Wednesday

Oct, 31, 2001

demons

FFP gets up and goes for a workout. I don't get up. I do get up before he returns and let the dog out, make the bed, get some coffee, put away the clean dishes and load the dirty ones in the dishwasher and get a shower.

I am not a total slug. I am a working gal. I get up and worry about flight arrangements and meetings. And, yes, sometimes I'd rather write some code and have to fix compile errors or see glaring design flaws or have to write a ZAP. True, the people doing this are lots better at it than I am. Sometimes these people kindly ask me questions about technical things and I love that although I suspect I'm not much use anymore.

So I go to work. I hope I haven't offended the powers that be by trying to get out of going to LA. Hopefully, they realize I capitulated when I saw that I was the correct person to go (um, OK, yeah sure, I'm wonderful) and that they wanted me to do it. Perhaps I take their travel restrictions and other budgetary constraints a tad too seriously when it is to my advantage. Perhaps. I'm sorry. I'll do better.

At work I figure out the logistics of magically appearing at a meeting in LA next week (a much more time-consuming thing than you might think made easier by an good assistant admin person) and try to do some real work and thinking. I also get some of my expense stuff from the European trip returned but I just take one look, shake my head at the pettiness and give them back to the admin to straighten out. Thank goodness for her. Or I'd quit, I swear.

Before a meeting I grab a coffee toffee. It's soft and not really sticky but it manages to grab one of my temporary crowns just right, just this little bit of suction and pull it out. That little sinking feeling that there is now a gap back there and something foreign in your mouth. Thank goodness it's the temp.

I call and get on the books for a quick cement on the tooth at 2pm and go home to eat so I can give my teeth a good brush afterwards. It's always something. We are lucky to have dental and medical care, food and fresh water, soap, shelter. I told a friend today that every time I fill the dog's bowl or make coffee, I thank my luck for fresh, potable, additionally reverse-osmosis-filtered water. Even for the dog. We are lucky. The best I can do in this world, I sometimes think, is appreciate it. Understand that not everyone has it. And many who do are worried about paying off credit card debt, starting to save and sending kids to college.

The dentist squeezes me in and gets the thing cemented back in about five minutes. And I go back to work.

When I finally head home, there is a huge traffic jam on Mopac. Several impatient drivers go forty of so down the shoulder until it runs out. I curse them. Mentally. But I concentrate on keeping the car moving but leaving a little space between me and the next car. For safety and because, I believe, it keeps the traffic moving better if you can fudge having to stop completely. Which you will surely do if you are one inch fron the next car all the time. Of course, traffic jams are slightly more interesting for us stick shift drivers. I'm changing the world one traffic jam at a time, see. I signal lane changes, stop for red lights and pull over for emergency vehicles. And try to obey speed limits. Radical, I know.

Let's get real about safety, though. And what we deserve and are guaranteed.

Each one of us owes a death. If terrorists kill thousands and send anthrax through the mail, we should respond and try to make things safer, find the guilty (who aren't already dead). If we want to bomb stuff and send in troops looking for Osama, then OK. There are consequences. Not for him, maybe or his confederates. But we can change the course of things, kill some people. Yeah, it makes me furious that we will wield the sword on behalf of innocent victims here but be pretty much indifferent to the fact that most people in the world live a pretty horrible life, many women subjected to religion-centric governments. Or maybe we should just leave tyrants alone until they piss us off like in WWII.

But, really, folks. We can't be perfectly safe. We will have car accidents and airline accidents. Sure, recall cars and tires. Try to curb drinking and driving. New York has curbed cell phone use in cars without a headset. Personally I don't have a headset and I can't have long conversations in the car. I have to shift gears. I only have one hand on the wheel as it is, lots of times! Will these efforts save lives. Yes. Can we all live forever or at least die of natural causes? No. And, finally, I'm willing to bet that when the anthrax is forgotten, fewer people (postal workers and others) will have died than the number of postal workers that have died at the hands of other postal workers. Oh, no. Here come the gun control guys again! Yikes.

You can make the world a safer place. (Yes, you personally but also the indefinite 'one' and the government.) But there will always be, always have been accidents, risks, plagues, epidemics, murders, wars and the stalking menace of old age.

You will die. (Yes, you personally, even if you did or didn't make the world a safer place.)

One spot or another in the U.S., Canada and Western Europe is not enormously more risky than another. Parts of the world are enormously risky to life and limb. Some of them are really risky to limb because war after war has left land mines to blow them off.

This is our world.

It was pre 9/11 and it will be after. It won't really significantly change with our 'war efforts.' What we have is a large number of victims in the U.S. on one day. However, we will doubtless have eight times as many victims of car accidents this year.

About 17,000 people died in the U.S. of AIDS-related causes in 1998. Leaving relatives and friends without a billion dollars worth of targeted support raised in a few weeks.

So, folks, get some life insurance if you want people to continue with a life style you've accustomed them to having. You will die. And it may be today.

I'd seen a couple of costumes at work. My admin was a clown when I turned up at her desk. A grim reaper took me by surprise a couple of times. (I saw the same costume if not the same person at the grocery store in my neighborhood, too.)

We had about a dozen or so trick or treaters. Nothing too scary. Prize winner was a bunch of grapes done with purple balloons.

I turned off the porch light at 9 and shut the blinds. No one dared ring the bell. I fell asleep while the Yanks were losing and woke up to the celebration of their victory. I hope it goes to seven games. It will be good for the economy. Won't it?

One last thing in this tortuous entry. (Are you still here?) No, wait, it's only the next to last thing.

I want to comment on the picture. I took it today. It isn't a great picture. I had to pull over and let the guy go by and get him on digital zoom.

When I first saw the guy I just thought, "Homeless guy on bike."

But look closely. He has a helmet! And a rear-view mirror. (Which he was using enough to make me self-conscious with the picture thing.) He has what looks like a gas can. Hopefully it contains water. And he has a CD hanging on the back fender. Oh, to reflect your headlights back at you at night. Yes! He may have nothing much but the bike and the stuff on it (or maybe he's a rich eccentric doing a bit of shopping on his bike). But he's safety conscious!

OK, one last thing (I really can't believe you're still reading).

Today, I realized someone was mad at me. Well, not just today. The realization had been coming around. But today, I was so sure.

This is a person who has, often actually, in the past asked, "Are you mad at me?" (I never was.)

I asked her today and she looked at her shoes. Then she said, "That's a hard question to answer, isn't it? If you say no then people don't believe you...." and she trailed off.

I decided I had to find out what made her angry, if I was really right about it and soon. And then I thought differently.

No, if I made this friend angry, no defense I mount will change it. She will either decide to open her life to me enough that she has the opportunity to decide she likes me again. Or not. And that is pretty much that. I may never know what I did, whether I agree with the indictment if one was made. But I can only be ready to be friends. It's hard not to try to fix past sins. But you can't. There is only future. I hope this person is my friend in the future and happy with me. We will see. Still, I wonder what I did or said? Or am I imagining it? No, something is definitely wrong that she isn't telling me. But maybe it's not about me. Sometimes I forget everything isn't about me!

wordly goods, safe and sound

"41,345 people lost their lives in traffic crashes during 1999, in 1998 there were 41,471 fatalities."

car-accidents.com

Meta:
I've been looking at entries from the beginning of the year. I made lots more linking and typing mistakes then. I think. Anyway, there are lots of them and I haven't been correcting them so much as noticing them and cringing. I'm not really a stupid idiot. But I don't edit myself too much at the time of posting.

JUST TYPING
Pop over to the coast.
For a meeting.
It's in the same country.
After all.
It could be worse.