“Let me be, was all I wanted. Be what I am, no matter how I am.” ~ Henry Miller, Stand Still Like the Hummingbird
Friday afternoon. Partly cloudy and very warm, 80s. Impending storms.
So where do I begin?
Corey arrived home on Wednesday night. The company chose not to wait for his documents to arrive, instead sending him home. I couldn’t reach him on Wednesday because his cell phone battery died, but he managed to call me once he made it to La Guardia after having one leg of his flight cancelled, being rerouted to Toronto, having his luggage lost, having a plane held, and having another plane arrive late.
If this sounds exhausting, trust me when I say that it was. He slept fourteen hours straight into Thursday afternoon, and who could blame him?
The good news, though—or at least the news that makes all of this bearable is that while he was on the ship for those four days, he found out a lot of information about the company, and most of it wasn’t good. It seems that they’ve lost a major contract because their ships keep breaking down, which means that they aren’t able to fulfill the runs between countries. One of the guys in charge on the ship said that in the first two hitches that he served, he was sent home after four days the first time, and after two weeks the second time.
Another guy said that the company is not above telling the crew one thing and telling the Coast Guard another, in attempts to get the ships back at sea. As it turns out now, everyone who was sent to crew the ship along with Corey will be sent home sometime in the next few weeks because that particular ship has a blown engine, which means one to three months in the yard. The Coast Guard is reluctant to pass on the inspections because the company has made half-attempts at fixing problems before, which, obviously, is unsafe.
“If you go to the window, perhaps you’ll still catch
the dying of the last light.
Madness. The madness of March.” ~ Eugénio de Andrade, from “White on White” (translated by Alexis Levitin)
So the long and short of it is that Corey would have been coming home anyway, but not this soon, but definitely not after three months. He has worked for a really dysfunctional shipping company before, and it made life very tenuous. That particular company routinely did patch jobs on their boats, and the boats were always breaking down as a result. I told Corey that I think that in the end it’s probably better that he didn’t invest too much time in this company only to be jerked around constantly.
The management at the security company was glad to have him back, and he plans to contact several other companies that were interested in him before, but he didn’t have his paperwork updated at the time. I think that things will work out for the better; at least, that’s what I keep telling myself.
In the meantime, I’m in an ongoing battle with UPS, having recently learned that the package was not held up by customs but rather because the store didn’t sent out the package until yesterday, this after being assured that everything that could have been done to get the package there within the two days for which I paid handsomely had, in fact, been done. I really hate people who lie to my face, well over the phone.
You can bet that someone, somewhere in the UPS food chain is going to refund me that money.
“Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened.” ~ T.S. Eliot, “Burnt Norton” from Four Quartets
Yesterday, I waited on campus for Brett as he only had two classes, and I didn’t want to waste the gas making four trips. I spent the time reading more of Game of Thrones. It was a beautiful day, and I was quite relaxed. I had big plans to walk Tillie when I got home, but by the time I did get home, I found that I was just exhausted. I know that it was the after-effects of the past four days finally catching up with me. I may try to take her for a walk when I finish this post, though, as I felt really good after she took me for a walk the other day, although, she did jump in the pool when we got home. She’s such a funny dog.
Anyway, yesterday was my mother’s birthday; she’s 80. She would absolutely kill me for telling people how old she is. Corey and I gave her one of his beautiful sunflower pictures, and she actually seemed to like it, rare thing when my mother likes a gift.
Today is Eamonn’s 21st birthday. We don’t have his actual gift yet as it’s going to be Rosetta Stone for French, and the plan was to pay for that with Corey’s first big check . . . yep, well, that’s how that goes, for now at least. He has big plans to go out with his friends tonight. Here’s hoping that he’s careful and has a designated driver.
It’s really strange in some ways to see your children grow into adults. I still have the most vivid memories of Eamonn as a small boy, and boy was he cute. Even then he was quite a flirt, shades of things to come. But it’s funny that when I have dreams that involve a young child, it’s almost always Brett as a baby or toddler. I suppose that’s because he’s still the baby in my mind. By the way, Brett corrected me: It wasn’t a toss up between New Zealand and Australia, rather between New Zealand and Canada or Sweden. My mistake.
“we bury the ashes
of our wording
and sift
the silences.” ~ Joy Kogawa, from “Offerings”
Had to take a break while Brett removed that strange adware program called Text Enhance from the computer. It seems that I’m not the only person that had the appearance of strange underlining and links to suddenly appear on their copy. Brett said that it’s adware/spyware, and he recommended that I download Ghostery, an application the prevents scripts from detecting your presence online, which stops the scripts from running on your computer.
The following is from my tech savvy son: The program installs itself onto the computer and creates ads in relation to the text that is on screen. Enhance’s website removal instructions only harm the computer further. Do not go to the website as it will install Enhance to your computer without your knowledge or consent. To delete it, simply uninstall it from the add/remove program menu in the control panel, or scan for it with an anti spyware program.
Thanks for the assistance, Brett.
That’s one less thing to worry about today, and trust me when I say that today has been one for the records as far as dealing with things. In between writing this post, I’ve been back and forth with UPS in six separate telephone calls, cut off once after holding for almost eight minutes, and told three different things as far as getting a reimbursement. Oh, and did I mention that one woman said that they had no idea as to when the package might be sent back from Germany; funny thing is that it wasn’t sent until 10:20 this morning, two hours after I talked to the UPS store manager, who assured me that she would see that it was returned to sender—but it hadn’t even left the country at that point!
Argh. I feel like Charlie Brown trying to kick that damned football.
“Wait.
Don’t go too early.
You’re tired. But everyone’s tired.
But no one is tired enough.” ~ Galway Kinnell from “Wait”
Since I began this post over four hours ago, the temperature has dropped 21 degrees, and rumbles of thunder can be heard in the distance. The rain is coming down hard now. There will be no walk today, for obvious reasons. The headache that was dull is back full force, and Eamonn came home from work to find green streamers all over his bedroom (I didn’t have balloons, so the streamers are almost as obnoxious).
Oh, and to add to the growing miasma of unmitigated crap that comprises our lives over the past six days, Corey got his paycheck from the Lithuania trip, and of course, because nothing is going right at the moment, it’s short. Can I just say that this whole week would be better if erased with permanent white-out from the book of life, auto-corrected and eliminated, as it were.
I plan to spend the rest of this evening watching Investigation ID on cable, get my fill of psychopaths and people who kill for revenge. As Aristotle said, tragedy allows the audience to purge itself of pity and fear and other negative emotions. I firmly believe that watching real-life stories of murder and mayhem and watching dramatic stories of the same ilk, as in “Law & Order,” allows me to release all of these pent up feelings of needing to throttle someone because of their incompetence and stupidity.
Purging the emotions without actually taking action. That’s a good thing. If only it really worked.
Okay, enough already. Between the telephone calls, computer malware, computer freezes, and all of the other bull, it’s now 9:10 p.m. I began this post half a day ago . . .
More later. Peace.
*I can think of no better image to represent how I feel than today’s selection of hanging bridges . . .
Music by Alex Clare, “Relax My Beloved” (Corey found this one for me)
Rachmaninoff on the Mass Pike
It calls the heart, this music, to a place
more intimate than home, than self, that face
aging in the hall mirror. This is not
music to age by—no sprightly gavotte
or orderly pavane, counting each beat,
confining motion to the pointed feet
and sagely nodding head; not Chopin, wise
enough to keep some distance in his eyes
between perceiver and the thing perceived.
No, this is song that means to be believed,
that quite believes itself, each rising wave
of passionate crescendo wild and brave.
The silly girl who lived inside my skin
once loved this music; its melodic din
was like the voice she dreamed in, sad, intense.
She didn’t know a thing, she had no sense;
she scorned—and needed—calendar and clock,
the rules, the steps, the lines, Sebastian Bach;
she wanted life to break her like a tide,
but not too painfully. On either side
the turnpike trundles by, nurseries, farms,
small towns with schools and markets in their arms,
small industry, green spaces now and then.
All the heart wants is to be called again.
~ Rhina P. Espaillat
Lola's Curmudgeonly Musings 