Ponna

 

The actual pole behind my house. One of those wires is my cable television.

I changed cable companies on Wednesday. I know that all cable companies have horrible customer service, but that's not what I'm looking for. I'm looking for spending less money and that's what I got for the next two years. Kind of a pain in the ass, but for eighty dollars less per month it is worth it. So the guy came, a nice guy, and in a painless conversion that took about an hour, I had three working televisions. I also had new internet service with a new wireless router. After the cable guy left, after I fed the dogs, and after I fed myself, I began letting the Amazon Echos and remote electrical plugs know they had a new master. That was around six in the evening. First three Echos were a cinch, the fourth one was not. So I went on to the 'smart' plugs that I have lights plugged into. After two hours of fucking around with those and not getting them to work, I gave up and realized that I would have to get up out of my chair and physically turn off/on the lights from now on. I then tried to tackle the fourth Amazon Echo. It is the oldest and most difficult to configure. With my phone in hand I followed the instructions. That didn't work. I then freelanced for awhile. That didn't work. I reset it, I deleted it, I rebooted it, I did every damn thing I could think of. After about an hour of that I brought up the chat line on the app and asked for help. Somebody named Ponna came on and told me to reset the thing, delete the thing, and reboot it.

"I already did that ten times." I typed calmly, while in my head I was shouting.

"Okay sir. To help you I need the last four digits of your card."

"Card?"

"Yes, the card you use."

I thought for a moment. What the hell card does Ponna need? Is there a card that goes with Alexa?

"You mean my credit card?"

"Yes."

So I gave Ponna the digits and Ponna had me do some more things. Some things that I had done over and over before contacting Amazon customer service. Nothing worked. Finally, in frustration, I typed back to Ponna.

"I'll tell you what I will do. I'm going to chop this damn thing into little pieces, put it all in a box, and ship it back to you."

Three little dots appeared, and below that it said 'Ponna is typing'. A few moments later Ponna responded.

"I understand your frustration."

And that was the last I heard from Ponna... until ten minutes later. My phone beeped and the Amazon Alexa chat bubble came on the screen.

"So, did that work?"

Air

The last four days found our temperatures up in the mid to upper eighties. In fact my thermometer said ninety one degrees on Saturday. So it has been hot for the month of May. Earlier in the week I had put the small air conditioner in the living room window, but it just couldn't keep up with the heat. I do miss the ease of whole house air like we had in Florida. Just touch a button and cool air flows from vents throughout the house. Installing such a thing in my nearly one hundred year old house would be quite expensive and disruptive, so I live with the window units. Yesterday I was sitting in my office, sweating my butt off, and I decided that maybe I could wrestle the large and heavy window air conditioner from the back porch to its place in the dining room. I put it in there because the dining room is central to the house. I hadn't planned to actually hoist it into the window, just have it there and ready for me to rope the next visitor into lifting it with me. It is very heavy. As the day wore on towards afternoon, the house got warmer and warmer. The big air conditioner was sitting right there on the floor. I don't know what got into me. But like a mother who suddenly gets super strength in an emergency, I squatted down, put my arms around it and hefted that thing up onto the window sill. I got it into the window and plugged it in. Ahhhh... sweet, cool air. For five years I haven't been able to lift that air conditioner by myself. But I did it. One hour later a breeze blew in off of Lake Michigan and the temperatures dropped twenty degrees and stayed that way. At least I got it done for the summer heat coming.

Down on Bucky's Farm

 

That's me stepping in cow shit

I think our Chicago winter has let go of its grip. Spring has been quite the tease with eighty degrees one day and freezing the next just to remind us of what winter can do. I'm pretty sure we can now breathe a sigh of relief for the next three months. Summer is here, finally! Who doesn't love summer. The three months that we can look down our nose at Florida.

The fine weather yesterday got me to thinking about summers when I was a kid. So many great times. Like the year we went to a farm in Indiana. It was owned by an old buddy of my dad. His name was Bucky. Apparently Dad and Bucky were good friends in the army during WWII, so one summer we got to visit Bucky's farm. It was very rustic. I was probably five years old, and I hated it. They did have electricity on the farm, but no plumbing to speak of. This son of suburban Chicago had never seen an outhouse before. My god, we had to poop outdoors in a little shed? Yes, I had to plop my tiny ass on a board with a hole in it and when I was done it didn't even flush. The crap just lay there about four feet below, smelling and drawing flies. Okay, so I learned something that summer about how farmers pooped. I also learned something about cute baby cows. I learned that they lived in the barn and pooped where they lived. To my horror, I found that when you tried to  pet one, they will step on your foot. That hurt a lot, but I probably got my revenge later that day when we had hamburgers for dinner. Like I said, the farm was rustic, no plumbing. After playing in the barnyard and probably smelling like cow shit, Mom figured that I needed a bath. Down in the basement of the farm house, was a hand pump. I was told to undress and step into a galvanized metal tub full of water, exactly like the one the cows drank out of. The water was tepid at best and to rinse, water was poured over me from a bucket.

There was one thing about that farm visit that I did enjoy. One day my dad and Bucky had to go into town. They stopped off at a gas station and went inside to do some adult stuff. Probably just to bullshit and have a smoke with friends. Anyway, out behind the gas station were a bunch of old rusty cars rotting in among the trees. I was in heaven. I got to crawl around inside the old hulks and pretend that I was driving. It was great fun. In fact that may be how I got my penchant for owning old cars. Playing in the rust, grease and dirt was so much fun. Fun until we got back to the farm and Mom made me take another bath in that damn cow, drinking tub.

 

Conversation in a Gay Bar, on a Weekday Evening

 

Tuesday evening I was sitting in a bar. Next to me was a young man, not bad looking. After a bit the young man turned to me and asked me where I was from.

"Chicago."

He stared at me for a second.

"Really? I'm from Virginia. Have you ever been to Mississippi?"

Okay, that seemed a bit off. Anyway, we talked some about the South and places the young man would like to visit some day. I asked him his name. (The following name is fictitious)

"My name is Andrew. So, where are you from?"

Andrew was a bit drunk and was repeating himself.

"My name is Alan, and I'm from Chicago."

A bit more conversing and then he asked me the worst question ever.

"How old are you?"

Well, Hell. I hate telling people how old I am, but I don't lie.

"Ummm.... seventy one years old."

"No... Oh my god. I thought you were like forty five or maybe fifty. You look great. Are you sure you're that old? What year were you born?"

I was suddenly in love.

"1949"

"Oh my god! So what were the 1950s like? Do you remember when Chicago had all those gangsters? Did you know any, like Al Capone? My mom is forty five, my grandmother is sixty five. I was born in 1997..."

Twenty four years old. Right in my wheel house.... forty years ago. It was like I had been hit in the head with a baseball bat. Twenty four, 1997? That was the year I met Mark. I was having a conversation with a child. Andrew reached over and held my hand for a minute, until I gently pulled away and excused myself to go pee. When I got back, the boy was in deep conversation with the guy on the other side of him. An older gentleman, of about forty five or fifty years old.

Happy Mother's Day Wednesday

 

I didn't go visit Mom yesterday. Yes, I know it was Mother's Day. I'm sure that Mom knew it was Mother's Day. The thing is that by this morning Mom won't remember that yesterday was Mother's Day. The last year has been hard for her. When you're ninety nine years old with short term memory problems, you can't lose a whole year to hibernation. For most of the last year Mom was confined to her little apartment and not allowed any visitors. No stimulation other than her aide that would bring her meals. No racing up and down the halls of The Crossing in her Hoverround. No visits from her children bearing bakery goods. Nobody allowed to visit on holidays or her birthday. Sure, they had the Plexiglas box for us to visit for a few months. The problem is that Mom likes heat. Eighty degrees is too chilly for her. That Plexiglas box was nowhere near warm enough, so visits didn't last long. Anyway, that is all over now. I have been trying to visit every Wednesday since they opened up again, but it is hard to spark any interest from Mom. She's usually sleepy and conversation is difficult because her hearing has declined drastically. After a few minutes of loudly repeating myself, we both give up because Mom is tired of saying 'What?' and I have given myself a headache. There is only one way to make a visit to Mom work. Either bring a small child with you, or bring a small and friendly dog with you. Mom loves both of those things and it really brings her spirits up. My problem is that I don't have any small children, and my dog does not behave when I bring her to see Mom. So I bring Mom baked goods. That gives me about ten minutes to quietly watch Mom as she tears into that. The rest of the hour is spent watching her nod off, or trying to have that loud conversation. Seriously, that place should have a small child lending service at the entrance. Either that or a puppy rental. I would definitely pay somebody to loan me their kid for an hour.

Two Scoops

 

Monday morning I got up, fed the dogs, let the dogs out, then brought the dogs back in. It was a very nice day. Sunny and balmy, and it put me into a good mood. I then poured myself a bowl of raisin bran and sat down to watch the news. As I chomped on my raisin bran, the dogs stood sentry in front of me waiting for something, anything, to fall to the floor from my cereal bowl. Like a spoon conveyor belt, I was shoveling cereal into my mouth as fast as it could handle it. And then I hit something. I had bit down on what seemed to be a pebble and immediately thought that I might have a good law suit against Kellogg's. After fishing my finger around in there, I pulled a small hard piece of something out of my mouth. I placed it on a napkin for further investigation after breakfast. Stuffing another mouthful of raisin bran into my mouth, I realized that something was not right. Again I went fishing with my finger, and way in the back I found a jaggedness where a tooth should have been. Holy crap, now I really do have a case against Kellogg's. I got my magnifying glass out and looked at the little pebble like thing on the napkin. It was not a pebble. It was not something that arrived in the box of raisin bran from Kellogg's. It was the top of one of my teeth.

A couple of months ago I went to the dentist because I had a bit of pain in a tooth. I pointed out which tooth it was to the dentist. She took x-rays, and poked around in there, finally announcing that it was not the tooth I had pointed to. It was the tooth opposite that one. It took four trips to the dentist to fix it. A root canal, a crown, and twelve hundred dollars. She did a nice job on that tooth. Unfortunately, it was the wrong tooth. The tooth that exploded while I was grinding away on that raisin bran was the tooth I had pointed out as the one giving me pain. I have an appointment for Friday. This time I don't think I'll have to point out the bad tooth.