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The most lovely Catholic church in the village of San Jose del Cabo………………..

Whose interior was just as beautiful……………..

With a place to light a candle to Mary………….

…………or Joseph.

Or write your worries on a ribbon and leave them to a higher power……..

 ……and then a reminder that the least among us need our help.

 Simple.

Setting up this blog for someone who was born-too-long-ago-to-be-all-that-computer-literate was a task.  What would take my kids an hour took me a week, but I put my big girl panties on and figured it out.  I might have cried.  I might have drank a bit in the process.  I might have thought about shooting myself.

Last week, Blogger changed the layout.  The whole thing.  Now trying to find your stats, drafts or comments is completely different and it’s taking me some kind of time to figure it out.  The thing is, it flips back and forth from the new way to the old way all the time.  The screen will pop up with the old layout and I AM SO HAPPY until the next time when the screen is completely different and I AM SO SAD.

It used to be that when I checked my blog on the ipad, and found an error, I could flip it from published to a draft and fix it later.  Until now.  Twice when I’ve done that, it has deleted the entire post.  Poof.  Gone.  It happened last nite, and I went flying up the stairs to check on our regular computer saying, “Please, oh please, oh please don’t be gone.”  Twas.

So I went to bed and tossed and turned in a tizzy trying to decide if I should get up and rewrite it, but I cannot write when I’m pissed off.  That’s for emails.  Anyhow, still awake at  2:00 a.m., I cursed Blogger and wrote this in my head instead.

At least my bitchiness didn’t land in your inbox.

Postscript:  I discovered over the weekend that to get rid of random underling, I need to go to my dashboard, click the side bar widget and make sure there is no text decoration.  Whatever that means.

I also learned that with a click of a button, I could go back to my old set-up regarding stats, comments…..  Mama was right.  When one door closes…………keep beating the shit out of it and you’ll eventually get it open again. 

My acting gig as a Standardized Patient ended Monday with the last round of medical students.  Over four afternoons, I had 24 abdominal exams as well as having my heart and lungs checked each time.  There was a lot of heavy breathing/hyperventilating on my part, and I never did a header off the table even though it made me woozyish.

I was a 45 year-old English professor, married with no kids, who liked to camp and hike with my husband when the weather was good.  And a high functioning alcoholic.  That’s the tricky part for the kids.  Nearly every student asked me something that wasn’t covered in training such as:

So where do you like to camp?  Haven’t been in forty years.

Who’s your favorite poet?  Dr. Seuss.

What’s your husband do?  Make me crazy.

You said you eat out a lot.  Where do you go?  Culver’s with a coupon.

How often do you and your husband have sex?  What?????

What kind of English do you teach?  Blogger English. 

It was a lying fest for four days and more than one student told me I played a good, cagey alcoholic.  Why, thank you.  After they did the exam and asked a meeeeeellion things about my fake life, they went in the hall while I answered some questions on the computer about what they did or did not do.  When that was done, I called them back in, introduced myself and we talked about how it went.

I met students who were English and philosophy undergrads, a paramedic, a writer, a former teacher in one rough part of Chicago, a Giants fan, and a diabetic.  Without exception they want to get better, and are willing to get input and advice from somebody they just met on how to make that happen.

I can’t say it was easy, but I can say it was interesting, enlightening, and encouraging.  Oh, and a few years down the road, we’ll be in very good hands.

The Speckled Trout is a year old this month, and this is post #305.  Sheesh, that’s a lot of writing.  When I first started, it would take me days to finish one post.  I’d work on it, delete half of it, rewrite it, post it, take it down, put it back up, find a typo, fix it, put it back up.  I wonder if the five people who were reading it back then were like, “What the hell???  I was just in the middle of reading something and now it’s gone.”

Thankfully, writing nearly every day has improved my ability to clearly get my thoughts down and it doesn’t take as long as it used to.  However……….since about December it has been a real struggle to maintain five days a week of posting, and I’ll be my own critic here and say that I don’t love what I’m putting out lately.  That takes time to formulate and I’ve got other things competing with that at the moment.

Rather than hold myself to the rigorous schedule I started, I am going to cut back on the posting so I’m doing it 2 – 3 times a week.  I spend my days writing in my head, and tend to fly up the stairs to get it written down because I’m so excited when it comes together.  Dork alert……a good sentence makes me crazy happy.  Instead of flying up the stairs lately, it’s been more of a trudge and that makes for forced writing, not good writing.  I have some longer pieces I’ve been kicking around, so I will see you here sometime next week with a return of my mojo.

HE has nothing to do with the above, but I’m thinking he might be the cure for my self-diagnosed Seasonal Affective Disorder, even though a certain Ellen friend always claims to have dibs on him………….

My neighbor, Mary, has MS.  She was diagnosed when she was 19.  You couldn’t imagine what thirty-five years of a disease like that can do to a person, and none of it is good.

Recently, Mary needed to get a crown.  Not the pretty, sparkly kind, but the expensive drool-inducing kind, and she asked me to take her to the dentist.  When I picked her up, she scheduled a return appointment to get her permanent crown put on, and asked me if I could bring her back.  Only if I’m not working by then, Mary.  Sure enough, two weeks later You Know Who is available for a ride to the dentist.  It is my custom to reward myself for any dental work I have endured, and I told Mary that when I picked her up.  Little work, little reward.  Big work, big reward.  Mary’s not as greedy as me, so she decided on coffee and a muffin.

We sat in the local coffee shop talking about kids and husbands, our crackpot Governor, music, writing and the neighbors.  With all her limitations and reasons to be bitter, she is not.  She is funny and interesting and dear to many of us.  Our Mary in her wheelchair conjures up all kinds of thoughts, but in her presence I see the grace.

Last week was a year since my cousin’s wife, Carol, died.  At the wedding we went to last week, I spoke with Rhonda’s cousin who’s daughter died last spring.  And if you read this blog……….

http://www.aninchofgray.blogspot.com/

……….you’ll be crying several times a week.  This was probably the saddest Christmas season I can recall since my own dad died.  Too many people on my mind, too many stories of loss, too many people walking the lonely road of grief.  And just what can one do for someone in that situation?

Please tell me if there is an alternative to saying, “I’m keeping you in my thoughts and prayers.”  For God’s sake, Ann Curry says it practically daily on the Today Show.  It’s right up there with “Have a nice day” as far as casually dropped and shallow in meaning statements.

But in the face of overwhelming grief for people we care about, what else of value do we have to offer?