ampullae of Lorenzini

What went before ONE: This afternoon, I took a first step in an Adaptation of Household Systems that I've been considering for some time.

The way the household worked in the Before Time was that I ran the business office, and my writing projects, out of my desk and computer. Occasionally, this got Stoopid, because the piles of business stuff would overwhelm the piles of writing stuff, or business correspondence would come in while I was writing and I would feel constrained to stop writing and do business. And, less occasionally, bills would get lost between the printouts of Chapter 6 and 11.

More than once in my career as coauthor/office manager of the Lee-and-Miller Writing Empire, I bemoaned the fact that I didn't have a separate office where I could just leave the business stuff and only deal with it during, err, Office Hours.

It came to me a few months ago that I now have that opportunity.

I let the idea languish, because, What if Steve comes home and is (rightly) corked off because I've appropriated his office?

To which the answer is, obviously: Well, yanno, Miller? You've been gone with nary a word nor a postcard for Five Hundred and Seventy-Four Days. You should expect some changes when you get home. Fight me. Also? Dammit, Steve, I've missed you.

So, today, as I say, I took my first step in separating my writing work -- which will go into Steve's office -- and the business/pr/NOT-WRITING aspect of things. That first step was to move his Windows machine from the desk to the floor between the desk and the wall,* thus opening up valuable desktop space.

And as I was doing this, I made a discovery, and that discovery is that AlbaCon was (probably) right. The connection was (probably) better from Steve's office. Because he had an ethernet cable plugged in from the Fidium-provided booster into the Windows machine.

The above paragraph was the point of this post, by the way.

Steve also has/d a perfectly good System 76 Meerkat desktop back on his desk, so writing can go forth without any more investment in technology.
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*I've long since put this machine to sleep (yes, it's still plugged in), and disconnected from the internets because Windows kept trying to download whichever its latest and greatest is/was, which -- the machine in hand would blow up; there's simply no way it has enough Oomph to take the new OS.

What went before TWO: So, I got more accomplished in Steve's office than I expected. I still can't figure out where to plug the speakers into the (Dell) monitor. But, arguably, having music isn't necessary to writing.

But! It's a big(gish) desk; half taken up by the computer, and the other half will be for writing ... STUFF.

This will work...

Time to get myself undusty and go to needlework.

Everybody stay safe; I'll see you tomorrow.

Wednesday. The sun has finally burned off the fog, and it's said it will be warm for the rest of the day. Windows around the house are open.

Breakfast was rice cakes, cream cheese, and red grapes. I have no idea about lunch.

WARNING:  Long ramble follows

So, I've been thinking about Quality of Life -- partly because of our recent discussion regarding pre-diabetes, partly because I'm reconfiguring Steve's office, partly because of a story I heard a while back, and partly because of an article about marketing I read a couple days ago.

Let's start with that.

The problem the article was addressing is that the marketing Old People Stuff to Old People ... was hard. Very few Old People seemed to want even useful safety devices. And this was baffling to The Industry. The article went on to point out that The Industry actually had very little concept of the group -- Old People -- that they were trying to sell these things to. If they had bothered to ask even the most basic questions, they would have, for instance, discovered that Very Few Old People think of themselves as old. Witness that I have to be continually reminded that I'm 73, not 42, the age at which you have all the answers. I talk about the Old Woman Who Lives With Me, and that's an apt metaphor -- unless I'm looking in a mirror, I am 42. My brain apparently lives according to far different calendar.

And it's not just me: The target audience for, oh, say, the cellphones with the big keypads? Most look at the device, and think, "Well, that might be useful for somebody who's old, but I have my smartphone, after all." They may download safety-feature apps, but clearly the Safety Phone is for somebody else.

The article went on to relate that even among the population of people who have and wear the buttons that you press when you fall (I don't know the proper name, I call them Panic Buttons -- and you see here a illustration of the problem) -- even among the population who had agreed that this device might be useful For Them, and wore them -- after a fall, a disturbing number did not trigger the button for as long as five minutes. Not because they were unconscious, or couldn't reach the device, but because they wanted to solve it themselves.

It is of course Legend that among the many who are prescribed, far fewer actually wear their hearing aids. My father didn't -- more trouble than they were worth, didn't cut out the background noise, too loud, not loud enough -- whatever. The article was ... optimistic that the new law that allows over-the-counter assisted hearing devices -- opening the market to innovation -- will improve the technology, make it cheaper/more affordable, and thus more people would use the devices, as they see fit, and to improve their lives according to their definitions and needs.

We did a lot with moderation. I mentioned somewhere yesterday that, when the cancer ladies insisted that I become Less Thick in order to not give a return cancer an edge, I lost 20 pounds, but I did it by just eating less. You can't tell people -- well. You can't tell ME that I can never have ice cream again, no matter how bad it is for me. But I can, really, get by with one scoop, instead of two.

The key here is, of course, self-determination: choosing or maintaining the quality of one's own life and experiences.

Steve and I talked a lot about Quality of Life as the medical mandates began to accumulate -- blessedly few in Steve's case -- there was no years-long, ever-more-desperate illness, but a slow, inevitable decline to a sudden finish. Still, the drugs, and the side effects, and the don't eat/drink/DO that. We -- I say "we" because I was part of the conversation, though Steve ultimately made his own decisions -- we researched, and talked about each new stricture, and measured it: utility against loss of joy.

Example: heart surgery to install an ICD. Short term unhappiness, followed by years of pursuing one's proper life. ICD is a Go.

The key was that one should use one's life, because that's what it's for, but that one should not come to the point where one either feared or hated one's life, nor forgot oneself.

I don't, by the way, say that we were wise; I'm only saying what we did.

. . . my, how the woman does go on.

So, the story I read backaways had to do with an -- oncology, perhaps? -- doctor who was becoming frustrated and hopeless, on the edge of giving up medicine, because they had realized that no matter what they did, what medicines they prescribed, their patients were going to die, and most of them quite soon. Finally, in desperation, instead of prescribing, they asked. "What do you want me to help you do?" And the patient they asked said, "I want to stay in my own home, I don't want to be in so much pain that I can't process, but I don't want to be so drugged up that I can't recognize my wife and kids. Can you do that for me?" And the doctor stared at him for a long minute, realizing, with a kind of rekindling of their own interest in their calling ... "Yes," they said. "I can do that for you."

And what, you ask, does this have to do with Steve's office?

I don't know and I can't ask him, if he did it for me or for him, or JIC -- but Steve left ... many ... wonderful gifts: He took hundreds of pictures of just daily scenes around the house, that come up on my cellphone as memories and reminders. The house is decorated with cover art, as well as the house itself, which was arranged to serve our necessities. And Steve's office was arranged to serve Steve's necessities. It's crowded with Stuff. Steve Stuff, because he liked to have far more things around him than I do, and even though I've had to get rid of some things so I could move without tripping, it still has a cozy, writer's cave vibe to it. It's probably still a little bit of a risky situation for the Old Woman Who Lives with Me, but for the me who lives in my head, it's a good space.

So! that went on too long. Thanks to everyone who got this far.

What've you been thinking about lately?

Today's blog post title is of course from Lewis Carroll, "Father William"