How Doing Stupid Things is Part of a Vast right Wing Conspiracy

“Stupid is what stupid does.” is an idiom popularized by the movie, Forest Gump and according to the Urban Dictionary it means, “an intelligent person who does stupid things is still stupid. You are what you do.” Go ahead, call me stupid. It won’t be the first time that label has been pinned on me. The first time that I remember hearing it was when I was trying to learn to tie my shoes. My mother tried to teach me. My dad tried to teach me. My brother tried to teach me. I wouldn’t be surprised if the mailman, milkman and the baker down the street tried to teach me. It wasn’t until some where a long the line another left-handed person got in the act and got the job done and now, at nearly eighty, I still show off my shoe tying skills by double knotting my laces.

The last time someone called me stupid was this morning when I berated myself for forgetting the Cardinal Rules for fixing all computer related boo-boos: 1) When all else failed restart your machine. 2) Restart your wi-fi. 3) Go to your bedroom, lay down a few minutes then get back up and restart your whole freaking day if you have to and by some miracle it all helps. But why does it take me a hour or two of frustration trying to get my printer to work before---Lo and Behold---the Cardinal Rules pop into my head? Someone needs to embroider those rules on throw pillow. I’ll bet they’d make a lot of money and I would be first in line to buy one.

I’ve been packing boxes and I’m up to 76 now. I have a handwritten inventory sheet that I finally typed into a word document and I wanted to print it off. Thus I was given the keys to Frustration City. Losing my printer was a frequent occurrence with my old computer and I got so I could download new drivers and get it back online in less than ten minutes. But with my new computer everything I tried including getting new drivers wasn’t working. Until I remembered to apply the freaking magic rules. 

After I move I wouldn’t even need a printer if I didn’t want one. They’ll have a IT room like in hotels where you can walk in with your laptop and send your documents to one of their printers.They’ll also have an IT guy at our beck-and-call too which I was excited about until I learned he gave us bad information when he spoke at a future residence meeting and told us we could keep our Charter e-mails forever when the company says otherwise.

In case you’re wondering about how the vast right wing made me do these stupid things, it didn’t. I got that title from a title generator that I found through another blogger, The Spectacled Bean. I put ‘doing stupid things’ into the generator and laughed out loud when it came up with the title at top of this post. I’m not sure if 'Portent's Content Idea Generator' will become a part of my blogging MO but if you’ve been reading me for very long you’ll be able to tell those spoof titles from the ones my brains works so hard at churning out. It’s no secret that coming up with titles is my least favorite part about blogging. I had the same issue coming up with titles for art work back in the olden days when I needed to name paintings for exhibits. Screw the naming question. The bigger cliffhangers in my future according to the Gospel of Me is will I be able to paint again or did the years take away any talent I might have had?

My new phone got shipped and delivered in record time but I was ready for it. For some obscure reason it ported contacts from an older version that included a bunch of contacts for Levi that I had deleted when he died. No worries. I deleted them again and put the hard copy list I made in my emergency ‘Go Bag’ for a power outrage or the apocalypse, which ever comes first. 

Next step was to start the porting process for transferring my landline number to the my new cell and if you read the comments section on my last post you know that is not going well. The saga continued for two mornings spent on hold and getting passed around Spectrum with different departments contradicting each other. Finally, I was given a phone number for Great Calls to call to find out why the rejection happened. Twice. Great Calls conferenced me in on the call to Spectrum and fingers crossed I'll know by Monday if the third port request works. If not, Great Calls was told by Spectrum to do the 4th request "manually" whatever that means. I'm so glad I didn't wait until closer to the move to go through this.

The house closing took place today but with hitch I wasn't expecting. Because my buyers were from out-of-state the title company couldn't issue me a check for my house until they get electronic copies of the buyer's notarized signatures. They didn't spring that twist on until the very end. Essentially, I signed my house over and had to walk out with a PROMISE the check would get hand delivered this afternoon. With so many moving parts, I feared something would go wrong. But it didn't. Got the check as promised but the bank says there's a two day hold on it which means I have to go back to get a cashier's check to make the final payment for my new place.

Since my husband’s (and my) grave marker is nearby the place where we closed I swung around to the cemetery so I could dig a hole for Levi’s ashes without getting caught. I was like Johnny Appleseed when I spread my husband’s ashes in two counties and at six places and that’s not counting the half a box of ashes buried at the cemetery, an ash locket I used to wear a lot and a four inch tall ash urn kept in a velvet box on my book shelve. Did I shed tears planting Levi's ashes into the ground? Yes, but not many and they were more about closure than the pain of loss. And for the fact that I probably won't get back up to this end of the county until my ashes are interred.

The day we interred my husband's ashes the sexton asked me if I wanted to be at the foot or head of the gravesite because Don’s ashes would be placed at the opposite end and it struck me that these three guys---two sextons and the funeral director---would probably judge our entire marriage dynamics by the answer I gave. I went back and forth trying to figure out a logical choice and finally I decided dead is dead and what difference could it possibly make what I picked or what these strangers thought. As hard as that decision was that day I don't remember what I decided nine years ago. Levi's ashes went as close to the stone as I could get them because I didn't want to accidentally dig up husband. That would be hard to explain.

Jeez, how did I get from vast right wing conspiracies making a person do stupid things to burying my dog’s ashes? If you can figure that out maybe you can help me step away from the computer and go find me some breakfast. My stomach is growling. ©

Visiting the Cemetery

I was in my husband’s home town a lot this past week so I popped into the cemetery to---to do whatever it is we widows do while visiting a gravesite. I still haven’t figured out why we go. It’s not like Don is there, buried six feet under. Part of his ashes are but his ashes are all over the place: on the shores of Lake Michigan, in the winds over a ghost town he loved, along a nature trail, in our back yard, in a river that runs through town, in a locket, and in a four inch high, boxed urn tucked in a bookcase. I was a regular Johnny Appleseed when it came to spreading his ashes. I had to make myself stop coming up with places where I thought his ghost would like to roam. And I’m still surprised I didn’t find a way to ship some of his ashes out west to the mountains in Colorado, his favorite place on earth. I was on a mission that spring after he died. I told myself it was a mission to please him but I suspect I was just making sure I had places to visit Don that didn’t involve going to a gated community full of dead people. But you've got to admit, Don is now part of the Classic Elements: Earth, Air, Water and Fire and there is something poetic and eternal about that.

The cemetery is a pretty one full of trees and hills and they don’t restrict the height of the stones like so many places do. Don picked out the plot himself, based on the fact that his life-long friend and his wife bought the lots next door. Party time when we all join him there, I guess. That thought tickled Don’s sense of humor. This week, I did not expect to see the stone with our names on it so overgrown! Vegetation covered up half the surface since I’d been there earlier this year. It made me sad, mad and embarrassed that I hadn’t check on it sooner. I didn’t have any tools with me but I pulled out what I could, unearthing a nest of angry ants in the process. I tried but couldn’t ignore the ‘yuck factor’ the ants brought to the experience. Ants will take over the world….or so I’ve heard and now I have proof.

I stopped by my sister-in-laws house while I was out and about and we got on the topic of burial verse cremation. She wants to be buried and I said, “I don’t care what they do so long as they make sure I’m really dead first.” But I am getting cremated and my box of ashes will reside down with Don’s and the ants. Yuck, yuck, yuck! Have I mentioned YUCK! I don’t like ants. She doesn’t want her kids to spend a penny more on her funeral than she spent on her husband’s funeral and I said, “Considering how long ago he died and how much longer you can live you’re going to get buried in a cardboard box! Prices go up.” She laughed as I knew she would. My sister-in-law has been a presence in my life longer than my husband was at this point in time. How strange the math gets after someone dies. I’m now older than my husband was. He’s like one of those butterflies that got trapped in amber for all eternity. My memories of him are fossilized and grow yellow with age, perfectly preserved with no chance of growing in numbers. Maybe that’s why we widows go to cemeteries? We need to polish the amber from time to time, to see where we’ve been to know where we’re going. We give an accounting at the gravestone, ticking off on our fingers our widowhood accomplished. Hey, Don are you listening? Am I doing okay? Are you doing okay? What do you think about the classes I took? As I said these things in my head, I felt like Little Orphan Annie searching for her lost past and future all rolled into one. If only that were possible for widows like it is for orphans searching for their birth parents.

The trees at the cemetery are entering their show-off mode. Some people love the fall color palette---the yellows, browns, oranges and golds---but it’s my least favorite. It signals change and effects my moods in a negative way, says the woman who wouldn’t eat orange foods until I was over forty. Years ago I took a class on Color Psychology where I learned it wasn’t just in my head, there are physiological reactions to colors which explains why they don’t use orange in the psycho wards. Interior designers know this. People who create commercials know this but what does all this color talk have to do with a widow going to a cemetery? Not much. I just got sidetracked thinking about how much easier it is to visit in the spring when the promise of renewal is palatable in the air we breathe, when the crabgrass hasn’t claimed the stones and the ants are still hibernating underground. Out of sight, out of mind.

I didn’t cry while I was at the cemetery but I chocked up as I drove through the gates to go home. I could feel the tears behind my eyes begging to spill out. But I told them, “NO!” I am woman! I am strong and I will forge a new life for myself even if I die trying. ©