Once in a Lifetime

Most people have difficulty moving on from unpleasant happenings but, strangely, seem to be in a great hurry to move on and forget about anything enjoyable or interesting. Keep talking about something you enjoyed for too long and someone is sure to complain, "Why are you still talking about this? That was yesterday. We've moved on."

I don't know that I'm any better than anyone else at moving on from the bad stuff but I am very much against extending the drama. But the enjoyable stuff? I want to keep on enjoying it, to keep on talking about it and sharing with friends. And right now, a week after the sun and moon performed their brief dance, I want to keep on talking about it.

There was a total eclipse when I was a kid but I was in the wrong place. Then there was one when I was a young adult and again I was in the wrong place. And it was heavily overcast that day so I din't even get to observe a partial eclipse. I was sure that I wasn't meant to ever see a total solar eclipse.

But finally, in 2017, there would be one very close. We could have driven there. I don't know why we didn't. I bought the glasses and we watched from our driveway. And it was very cool but at the same time a little disappointing.

I didn't expect that there would be another solar eclipse any time soon but I Googled it anyway and was amazed that there would be another so soon and so close to us. It would be only a little less than a three hour drive to reach the path of totality and I was determined to get there.

With all the traffic and road construction it ended up being a more than four hour drive. We originally planned to go to Talimena Senic Drive and stop at one of the overlooks. But when we stopped at the Love's on I-40 my husband started up the GPS because we hadn't been that way for a long time and Google informed us that Talimena State Park was closed.

I don't know if that meant the entire scenic drive was closed but we decided to keep heading east to Russellville Arkansas. The traffic was bumper to bumper and very slow, often completely stopped. It was clear that we weren't going to make it to Russellville in time so we stopped at a rest stop near Ozark.

At Ozark totality would only last for two and a half minutes instead of more than four but other than that it turned out to be the perfect place. There were a lot of people there but it wasn't a huge crowd. There was a huge open grassy area and there were separate little family groups all over.

Now I hope you're still with me because all of that was merely introduction to what I really want to say. And what do I want to say? So much. How and where do I begin? I was actually prepared for it to be less of a big deal than I had always expected. On the contrary, it was even more than I could have imagined.

The first thing is, an eclipse makes one more aware of the solar system. We all learned about it as children and we accept that it is real (Well... at least most of us do.) but during a solar eclipse you feel that it's real, the same way trees and houses and cars and anything you can see and touch are real.

We sat in the lawn chairs we brought with us. It couldn't have been a better day. The weather was perfect, comfortably warm with just a few thin cirrus clouds. We looked at the sun through our eclipse glasses for a few minutes at a time. We looked at our phones. I checked the NASA website with its live countdown. I checked social media. We watched the other people.

Within two minutes of the time we looked continuously, watching the cresent sun grow thinner and thinner until it was just a thin, short line, then just a dot, then gone. I took off my eclipse glasses and looked at the dark disk with the ring of white fire. And at the strange twilight all around us. I cannot adequately describe how amazing it was.

It was extremely brief and as we drove home in traffic that was even worse than the traffic on the way there, I thought about how all the best times of our lives are very short, often only moments. We should, as much as possible, be fully there for those moments. It's easy with something like an eclipse. We know it's coming; we're ready to pay attention. Many more ordinary good times pass us by because we're too busy to pay attention.

The next total solar eclipse will be in 2044. If I'm still alive I will be 86. It's not impossible that I will get to see it but I think very unlikely. Monday, April 8th, 2024 was truly once in a lifetime.

Plans, Not Resolutions

Everyone is thinking about New Years Resolutions, either making them or declaring that they do not make resolutions. I guess I'm doing the latter. I don't make resolutions but I do make plans. Resolutions feel like formal commitments. Plans can be casual, tentative. Plans can be changed or adjusted.

It seems like most people make resolutions that are hard or unpleasant. Eat healthy, exercise more, make peace with a problematic relative, write a book. But resolutions don't have to be a challenge or sacrifice. You can resolve to do more of what makes you happy even if it's just spending more days being a couch potato.

Of course there's nothing wrong with self improvement but even in that case thinking in terms of plans instead of resolutions might put you in a better mental space and more likely lead to success.

So anyway, I have plans for 2024.

1. Write something on this blog once in a while. No firm time commitment right now. Maybe once a week, maybe once a month. Probably irregularly.

2. Make 2 or 3 quilts. It has been several years since I worked on a quilt and I have several in mind that I really want to make.

3. Try harder to work down my huge fabric stash and possibly give some pieces away.

4. Go through my stuff and try to get rid of a few things.

5. Finally finish the latch hook kit I started over 42 years ago.

6. Keep on living my life pretty much as I have been for the past few years because life is great and I don't want to mess with that.

Orange

TV Drama... or Comedy...

Kind of a funny story, I think, but I'm easily amused so, as they say, your mileage may vary.

Sometime last year - probably almost a year now, I don't know, my time sense is almost totally gone - our son (adult, lives upstairs in our house) complained that the TV (yes, the only one in the house; we're weird) was making an annoying high pitched noise and wouldn't watch TV with us anymore and that's kind of a big deal to me. I like to watch TV with my son, like I used to enjoy watching TV with my mom.

His dad and I could not hear the noise at all, not even a hint of a noise. The TV was, and still is, working perfectly just as it has for more than 10 years. But we decided we could solve the problem by buying a sound bar. We had thought about buying one anyway, though not very seriously. Apparently the soundbar did solve the problem. Son is happy to watch TV with us again.

Several years before, we bought a DVD player with the intention of using it both to watch DVDs and to stream Amazon Prime Video. But it turned out to be crap for streaming. It was either buffering more than half the time or wouldn't work at all. We assumed the problem was our best we can get out in the boonies Internet connection and gave up for a while and did a lot of bitching and whining about how unfair it was that we couldn't stream video like normal people.

For some reason we finally decided maybe we should try a better DVD player/streaming device. This was after the purchase of the soundbar. We read reviews. All the reviews said all the DVD players are crap for streaming and a lot of them said we should get a Roku instead. So we did and (heavenly light, angels singing) it worked and we love it! Oh my gosh! Life changing! But now it requires four remotes to watch TV: the TV remote; the DirecTV remote, the soundbar remote, and the Roku remote. (Yeah, we're not giving up DirecTV, for a number of reasons, the main one being that we're old and pig-headed)

So just like every company you ever buy anything from, Roku started sending me emails trying to get me to buy more stuff and that's how I found out that Roku soundbars exist. Why couldn't anyone have told us that before we bought the soundbar? (several really bad swear words) To think! We could be using only three remotes to watch TV instead of four!

I do kind of want a new TV and we could easily afford a very nice one but both of us have always been conditioned to wait until things do not work at all anymore before replacing them and did I mention that we're old and pig-headed? So anyway, that's the story and we're just sitting here wishing for the TV to hurry up and quit working. It's an LG, by the way. The darn things last forever.

What We Did New Year's Eve

F**k Everything

In more than 25 years of being online I have figured out a few things about what it takes to get people to pay attention to you on the Internet even though I will never be able to make it work myself. The number one thing you have to do is be negative. Rant, swear, criticize... hate something. I have generally been positive. Certainly not always. No one is positive all the time and if they are it's 99% certain they're faking it.

I have always been mostly ignored and even though I know that's no different from the majority of people it still hurts. On the other hand, there are certain advantages. I am also mostly ignored by the trolls and that's a good thing.

After getting frustrated with blogging and several other social media things I found my place on Twitter. Still not popular but I got enough interaction with other people to make it satisfying. It's true what I considered my most "important" tweets have always been ignored but a few likes and replies every day is way better than I ever got blogging and, more important, I feel like I have a few actual friends there. But now a ridiculous billionaire man-child who never developed emotionally past the age of 3 years is wrecking it all because he, who is constantly in the spotlight, is somehow even more attention starved than I am.

So all the "cool" kids are moving to something called Mastodon. Why Mastodon? Why such a complicated and buggy platform? Maybe there are no other choices? Anyway, no one would follow me even if I knew of somewhere else to go so I follow the crowd. Or I would but Mastodon itself is blocking me from joining. I know it's just technical growing pains and it's stupid to take it personally but being ignored and left out for most of your life affects you that way.

I actually did sign up at Mastodon about six or seven months ago, fooled around with it for a bit but there was no one there I knew and not a lot of interesting activity so I stopped going there and of course I forgot my password. So I click on the Reset Password link and nothing happens. I try again. Nothing happens. I try several times a day for 3 days. Nothing. Someone suggested I create a new account. So I try that. I type in my email address and... it asks for my password. Not a new password but the password for my existing account! It knows my email address and will not let me create a new account without my old account password? What the hell?!

So I don't know. Maybe my online life is over. Maybe I give up on ever again hanging out with my online friends. And honestly, they probably don't like me as well as I like them. All the signs are there; I just never wanted to admit it. I'm annoying and boring.

I guess I'll stick with Twitter as long as it lasts then I don't know. Maybe do something useful with whatever's left of my life. Or more likely just veg out in front the TV steaming crappy movies on Tubi.

Me, the Return

Am I back? I don't know. I was considering it but I see my last post was about starting blogging again and... I didn't.

People on Twitter are talking about its imminent demise or at least its transformation into a conservative free-for-all hellscape. And some people are leaving and going... where?

I'll be honest, I'm more angry at the people leaving than I am at the new guy. Cowards! Twitter isn't one guy, not even if he's the owner. Twitter is all the people who use it to share their thoughts and interact with each other.

I said it in a tweet a few days ago and I'll say it again here, not that anyone will pay any attention either site: Why would you leave when you could stay and make yourself a problem for the narcisistic asshole?

Thoughts on Quitting and Starting Again

They tell you, "Don't be a quitter," but if quitting makes your life better then by all means quit! But this is only a blog and anyway, I never intended to quit so this doesn't apply here.

Spending time on Twitter instead of blogging has made my online life better though. On Twitter I get some feedback - likes and retweets and replies. On the blog, for the last few years I have felt like I was talking to an empty room. But sometimes I have things to say that are easier to say in a blog post than in a tweet thread. Still, what's the point of saying it if no one is reading it?

Don't get me wrong, I absolutely do not want to be an "A-list" blogger, even though I have things I wish I could say to the whole world. Popular bloggers get trolls. All I want is half a dozen to a dozen comments from half a dozen or more people on most blog posts. The bloggers I envy are the ones that attract a pleasant little community of commenters.

But whining about being unpopular isn't going to make me popular, right? So I don't know, I'm thinking I want to try this again, not every day but maybe one or two blog posts a week, but no promises.

The crazy thing, is that for a long time, even before I "quit," I have been thinking about starting another blog, one with a political focus. Haha, another blog to abandon. Oh, and then there's my (also unpopular) sewing blog which I have also semi-abandoned and would like to get back to. But we'll see what happens. One day at a time, as they say.

Lilacs

These smell soooo good!

Wild Plum