Day 106: What Might Have Been

During our video chat a couple afternoons ago, granddaughter Ember was asking little brother Jesse to turn off the sprinkler so it wouldn’t get the phone wet. I couldn’t see where the faucet was, so I asked Ember: “Where do you turn off the water?”

“Same place we turn it on,” she replied quickly, probably wondering why I would ask such a dumb question. I mean, where else would she turn it off? Further questioning revealed its actual location.

As long as we’re talking about communication challenges, I’ll tell you a random vignette that I just remembered from my own early childhood. I think I had accidentally knocked over and broken something. I apologized to my parents, assuring them, “I did it on purpose.” That’s because I thought “on purpose” meant “by mistake.” I didn’t understand why, the more I tried to profess my innocence, the more annoyed and confused Mom and Dad became. Finally we got to the root of my lexical confusion and all was well.

On this day last year, Molly and I were exploring the Snæfellsnes Peninsula in western Iceland. On this day this year, we were supposed to be winging our way back to see Ma in Delaware.

Of all sad words of tongue and pen, the saddest are these: ‘It might have been.’

A quote from John Greenleaf Whittier, cited by Ma today

Speaking of adventures I didn’t have, I just discovered three fraudulent charges on my almost-new credit card: one from Ireland and two from Colombia, totaling around $500. I have no idea how my information got compromised. This is a huge pain and will take a while to resolve. Further, I just noticed that the bank has deleted the last two weeks of transactions on my now-closed account. I sure hope they didn’t go against my explicit instructions not to cancel any of the existing authorized charges. I’m tired of feeling powerless against bureaucracies. And corrupt governments.

I realized several nights ago when cooking my dinner that when the oven is on, it gets dangerously hot—too hot to touch—on one part of the outside, where it’s pressed right up against the particle board of the counter. I don’t know how long it’s been like that, but it’s a fire hazard, so a new stove is being delivered tomorrow (unless the credit card people voided the transaction). It is super-cheap and basic, with only analog controls. The kind you’d get for a rental unit. But it should be adequate, I hope.

Via e-mail I whined to Molly the other day about my profound boredom. She suggested I draw a quokka to pass the time.