Habit #15: Knit Happens

Just when I had taken up ancestor research as a way of not writing, a friend in England informed me that I needed to take up knitting. "It's rather addictive," she said, not knowing that my ancestor research had gotten to the point where I needed something to distract me from it.

I did my best to tell her that I was hopeless because not only can I not count, I have extremely limited manual dexterity. I explained that I had spent years trying to learn to play the piano only to realize that no amount of practicing Czerny and Hanon exercises would make my fingers work properly. Jocelyn was undeterred. "Nonsense," she said. "You don't need manual dexterity in order to knit."

Rather than argue, I did as instructed and purchased a ball of wool and a pair of rather ungainly wooden knitting needles. Jocelyn got me started right away. Well actually, Jocelyn got started right away. She had done two rows of twenty stitches before I reminded her that she was supposed to be teaching me to do it. "Right," she said and pulled the needles out and rewound the yarn so I could start from the beginning.

I knotted loop around one of the needles. Jocelyn showed me how to "cast on" stitches. Since my needles were long, I decided to cast on enough stitches to cover two thirds of the needle. Starting with the full needle in the left hand, you stick the empty needle in your right hand up and behind the first stitch of the full needle, loop the yarn from the ball around the back of the empty needle and then pull the new loop down and liberate the stitch from the full needle. Repeat till the needle in your left hand is empty. Jocelyn made it look so easy. When I tried it, I discovered that I have two left hands and a neurological disorder. After an agonizing hour, I had completed a single knit row. Then it was time to learn the purl stitch. Purling is knitting backwards, sort of. I switched the full needle to my left hand, back side facing me and stuck the empty needle down and in front of the first stitch. It took a while for me to figure out that I could hold the looping yarn with the thumb and index finger of my left hand while purling. This was fun!

I decided then and there that I was a knitting convert and began fantasizing about all the lovely sweaters and wraps I would create while I was not researching my ancestors and not writing my novel. And then I looked down and noticed that I had made numerous mistakes where I had dropped stitches and created holes where neat stitches should have been.

For the next three days, I attempted to get the first five rows off to a good start but I kept "creating button holes" without realizing it and back to the beginning I would have to go. After restarting my project for the tenth time, Jocelyn began calling me Penelope. I was not amused.

Jocelyn's friend Felicity, a master of the craft, suggested that I knit a stitch at the end of each purl row. This sounded like good advice, so I promptly forgot it.

My flight back to the US, the next day, was delayed by three hours and I occupied myself by starting and and restarting my project six or seven times, to the amusement of several bored children in the gate area. Once on board, we were informed that our pilot was stuck in traffic on the motorway and would get to the plane as soon as he could. This gave me two additional hours to start and restart my knitting project. By the time we took off, I had ten fairly decent-looking rows. And then I remembered Felicity's advice to end each purl row with a knit stitch. After another ten or so rows, I noticed that the top of my project was wider than the bottom. Merde!

Rather than rewind the considerable length of yarn I had now invested in my project, I decided to push on. My husband was not impressed by my knitting. "What is it?" he asked. "Practice," I answered defensively while trying in vain to uncurl the sides and make the thing resemble a rectangle. Eventually, I reached the end of the ball of yarn but had no clue how to take the knitting needle off the last row of stitches, so there it sits. It isn't pretty, but I'm proud of it with it's many "features" and "design elements".

Meanwhile, I have gone back to ancestor research and pretending to write. What I liked about knitting was creating something out of connected loops of yarn. It also made me sad, in a way, because of how easily the work is undone. Sometimes life is like that. I wonder if I will ever finish anything?

Habit #14 -- AncesTree Dot Com

The blogger's paternal grandfather circa 1940

Whoever is behind Ancestry.com, is raking it in. I resisted the ads for years. I even resisted invitations to fill in blanks on family members' trees until I received a notice from an attorney in Iowa. One of my mother's first cousins who had never married or produced any children had died without leaving a will. He has a sizable estate which will be distributed to the surviving children or grandchildren of his numerous siblings. There are at least 200 hundred of us, so I don't expect to receive more than ten or twenty dollars. But still. An inheritance from a long-lost relative.

Out of curiosity, I took out a temporary "free" membership in Ancestry.com. Who was this man who never married, had children, or made a will? The first person I entered was my maternal grandfather. I didn't have any specific information about him other than his name, but that was not a problem. Ancestry lets you give approximations, so I said he was born around 1900 give or take 10 years and, voila! Ancestry.com supplied a chain of "hints" which included his World War I and II draft registration cards as well as U.S. Census reports from several decades up to the 1940s. With each hint I verified, more hints popped up and suddenly, my family tree looked more like a forest.

A basic Ancestry membership costs $19.99 per month. This gives you access to a vast trove of public information including birth and death records, telephone directory pages, and family trees developed by other Ancestry members who are somehow related. I got lost in my family forest and began filling in data on second and third cousins twice and thrice removed. After a couple of days, I realized that I had fallen into a labyrinth that teased me into moving forward rather than trying to find my way out. I simply couldn't stop myself.

$19.99 per month is a lot of money, $240 on an annualized basis. But there are many incentives to pay $34.99 per month because at some point, your ancestors lived on another continent and the only way to find out if you are descended from royalty is to check overseas archives. I keep telling myself, I can quit any time and I will only pay the monthly membership fee while I am researching, but what happens to my research if I stop paying? Will Ancestry.com hold it hostage?

I am afraid to find out and so I am praying there is a way to download everything otherwise I may spend my retirement funds keeping my ancestors alive.

Habit #13 -- Giving Up the Paycheck

Shortly after my first child was born, when I was on a six-month maternity leave, I realized that the most compelling reason for returning to work was to get a break.  The pressures of a newborn baby plus the "help" and "support" coming from so many corners made me realize that working ten-hour days for people who didn't appreciate me actually wasn't as hellish as I had thought.  There was no inconsolable crying at work, no worrying about mysterious bodily fluids, no hyperventilating family members demanding that I call the pediatrician, no dogs eating the food left on the counter for two unwatched seconds.  Even better, I could close my office door and take a nap on the floor under my desk in perfect peace and quiet.  As attractive as all this was, I realized it was a lousy reason to leave my precious baby in the care of a virtual stranger who might be a religious nut or a child-abuser (or both).

So I did the responsible thing and quit my job.  What followed was two decades of trying to accomplish many things and only occasionally succeeding.  My first goal was to take a daily shower.  Sounds easy, except the minute I turned on the water, the baby would start screaming or the dog would start barking and then the baby would start crying, or the phone would ring and it would be my husband asking me to do something that required complicated logistics given said baby and dog.  It humiliates me to admit that there were many days during my baby's early months when a shower did not happen.

Eventually, my husband and I succeeded in setting a fixed bedtime for our daughter -- 8:00 pm -- and that was when we would eat dinner and I would have a shower for dessert.  We drove our teenaged babysitters crazy with our bedtime routine but most of them had heard we paid well if the baby was asleep when we came home.  The bedtime ritual had given us back some portion of our pre-baby lives and we adhered to it with the precision of a German train schedule.  Daytime hours, unfortunately, never fell in line with any sort of routine.

My husband left the house at around 8:00 each morning and returned sometime after 7:00 in the evening.  My days consisted of breastfeeding, making coffee, changing diapers, dressing the baby, feeding the dog, doing a load of laundry, bundling the baby into her outerwear and strapping her into her stroller, walking the dog, changing the baby, re-bundling her, going to the grocery store, the bakery, the gourmet deli, the dry cleaners, and returning home for more breastfeeding and a late lunch.  After running around all morning, the baby was supposed to take a nap, but she was a light sleeper and every ring of the phone or bark of the dog would wake her so eventually I gave up on that idea, being grateful for the eight hours of sleep she granted us at night.

The lack of nap meant that the baby was often fussy in the afternoons and that meant putting her in the Snugli while I chopped vegetables and marinated the chicken.  This worked great for about four days until she got bored with the inside of the Snugli and started screaming the minute I strapped it on.  So I tried the backpack.  It was awkward to get into with the baby inside and I almost dropped her on her head.  My next brainstorm was to put her in a baby rocker on the counter top.  In between chops I would rock the chair or tickle her tummy or otherwise distract her.  In this way, I managed to prepare a nice dinner for my husband across a four or five hour time period.  

Just when I breathed a sigh of relief that all I had left was to throw everything into a saute pan and boil water for rice, invariably the phone would ring;  while I looked away for five seconds to find the phone, the dog would help himself to everything on the kitchen counter.  I knew that St. Francis was testing me, so I let the dog live.  The call that enabled the dog to clear the counters was usually my husband saying he was coming home and hoping that dinner would be ready.  I explained that his call had cost him his dinner and would he please stop at the Indian carryout and bring home some butter chicken and saag paneer and naan?

Most of my friends in those days were the nannies of neighboring children because the other mothers had the good sense to fork over their paychecks to high school graduates and foreigners so they wouldn't have to deal with the diapers and dogs and disappearing dinners.  Those mothers have no idea what they missed.

Habit #12 -- Simplifying Life With Technology

I wish this was a piece about how Comcast/Xfinity has ruined my life, but that would be a lie.  The truth is that Comcast/Xfinity has robbed me of several hours of my life in my attempt to consolidate internet service, television, and voice into a single account.  Usually, I am too smart (!) to fall for the ploys of salespeople promising that by switching to this service or that carrier I will save tons and tons of money.  AT&T had me going a couple of years ago when they tried to talk me into adding television and internet via DSL connection to my existing landline service.  After patiently answering the salesperson's questions about the features we use, she presented me with savings of about $10 per month.  OK, that adds up to $120 a year but the trade-off is being stuck with DSL which is S-L-O-W.

Two weeks ago, I called Comcast about problems with my television service and even though they didn't fix the problem, they got my attention when they promised that I could save $100 per month by switching to their voice service.    Meanwhile, they sent me a replacement for one of my Digital Transport Adapters in the hope that it would fix my TV problems.  It didn't.  I spent three hours on the phone (mostly on hold) with a series of non-native English speakers before someone figured out that I needed a technician to come to my house (duh).

I was sorely tempted to tell Comcast to take their voice service and shove it, but they had made a compelling economic argument.  Currently, my Comcast bill is about $105 and AT&T charges approximately $120 per month for my two landlines.  With Comcast's "special promotion" I will pay $105 per month for everything (for 12 months) and not have to pay AT&T a nickle.  Well, I still want to keep my fax line so I will be paying AT&T for that and for my mobile family plan (a huge amount of money each month).  I asked how much I would be paying in 13 months and the salesperson said I could call in 11 months and ask to have the promotional pricing re-instated.  With any luck, we will have moved out of state by the time I need to remember to call so I won't be shocked into re-signing with AT&T because I forgot to call about the promotional pricing.

So, taking the plunge, I said "I'll try it!" and hoped I wasn't making the biggest mistake of my life.  A few days later, the big box arrived and I put off installing the breadbox-sized modem until it dawned on me that my AT&T Service was going to be cut off and unless I could get the Comcast voice service to work, I was going to have some explaining to do to my husband who never understands my explanations.  The installation instructions stated very clearly that the new "Wireless Gateway" needed to be installed in a central location within the home, away from a window or a wall. Failure to do this would result in poor reception for users on the other side of the house, namely the children, who could be reality TV Stars when their internet access is flaky.  I hadn't even taken the thing out of the box and already I was in trouble.

The location of my existing modem and wireless router is on the south side of my large, one-story house, next to a window and a wall.  Once upon a time, these dust-attracting devices had been in a more central location but were relocated to where the cable enters the house by a technician who was attempting to resolve internet connectivity issues.  No problem, I thought.  I'll install everything and then have Comcast come over and drop a cable in my kitchen.  Scheduling that was my first phone call.  An hour later, after having repeated my name, address, last four of my social security number, and my reason for calling to three or four non-native English speakers who did not understand what I needed, I had an appointment scheduled for between 3 and 5 pm two days in the future.

After installing the new "Wireless Gateway" and following the directions to the letter, nothing worked.  I could feel the love emanating from Daughter #1's bedroom and got back on the phone with Comcast.  Same routine as before until I was finally routed to an American who understood immediately what my problem was, or so I thought.  We tried this and that for an hour until he gave up and forwarded my call to the technical support team for voice.  After waiting an eternity for a human to come on the line, I was again speaking to Sri Lanka or Malaysia or Singapore or somewhere else, and attempting to make myself understood.  Finally, five hours later, the internet was back online and I was pretty sure the voice service was working, although there was no way of knowing for sure.

"While I have you on the phone," I said to the weary tech support person, "Can you tell me what is wrong with my television service?"  I then explained how I have four TVs, only one of which is connected to the cable box.  The other three have those little Digital Transport Adapters which only provide access to a limited selection of channels.  When I was no longer to tune into the station which runs "Law & Order" re-runs non-stop, which was the original problem I called about which led to my being talked into the voice service, which led to my wasting many hours of my life on the phone with Comcast.  Again.  And again, and again.

My reward for being so patient and not screaming at anyone was that a technician was dispatched to my house the very next day!  My patience was further rewarded because this guy knew what he was doing and quickly fixed my TV problems.  Not only that, he programmed all of the Comcast remote controllers so that they actually worked like they were supposed to!

There is nothing like technology to teach us humility because it all seems so easy and seamless.  Until we get it home.  When we first purchased our high-definition TV, I listened carefully to the guy from the Geek Squad as he explained how he had set this and tuned that and programmed the other.  He demonstrated all of the amazing features we would enjoy with our new digital, high-definition TV.  The minute he left the premises, nothing worked and it took a week to get him back.  Meanwhile, we were pushing the buttons on the TV itself in order to change the channels, the picture was less than high-def, and our one attempt to watch a DVD nearly caused a homicide.

So, today, I planned my day around my Comcast appointment, the one in which the technician would drop a cable into my kitchen so I could have an optimal location for my new modem.  As the clock struck five and I hadn't heard from Comcast, I called them (big mistake) and after spending 90 minutes on the phone learned that the appointment had been canceled!  "Not by me!" I exclaimed, "I've been waiting all afternoon and now I've spent another hour and a half on the phone and I am not happy!"

Twenty minutes later, an American (in America) explained to me that I could simply attach the new modem to the cable serving my main cable box and since that is in a central location, everything should work just fine and I wouldn't be charged the $39.95 (that no one bothered to tell me about) in order to have a cable installed in a suitable location for my voice service.   

SERENITY NOW!

The True Story of the Tortoise and the Hare

Forget the "slow and steady wins the race" moral of Aesop's famous fable, because Highly Effective People know some things that Highly Ineffective People do not.

In the true story of the tortoise and the hare, just like in Aesop's Fables, the hare challenges the tortoise to a race knowing full well that the tortoise cannot win, but he loses to the tortoise anyway.  The fable would have you believe that the hare goofed off along the way and taunted Mr. Turtle as he poked along.  What really happened is this:  Mr. Rabbit had a well-deserved reputation for speed and for being a bit of a know-it-all.  Mr. Turtle, on the other hand, enjoyed sunning himself on a rock while lavishing compliments on everyone who joined him in the sunshine.  In this way, he ended up with many loyal friends who would do almost anything for him.  When Mr. Rabbit had had enough of listening to Mr. Turtle as he held court while being waited on by his smitten groupies, he challenged the lazy and arrogant reptile to a race in order to set the record straight.  The only problem was that the "Toadies", as Mr. Rabbit referred to Mr. Turtle's friends, weren't interested in watching their beloved Mr. Turtle suffer the humiliation of certain defeat; so they hatched a plan that would silence the annoying Mr. Rabbit forever.

On the day of the big race, Mr. Turtle slowly made his way from his sunny spot to the starting line where Mr. Rabbit had been waiting impatiently for quite some time.  "On your mark, get set, go!" announced the referee.  Mr. Rabbit tore off at great speed, looking back only briefly to make a rude gesture in Mr. Turtle's direction.  Mr. Turtle then did something surprising, he took a look around, winked at his admirers and shut himself into his shell for a nap.  A bit later, someone knocked on his shell and said, "OK T, it's time."  The referee had been sent to get coffee and returned just as Mr. Turtle popped out of his shell, and acted like he had been moving forward all along, there was only one conclusion:  Mr. Turtle had crossed the finish line (which was also the starting line) first, with Mr. Rabbit a close second.

Mr. Rabbit, making the classic error of Highly Ineffective People, had failed to consider that not everyone values honesty and hard work.  Mr. Turtle, on the other hand, knew that he didn't have to move a muscle in order to win the contest for hearts and minds;  all he had to do was keep telling his followers what they wanted to hear; nobody cared that Mr. Turtle cheated because everyone knew that Mr. Rabbit was the faster contestant.  That fact was never in question.  

To this day, Mr. Rabbit has no idea how he lost that race.  He left the area and headed south in search of a better life, only to find that there are tortoises and toadies everywhere.  If he could have grown a shell and shut himself inside, he would have done it.  Instead, he discovered Happy Hour thereby consigning himself permanently to an lifetime of ineffectiveness.

Copyright 2013 by Teresa Friedlander, all rights reserved.

Java, or Habit #3 - Coffee Breaks

Time for a little something.  Be right back...

Pandora

The other day I broke down and bought an iphone because I have a dog who loves to escape at inconvenient times and makes me late for appointments and exercise classes, etc.  I Googled dog-finding applications and devices and found two which sounded promising.  The first was designed for hunting dogs which go far afield in search of racoons, boars, etc.  This system has two components:  a collar with two antennae and a radio receiver which communicates with the collar via satellite.  I liked the way this one sounded because it was rugged and my dog loves to go into the back country of Jupiter Farms.  So I went to Gander Mountain, a big NRA outlet, and bought the $500 system, after being assured I could return it if I didn't like it.

The Red Dog tolerated the ridiculous collar quite well and didn't seem to mind that everyone who saw him laughed at him.  I was able to find him when he went on the lam although it required a bit of compass learning on my part.  The problem with this elaborate system was that the batteries on the collar and radio receiver ran down rather quickly meaning that the Red Dog could go missing at any time even wearing the My Favorite Martian collar.  So, I decided to try another device, the Tagg collar, which works with the iphone.  That meant buying an iphone which I had resisted for years just because. Fortunately, I was due for an upgrade and AT&T sold me the 4s for $99 (plus an exorbitant fee for this that and the other).

It took a few days for the dog tracker and the iphone to learn to love each other, but in the meantime, I discovered itunes and then, the love of my life:  Pandora.  I am totally addicted to my Bluegrass and Country stations.  My earbuds are always in place and I no longer speak to anyone.  This is a blessing and a curse because I find people to be distracting even though I crave conversation and connection.

What I am discovering is how much great music there is out there that I do not have to work to enjoy.  Life is good.