TheBanyanTree: What I do on a Saturday

[Monique Colver]

Happy Saturday Tobie.

Me, I just wait until my mouse stops working and then get batteries out of the freezer. Or wherever they are. We have lots in case the world goes dark and I still want my mouse to work. 

My Saturday has been nowhere near as exciting as yours, though I commend your mother for living so long. That's the objective, isn't it? To keep going until we can't?

I'm recovering from a cold, which used to be not so much a problem, but these days everything takes longer. Not for Andrew, who had a cold first, but once he lost weight and started exercising he's been much healthier and recovers faster, like I used to, in the distant past.

Apathy has been my top interest this week. I'm not depressed, and I have lots of things I want to do, and to do, but I just don't care. They tell me apathy comes with Parkinson's, but I really don't care. I hope it stops soon because it's boring as hell, and it makes me more boring than usual. 

If possible.

I did work last week, and billed and got paid, and have much work to do in the next two weeks, so I'm hoping this passes by Monday. Or not. I don't care. I went to my second movement class on Wednesday, which is once a week, and I was late again. The first week I went in the entrance I used to go in, years ago, to see my doctor before she quit in frustration, but the class is on the other side of the hospital in the basement, in something called the Willow Room, or Fir Room, or Room Room. The second week I thought I had it figured out but I did not - I went in the main entrance to the medical building when I needed to go in at Urgent Care, then take the elevator to the basement. On Wednesday I'll review this first and hopefully get there before our instructor starts talking.

I signed up for this class because a local advocacy group gives it, and it's cheap, or nothing if one is temporarily short of funds. And I need to remember how to move. Not that I've forgotten yet, but I am sometimes stiff and unwieldy. The first week we did all the exercises in our chairs. We rolled a tennis ball with our feet, then played with the tennis ball with our hands, then we tossed the tennis ball from one hand to the other, and if we dropped it, which happens a lot, we couldn't move to get it. We're learning to not move as well as move, because jumping after something that has slipped from our grasp is dangerous and a great way to fall on one's head. There was laughing, instructed and not, and flying tennis balls, and something about a book I don't have. Maybe I should find out what it is so I can do these exercises. There are so many I can't remember them all.

We take off our shoes in class, and I do have the prettiest socks, which is something I take great pride in because it's all I've got. The class is diverse: old men and old women, but everyone has Parkinson's. It's all old white people because we are not a diverse community, which some people take pride in, but I do not. It is what it is.

The instructor told us that the second week we'd be getting on the floor, which is a good thing to know since there's no telling how often the hospital cleans the carpet. So we all showed up with our yoga mats, mine being fresh from Costco because Andrew got me one as soon as he heard I needed one. But we did not get on the floor at all. We did have a photographer from the local newspaper taking pictures of us grimacing and being all Parkinsony, but I am comforted by the knowledge that no one in this town will know who I am if there are any pictures. I'd rather be anonymous woman #4. 

The instructor says it may be a couple of weeks before we get to the floor. Perhaps we're all underperforming? It's hard to tell. 

On Thursday I woke up with a definite cold, and thought about canceling my afternoon dental appointment. But I'm a lucky sort of person, and shortly the dentist office called me to cancel because my hygienist wasn't coming in. This is not the first time I've wanted to cancel an appointment but wanted the other party to do it so I wouldn't feel guilty, and it happens often enough to convince me that I have found my secret superpower. 

I need to write some blog posts about business for a client's website. They will pay me, but I've been very lax, though I have several ideas and source documents. Apathy.

The fact that I've written this much may be an indication I'm tired of apathy. I hope so. I haven't even finished my course on Economic Systems, or learned how to felt. So many things to do. And work even picked up, which is fun. They come to me as a referral from another client and I say, I may not be what you want, and they say, No, you're exactly what I need, which is good for my ego, which sustained some serious direct hits last year. 




Monique
Sent from my iPad

> On Jan 18, 2020, at 4:41 PM, tobie at shpilchas.net wrote:
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> Saturday, January 18, 20202020202020202020202020202020 (that’s EXTREMELY good eyesight)
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> Shabbat Shalom folks,
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>    I am locked in the house over the weekends.  I don’t leave my mom alone in the house. There has to be someone smart here in case of emergency.  She’s going to be 100 in March.
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>    So here I am getting her lunch ("Tobie, the ratio of noodles to soup was wrong. Next time, more noodles, less soup"), and when I have someone to spell me, then I can leaved the house and what I do is run like crazy to get supplies, do errands, take care of business, because my job is doing all the household chores, shopping, cooking, fixing things, or having others fix them, household management.   I said I’d take care of her when she got old and here I am doing the right thing.  On the down side, I have no life.  At all.
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>    On the other  hand, some exciting things do happen.  This is today’s excitement.  I had to write an email to our friend, Tom, who’s the Mac expert. I just wanted to share this email to let you all in on the  thrills.  To be thorough, this is just the text. There were illustrations that do not travel in the Banyan Tree sphere. But you all have active imaginations (the proof is legion) and I know you can fill in the visual details with the images of your choice.  
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> Saturday, January 18, 2020
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> Say Tom ——
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>    I know I’ve asked you this before, but here it is again:  Every once in a while, the magic mouse (curse its existence) suddenly stops working. It’s the battery needing to be charged.  First of all, why can’t it warn me just a bit in advance instead of just suddenly not working?  Why isn’t there some icon with the status of the mouse battery showing, maybe up in the menu bar?  Or at least in the preferences with the mouse?
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>    I’ve looked it up:  "How to tell Magic Mouse battery life?"  and I come up with advice saying that if I go into the preferences and click on mouse, I will see a window that looks like this:
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> From the Apple menu, select System Preferences.
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> Click Mouse. The window shown below appears.
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> Check the Mouse Battery Level in the lower-left corner. This is the percentage of battery life left in your Magic Mouse's batteries.
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>    The thing is, I don’t see a window like that with the mouse battery level in the lower left corner.  I see this:
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>    which pertains to the regular old mouse with a tail that we all so know and love.  But there is no battery status shown.
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>    As I recall, when I last kvetched about this to you, you instructed me to do exactly what I had been doing, which is to go to the menu bar and click on the strange blue tooth icon, choose magic mouse and there it would be.  I’d done that dozens of times and there was no battery status showing. In fact, I’d see exactly the diagram you see above.  No help whatsoever.  But when you told me to do it, the battery life suddenly showed, making me feel like I must be crazy.  After we hung up, the battery life disappeared and I couldn’t figure out what you’d done that was so, well, magic.  And curse you, Red Baron!  It’s like what my father used to do when any mechanical device broke. We’d call him when the smoke stopped billowing out of the dryer (for instance). When he walked into the room, the dryer would work.  "Nothing wrong with the dryer." and he’d walk out.  After he’d left, the dryer would burst into flames.
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>    I am now charging the magic mouse and have no fracking clue as to the progress of the charging.  What the frack!!!???
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> Help me now.
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> Tobie
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> And that was the letter, the highlight of my day (so far).
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>    I remember when I was very young, wanting fireworks and excitement, grand happenings and revelations! Even turmoil was preferable to lack of sensation. And yes, I learned a whole lot from that attitude.  Now, when I am not very young, what I want is far less pyrotechnic.    But damn it, not THIS FAR LESS!
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> Help me now.
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> Tobie
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> "I'm Jewish.  I have OCD; and I'm not afraid to use it."    THS
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> Tobie Shapiro
> mailto:tobie at shpilchas.net <mailto:tobie at shpilchas.net>
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> "While the mind thinks of ways to destroy the enemy, the heart thinks of ways to heal the enemy."       Meyshe B. Shapiro-Nygren
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> Tobie Shapiro
> mailto:tobie at shpilchas.net <mailto:tobie at shpilchas.net>
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