Angry---frustrated---annoyed

I am furious with my "NewBlogger" account and I have only had it about 48 hours. I want a phone number to call where I can address my problem with a real person who might help me, but apparently, no such help is available. For weeks, I resisted changing until this Sunday when the sign-on dialogue indicated that if I wanted to continue using blogspot, I must switch over to the "new blogger."

The only real purpose of my blogspot has been to discipline myself to write out and contribute my thoughts on assigned topics for Sunday Scribblings. Since I started last summer, not just the writing, but giving and receiving comments has also become a very vital part of this blogging experience. I really love and appreciate the community of sensitive and caring people I have become connected to this way. I care about both commenting and receiving comments. I have also loved my specific blogger identity, similar to but NOT the same as my email address. But this Google account has somehow screwed this all up. Tonight I have read about 5 new Sunday Scribblings--on Puzzled---and attempted to comment on several of them. On one I made 6 attempts to share a comment about how delightful the person's post was. None of them would "take." It said I had the wrong password. BUT I DID NOT. I knew I was using my correct password. However, just in case I had made a mistake when transferring ovet my account, I went to my new blogspot and had no trouble opening my own blog with that same password. It turns out that the problem is that I was using my blogger name and Google wants me to use my email address. If I sign that, the people I am commenting to won't even know it is me, Sundaycynce.

Anyway, I am currently furious about being forced to make first the one change, which, of course, the rhetoric promised me would not be any different except in the improved capabilities of the new system; and now being forced into another change, I resent and dislike and which, as far as I am concerned, impedes communication!!!!!!!!!! And because technology basically propitiates its superiority over humans, I cannot get hold of human to talk this problem over with.

HHEELLPP!!! ANYONE......

Puzzled--story seed

He looked up, puzzled. Would he ever understand this woman that he loved so totally?

She was just returning to the table, and she seemed to have been crying. Why?? Weren't they creating what would be remembered as one of the best nights of their lives? He had asked her to marry him. She had said yes, then had hurried off to the restroom. It didn't ever happen like that in the movies.

"Is everything okay?" he asked nonsensicallly.

"I'll be fine," she reasurred him. "I'm just being silly. I always wanted to celebrate this moment with my parents. Coming so soon after their deaths just made me a little sad. I'm sorry."

He had hardly known her parents, had met them several times, but they lived so far away, they really hadn't been a factor in his life with her. He figured they must have been good people, because she was the most caring and thoughtful person he had ever really known, but that they might be a significant influence in his future life, really hadn't crossed his mind. They had lived somewhere in Canada, had died together recently, some sort of accident, automobile--he assumed. She had seemed okay with his not flying to Canada with her for the funeral. He really had NOT wanted to go, he hated funerals. She seem to accept his work excuse. She indicated there would be so much to do, both her siblings would come back for it also. None of them lived there anymore, so all would be staying in the family home. Besides the funeral and burials---she didn't know if they had pre-arranged anything---there was much to do with the house, the estate, and all kinds of mess that she'd never really given any thought to.

It was while she was in Canada that he had realized how much he had come to want her in his day to day life, full time, permanently. He convinced himself that this was a good time to go ahead with marriage plans, that it would help her get past the loss, by creating a new "family" to fill her life. She was gone a couple of weeks longer than he expected. They talked often. He even finally volunteered to fly up and join her, but she said it wasn't necessary. Her attitude confused him a bit, she seemed distracted more than distraught, definitely upset, but she didn't seem to want to talk about it. He had asked numerous times about the accident that had caused her parents' deaths. That was something else she didn't want to talk about, he assumed because it was gruesome.

Since she had returned, she was definitely more puzzling to him, than she had been before: moody, it almost seemed secretive, about phone contacts she periodically received and mail. All of it really just served to convince him it was a good time for him to turn her thoughts and interests elsewhere with wedding planning.

It never occurred to him that perhaps he ought to know more about this dear fiancee, her former family, how they made their living, and the accident of their deaths.

Puzzled----a state he didn't find too terribly uncomfortable. Didn't all women puzzle all men??

What he did not realize was the complexity of the puzzle of the life he was about to merge with his own.

Crushes are Yummy

I had a problem last week coming up with anything original for yummy.. I read quite a few of those by other contributors and thought that they were certainly "right on." I too could have listed numerous things I find yummy: most were sweet, like cinnamon buns & tira misu & sweet potato,pecan casserole & s'mores by a campfire; or sweet and precious, like babies and puppies and kittens. I also liked great buns in tight fitting jeans, especially male divers butts and legs, in tight jeans or in skimpy diving swim suits. There is also cuddling and kissing by a crackling fire listening to wonderful music. But.....

Then, this week, when I started thinking about crushes, I realized what a great example they really were of yummy also. Yummy is a sensory word and crushes are all about sensory overload, sensory head over heels, heart and senses over mind and intellect.

We have all had crushes. Suddenly, frequently without reason, one individual is more gorgeous than any of the other people in his same group (class, team, work location, whatever), his smile lights the room, increases our heart rate, blood pressure, and frequently body temperature. Everything he says is more dazzlingly intelligent or funny than anyone we have ever known before. We think about him all the time, often to the detriment of what we should be thinking about. We make up conversations and know just what we want to say. Except when we have that opportunity to actually speak to "him," our tongue becomes tangled and our mind turns to mush. Crushes are one of the most delicious sensory experiences of our human life.

Sometimes, I think I'd even say usually, crushes just fade away over time. Reality sets in, either gradually over time, or perhaps suddenly as an overwhelming truth reveals itself. Sometimes the dissolution of this sparkly romantic dream is painful and crushing. Philosophically though, I really think having and surviving crushes is an important part of the growing up and maturing process. On the flip side, crushes can also help us keep feeling young. We should hope we never get too old to feel the "crush rush," but that we can remain mature enough to keep it in perspective--feel and bask in the glow, but know it probably isn't "real." We also need to remember that something that is real should never be jeopardized for the thrill of the crush. Occasionally, really lucky people have a crush that turns to real, lasting love; and for an even smaller, luckier few, the "crush rush" hangs on through the years with that love.

I think I am one of the lucky ones.

Goodbyes

Thoughts on Goodbye(s) are many and varied. Goodbyes are almost invariably sad, sometimes heart wrenching, but at the same time, I believe, desperately important. Important to closure, vital to moving on with one's life.

The following is a poem I wrote some 40 years ago when I was a junior in high school after the end of an only-just-budding romance which I still perceive as the most potentially serious I had in my first 18 years. Writing the poem gave me the closure I needed; as much as I ever got.

"Farewell"
"Fare well," I said,
for that did seem to say
the things I felt.
For it was not "Good Night,
I'll see you soon again,"
Nor yet a cold "Goodbye."
I could not say, "Good luck,"
and not be trite.
"God bless you," he would
Neither understand nor like.
And so I said, "Fare well"
And longed to add,
"My darling," and a kiss.


There are so many ways to say good bye; so many shades of meaning. There are the words, sometimes very hard to say; but beyond that is the emotion and the process of separation which still must be traversed. This is true whether the good bye is an unwanted / regretted separation, or one which should improve the lives of one or both parties involved. I believe the hardest goodbyes of all must be those when the loser(s) is denied, by whatever circumstance, the opportunity for the face-to-face good bye.

I must admit that my take on this post has been reshaped somewhat by the events and news of the last 55 hours or so. The tornadoes that devastated Lake county Florida--I grew up there, from age 5 to 17; it was my home of record for longer than that--- although, blessedly, not harming my family there, have certainly tortured my heart.

In the middle of an ordinary Thursday night, rain and thunder came--these are not unfamiliar to any Floridians-- but this time families lost parts of themselves with no chance to say good bye. A mother and her 8 year old son escaped but her husband and 7 year old son were found dead in the wreckage of their home. Two teen-aged girls lost the brother who was their triplet and both of their parents. A 29 year old man awoke on Saturday and asked his wife to tell him that all of Friday had been a horrible dream, but the agonizing truth must be acknowledged, the bodies of his mother, his sister and his 8 year old niece were found in the decimation of his boyhood home.

Goodbyes. These ordinary people didn't get to say any goodbyes. But the real agony of the separation, of this unexpected and unasked for end to loved ones and to life as it had been, must be dealt with and survived.
Feeling blessed by my own good fortune, I would like to do something to help these hurting strangers suffering from their losses and stolen goodbyes. However, I simply feel helpless.