In A Whirlwind

Somehow this week seems to have flown by rather like a whirlwind of dry leaves. No special reason. I have been trying to take advantage of some fine autumn days – and even of one or two less fine. I have photos still in my camera that need to be transferred to the computer and sorted. I have thoughts in my head about which the same could be said! Some have found their way onto the keyboard, but into emails rather than blog posts. There’s a time for everything… I suppose.

All around me, others seem to be caught up in their own whirlwinds as well. Circumstances not behaving as we’d like them to. One minute, we think we know exactly where we are. The next… We don’t.

Hm. Apparently, the same goes for books. Between paragraphs I spent fifteen minutes or so looking for my Wizard of Oz book, knowing that I needed a quote from it. I can’t imagine where it’s gone off to. Must have been taken by a stormwind…

… Ah, there it is. (It had sought the company of Harry Potter, for some reason.) And here is the quote that I did not know I was looking for. Do you find that a contradiction? I knew I was looking for a quote from this book. Didn’t really know which one. Until now.

If you’ve been feeling lately like you’re being shaken by unexpected stormy weather, this is for you: 

“The cyclone had set the house down, very gently – for a cyclone – in the midst of a country of marvelous beauty.”

L. Frank Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Ch 2

 

 

 

 

Pedestrian Problems

Choosing some pictures today to give you an idea of the snow problems from pedestrian point of view. Here and there you do find a nicely ploughed sidewalk, going on for a bit - until...



... it suddenly stops! In this street corner, someone pushing a walker or pram or wheelchair, or for other reasons unable to "climb", just wouldn't get any further!



A pedestrian crossing over a heavily trafficated road - but if you manage to get across... surprise, surprise... you'll just find yourself facing another wall of snow, with nowhere to go!

Murphy At Work Again

Remember the house where Murphy's Law rules?
I.e. where my Dad lives.

In December, we had problems with

1/ plumbing, resulting in a flooded cellar (main problem fixed)
2/ a muddy yard (temporarily solved by snow and ice,
but no doubt the problem will resurface when it begins to thaw!)
3/ a broken refrigerator (replaced)
4/ the lock in the front door (fixed)
5/ the heating system (fixed)

Last week it was the clothes washer's turn. Lucky for me, home care seem to have decided that when it comes to technical things, it's better to call my brother, although he lives farther away. (They're right.) He has now ordered a new one, and a tumble dryer as well (there wasn't one before). Yes, luckily there is money enough to pay for it. Mum just never wanted one.



This is NOT The House, but a completely different building,
probably abandoned even by Murphy. His work there
seems to be done.

Murphy's Law

Do you recognise the epigram "if it can go wrong, it will"?
It is generally known as Murphy's Law. 

Murphy's Law was named after Capt. Edward A. Murphy, an engineer working on an Air Force Project designed to see how much sudden deceleration a person can stand in a crash. One day, after finding that a transducer was wired wrong, he cursed the technician responsible and said, "If there is any way to do it wrong, he'll find it." The contractor's project manager kept a list of "laws" and added this one, which he called Murphy's Law.

During the month of December, Murphy's Law seems to have moved into my dad's house, determined to stay. For new readers (I notice my number of Followers has gone up lately!) I'll sum up the background: My dad became a widower in May this year. He is still living in his own home, alone, but with a lot of help from municipal home care staff around the clock now because of various health issues.

When my brother and I were there for 1st Advent, my brother discovered 3 cm of water on the cellar floor, caused by a plumbing problem. Resulted in need of help from big truck with pumps and hoses the following day.

There were also problems with the lock on the front door being on the verge of falling out. Resulted in need of locksmith.

Last week the refrigerator gave up. Resulted in need of urgent purchase and delivery of a new refrigerator. My brother dealt with this over the phone, while I dealt with nervous breakdown (my own, and not very successfully dealt with).

Yesterday it was some pump connected to the heating system that stopped working. Resulted in need of I'm-not-sure-whose-services, but home care staff seems to have dealt with this on their own this time (making the appropriate phone calls) - I guess they're now accepting Murphy's law too and beginning to see machinery breakdowns as part of the daily routine in this house! 

One problem which we have not yet dealt with is that because of the increased traffic (all the home care cars coming and going) the front yard has become all muddy during the autumn, resulting in need of a truckload of gravel, and people to spread that out. While they (who?) are at it, it would probably be a good idea to also have the path up to the house fixed to make it easier for dad to get out with his rolling walker. But with all the other stuff happening we haven't had time to talk to anyone (whom?) about that yet.


While we were doing nothing about that, the weather changed this week. Instead of muddy ground there is (I suppose) now frozen and snowcovered ground instead. Arose another question: How to deal with snow when more of it falls down at the same time. Luckily we have an arrangement since before that the snow plow drives into our yard (which is at the end of the road) and turns around there. But if there is a lot, some shovelling by hand etc will be needed too. (Mum and dad used to be able to do that themselves. Last year, luckily there was very litte snow all winter.) There is another team within municipality organisation which can help with that (at a cost, and only for the elderly). The problem with that is it turned out one can't just ask them once and for all to just go out there whenever it seems to be needed - they need to be to told on each occasion. The job to decide when it's needed will also have to fall on the daily home care staff. (The snow situation here in town where I live, and out in the countryside where dad lives is not always the same.) Luckily though, home care are again being very helpful. My job today was to call them about this, and they did not seem to consider it a big deal to include that too in their job.

Remains to be seen though what Murphy's Law will find to strike at next... (Murphy's Law Site has a lot of suggestions... )

Not Quite as Planned

If you would like to get a feeling of what 1st Advent Sunday should be like, go to the previous post: A Swedish Advent Hymn. If you want to know what it was actually like for me, this year, stay here.

That I would not be going to church to sing Advent hymns, that much I knew beforehand. The closest I got to a church was that on the way to my dad's house, we (my brother and I) went up to the churchyard  in that village to have a look at the headstone on our mum's grave, which was put up after we were there last. When we got there we were at first greatly surprised to find the car park full and cars parked alongside the road too, because we had by then completely forgotten that it was Sunday at all, and 1st Advent Sunday on top of that...! This because before going to the churchyard we had also been to a store in town to get various technical and plumbing emergency things related to unpleasant discoveries my brother had made at the house when arriving there Saturday afternoon. Namely that there was 3 cm of sewage water on the floor in the old laundry room in the cellar and problems with one of the toilets upstairs...

My major contribution at dad's house was bringing food on the table (most of it I had prepared beforehand) and washing the dishes afterwards, and going through a pile of bills etc. I also managed to find the electric Advent candle holder and a place for it where dad can actually see it. That is actually just about what I can manage in one day (with chronic pain problems in neck-shoulder-arm.)

My brother had a much tougher afternoon trying to fix the flood situation. It turned out it was too big a problem to be solved by the small pump we had bought for the purpose. Pofessional help would have to be called in the next day (today). This however still involved trying to make the flooded room accessible for the professional people. Which meant my brother still had to spend the whole afternoon (several hours) in the cellar, clearing that room from old garden furniture and two sacks full of other various moldy rubbish. One huge problem that we are facing is that our parents rarely threw away anything, ever - Dad's philosophy always having been that as soon as you get rid of something, the next day you'll find yourself in need of that very thing; so he always preferred to be on the safe side...

When I got home in the evening, it was without knowing if my brother would be able to sort the emergency situation out before he had to go back home at noon today (he lives 300 km away). There is also a list of other unsolved big problems of various emergency degree, one or two which my brother had meant to take care of this weekend before he knew about the even more important emergency. Just the mere awareness of the list gave me a literally sleepless night last night. My own computer situation has not even made it to the list yet! (In case anyone missed it, my desktop computer died a couple of weeks ago and the laptop is not very well either.)

However, at noon today my brother called to say the plumbers had been there with their machinery and cleared the pipes and dealt with the flood etc. So a huge sigh of relief, even though a number of other problems still remain.

We have a saying in Swedish that would translate something like "fortune in the midst of bad luck". (I can't think of an exact English equivalent - if someone can, please share.) I guess that's how we have to think of it. Had my brother not come here this weekend, the situation could have got much worse before anyone noticed, because normally now no one else ever goes down into the cellar...

 

Updates

1. Update on the hospital visit in the morning with my dad:
Worrying beforehand did help. It all went much better today than last time. (See yesterday's post about Hope and Worry.) We are still not much wiser, though. The specialist will have to do some digging into the past, trying to collect medical records from other places, before he can determine whether new medication might possibly be of any help. For me, however, it was a huge weight off my shoulders that this time an assistant from home care was also with us through the whole visit.

2. Does this experience also really mean that I feel I have to update my theology? In case someone actually feels unsure about it: No. I never seriously thought that when Jesus said "Do not worry about tomorrow" he meant: Never think in advance. The whole context in Matthew 6 has to do with a much bigger picture, what things we find most important in life. (To increase our bank account, or our compassion.)
                                                   

3. Update on the computer situation:
In the late afternoon, I tried a couple of more internet tips on the dead computer, but without success. I'm not going to make any more desperate attempts, that might only lessen the chances of retrieving  lost data from the crashed hard drive by help of other means. My brother will probably be able to help me with that later on.

So I have accepted the fact that I will have to buy a new computer. It has been on my mind for a while anyway. Just hoping the laptop will continue to keep its spirit up in the meantime, until I decide on the best alternative for the future.

Today I have been able to safely transfer all my original 2009 photos, and also some edited ones, from my backup USB flash drive onto the laptop. Phew!


It's not the End of the World.

Hope And Worry

Early in October, I had three blogposts entitled The Worries of Tomorrow, The Troubles of Today, and Another Day; preceded by a Quotation (41/09) from the Bible about worrying; or rather about NOT to worry about tomorrow, "for tomorrow will worry about itself". You'll find the posts in the Blog Archive for October.

The gist of it all (in those blogposts) was that I found that a bit more worrying "yesterday" would for once have been in place, before accompanying my dad on a visit to the hospital, which turned out just energy-consuming, irritating, exhausting, unproductive and a general waste of time for everyone involved, because of lack of proper planning, and too much optimism.

Now it's time for a new attempt. I can only hope I have worried enough in advance this time! The blood samples got taken last time (should have been taken a week before that, and could have been done elsewhere, but weren't). Tomorrow, home care staff will be accompanying dad all the way to take care of all the practical assistance he needs. (Which I can't provide because of my own chronic pain problems. Which last time's experiences proved.) A little while ago I phoned the home care organizer and checked that we still agree on this and that proper preparations have been made by them this time. I will meet up to sit in on the actual talk with the doctor; that's all. (Which will probably be more than enough for me for one day.)

Until that is over and done with, I will try and resist my inner urges to waste more energy on attempts to resuscitate my dead computer (see yesterday's post). It is unlikely to get any deader than it already is by waiting a bit. 

My Computer Died

After writing the previous post on my desktop computer, I turned it off and went out for a walk, and to get a few things from the supermarket. When I got home and turned on the computer again a couple of hours later, it was dead. Apparently it had some sort of sudden heart attack - important system file damaged or missing...

I called my brother the Computer Wizard on the phone (he lives in another town), and we tried a few things, but it did not work. He did find a web page for me with some other suggestions and I might try them another day when I'm less tired, but my hopes are not high...

Well, at least I still have the laptop and so I'm not out of internet connection! But the laptop too has been complaining about being tired lately and a couple of times threatened to go on strike. (Had to unplug the battery and reinsert it to restart.) Apparently neither of my machines has been very pleased with my blogging habits of late...!

I will have to start thinking about getting a new computer.

The worst thing about the present situation is that I have all my edited photos on the dead one; as well as the PSP software; as well as a lot of personal documents and whatever; as well as that's the one connected to the printer; and...

I do however have some of the photos stored in the Picasa webalbum. (The ones I've already used on the blogs + a few yet unpublished.) The original photos from this year I also have on a memory stick (which I hope is still alive). Photos from previous years I have on CD-R, and also some older documents. It's mostly things like edited photos and documents from this year that are gone unless they can be recovered.


Apart from the loss of Data, I can also foresee a considerable loss of Time and personal Energy over the next few weeks, trying to fix things.

For the next few days I had already scheduled posts for my Picture Book, so no immediate panic. And (now I'm repeating myself, just to help myself breathe calmly) the laptop is still alive so I'm not without internet. And... I don't know what I'm complaining about, really. Still feels like I just lost a friend, though!

I Knew I'd Get In Trouble

I knew I'd get in trouble with my camera one of these days.

This summer I've been walking around town a lot taking photos, and getting more and more unconcerned what people might be thinking about it. It's not unconceivable that behind my back, perhap I'm getting known as "that woman who always stops and stares, apparently for no reason at all" or "you know, the one always waving a camera about even in places were there's nothing really interesting to photograph".

For example, people who rushed by in their cars over the bridge on Sunday morning, probably never even caught a glimpse of those spiderwebs that I was taking dozens of pictures of, walking back and forth on the sidewalk very slowly, stooping down and whatnot.



I'm still hesitant about taking pictures of people in the street. I did take some such pictures at the autumn market, because somehow, on such special occasions, people don't seem to be bothered about it, or even notice. Sometimes, I also try to get shots of people from a distance - like walking away from me. Just to get some sense of motion into the photo. Their backs turned towards me, they don't notice; and it's highly unlikely they would even recognize themselves if they ever came across the picture. Which in turn in itself is extremely unlikely that they ever would since I'm blogging in English and rather anonymously.

Yesterday, not far from where I live, I stopped in the street and got the camera out to get a shot of the continued autumn colour change in the treetops. I did not even really notice there were people further down the street, until after I put the camera back in its bag. Then I heard and saw them, a bunch of school boys occupying the whole sidewalk, shouting rather loudly to one another. I crossed the street over to the other sidewalk - still at quite a distance from them. Then as they approached, suddenly one of them called out - surprisingly polite, considering the language they had just been using towards each other:

- Excuse me!
I wasn't looking at him, and at first did not get that he was talking to me, across the street. He repeated:
- Excuse me!
- Yes? said I, turning towards him, thinking maybe he wanted to ask the time or something.
- Were you taking pictures of us? (suspicious tone of voice)
- No, said I, surprised (and hoping to myself I was telling the truth).
- But you had your camera out just now! (still suspicious)
- Oh... Just the trees... said I, with a very vague wave of my hand towards the distant treetops... and feeling very stupid, because the view was not really all that obviously stunning and worth taking photos of!

By then I sort of half expected having to clear the memory of my camera on spot, under supervision of half a dozen nearly-teenage-boys...

But astonishingly, all I got back was an "oh" and a shrug.
And they continued their way, and I mine, in peace...

When I got home, I checked my camera.
The boys were not in the picture.
Relief for my conscience!

But perhaps I'd better check the surroundings as well as my "focus" next time, before taking pictures in strange places... Or I might end up arrested for suspicious behaviour or something!
 

The Troubles of Today

(Readers are advised to read yesterday's posts before this one.)

Sorry, Jesus! For once (-?-) I have to argue with you: I actually think a bit more worry yesterday might have saved at least about a dozen people a lot of trouble today. I  would not even be surprised if today shortened my own or someone else's life by a few hours, but that will of course be hard to prove...

I'm lying in bed now, at four in the afternoon, and don't have enough writing energy to go into details. But to sum up: All that came out of today was that some blood samples got taken that should have been taken a week before, which  could have been done locally without going to the hospital in town. Since it was not, all the rest of today's hospital visit was a total waste of time and energy for me, dad, busy specialist doctor, several nurses, receptionists, drivers and others...

Well. One more lesson learned: Next time, home care staff will have to accompany dad to the hospital, even if I sit in on the actual talk with the doctor. What was I thinking?! What was anyone thinking?! "Good will" is not enough to get through a day like today. My dad needs a lot more physical assistance than I can provide; and don't think that just because you're in a hospital, there is always staff at hand... If I knew who to yell at, I'd yell. Loud. However, I don't really know who to blame... Lots of individuals today went out of their way to be helpful; the fault is not with any of them. Tomorrow, I'll try to phone Someone In Charge and talk calmly about how to avoid the whole thing from being repeated...

Thanks to all who responded to my worries from yesterday and who have been thinking and praying. Keep it up, please. I'll need it.