Peaceful, easy feeling

Sent from my U.S. Cellular BlackBerry® smartphone

I'm not crabby!

I'm at the beach!
Sent from my U.S. Cellular BlackBerry® smartphone

Aack! My brain!

As a newish BlackBerry user, I really haven't thought twice about battery charging. I plug the device into the charger at night and when I'm in the car, and it charges while it's tethered to the computer.

This morning at around 4:00, a tiny, gentle alert sounded from the nightstand. I thought I'd set an alarm by accident and decided not to even look at the phone. Of course after I woke up a little bit (because who can go back to sleep when you hear a tone you've never heard before?), I did look, and saw a Low Battery Alert. Hmmm. Never had one of those. And it's been plugged into the charger all night. Hmmm. Hmmm.

Okay, I'm wide awake by 4:15. You see, I'm going on a trip. TODAY. On a plane. And, well, I'm going to need my BlackBerry brain while I'm gone. We (BB and I) headed to the office, got online, Googled "yellow LED red battery icon" and found out what to do. During the various solutions I tried, I discovered that the plug-in charger I've been using works fine on my husband's flip phone, but wasn't supplying a charge to the Curve.

Hmmm. Hmmm. Hmmm.

No time to figure that one out. The charger we've been using for his phone works fine on mine, so I traded for a player to be named later. Heh.

What this means is I won't have to leave earlier than I'd planned in order to stop at the US Cellular store on the way to the airport. (US Cellular offers free battery swaps when your battery dies.) As of now (obviously, since I'm online), the battery is fully charged and appears to be holding the charge nicely.

I really had no intention of getting up at 4 a.m. though.

As for blogging while I'm gone, I'm not sure if it will happen. I had big plans for writing a couple posts to be published later, but that hasn't happened. I need to do a lot of house stuff, I need to pack, I need to take my walk, I need to drive to the airport … all of that stuff takes time. Waking up a couple hours early doesn't help much, since my husband is still sleeping. All I've accomplished is resurrecting the BlackBerry and doing one load of laundry. Vacuuming makes noise. Packing means I need to be in the bedroom. It's too dark to walk.

I'm too rattled to write anything coherent, as this post clearly proves!

Anyway, I did manage to walk yesterday in town. If you're a Facebook friend you saw the photo. And if you're not a Facebook friend, why aren't you? (If you scroll down the left sidebar of this page, you'll find a link to Facebook me.)

The advantage of walking in town became very clear to me about half an hour into the walk: public restrooms! That's not something we have out here in the Middle of Nowhere, so you really have to plan ahead. Or learn to cop a squat, something I've not managed to do very well. Yet. Practice makes perfect.

My brother will be fetching me at the airport tonight and the weekend will be emotional and sweet and offer, maybe, a little more closure to the events of the past month. If I have time to blog and something to say, I probably will. If not, well, I'll be back next week. Behave yourselves!

Purging

No, not binge-and-purging, the other kind, the kind that's all over the cable channels these days. Niecy Nash started it (I think) with Clean House, and it's now evolved into that Hoarding show that I can't even bring myself to watch.

I'm not a hoarder. Well, except for yarn maybe. But it's neatly contained and I swear I had plans for it when I bought it. I've been able to let go of a lot of yarn over the years, and I think I could probably get rid of some more, but I'm in one of those inert places where I can't do much more than is vital for our day-to-day existence.

In addition to the daily walk, which takes an hour, I've done very little around the house. Yesterday, in order to make myself feel as though I'd accomplished something, I unsubscribed from some e-mails, cutting the virtual clutter by about 60 percent!

When I switched ISPs last summer, I dropped a lot of e-mail newsletter subscriptions. In the last month, I've found myself skimming the remaining ones, or deleting them without opening them at all. There are a couple I think I'll get back to, so I'm keeping them. All they're doing is taking up hard drive space. The rest? Gone. All the political ones are gone. I'm active locally in my Democratic women's group and that's enough right now. I don't need the DCCC, the DSC and OFA asking me for my time and money, both of which are in short supply lately. Especially the money.

Speaking of the local Dems, I'm "working" today at our party headquarters. We've never had a headquarters during a mid-term election, but this one is apparently important enough that the Executive Committee rustled up a location, stocked it with signs and stickers and badges, oh my, and staffed it with volunteers. Like me. All I need is my knitting and the BlackBerry and a couple of magazines. And maybe the iPod. And this remote control. (Did you see The Jerk?) I'll be good for the day.

The down side to a day of service is, when do I walk? I could take some time during the day, lock up for lunch and walk around town for an hour. That might be fun, actually. Or I might have to get it done tonight. Dinner is ready, reruns from last night. I made enough vegetable-beef soup for a dozen guests, and there's only two of us. Soup's better the second night anyway.

Which will it be? Stay tuned …

Four in a row!

I promise I won't count down my daily walks indefinitely, but it's very helpful to me to do so early in the game. Consistency may be the hobgoblin (I said 'hobgoblin!' And it's almost Halloween!) of little minds, but it also is the best (perhaps only) way to create change in one's life. And believe me, changing from working in a garden to sitting on my ass is not the way to change one's body.

I don't think it's an even trade, this walking thing. The garden work was labor-intensive and took much more time. Maybe the month or so of rest I took as the garden work was dwindling was a good thing. I'm always looking for ways to trick my body into releasing lard. Maybe it won't remember the digging and planting and hoeing and weeding, and we'll just start from the sitting-on-my-ass part.

September was supposed to be very different from the way it turned out. The ass-sitting came as a result of my dad's sudden death. It turned out to be more than just sitting. It was napping and eating and actually being pretty much a zombie, and it's really not over. I'm told by family and friends on the one hand that it 'takes time,' and on the other to 'move on with your life.'

I guess I'm not quite there yet. I'm still in the taking time part, but I'm beginning to wonder how much time it's going to take. One of my friends says it doesn't get better, it gets different. So, so true.

Anyway.

Yes, it's fuzzy and crooked and I should have edited it. So, sue me. Heh.

I've been taking my Blackberry with me when I walk, and posting a picture on Facebook as I'm trudging along. Yesterday started out grey and dreary and I just wanted to get it over with. At the 1.5-mile mark, I wondered if it was going to rain before I got home. Then a half mile from the house, the sun broke out. It lasted only a few minutes, and must have been responsible for pushing our high temperature above the 50-degree mark. And it was glorious. I felt very happy for those few minutes, in a way I haven't felt in quite some time. I wish it could have lasted a little longer, but decided I should probably be grateful for the moment.

The weather here will be improving later this week, just in time for me to leave the state. I'm heading to the land of perpetually nice weather (Florida, unless they're having hurricanes), for the second memorial service. I hope when that's over I can really begin to get out of this dark place and be glad my dad is in a better one.

Even with highER speed internet access ...

my computer life can be slow.

Tethering the Blackberry to the computer affords me a vastly improved
internet experience, but sometimes – like this morning, for instance –
there are inexplicable glitches. Right now, for instance, the Blogger
Dashboard refuses to present a screen in which I can create a new post.

As my mother used to say, "There's more than one way to skin a cat."
Thank goodness for the ability to e-mail a blog post.

(One of these days I'm going to have to look up the origin of that
weird expression. I never questioned it when she said it, and she was
always right. There IS more than one way to do just about anything!)

I've been taking advantage of highER online speeds this weekend to
sign myself up for online banking and bill paying. Should my husband
and I decide to head south this winter, we'll need to be able to take
care of business no matter where we land. So far, so good. Why haven't
I done this before?

Oh, right, painfully slow dial-up. Heh.

I also found out that I could register my Kroger Plus card at the
Kroger website and load digital coupons to it. Who knew? I probably
should read those little mailers they send out once in a while, I'm
sure they've told me about this feature.

In this day and age, when we depend so much on thousands of dollars'
worth of electronic equipment for information and entertainment, it's
great to know you can save $3 on toilet paper without cutting out or
even presenting a coupon.

Nothing can speed up my walking, it seems. But at least I'm out there
doing it. So far this month I'm three for three, three miles each day.
I don't see any reason not to continue. It's going to be a little
chilly today – upper 50s for a high – but I have a basket of
headbands, hats and mittens ready and waiting for cool weather.

There goes that excuse.

Friday Quote Day

Discipline is making the choice

between what you want now

and what you want most.

~ Author Unknown

I'm not so sure I like the word "discipline," but I like – and am comfortable with – the concept of choice. I'd rather think not think of myself as an unruly delinquent. Discipline belongs in middle-school classrooms, not grown-ups' kitchen pantries.

Last night we did indeed have pizza, and it was my favorite variety: pesto sauce with mozzarella, fresh sliced tomatoes, kalamata olives, onions and grilled chicken, sprinkled with feta. I had just one slice.

By 8 p.m. I was a little hungry. I'd been alternately knitting and playing BlackBerry solitaire while watching television multitasking. I wished for ice cream, but none appeared, so I had a half cup of applesauce with a little cinnamon mixed in. By 9 p.m. I was ready to read for a while and go to sleep, still a little hungry but not uncomfortably so.

It's okay to be hungry. Meals are so much more satisfying when I am ready to eat, rather than when I eat by the clock. But I'd rather not go to bed hungry. I think maybe I need to eat dinner later in the day (we usually eat around 5:30). I'll have to convince my husband that scheduling dinner for my needs is more important than watching The Ed Show.

Or Colbert Report reruns.