Shirley’s House of Recycled Virgins on Whitewater Avenue

Oh mother tell your children
Not to do what I have done
Spend your lives in sin and misery
In the House of the Rising Sun

The Animals

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6dxNsWMb_E]

Way back in the distant recesses of time when my children were in grade school, we lived in a small HUD Family Housing complex in Fort Atkinson, WI while I was going to college in Whitewater. The horrors of the almost white glove inspections that the female half of a husband and wife management team used to put us single Moms through are responsible for my recent angst and near panic about getting my current apartment ship shape for the yearly inspection. Shirley (names have NOT been changed to protect the guilty) was a bit of a harridan—no, I take that back, she was a full blown harridan.

Shirley never called me by name. Not once in four years. When she talked to me, she called me and the rest of the single Mom’s who lived in her little fiefdom, “you people.” It was pretty obvious that she didn’t have much respect for any of us and openly despised most of us. I think she and her husband saw themselves as the keepers of our flagging morality brought on by the scourge of divorce. The most horrible thing had happened to us. We had no man in our lives to take control of matters.

She was certainly not impressed with our housekeeping skills. As far as I know, none of us ever passed her inspections the first time around with the possible exception of Frankie’s* Mom and she was even scrubbing Frankie down with ammonia. (I’m serious. Frankie’s Mom had issues with germs, the poor lady. More importantly, poor Frankie.) Shirley always gave us a list of things we had to have fixed on her return visit which would be a surprise visit. There could be no dirty laundry, furniture had to be one inch away from the walls, no dishes in the sink waiting to be washed, and even the window channels had to be absolutely spotless.

I personally think that was just an excuse for her to get back into our apartments to find out if we were doing something else she and her husband disapproved of. Specifically, whether or not we had a boyfriend who may or may not have been sleeping over. Shirley and her husband, Dick (a more appropriate name for that jerk could not have been invented), disapproved of boyfriends in no uncertain terms. When she gave me the keys to my apartment, she casually said “Of course you know that you are not allowed to have overnight guests.”

Silly, naive me, gaped in surprise and said something to the effect of “You mean my kids can’t have their friends over to spend the night?” “No,” she snapped, “I mean that you can’t have a man spend the night. Of course your children can have friends over to spend the night.” oh…

I was pretty sure that there were no such rules for HUD housing in general and that Shirley and Shirley’s husband, Dick, couldn’t actually make rules like that for this complex in particular but I was desperate for affordable housing and had no man in my life that I wanted to spend the night with at the moment anyway so I just filed that away for future reference. I did wonder if it would be OK for me to have a female spend the night and if it would matter if I was entertaining a lesbian lover but for once in my life, I opted not to make waves and bit my tongue. Besides, I didn’t have a lesbian lover either. Rebellion would come later.

I made sure I re-read my lease to check if I had been foolish enough to sign something that had put such a ridiculous restrictions on my non-existent love life though. You never knew when I might get a lesbian lover after all. I wanted to be prepared. I hadn’t.

Rebellion came closer not long after I moved in when I realized that Shirley and Dick were cruising the parking lots after 10pm and again before 6am every morning to check for strange cars and asking certain neighbors whose apartment those strange cars were visiting. How did I discover this? Why Shirley asked me about a strange car that was in MY parking lot, that’s how. She TOLD me it had been there at 10pm and still there at 6am.

My reply that I didn’t make it a habit to check whether any of my neighbors was being naughty and had no intention of snitching on them if I did find out they were might have been a bit rebellious. Shirley was not happy. I suspect I went onto the potentially naughty list after that conversation. I Certainly made the not cooperative list.

Rebellion came even closer when one day while I was talking on the phone, I opened my front door for some reason to find Dick standing outside it in an attitude of listening concentration. I can’t remember who I was talking to or what the conversation was about but I certainly remember the guilty look on his face as he scurried away.

At that point, I went and asked my new neighbors what in hell was going on with the management. They knew all about it. They advised me that if I wanted a boyfriend to spend the night I should tell him he needed to park on the street. Preferably a block away. What’s more if I wanted to talk about anything that was happening with my neighbors or some rule I was personally breaking, I should check to be sure Dick was not lurking around somewhere.

It was during one of the get-togethers inspired by my questions that someone (it might have been me) said they felt like they were living in “Shirley’s House of Recycled Virgins.” Soon we (okay, *I*) had composed a song sung to the tune of “The House of the Rising Sun” which has since been lost to many years time and moves to several other apartments. I made it a point to be singing it whenever I noticed Dick lurking about the building trimming hedges he had trimmed less than a week ago. LOUDLY and with gusto.

We plotted about how to bring this matter to a head and prove to Shirley and Dick that treating us like wayward teenage sluts was going to cause them more pain that it was causing us. We began discussing Dick and Shirley when we suspected one of them might be listening, saying the most outrageous things we could think of to say. A couple of us even tried to set Dick up into making a pass at one of us by talking about how hot we thought he was. We were out to make Dick and Shirley’s lives as miserable as they made ours.

I offered to have some guy come over and spend the night a few nights and make it more than obvious that he was at my house but the problem was I didn’t know any guys I wanted to invite for overnight pajama parties. I was such a party girl.

Outright rebellion came the following summer when Shirley finally accused me of having an unauthorized overnight male guest. I must confess that I, in fact, did have a male guest over night. He just happened to be my brother-in-law’s happily married brother-in-law who spent the night at my place with me chaperoned only by my two young children as we were traveling from Florida to Nebraska. We had stopped by to dump off most of the junk I had dragged to Florida with me, buy a new tire since we had had a blow-out somewhere in Georgia and deposit my check into my bank account. And sleep.

The ONLY way she could have known this is that someone tattled. We were traveling in MY car and had arrived at 11pm and left before noon the next day. To add insult to injury she waited three weeks for me to get back from Nebraska to confront me with this indiscretion.

She was also not happy that I had “abandoned” my apartment for three months while I was in Florida and Nebraska visiting relatives and had shut off the refrigerator. Not only that, I hadn’t bothered to put anything away when I made that flying visit to Wisconsin. I had simply unpacked the car and left everything sitting in the middle of the living room. In an untidy pile. I hadn’t even made one of the beds when I left the next day—my son’s bed which only got made when I KNEW Shirley would be there to point out my sloppiness and moral ineptitude and I just wanted to get through the damn inspection without making waves. How could I be such a pig?

AND, and, and how could I afford to go running off to Florida and Nebraska for such a long vacation. She had half a mind to report me to the authorities. That’s when I started laughing

How did she know all this? Because I didn’t answer the door for several days in a row when she came to talk to me about my unauthorized male visitor so she let herself in and investigated and she asked the neighbors where I was since it was obvious someone was watering my plants. By then I had done a little sleuthing and knew she couldn’t legally do what she was doing as far as guys spending the night and a bunch of other crap she and Dick were pulling and was in the process of gearing up to complain to HUD about them.

I gave Shirley a piece of my mind and told her that she couldn’t make the rule about guys spending the night stick and if she ever came into my apartment again for any reason that was not specifically stated on the lease, I would file a complaint to HUD if I didn’t do it based on this particular incident. Furthermore I didn’t give a rat’s ass if she called the welfare office. They couldn’t tell me how to spend my money or where I spent the summer either as long as my kids weren’t being neglected.

She tried to claim she did indeed have the right to ban men from the apartment and that she also had the right to come in for maintenance reasons. I invited her to start eviction proceedings because I intended to have as many male visitors spending the night as possible and maybe even a female lover or two but advised her she better call a lawyer because I intended to own her new car and anything else of value she owned if she tried to do that since I knew it was illegal. I asked her who had complained that something wasn’t working in my apartment or what she was specifically looking at that needed maintaining that wasn’t covered by the yearly inspection and would not require a 24 hour written notice. She glared at me, harrumphed and turned heel to leave. I never heard another word.

I was fed up though and did indeed write that letter of complaint to HUD. It was 3 or 4 pages long and included every egregious bit of crap she and Dick had pulled on any of the residents that I knew about. I also proceeded to go door to door within the complex and got more than half of the 32 tenants to sign it. Within a few weeks HUD sent letters to everyone living there and advised us all that the management had been advised that most of what they were doing was illegal.

That was the beginning of my life long interest in political activism ever since.  I never made my son make his bed again when it was time for inspections. I never found myself a lesbian lover either.

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More Kitchen Adventures: I Have to Clean the Oven? Today? Seriously?

Nope, my good girl, Kerryn, came to my rescue! Since she voluntarily came to clean my oven for the stupid HUD Inspections, I made her a simple supper of Salad, Omaha Steak’s Pork Loin Cutlets (a gift from one of my neighbors), and Garlic Mashed Potatoes and Cauliflower which she had never tried. The Pork Cutlets were really, really good. Thanks, Richard!

 The mashed potatoes and cauliflower combination is a fairly new discovery for me and Kerryn liked it so just for her, here’s the recipe for six to eight servings:

Garlic Mashed Potatoes and Cauliflower

Cook until tender:

1 head of cauliflower broken into small florets

4 medium-sized unpeeled Yukon Gold potatoes cut into 1 inch cubes

I usually start this process with the potatoes in a pot that has a steamer insert and put the cauliflower in the steamer until the potatoes are beginning to get soft. Then I dump the cauliflower in with them and finish them together.

While that is cooking peel, smash and mince 3-4 good-sized cloves of garlic and saute it in 1 TBS of butter until it smells good and is tender. Do not brown. OR if you’re busy and rushing things, use 1 tsp garlic powder in the next step. More if you like garlic.

When the vegetables and garlic have cooked put them in a food processor with a bit of the cooking liquid and add:

2 (or more) TBSP butter

1/8 cup of whole milk to start.

½ tsp salt

A few cranks of the pepper grinder

Turn the food processor on and let it do its thing until the potato peels are still visible but the potatoes and cauliflower look like mashed potatoes are supposed to look in your world. I like mine a bit lumpy. (What can I say, my mother was not into doing whatever it took to make smooth mashed potatoes when I was growing up so in MY world mashed potatoes are a little lumpy with chewy little chunks of potatoes in them.)

Turn it out into a serving bowl and stir in 1 TBS of parsley. Fresh is a nice touch but I seldom have fresh on hand so I use the dried stuff. Plop about a TBS of butter in the middle and crank some pepper over the top. Good with beef or pork gravy on it, too.

If I was going to make this dairy free I would substitute a good margarine for the butter and use plain soy, oat or almond milk instead of Cow’s milk. Maybe coconut milk.  I’ve been reading good things about the health benefits of coconut oil.

Since I live alone I halve this recipe and I’m inclined to use instant potatoes. Just follow the recipe on the box for 2 servings and dump everything into the food processor with half the cauliflower. It keeps well in the refrigerator for a few days

That’s Kerryn.  She doesn’t look much like a kitchen drudge in that picture does she?  But let me tell ya, she can clean an oven and not make a mess of the floor.  I don’t know how she does it. 

Thanks for helping me out with that odious chore, Sweet Pea. You rock!  Love ya a bushel and a peck and a hug around the neck!

Addendum:  It is 9:30am. The inspectors have come and gone.  I got the bathroom and kitchen mostly done, the windows washed, and my bed made.  I had the couch pulled out and the equipment and cleaning supplies to vacuum and steam clean the pet messes on the carpet (wouldn’t you know one of my brats puked on the carpet in two different spots yesterday) scattered around so it was obvious I was getting to them. 

They weren’t even going to look in the oven or refrigerator but I insisted they look at the oven since I stressed over it so much and Kerryn made a special effort to help me.  Jill said it was obvious that I kept up with the housekeeping so she just checked things off her list.  I guess that’s a compliment.  They did test the fire alarm and made sure all the other mechanicals were working–flushed the toilet, turned on the fans and all the lights. I pointed out that I cleaned the windows because if the windows are clean and the kitchen counters are cleared off, the dishes are put away, the kitchen floor is mopped and the carpets don’t have a bunch of crap littering them,  then the house looks clean to me.  The dust can be an inch thick but if those things are done, it looks clean.  Just don’t look too closely.

Honestly, I don’t know why they send that damn letter telling us that we have to do this long list of stuff to pass these things if they aren’t going to check to be sure they are done.  On the other hand, I still have nightmares about living at Shirley’s House of Recycled Virgins on Whitewater Avenue in Fort Atkinson when the kids were young.  What a PITA that stick-up-her-butt woman was when she did inspections.  I guess I won’t complain about the young ladies here and try to remember they aren’t Shirley…

Wikipedia: floor definition: the level base of a room. →

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Life at the Three Threes: HUD Inspections

Life at the Three Threes is ummm…interesting to say the least. I love living in downtown Madison and having the University so near. The energy of so many young people roaming the streets and patronizing the same business establishments I patronize is exhilarating. Living on the 9^th floor of one of the tallest buildings in the city is excellent. I’ve got a view! Having the Senior Center where I volunteer and socialize keeps me from becoming socially isolated. As an extrovert with introvert tendencies I really need and enjoy that outlet.

And then there is the Three Threes (the building street address is 333) itself. This building is HUD Housing meaning the rent I pay is based on my income and the rest is paid by a federal program with the Department of Housing and Urban Development. The residents are either senior citizens or disabled in some way.  The staff here is primo! We couldn’t ask for nicer and better folks in the office or on the maintenance staff. They all have an excellent sense of humor and are kind and helpful to the inmates err…residents.

Jill, in the front office, reigns with a quiet fair-minded benevolence. Gina, the resident activities coordinator and Jill’s assistant is creative and enthusiastic as well as fun to hang with. Erica, the Services Manager (she helps us get the social services we need to stay independent and healthy) is the BEST! I want to hook her up with my son.

The building is extremely well maintained and if you ask for something or there is a problem Vern and Scott are Johnny on the spot. Eldegard (I may have misspelled that—it’s Spanish) keeps the common areas spotless. They are all pleasant and nice folks.

BUT…(you just knew there was a but in there, didn’t you?) there are some things I (and most everyone else here) don’t like about living in HUD housing. Yearly inspections are one of them. A lot of people hate it with a purple passion but I’m generally pretty stoic about it. It forces me to spring clean which is a good thing and I sort of appreciate the push to do what I should be doing anyway.

But I don’t like it. It’s stressful. It takes all the fun out of spring cleaning which is that I do it because I feel like opening and washing the windows and as long as there is fresh air let’s get rid of all those pent up winter smells that accumulate. I’m in the mood and energized. Bring on the Pine Sol!

Besides that, I don’t particularly like young, healthy, physically active people coming in and judging my housekeeping skills. It doesn’t matter how nice they are. It’s unnerving.

Inspections take that away from me for the most part but whatever… I can deal. However, this year I am in the “hating it with a purple passion” camp. I have been incredibly busy for the past 4 weeks running to the chiropractor, the vet, and today I have to go see my GP. My son’s birthday was last Sunday. That may not seem like much but for me, it’s exhausting.

When I got the notice last Friday that they were going to be doing inspections THIS Thursday (that’s tomorrow), I was horrified. I was baking a cake on Saturday. Saturday night I was going out of town until Sunday evening. I had a Chiropractor appt Monday, Bridge on Tuesday, Dr’s appt on Wednesday. I need naps every afternoon. Serious two-three hour naps or I get sick. Just when was I going to find time to clean? Especially since they want the oven, refrigerator, bathroom, and carpet looking good. Oy…

If I fail this inspection then they will put me on horror of horrors quarterly inspections. Good gawd…

Don’t get me wrong, I think I am one of the luckiest people I know to live here in affordable housing that is well taken care of. I try to remember to count my blessings and not bitch a lot. Today I’m bitching.

Bless her heart my daughter is coming over tonight to clean the oven because that always triggers an asthma attack for me and needs its own day all by itself. And I’ve taken on the attitude that what gets done gets done. If they put me on quarterly inspections I’m going straight to Erica and asking her to help me find some housekeeping help. I’ve always wanted a maid.

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Promotions for Gremlins or Is She Crazy?

can’t bear the roosters crow
I guess it’s something that you already know
Remember the darkness bless the light
Lest I fall into the night
You might think I’m crazy, crazy like a fox
You might think I’m soft but I’m hard as a rock
I got something , something called fire
I got something take my spirit higher
Stopped wearing black I am tired of look thin
I got a big fat spirit walking born again
Got to get humble going to wash your feet
Got to feed the beggar down on poor’s man street
Like a saint I walk on water, turn water into wine
Turn the other cheek, give my eyes to the blind

Crazy by Bride
Well I went to court today and got my restraining order against the man-who-wishes-he had-never-met-me At least that’s what the note under my door claims but he claims he didn’t write the note or so his lawyer told me. Lawyer? Yup, he had a lawyer there representing him and she wanted to settle the matter before we got to the judge. He would agree to everything I wanted for one year.

At first I said no, I wanted to go before the judge because I wanted to know about this note and my blogs disappearing for several days. Ms Lawyer (yes he got a female lawyer!) said she would not allow him to testify. WTF! The person who was with me said the judge couldn’t make him testify and couldn’t do anything about my blogs anyway and I couldn’t prove he had anything to do with the note or my blogs so I should negotiate. SHIT FuCK DAMN!

OK then sucker 2 years! I could hear him getting pissed and whining about that because he would have to take another elevator if I was in the one he wanted blah blah blah and he couldn’t eat at the Senior Center (he never eats there, he just walks through and stares at everyone). I did concede that he could go to classes during that time period but that he had to stay out of the dining area. I could have made things much worse for him. Much worse.

Now, I’m willing to believe he didn’t “write” the note but I’m willing to bet cash he knows who in hell did and how it got under my door. I’m willing to bet he had “nothing to do with my blogs playing hide and seek” but I’m willing to bet cash he knows who did and he was told all about it before it happened. I’m willing to bet the reason he had a lawyer with him is to protect those other people more than it was to protect himself.

Those other people are an amorphous group of men and women whose identities I am not quite certain of. I am sure that some of them live on the premises but I am also certain that not all of them do. I think of them as a consortium of individuals known collectively and somewhat affectionately at times as The Gremlins. Today I believe I am promoting them to Troglodytes. At least some of them.

I believe that there might have been some meddling going on that got my admirer thinking I was more interested than I was and then got him even more upset than he needed to be when his overtures did not work. I think I know exactly who that twit of a meddler was. He’s a sociopathic snake in the grass who can’t resist causing trouble for others. A troglodyte who looks good on the outside but is so putrid on the inside one or two pokes reveals the stech of psychic decay. He’s supposed to be moving out soon and it can’t come soon enough. If I get a chance, I will confront him about this and then I will go to the building manager about it.

But the other troglodytes are much more onerous and dangerous. I believe there are burglars living on the premises. There are so many complaints about break-ins and theft it’s ridiculous. The management says they can’t do anything, call the police. The police say they can’t do anything until you actually catch somebody in the act. Right. The cops don’t pay much attention to complaints from people here at the Three Threes. You are automatically labeled neurotic simply by virtue of your address and posibly psychotic. Complaints like this are dismissed out of hand.

I think the main reason for the break-ins is because of the computers in the building. I’ve “lost” six (or is it 7–I’m beginning to lose count) computers to viruses/trojans that none of the big gun virus/trojan detectors out there can detect or figure out how to remove. I’ve spent hundres of dollars trying to keep thme out and/or get rid of them. Basically I don’t really control this computer–they do. They allow me to use it if I behave myself and don’t try to do anything to get rid ogf them or talk about them. I am writing this in Word because when I tried to writ it online, the sentences about burglars living in the building got edited out.

Why do they want the computers. It’s some kind of cyber crime. I wish I understood computers better but what from what I do understand I believe they are turning other people’s computers into some kind of conduit (servers?) for information out into the internet. I’ve found evidence of what looks like credit cards and telephone numbers to Asia and Europe. They seem to be using Telnet.

It’s really amusing to write things that mess with their heads and watch them run around in circles being pissed as hell at me. They’ll do something they think will punish me. Like steal my blogs away again. Of course this time I will go to the cops. I might not get anywhere but since I have a job working on the internet and they may have cost me that job already, this has now become serious shit. So I double dog dare you, you idiots. Besides they’ll go straight to Mr Can’t-Take-No-For-An-Answer for answers. Any questions?

They could take my TV remote again. As if getting up and walking all of 8 feet is a huge hardship. They’ll bring it back later just to make me feel foolish anyway. What else? Oh they could move things around. Steal my kids pictures.Search the house for god knows what. Steal my sewing supplies. Eat my food while they are here. Use up all the ice cubes and don’t make any new ones. Rude ass people. Kill my plants. Why that was so appealing I don’t know but they put some mighty foul smelling shit in the pots.

But you know what, I ain’t gonna let none of that shit piss me off or hurt my feelings. If I let them control my emotions then they win. Wasting my energy on getting pissed off is foolish. I have better things to do like tring to figure out what they are up to and why they are so interested in being in my apartment doing nasty stuff to me. It started out as payback for something and I’m not even sure what. That part I don’t care about.

It’s the computer stuff that is so fascinating. You would not believe what I have learned about computers. They have rendered so many machines with windows inoperable right off the bat that I am really going to have to learn Linux. At the moment I am too lazy–better things to do. Tired of playing with PCs.

Yes, I know this sounds crazy. The rantings of an insane woman. God I wish it was. I could take a pill and make it all go away.

B

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Hide N’ Seek

Olly olly ox in free!

My Blogs all went on a walk-about this weekend. I could see them but couldn’t get at them. My friends said they were password protected. Someone else had the controls. Apparently it was a cruel practical joke connected to my recent encounter with Mr. Won’t-take-No-For-An-Answer.

Sunday I got a note shoved under my door that said please read June 21st at 6:10 am on the envelope. I don’t know when it was delivered I found it at 11:45. I don’t follow instructions well and read it right then and there. It was totally off the wall and bizaare and somewhat threatening so I called the police.

We decided it was probably better not to poke a sleeping tiger at one o’clock in the morning and it would be better to try to get a restraining order against him. I took the note and envelope to my manager on Monday and she said she thought it was his handwriting so on Tuesday I went to the courthouse and filed for a restraining order.

Thursday the 21st my Blogs disappeard. Rat Bastard.

They came home last night.

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I Want To Defrag My Life

I’ve got to defragment my PC tonight. It’s running wonky and sometimes refuses to shut down properly when I want to shutdown which leads to a scan disk on restart which probably fixes anything that needs fixing but my files are probably fragmented as hell. Like I k hidden now what the hell I’m talking about. I just know that I should defragment this thing every once in awhile and that it’s a good idea to do it if your PC is acting wonky.Mine is acting wonky. What is wonky? Well, it hangs up on shut down a lot. Like nearly every time I try to shut down. It won’t let me into the Internet Explorer tools via the tool bar in IE (gives me a “not accessible because of restrictions on this computer. see your network administrator” message) and if I try to go in via the control panel it just hangs up and the PC freezes. My AVG anti-virus automatic update is denied access to the internet by my firewall and I can’t figure out why that happens but I can get it to update manually so I guess it’s not that big a deal, just a PITA so far.

So what else is new with me and PCs? I’ve been having a running battle with trojans for almost three yeas now, speaking of the Gremlins. It will probably get worse if I mess around with trying to get rid of them. For the moment I think I’m just going to try to coexist peacefully and see what happens. It sort of peeves me that they are there but I’m really not in the mood to fight with them either.

I just wish they would go away and leave me alone. It’s like having evil unwanted relatives as guests who just won’t go home or maybe they don’t have a home and you’re stuck with them because after all, how do you throw family out? Except these demons aren’t family. They’re just omnipresent.

Who are the Gremlins? I’m not really sure. I’ve got my suspicions, of course. I’m almost absolutely sure who one of them is but I won’t/can’t name names. I’ve got strong suspicions about other people.

What do they do? Well, I know they break into apartments and steal things. Many, many people have complained about that over the years. I know they have a strange fascination with my PC(s). I believe they might break into the apartments of the everyone this complex who have PCs plant special trojans that then suck up their extra PC resources. Since DSL is practically as cheap as dial-up in this city and the building across the way is primarily rich college kids, there is no reason not to have it really. I think they have everyone on some kind of local area network. Like I said, I’m not sure but I’ve heard of way too many problems with computers in this building. I think DSL might be provided in the other building.

There is a PC fix-it guy who will come here and fix your PC for a mere $28.00 an hour. His flyer appears on the bulletin board every once in awhile. He says he’s so cheap because he thinks the poor should not be disenfranchised from this form of communication. Noble cause and all of that. blah blah blah.

Sounds too good to be true, huh? It was too good to be true for me. I have a 2 year old Dell I would like to get de-trojanized so I called him and talked to him about it. He said he’d check his schedule and never called back. Guess he was too busy with his regular $75 an hour jobs.

I try not to be paranoid about that. I try not to wonder if he is part of my suspected tribe of gremlins. and that’s why he won’t come to my house for $28 an hour. I should call him again.

There are a group of us who are trying to get a PC club going here in the building. Maybe I should call the cheap PC guy and ask him to be a pseaker/advisor. Why not, he was all about helping people get on the web. He could give a security talk. I’d like to meet him, see what kind of vibes I get. It would be good for business for him, he would probably do it if I get Richard to call.

Charlotte reccommends him highly–maybe she would call. He does all her work on her PC. I don’t have a clue why her PC needs all that work but she met him at the Senior Center where he volunteers occasionally and they recommend him highly there as well. There is a whole room full of PCs there . At least 15 if not more.

I helped an older lady named Eloise who has severe arthritis put an onscreen keyboard on her PC and showed her how to make they type bigger and use the magnifier plus how to do a search on IE. That gave her enough confidence to take a course in using her PC at the Senior Center.

I also helped Kathleen learn how to search more effectively although I am hardly an expert. I wish someone would teach me how to refine searches so I get exactly what I want.

But here I am dithering about nothing so I can avoid talking about the gremlins. Because talking/writing about the gremlins makes me edgy and sad and angry all at once. I know everything I say about them sounds crazy. I wish I could defragment my life and expel the gremlins.  I try not to worry about this shit and just shrug my shoulders and say, hey, this is part of living at the Three Threes.  Deal with it.  <meh>

B

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