make our tiny house a home.

Last week King and I traveled to Grand Haven to help our son finish painting and putting up trim on his house. Well, King helped. I played with the grandkids. It gave us the opportunity to go through the nine remaining boxes of stuff we have stored in our son’s tool shed. I came home with a 1945 edition of the Joy of Cooking (which was a wedding gift to my mother), a few prints my mother had in her home, the Bible that was given to me when I joined Haven Reformed Church as a teen, and a couple of trivets.  

There are still a few boxes remaining that contain small appliances. They are doing little more than gathering dirt and mold. I thought I might save their content for the day we need to move into an apartment.  Now I am not so sure. I’m doing well with the set of cheap pots and pans, a single knife and plastic mixing bowls I use daily in the trailer.

So, I started eliminating even more “stuff” and gave a juicer and the picnic basked it had been stored in to our daughter-in-law.  I have a food dehydrator that I will give to the first daughter or daughter-in-law who says she wants it. I have bread pans and a few other things that can go to Goodwill.

Those treasures we decided to keep we brought home and spent a day or two looking for places to display them.  We live in 160 square feet. There is not a lot of wall space.

Our eclectic home has now become even more so. It’s become the Brady Bunch 1970s kitchen meets a 1980s rust and orange dining room meets my mother’s Early American décor.  The trailer now has a few sentimental things that will only mean something to me. The Early American prints were a gift from me to Mom when said she wanted something for above their bed.  There are two trivets in the kitchen. One was a gift to Mom when the church’s Women’s Guild group had a Secret Santa gift exchange in 1965. (There is a date and name on it). The other trivet I bought for her in Leningrad (now Saint Petersburg, Russia) when I was an exchange student to Finland in 1973. There is also a glass vase my Finnish family gave my mother that same summer.  The cookbook is tucked away with a homemade Glenn United Methodist Church cookbook that has a few recipes from Mom in it.

Seven sentimental items and a sewing machine – that’s not so hard for kids to get rid of when King and I are gone, right?

Although it’s not much of a garage sale, is it.

We truly are worlds apart

It’s Sunday morning and the campground is a beehive of activity. People are sitting around their campfires for one last cup of coffee, joggers are getting one last run in before packing up and leaving and those wanting to get an early start are starting to unhook their trailers and RV’s or take down their tents.  By this afternoon there will be about eight of us left in the campground for the week. Summers are busy, but by the time we leave for the winter we will be the only trailer here.

I’ve been watching the young people across the drive from us. A group of eight friends (I assume they are friends) in their mid-to-late 20s spent the weekend camping. They have been a quiet group, spending most of the time sitting around the campfire, playing football and generally just chilling. There are two dogs with them – a golden retriever and a black lab. The lab must be older as he’s pretty sedate and goes with the flow. The Golden… is much younger and is quite insistent that everyone must love him for obvious reasons. They are well-behaved dogs. I got barked at when I came around the corner of our trailer with a huge hanging flower basket in my arms. It scared the poor lab to death to see a walking flower basket. He barked. Once.

Cindy could care less that there are other dogs around. She spends her days either sleeping in our bed or sleeping in the shade of the side of the trailer that faces the road. There is soft dirt there and she digs it up slightly for the coolness of the dirt under the surface.  I’m not certain she even notices the people across the drive, or if she can see that far. She definitely can’t hear them.  She is at the stage in her life where naps are frequent. She stretches out and almost immediately starts snoring.  Sometimes standing directly over her and calling her name is not enough to wake her and I have to physically touch her. I think it scares me as much as it does her.  Even my sweet Cindy could wake up snapping if startled. She never has… but the possibility is always there. I’m always cognoscente of that fact. I practice touch and jump back.

King and I normally park our home in more remote locations and often find our nearest neighbor to be a quarter-mile or further away.  This campground is very nice, clean and modern. But it reminds me of our early marriage years when we lived in married student housing. That’s ok. A bit of nostalgia is good for the soul. In our early days together I was the more gregarious one. I spent a lot of time outside with the other mothers watching our children and talking about classes. King only ventured out when there was a pickup basketball game.

I’m not so gregarious anymore. I prefer isolation. I could say it’s the pandemic, but I honestly think things would be the same with or without social distancing.  People wear me out.

Something happened this week that has me scratching my head and saying to myself, “Really, Phyllis?”

We got satellite TV.

For the first time in 43 years I can honestly say I am really excited about having almost unlimited TV channels. I think it is a further excuse to stay away from people.  A complete satellite system was among the things given to us by our friend two weeks ago.  It only took our son (a former cable installer) and 50 calls to the service to get it working. I guess I REALLY missed cable news shows. I didn’t realize it until I spent that first morning with satellite binge watching news shows. And yes… they are news SHOWS. Please people. Learn the difference between news reporting and opinion giving. That said, I do enjoy watching them.  Except for one news network, but since I neither endorse nor pan anything in my blog, that show shall remain nameless.

But I don’t watch news 24/7. And King likes his sitcom re-runs (before we got satellite I bought him the first five seasons of Andy Griffith on DVD and he now has the shows memorized). 

The other night, however, I fell asleep while reading and woke to King swearing at the TV. I listened for a while and realized he was swearing at a news show host.  “He’s just giving his opinion. He’s entitled,” I told him.

“Not when his opinion is wrong.”

“Ok then. I have a nice teen paranormal romance here. Why don’t you take a break and learn about werewolves and Dijons?”

We are worlds apart.

 

I get new marching orders

I arrived in Michigan from our winter in California with an ankle that sometimes ballooned to three times its normal size. Friends and family were convinced I was going to die. I was pretty sure whatever was wrong happened because I repeatedly whacked my foot on the side of our daughter’s bed while I was taking care of her after surgery. She often insisted, quite loudly, that I move a little faster while helping her in and out of bed.

After several ex-rays and doctor visits I finally relented and made an appointment with the orthopedic surgeon to see if he could figure out what was going on. Turns out I have an extra bone in my ankle (it’s congenital) that was, in fact, injured by whacking it repeatedly on the side of the bed. There is actually a name for the extra bone. It’s called os trigonum.

The surgeon suggested I start physical therapy. Three summers ago I went to physical therapy when I had knee replacement. So it’s not new to me. It’s cool. It gives me something to do.  And I’d like to be able to keep up with our 13-year-old dog, Cindy, when we go for walks.

I have the same therapist I had three years ago. My first day of therapy was his first day back to work since the COVID shutdown. I would like to say here, I wear a mask,   I work out on a bike for several minutes of “warm up” and I have yet to die from carbon monoxide poisoning.

Wrong again conspiracy theorists.  

So part of my therapy is to improve my balance while standing on one foot. I can’t do it and I’m pretty sure it’s not an injury thing. I simply don’t have any balance.  I used to. I could do that yoga pose thing where you put your left foot against your right knee and stand for hours.  Now I just tip over.  The therapist is always ready to grab me in case I don’t right myself in time.  I finally told him I would give him an A for effort but if I actually did tip over to just let me go. One person down is better than two.

Honestly, I used to be quite limber. I could do hand springs, cartwheels, forward and backward walk-overs and even a passable splits. It is quite surprising when you discover these feats are no longer possible.

Years ago, when the children were young, we were visiting my parents. The grass was soft and cushy and I decided to try a backward walk-over. I think I landed first on my neck and then on back with my feet stuck underneath me. And I could not move. I finally managed to roll across the driveway to a lawn chair and pull myself up. I walked into the house to find my father lying on the floor in fits of laughter.

He finally pulled himself together long enough to gasp out, “I was coming to help you but I couldn’t stop laughing.”

Anyway, that was the last time I tried anything acrobatic.

 

 

The give and take of marriage

It was a fairly quiet weekend for King and I. We helped our son paint his house Friday and babysat Friday night while he and his wife went out for dinner.

That left the rest of the weekend with little to do.

Saturday I attended a virtual wedding vow renewal for a friend I worked with years ago at Central Michigan University. Five months ago it was going to be an in-person vow renewal. Many things have changed since then. There is this thing called a pandemic. Maybe you’ve heard of it? It has forced a lot of people to make big changes in their lives. And because of those changes we are learning a lot about friends, family and acquaintances that may have been better left un-learned.

Anyway, Brian, (the former co-worker from CMU) was “the IT guy” for the department where I worked.  I can’t recall the number of times I would call him, “Brian I need a new keyboard.” Brian knew I spilled -- yet again -- another Diet Coke all over the keyboard. He never let on that he knew.  He would simply show up in my cubicle with a new keyboard and offer to plug it in for me.

There are some people (not many) I miss from that job. Brian is one of them. I’ve never met his wife Sara, but she and I chat frequently via Facebook. I wish them both all the best.

As for King and I…

Two weeks ago we drove to Chicago to get some RV equipment from a friend who is moving out of the country. The friend had just purchased a new high-tech motor home with all the bells and whistles. Since he is now moving and selling the motor home he gave us all the extra equipment he had purchased to go along with it.  It was a generous offer made because we had been good friends and loyal employees. After retirement King and I had worked as caretakers on his hobby farm in South Haven.  We were the last in a long line of people who came before us.  Taking care of his place was actually a pleasure and we stayed on there for seven years. Apparently it was somewhat of a record for most of the caretakers there.

We came back from our quick Chicago trip with two brand new deep cycle batteries, some type of holding tank pump, a made-for-RVs satellite dish and a few “other things.”

Among those “other things” was a foam mattress topper. I decided to cover it and use it as an extra cushion for the table-that-converts-to-a-bed in the trailer. I use the area as a reading nook – only setting the table up when I have a project that requires the use of my sewing machine.  I had ordered some material online and when it arrived I hauled the topper out onto the picnic table to attach the material to the topper – quilt style.

During the middle of the operation the wind picked up and the topper blew over onto itself. As I’m lying across the topper to keep it from blowing away I said to King, “I need a little help here.”  He promptly got up and went into the trailer.

Okay then. I’m resourceful. Guess I’ll do this one myself.  I pulled an ice chest over to the picnic table with my free foot and hauled it onto the end of the topper that was flying around. A second later King came out of the trailer and handed me my phone.

“What’s this for?”

“You said you needed a calculator.”

Marriage takes a lot of patience… and hearing aids.

We settle into a routine

We are still here. I guess that means we are here (at this campground) for the duration.

It’s interesting to see the campers come and go. Big and fancy motor homes, equally big and fancy travel trailers line the campsites on the weekends. King and I watch them as they pull in, expand their “homes” with slide-outs and bring out the coolers, lawn chairs, outdoor grills and awnings. We are not quite that fancy but we are comfortable.  In the trees are the primitive sites and tent campers find respite from the heat in the shade.  Those of us in the sun either bake or turn on the air conditioning.

By Monday afternoons the campground is generally empty. But oh, the activity over the weekend. The owners have started hosting a farm market on the grounds from 3 to 7 p.m. on Saturday. The vendors sell baked goods, craft items, BBQ and more. It's rather nice to be able to walk over and browse.  I'd invite anyone in the South Haven area over the weekend to check it out. Wear your mask. Practice social distancing. 

Saturday  a couple pulled in next to us. They had just come from an RV sales place in Grand Rapids and are doing a trial by fire with their new trailer for the next two weeks. It’s a nice trailer and it was fun to watch as they set it up and discovered all the bells and whistles it has to offer. There are a lot of them.

Bells and whistles on our trailer? Ummm. No.  As I said we are not that fancy. The old Shasta we owned before this one had a roof air conditioner. This one does not.  Last week, with temperatures predicted to soar into the 90s, our youngest son decided he did not want to come for a visit and find baked Mom and Dad inside the trailer. So he bought a portable air conditioner. It’s the kind that sits on the floor with a large hose vent for the exhaust. After considerable debate King relented and let me block off the back screen door with foam core board (the kind that’s used for school projects) and vent it out the hole for the door handle.  We never use that door anyway. He thought we should set it up in the shower and vent it out the top trailer vent.  We tried it. The bathroom was freezing. The rest of the trailer – not so much.  We now have it set up in the back. 

Prior to installation the inside trailer temperature reached 100 degrees. It truly does help keep us from baking.

Days have kind of melded into one another. King gets up, putters around the outside of the trailer (Sometimes he starts a fire – sometimes it’s on the hottest of days), takes our dog, Cindy, for a walk and then we sit outside in companionable silence. For us 40-some years of togetherness basically means we’ve said all there is to say to one another.  Since I am the family communication person, he’ll ask, “Hear from anyone?” And I will give him the Cliff Notes version of a conversation with whatever child I’ve chatted with via messenger or text.  Later in the morning he’ll get up from his lawn chair and go into the trailer. I know it’s a sign he is getting ready to head to the store, but I’ll wait until he says, “Are you ready?” because if I get up and get my stuff together he’ll sit back down and wait until going to the store is, once again, his idea. Rather than have us ready to go to the store at the same time, he would rather wait in the truck drumming the steering wheel with his fingers while I get my purse, find the keys and lock the trailer. It’s his way. 

Our trips to town include a drive through the parking lot at the North Beach in South Haven. I call it “checking to see if there is still water in Lake Michigan.”  Then we head to the gas station where he buys scratch-off lottery tickets, lemonade, beef jerky for Cindy and an ice tea for me. It’s the same every day. Tuesday evenings are reserved for golf league. It’s the reason we stay in one place for the summer. Well, it’s the Tuesday evening golf league and twice a month golf scrambles that keep us here. And yes, he practices social distancing.

Sunday morning was one of those golf scramble days. So I sat alone and watched a few neighboring campers pack up and get ready to head home for the week. I would be lying if I said I envied them.  I’m quite content where I am.

Life may sound mundane,  but it’s peaceful.