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C’mon Fall–Bring It On!

Halloween is fast approaching, and I’m amazed by the number of people I know at work or in my private life who love this holiday more than Christmas. I’m amazed mostly because I don’t really get into Halloween at all. Okay, I’m all for getting a bag full of candy, but wait, I’m a senior citizen and don’t go trick-or-treating anymore. Haven’t for a long time.

Okay, so that part of Halloween is over for me. But what about dressing up? Not really into that, either, although I love seeing what the kids (and their parents) come up with. At work we open our doors to the children of employees after school on the 31st. One little girl came as Wednesday last year, and believe me, she had the look down. Her mom told me what went into putting that outfit together and it turned out to be several hours of searching, mostly on Amazon. (If you don’t know who Wednesday is, search Netflix).

Scary movies? Not a chance. I really disappointed one co-worker with that one. Now, the flip side of that would be the holiday movies on Hallmark, and I don’t really enjoy those much either. Give me the classic Christmas films, like Christmas in Connecticut with Barbara Stanwyck or The Bishop’s Wife with Cary Grant. I spend Christmas Eve and Christmas Day watching eight favorite holiday films, and those are just two of them.

Which brings me around to Christmas. I can’t say I love it, because I’m usually alone and that’s not much fun. But I do enjoy the decorations as well as Advent, which we observe in church. I guess a big part of Christmas for me is the celebration of the birth of Christ. The carols speak to me, both for their meaning and tradition.

This year, Christmas comes on a Thursday, and I’ve taken Christmas Eve and the day after off from work, so I’m looking forward to the five days of sleeping in and doing what I want to do. Which will not be shopping. I’ve got my Christmas shopping done. I just have to mail the gifts, which I won’t do until December. I try to stall mailing my mom’s package because I know she won’t wait until Christmas to open her gifts and that always disappoints me. However, I don’t like waiting in line at the post office, so it’s a trade-off.

But back to Halloween–I remember growing up we always carved pumpkins, which I loved doing, and then my mom would roast the pumpkin seeds. I don’t know what she did to them, but they were yummy. So that is one tradition I wish I could keep, but I won’t, because I don’t have anyplace to put a pumpkin and I have no idea how to roast the seeds properly. But the memories linger.

This time of year is my favorite, holidays or no holidays. Today it will be 64 degrees outside, which is perfect for me. Okay, I like it even when it dips down quite a bit lower, so I’m looking forward to the next few months. And truth to tell, I’ll enjoy seeing the kids at work on Halloween. I’ll bring my favorite candy (Milky Way bars) for them and hope that there’s some left over. Then it’s Thanksgiving, which is day off of watching football for me, and then (yay) we’ll get into Christmas.

Of course, there’s the leaves turning, although it looks like that particular treat skipped my area this year. But I’m pulling out my long-sleeved clothing and can’t wait to wear it. C’mon fall, bring it on!

Image Credits: Fall Leaves (header) © Subbotina Anna; Fall Leaves (footer) © sea and sun; Ghost © Kaca; Advent Candles © Christian Horz–all, stock.adobe.com

P.S. For those of you who remember the trouble I’m having logging on to my WordPress account, I’m still having it. However, the irony is I’ve been posting more, because if I’m able to access my account, I want to use the opportunity. The trouble comes in accessing my account. It can take two hours or (if I’m really lucky) 2 minutes. And I’d better get my editing done while I can, because I don’t know if I’ll be able to get to the post again any time soon! It’s not WordPress’s fault. It’s AT&T’s.

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Puppy Love

On Thursday, close to the end of my work day, I overhead my co-worker talking to her mom. She was crying (my co-worker, that is) and said, “I’m so sorry you had to go through that alone.” After a bit more of the conversation, I deduced that a pet had died.

It turned out I was right. When Sherry got off the phone, I asked if she was okay, and she said no, her dad’s dog had died that day. Sherry’s dad passed away four years ago, and I immediately flashed back to the time my stepdad’s cat died, eight years after his death. It was like losing the final connection to him, and brought back all the pain of the night he left us.

I don’t know if Sherry experienced the same kind of grief, but I imagine there was a lot of emotion. She told me the story of the day she got the dog, the runt of the litter, and surprised her dad with this teeny puppy. Tears rolled down his eyes when he first laid eyes on his new baby. For the next year this man, a farmer, carried that dog in the pocket of his overalls.

I felt compelled to do something to show I cared, so I got up early Friday morning and bought some flowers at the local supermarket. Nothing fancy, by any means, but I put them on her desk so she saw them first thing this morning. She didn’t seem to want to talk about it, so I didn’t push. Life goes on.

It’s funny what losing a pet can do to us. When my mom lost her beloved dog, Mishi, she cried and cried for days. The three of us kids, all teenagers, got a little irritated. It seem unlikely that she would cry that much for any of us, we said, not at all joking. I know now my mom would grieve any of the three of us much more than she would a dog, but at the time we didn’t feel loved. At least not as much as she cared for that dog.

When I lost Paco, I felt guilt and relief along with my grief. Guilt because I hadn’t realized how hard the previous year had been on him with his failing health. The vet told me it was likely his system had been shutting down for some time. I know cats are good at hiding pain, and I think Paco hid his from me, not deliberately, but because that’s what cats do. The relief came because in his last few weeks I knew I was losing him, and finally reaching that point allowed me to take a deep breath and move on. But I cried and missed him terribly. It took a long time for me to remember the good times and to let go of my guilt. I hope I can take what I learned from Paco and keep Walter and Mimi from experiencing the same.

When I was in high school, we lost our cat Gabriel. I went to my youth pastor in tears, asking if cats went to heaven. A few months later he told this story to the entire youth group, mocking my tears and making fun of my question. While he didn’t name me, I knew who he was talking about. He caught my eye and seemed surprised to see me in attendance. Or surprised by something. I never trusted him again.

When I lost my stepdad, I went to my pastor (fifteen years later and a different church) and he warned me that some people would likely say stupid things. I thought back to that youth pastor. I hope he learned his lesson. I’ve been aware ever since that I could be the one to say something insensitive.

I know of some people who say, “it’s just a dog. Get another one!” Yes, I’ve heard them say it. But those of us who love our pets know it’s something more.

Image Credit: Schnauzer puppy © Lunja–stock.adobe.com; Tabby Cat illustration © Victoria–stock.adobe.com

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Walter and Mimi Unaware

I took this picture the day before our annual visit to the vet. They look pretty content, don’t they? Well, not on the morning of our visit. Getting Walter into the carrier takes two people. Mimi goes in easier, but she’s scared. Both of them are. Still, I want my babies to be healthy, so we do it. They’ll go back to being happy soon enough. Like, as soon as we get home and I put those carriers away!

I trust you, Mama, but I would prefer to stay at home!

Image Credits: Cesar Cat © Belinda O, Paws in Heart © BigStock Photos, Cat and Mama © Arsaka Saka–stock.adobe.com

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Garbage In, Garbage Out

I got some distressing news from my Internet provider today. Apparently, they don’t service WordPress.com. That means that connecting to my blog is sporadic and frustrating. I’m connected now, obviously, but in the future I may need to take my laptop to work to be able to post anything on a regular basis.

In case you’re wondering, it’s AT&T Internet Air. I called them and spent a half hour with their tech services, and in the end the nice man who’d been helping me said, sorry. Nothing more we can do.

The night before I spent two hours with one of WordPress’s Happiness Engineers, who was also very nice, but ultimately we realized the problem wasn’t with WordPress. So I’m frustrated. I don’t know how often I’ll be able to post since connecting is so difficult. I’ll keep trying, of course.

Technology is not perfect. We’ve come to depend on it, but things like this happen. At work, one of our customers has a very flawed system for reporting claims, which is what my department handles. A co-worker says they just need AI, but the bottom line is, garbage in, garbage out. They used to say that a lot, remember? Now it seems you don’t hear it as much, but it remains a fundamental truth for computer science.

It looked sort of like this.

My dad worked with computers for years, starting in 1959. We used to go down to his offices and see the giant green computers all housed in one room. I was in awe of them. These machines would spit out all kinds of code that my dad and his colleagues refined as much as possible. Recently he told me that at one point, a large number of employees were working on a project and they split up into teams that each worked an eight-hour shift, so someone was working on the project 24 hours a day.

His shift was 4 a.m. to noon. One day my mom said she didn’t think she could handle that schedule any more (it left her dealing with three small children alone most of the time), and he told her, it would end on Thursday. She was dubious. How did he know? Because that was the day they were going to ship the program out to the customer, he said. Any problems that came up after that would be dealt with as they arose.

It seems that’s similar to the way problems are dealt with now. How many updates do we get to our operating systems? No one, not even Microsoft, can guarantee that their programs are perfect when they first release them.

So I’m holding out hope that my problem with my Internet is being addressed. For any number of reasons it isn’t practical for me to change providers. If my posts are more sporadic than ever, you’ll know why. If they’re more frequent, it’ll be because I connected and took advantage of the situation.

Image Credits: Frustrated Man © Brian Jackson–stock.adobe.com; Computer Room © Londita–stock.adobe.com

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It’s Mimi’s Turn!

I was bound and determined to get a picture of Mimi for this week’s post (not to imply I publish a Caturday post every Saturday, but let’s face it, lately that’s been the case). Unfortunately, this was the best shot I could get of her. She kept moving on me! She’s a tough one to get a good picture of in the best of times. Still, you can see a bit of her sweet personality in this shot, something that’s hard to capture. The ears say she’s on alert, but that was probably because I was hovering over her.

Did you see the Super Moon this week? We did!

Image Credits: Cesar Cat © Belinda O, Paws in Heart © BigStock Photos, Cat in the Moon © Victoria-stock.adobe.com