07:39 - 16.06.06
synopsis
The hair on the nape of my neck stood on end when I was closing the windows in my bedroom the very first minutes of Wednesday morning not long after my last real post to you dear diary. A fusillade of light like fireworks followed immediately by booming rolling thunder was the reason. A car alarm started it's braying and the streetlights due south of our community were extinguished. The forecast for the evening had had storm warnings for surrounding areas of the city but we were to be "missed". Maybe we didn't meet all the criteria for a storm, but continuous lightning and thunder, strong winds and sleeting-down rain seems pretty stormy to me. That first salvo of wet weather went on all night. Since then the rain has been steady, but without the fireworks.
At that first moment of thunder, I thanked the lawn mower gods that I had cut my grass earlier in the day. If I had hesitated, I likely would have found that foliage waist-high by the time it stopped raining and dried out enough to do the deed. I almost hadn't because the nasty neighbour with the souped up truck had spent a lot of time that afternoon parked right in front of my yard. Sitting in there and reading a newspaper, he was. I wasn't willing to put up with his verbal slangs nor did I want to deal with the threatening body language he uses. Went for groceries first. When I returned my youngest was just arriving home from work and the neighbour drove away just after we carried all the groceries from the street and around his vehicle that blocked access to our side walk. That truck is about as wide as my entire front yard you see. With 6 foot high hedges on both sides, we had a gap of about a foot of space to work with. My one sister had given me an extra fleece jacket she had when we were at the farm so, despite the weird weather, I was very comfortable working outdoors until dusk, wrapped up as I was in it's warmth.
I spent the next day washing those purple curtains my other sister had been able to pick up for me. She had added in another bag of curtains she had no further use for as well. The upshot, after I get them all cleaned, is that all my windows will have a real covering. In the time I've been in this home some of the windows have never had a cover. Just investing the resources I had available in my sons instead of the house, you see. While waiting for the laundry cycles to pass, I continued wrestling with that computer virus thang. It was supposed to be a minor issue, but not on my computer nor for a lot of other people in the trader bulletin board either. My security software was somehow disabled a day later and other programs were compromised as well. The sad thing was some of the sniping that went on between people on that bulletin board. One woman took all the members with children to task blaming them for the problem. She obviously didn't read the reams of information we were being sent both to explain what had occurred and also what steps we would need to take to fix our own personal units - shut down the registry?? I also don't think she understands much about the internet given the rant she indulged in. Maybe there is a thorn in her side that she needed to vent about that had some marginal link to this virus, but why dump on a few hundred strangers? I was also trying to get a bit more work done on the Elections Canada assignment. If our previous service providers can't supply our requests, or if their fees are too high, we have to send out tenders. That can be a bit time consuming so I want a bit of lead time. Got a response from the one hospital that I am responsible for for patient voting so that's another task covered off.
I spent several hours on Wednesday searching for and sorting through family photos. The sister of my son's fiancee wants to create a montage that will blend the two family histories together. I found it a surprisingly difficult task. Family history can be a bit touchy after all, with deaths and divorces thrown in for good measure. I decided not to provide any of my wedding photos for example, but since it is my son's special day, I did include photos of the family grouping. The boys' Dad took off just before our 20th wedding anniversary so the time our family unit was intact was significant and it mattered in his life. Ditto for including some photos of his Dad's step-family. They are a very nice group of people and were very prominent in my son's life until his teens. At that point my mother-in-law trashed the relationship with the step-father and moved on to another. The step family was still very caring and open with my guys, but over time the contact lessened as life took over. I also struggled with which pictures I should submit of my Mom. My Dad, my sibs and I all still miss her very much, even though she died 8 years ago. A lot of the photos I have are from significant family events. A lot of them would trigger strong emotional responses especially given that this is their first grandchild to get married. I don't know if my Dad's neighbour was able to get time off from the hospital so she could attend too, but there is also that thorny question to deal with given my observations on the Monday excursion. I don't want to supply more fuel for the one sib who is already trying to cause harm there. It actually took several hours just to decide which photos to send and which to withhold. Then there was the scanning and croppping that needed to be done, with that software being part of what was damaged by the virus. That was why there was that last terse post dear diary. I finished emailing the sister doing the montage at 3:30 in the am and then spent an hour writing to you. Just as I was nearing the end of that post the whole unit crashed. I took it as a sign I should go to bed.
Yesterday was spent cleaning up after that photo treasure hunt that brought the cats so much joy. I apparently entertained them royally crawling in and out of cupboards and drawers in my search. They got to scent out a whole lot of new territory, you see. Continued with the election assignment and the curtain washing. Met my youngest at the mall after his workday so we could buy him some proper dress clothes for the wedding. As I noted, I can cobble something together out of my work clothes, but he doesn't have that kind of flexibility in his wardrobe. The last wedding he attended was about 15 years ago. He was a lot smaller then. I meant to write to you last night as well as continue my own job search, but number three son arrived and spent the evening with me. He had heard that his older brother had already gotten one response within a day from an employer after I sent out some of his resumes, so he wanted to check his email to see if any had also responded to him. No luck, but we spent the balance of our time together playing on youtube and discussing music, of course. Who knew, for example, Gary Oldman/Sirius Black was so Bad to the Bone. When they were growing up, music and read-aloud stories soothed those boys to sleep don't you know.
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