Why I Called My Blog "Life in Merlin"

Some folks around here live in Merlin, a state adjacent to the District of Columbia. Myself, I used to reside in Maryland. A few years ago I ventured down to DC, as we call it, for lunch with a friend. I parked on Wisconsin Avenue without noticing a small sign waaaay down the street warning anyone congratulating herself on finding a parking spot so close to the restaurant that all parked cars had to be off the street by rush hour. Well, it was a long lunch. When I came out at 4 PM, my battered red Toyota was gone. A taxi cab driver waited nearby, like the spider in the parlor, ready to cart the flies off to the Dept. of Motor Vehicles. A Personage in a Suit, who shared our cab, fumed that he "would see about this!" I merely mentioned that I hadn't noticed the sign. The driver replied, "Jes' 'cause you from Merlin don't mean you can pay no-never-mind to them signs." I had to pay $150 to get that old car back.

You Say CANNULA and I Say CANNOLI

 

This is a cannula ("can NUH lah"). When the prongs on the cannula are placed in the nostrils of a person  like me, who is short of breath because of a chronic lung disease, it delivers supplemental oxygen.

I went on oxygen at the end of March. There's a lot of learn. The most important is: "Don't trip over the green-tinted fifty-foot tubing," which connects the cannula to the oxygen concentrator. Alas, once a klutz, always a klutz. The second most important: you must clean the cannula once a week and replace it when necessary.

Only one had been delivered. I needed a spare for when the old one was drying after cleaning. I called the supplier. 

"What size do you need?" 

 

"Gee, I don't know. How many sizes are there?"

"Two. Size 14 and Size 17."

"I don't know what size I have."

"OK, I'll send you one of each and you can decide which one you prefer."

UPS delivered the cannulae the next day. I carefully measured the distance between the prongs with a ruler, using both the edge with the inches and the one with centimeters. Many times, from different angles. The distances always looked the same! I laid a new cannula on top of the old one. They looked like twins. How could that be? I tried measuring again. I was about to ask the resident mathematician for help, but decided to consult the Internet first. 

Silly me! I learned that the cannula tube that connects to the green oxygen-supply tube is either 4 or 7 feet long. The 4-foot tube is for children; the 7-foot, adults. I looked at the packages. Sure enough, one was labeled 1600-4 and the other, 1600-7.

I don't know how the person on the phone came up with 14 and 17. Maybe that "1" was really an "l" (el), meaning "length?"

Snow on the Daffodils

It snowed all morning, but it's supposed to reach 44 today. The snow won't be around for long. Fat robins are feasting at the feeders. The daffodils' yellow bonnets are covered, for now, with white veils. 

UNWELL

 Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis (IPF) can be brutal. I'm not doing well right now. I'm going to take a holiday from blogging so that I can learn how to live with this condition and feel better. I hope to visit your posts while I'm vacationing. I'll be back in awhile. 

Weekend on the Severn River

 P enjoying view of the Severn River 

from the deck of our rental house

This past weekend, five cousins and two spouses rented a house on the Severn River near Annapolis, MD.  It was the first meeting for some of us.  Although P and I drove just 20 miles, the others flew in to Baltimore from Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, and Wisconsin. 

The five cousins are all women. I am the oldest, at 81. My sister is almost 78. One cousin is 77. I lost contact with her in 1946 when both my parents and hers were divorced. The other two cousins are sisters. The older is 62; the younger, 58.  Three years ago, I had no idea the younger two cousins existed. My husband had been researching his family on Ancestry.com when the youngest contacted him, saying I had turned up as a first cousin on Ancestry and asking how we were related. 

My dad's brother, who died in 1965, turned out to be the father of both my 77-year-old cousin by his first wife and also the two new cousins.  We are all glad we found each other. 

-the 77-year-old, who thought she was an only child all these years, is delighted to have two half sisters. I am also glad to have re-established contact with her.

-the youngest cousin always felt as if she didn't quite belong in the family she grew up with. The man she thought was her father often said, "You don't look like one of us." She was relieved to learn the results of her Ancestry test. Now there was an explanation for all the hurtful comments of adults and the nasty teasing of schoolmates that she endured while growing up. 

--her older sister delayed getting tested because she was afraid the truth would disrupt her family, but she finally took the Ancestry test.  At first, the truth took some getting used to, but

--her two other siblings eventually accepted their new status as half-brother and half-sister and have even said they'd like to be part of the new family. 

P and I met the youngest cousin at my sister's house two years ago.  This past winter all of us began getting together regularly via Zoom sessions. We all wanted to finally meet in person. And that's what we did this weekend. 

The three older cousins are reticent introverts. The new cousins are Forces of Nature: assertive, exuberant, extremely energetic. 

We're going to set up our own blog. 

A Childhood "Haunted" House

 Some years ago, my husband was back in Cleveland, OH. He decided to visit his childhood home. He was born in that house in 1939 and it was home to him and his siblings until he left for college in 1957. After his father retired in the mid-60's, his parents sold the house and moved to the old farmhouse they owned in Knox County, OH.

The house was in Garfield Heights, a Cleveland suburb. While he was growing up, P's neighbors were all White people, largely of Irish and eastern European origin. His parents had a party line, so P often picked up the phone to hear his next-door neighbor talking in Czech. One day, thinking she might suspect he was eavesdropping, he quickly hung up when he heard her say the word, "telephone".

P knew that the neighborhood had changed and that the house now belonged to a Black family, so he wasn't sure how welcome he'd be if he approached the owner. Noticing that the yard looked better than it had back in his day, he knocked on the front door. A middle-aged woman answered the door. From upstairs, what sounded to P like "a crabby old lady"--her mother?--called down to her: "Who's at the door?"

"It's OK," the woman replied to the old lady. P explained that he had grown up in the house. The woman was very friendly. She asked him to step inside. They chatted a bit, and then she asked, "While you're here, there's something I've always wondered about. There's a bump on the floor in the basement that looks like it's been covered over with cement. Do you know anything about that?"

Always quick on the draw, P replied, in an ominous tone, "Don't dig there!"

"What???" The woman was clearly horrified.

"Just kidding," he said, reassuringly. "Actually, I have no idea. That must have happened after we moved out."

I Fell for a Scam

 

 

"Use the below" doesn't sound like normal English.

If I'd noticed that, I would have realized that something was phishy.

Instead, in my usual haste, I clicked on that link when I received an identical e-mail earlier last week. BIG MISTAKE! The first sign of trouble was the sudden disappearance of the contents of every one of our e-mail files (inbox, sent, drafts, spam, trash and contacts). P spent all afternoon recovering everything he could, but we will have to enter each of our e-mail contacts individually. 

Soon we began getting phone calls from friends and relatives saying our e-mail had been hacked. A few had received the following weird request that didn't sound like it came from me: 

Subject: Await your response

Great to hear from you, please I need you to get a Steam Wallet card for a friend who is down with cancer of the Liver. It's her birthday today and I promised to get it for her, but I can't do this now because I'm currently out of town going to sympathize with another friend of mine who his mom died of heart disease today. All my effort purchasing the card online proved abortive. Could you get it from any store around you today? I'll reimburse you once I return. Please let me know if you can handle this.  

I'll be happy to make this possible for my ill friend today. 

Other friends/relatives received only this e-mail from the scammer because of a mistake in the spelling of my name in my gmail account:

Did you receive my previous email?

Let me know if you did receive it.

One of our friends thought the e-mail was probably legit until this e-mail turned up in his spam folder the following day: 

How are you doing today? Thanks for your help yesterday. I really appreciate it. I know these would sound really stupid but I don't have a choice than to tell you these. I myself would need the Steam card. If you wouldn't be mad at me, would you mind helping me purchase another steam (sic) card for $...? I promise to refund all your $...  as soon as I am back but I wouldn't be back today again as my friend is ill due to the loss of his mom. He was being taken to the hospital and I'm here with him. The doctor said he will be fine tomorrow and I'll be back by Sunday. 

According to online information, this scam has been around since 2019. Apparently no company would ever ask you to renew your account password by sending you a link like this.  Companies either assume you will take the initiative to change your passwords or they provide a secure website for that purpose. We got busy changing all our passwords immediately. The whole episode was creepy. 

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Here are 18 of my remaining journals. I've kept journals over the past 50 years. Some have already been lost or destroyed. At least one got thrown away, hidden in a stack of newspapers. I am now re-reading the remaining ones, intending to salvage the good parts and getting rid of "the bad and the ugly." I don't want to share everything I ever wrote, especially with those closest to me. If any of them keep journals, they will understand. 

I want to share some of the journals' good parts on my blog. I also re-read parts of my blog from now and then, and, honestly, sometimes it makes me laugh. The best stories are the funny ones. I want to pass on some of these stories to my children and grandchildren in hopes that they will laugh as well. So, before long, I plan to have copies of my blog printed for them. 

Booster Shot

 Today we got our Corona virus booster shots at CVS. Any Marylander over the age of 65 can get one. 

We got our flu shots last Friday. At first I told P that I didn't want to get the booster so soon after the flu shot. "Why not?" he asked. "Are you like your mother's cat?"

Mom (who lived with us for ten years, until she was 99) always insisted on multiple vet visits to space out her cat's annual shots. "You're not going to put all those vaccines into this tiny cat all at once," she told the vet when she was still living in her hometown. The vet allowed her to stretch out the visits. When she moved in with us, she told the vet the same thing. This vet just rolled her eyes and said nothing. Toward the end of the first annual visit, the vet gave the cat a single injection. Mom was immediately suspicious. "What did you just do?" she demanded.

"I gave your cat her annual shots. She'll be just fine." 

Mom wasn't happy, but the cat showed no ill effects. 

We sat and sat . . . .

I wasn't going to write about 9/11 again, but here's what's going through my mind today.  My husband and I worked for the Department of Defense, so we were both in our respective offices that morning. In my office, on the fifth floor of the main building, we watched in amazement as a plane plowed through the first tower of the World Trade Center and in horror as another plane hit the second. 

Within minutes, we were all told to go home. Then came the challenge of making one's way down four flights of stairs crowded with hundreds of frantic people. I found my way to our car in the parking lot. My husband was already there. As a high-ranking 35-year employee,  he was entitled to a special parking place just a few rows from the front door of the building.  The downside of this plum spot was now apparent. We were far from the single parking-lot exit. Yes, there was just one exit to this huge lot, because terrorism was on everyone's radar even before 9/11.  The bad guys had to be kept out. 

Those who had to park farther from the building every day were now able to leave first, but even they were hampered by the bottleneck at the gate. Everyone inched along for what seemed like hours. We mostly just sat and sat, glancing at the sky and listening, wondering if we were going to be targets. My husband thinks it took us about two hours to reach the gate.  I cried all the way home. 

Work was never the same after that. The going-away party scheduled later that week for a beloved team leader was cancelled. The Iraq War came along in 2003 with a lot of flag-waving and fanfare. "Shock and Awe." It made me sick. When my 97-year-old mother began to wander down our driveway and complain to passersby about the treatment she was receiving from the "strangers" in "that house,"I knew it was time to retire. It was 2006.

The world was never the same after that either. Our first grandson arrived nearly a year after the attack, in 2002. His due date was supposed to have been on the first anniversary of 9/11, but he appeared nearly two weeks early. He arrived during the days when a sniper and his young sidekick were terrorizing the Washington suburbs. His parents couldn't even take him to the park in his stroller until after the pair were caught, in late October. 

The country is still under the spell of 9/11. We are so angry with each other and so fearful of "the other" that we are barely able to cope with any of our problems, let alone Covid. What will become of us?

A Beautiful Start to the Day

 We left the house at 6 AM. The "waning gibbous moon" had not yet set. (I had to look up what you call a moon that was full two days ago, but now has a tiny nip taken out of it. ) The air was cool and pleasant. We saw only a few people out and about.

We were on our way to the lab for a test I have to get three times a year to see if the powerful medication I take for idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) is leaving my liver alone. Liver damage is just one of the possible side effects of this miracle drug. Only one other patient was ahead of me. I was in and out in no time. 

IPF makes you cough. I am glad I didn't cough in the waiting room or during the blood draw. People would have thought I had Covid for sure and I would have gotten dirty looks, even though I was wearing a mask. 

Sunday was my 81st birthday. Our daughters came over and brought dinner, most of which I couldn't eat. My appetite is still a distant memory. "No appetite" is another side effect of my medication.  I have become a skeleton. I don't know whether to get clothes that fit (size 4 as opposed to my normal size 8) or to keep on hoping and trying to regain some weight.

I confessed to my daughters that I am guilty of what I call "IPF Kabuki."  I frequently act as if I am worse off than I really am, if only to make sure that everyone knows I need to be taken care of.  I still have not accepted the fact that I have this disease and that limits have been imposed on my life, against my will.  I realize that every person on earth is subject to limits, and that I am hardly alone in this. Still, there is something about chronic illness with a stated life-expectancy of "3-5 years after diagnosis" that dims your hopes. 

That said, from what I read on line, I don't seem to be that bad off. I may be wrong, but I suspect I could be doing more. Instead,  I have been lolling around, having my kind-hearted spouse bring me this and that and do more than his share around the house. Meanwhile, I have stopped doing all of the things that are supposed to be helpful in my situation. No exercise for over a month. Not pushing myself to eat more. Not doing any breathing exercises.  I am pouting, I guess. I am just so angry and so unaccepting of what has happened to me.  I need to grow up.

Breakfast at Burger King

Photo by Richard Sacredo on Unsplash

On the way home from a week at our cabin in Knox County OH, we bought our breakfast at the drive-through window at Burger King and then found a spot in the parking lot. My husband was so charmed by our close encounter with a red-winged blackbird that he wrote this story. 

-------------

We paid for our breakfast croissant sandwiches and parked to enjoy them. I put down the car window and started opening my sandwich. A bird is trying to fly into our car! What is happening? I start rolling the window back up. The bird is fluttering, suspended just outside the driver's side window, squawking.  It's a redwing blackbird,  its red (patch) brilliant in the morning light.

We get the message right away. He's earned a bit of my sandwich. I toss it out and it's quickly gone.

Wait. There are more of them. A whole family is on the pavement outside the car door. I toss out another crumb. An apparently young bird shyly pecks at it. Its siblings look on, but do not challenge him. They are taking turns!

Several more crumbs, and it's my turn. I settle to enjoy my croissant sandwich. But there he is again. The brilliant father is perched on my side mirror only inches away, looking me square in the face, squawking--resplendent in the prime of his life. How can I deny him?

These birds seem very orderly and know exactly what they are doing. So if you're heading east from Coshocton on Ohio's Route 36 and are stopping for breakfast at the Burger King, buy a little extra. 

We

Me, Myself and "i"

I think it was Mrs. Ware, my fourth grade teacher,  who tried to teach me to dot my "i's". Or maybe it was Miss Flaugh in fifth. Anyway, I'd been ignoring this cursive nicety for too long. I could see the point in crossing the "t's", but the "i's" didn't have it for me. It seemed like a waste of time. My cursive was legible. No one had any trouble reading it, and I'm sure that included Mrs. Ware and Miss Flaugh.

I think it was Mrs. Ware. She was always telling us interesting stories, such as the one about the lost civilization of Atlantis. "That island sank!" she proclaimed dramatically.  Civilizations are lost that way. Perhaps a civilization in which the citizens failed to distinguish between their p's and q's and refused to dot their i's was doomed.

The blackboard stretched across the whole width of the room. Mrs. Ware made me write a string of i's across the full length of the board.  Then I had to go back and dot every single i. 

I Know They Have to Repair the Roads, but . . .

 A week ago, on our way home from a vacation at our cabin in Knox County, OH, we were cruising along on US Route 40 east of Uniontown, PA, when we suddenly encountered a "Road Closed" sign.  Oh no!!

The 25-mile detour took us along a narrow, 2-lane, winding country road. Near Confluence, PA we laughed at the name of a nearby town--"Lower Turkeyfoot"--but otherwise, our mood was grim. When was this detour ever going to end? It threatened to go on forever. It bypassed our usual rest stop in Addison, PA and finally dumped us off near the Mason-Dixon Line. The sign on a roadhouse said, "You survived the detour! Let's party!"  All we could think of at that point was getting home, so we kept going. 

Middle Class to Follow the Billionaires into Space

 SpaceBus will launch in November, 2021, carrying 250 middle-class subscribers into space. Tickets for the 22-minute ride will cost just $100,000 each. 

Sardonic Humor on the Fourth

 I've reached that time of life when I live mainly on Memory Lane. At least for now, as I still seem to have a fair number of marbles. 

Anyway, some years ago, all residents of Montpelier, the name of our Levitt-house community in Laurel, MD, woke to find small American flags at the bottom edge of their driveways, with a post-card-sized ad for the local realtor who was responsible for placing them (over 500) before dawn's early light.  

While most of us were pleased when we found them, one resident was not.  He posted a message on the community's e-mail bulletin board, protesting that the realtor had taken advantage of our national holiday to advertise his business. As if this was somehow un-American.

Another resident replied, "If you'll just provide your address, I'll come and remove the offending item." 

I loved that. 

The Day of the Locust

 . . . is drawing to a close.

Quite a few carcasses litter the ground. The volume of the raucous love-call made by the males is diminishing just a bit. The ones that are still flying around seem to be slowing down. They are not particularly skillful navigators, frequently bumping into windows and siding with a soft "plunk". 

Today's Washington Post says that it's the female cicada who's in charge. She decides whom to accept. "Within an hour (of mating), she will slice open a small tree branch and lay her eggs securely in the opening. Soon, she will also die." 

Ah, poor thing. Six weeks after Mom passes on, the eggs hatch. The nymphs drop from the tree and burrow into the ground to stay for the next seventeen years. 

Know this, Ladies:  the pickings are getting slimmer by the day.

They Are Here!

                                        Red-Eyed and Weirdly Beautiful

                    Just a few of the hundreds of carcasses beneath a single tree

                              Recently Hatched and Ready for a 3-Week Frolic

We wondered if they were ever going to emerge, and here they are. They're making a LOT of noise. My husband was startled when one landed on the back of his neck. Fortunately, it flew off immediately. 

Waiting for Cicadas

Brood # 10 of noisy, red-eyed cicadas will emerge any day now in the Washington, DC area.  We went through this before, 17 years ago.  They hatched, they sang loudly day and night,  they mated. They didn't eat and probably never slept. After three weeks, they were worn out. They flew ever more slowly, bumping absent-mindedly into things and people. It was if they were half asleep or dying, which they were. And then they disappeared. Their progeny will emerge 17 years from now, but we won't be around to see it. 

Although many people claim to be grossed out by the mere sight of a cicada, Dilly Dog will be delighted. She was born on an Amish farm seven years ago. During her first few months of life, she seems to have supplemented her diet by digging for moles and voles. When the cicadas arrive, she'll probably think "mice with wings" and feast on them. Fortunately, they're not toxic. 

Waiting for Hummingbirds

 

We put our hummingbird feeders out two days ago, on April 8th.  I make the nectar myself, following an Audubon Society recipe:  

(1) Bring 5 cups of water to a rolling boil.

(2) Stir in 1 and 1/4 cups of granulated sugar. Let it boil for a minute to dissolve the sugar. Remove from the heat. When cool, pour into two 20-ounce mason jars and refrigerate.  

(3) Pour 3/4 to 1 cup of cold sugar water into each feeder, depending on demand. Making 40 ounces at a time provides enough nectar to fill our two feeders twice, with some left over.  

We have two feeders. one in the front yard and one in the back.  I change the nectar twice a week. I bring the feeders with the "old" nectar inside, empty them,  and clean them with hot water and white vinegar. Left alone, they will develop mold and mildew. I put "new" nectar in clean feeders. (We have two sets of feeders.)

The water in the little cup above the feeder is meant to discourage ants, and works quite well. Bees and wasps are another matter. They visit the feeders constantly, so you have to watch out for them when removing a feeder. 

While awaiting the arrival of the feisty hummingbirds (they will get into fights over the feeders throughout the spring and summer), we can see evidence of nesting activity among the seed-eating birds. The male finches have turned bright yellow. A male cardinal will court a female by offering her a sunflower seed.  Male mourning doves waddle purposefully after the ladies, who feign complete indifference.  It's a wonderful circus.