My desktop is in the computer hospital this week. A good part of last weekend was spent trying to figure out what was wrong, however to no avail. The machine just shuts down. Gratetfully there was no blue screen of death and all data appears intact. Hubster just recently purchased an external hard drive on which he stores all his photographs. Wise move on his part. The machine just shuts off before we could use system restore or switch to safe mode. It appears to be an electrical problem which I trust is fixable at a reasonable price. Machine is 4 years old and does what I want it to so I'm willing to put a few bucks into it to keep it going a while longer.
As it is our main computer, I had to configure my laptop to use the DSL modem and router. That took another hour plus. The make-shift system works but it's a tad awkward and does not inspire thoughtful blog entries.
The other crisis of the week has been my mother's partials. When she was a girl, she had a bunch of teeth knocked out when someone pushed her at a swimming pool. Since then she has had dental bridges on both her upper and lower teeth. Saturday I found her in a tizzy. She told the nurses I was taking her out to get someone to look at what I learned was her lower partial. With Mother, it's all right now. Everything has to be done immediately. She will not rest until what ever she thinks needs to be done is accomplished. Reality does not ease this mind lock. I compared the fit of her lower partial to her upper one. There was some play in it, but I couldn't get a good understanding of how it bothered her. The partial looked intact. There was no obvious irritation on her gums. I noticed she has molars to chew her food. Seeing as this was Saturday on Memorial Day weekend and I'm on my way to work, there was nothing I could do except to say I'd call the dentist on Tuesday.
Since then nurses, nurses aids, even other patients stop me in the hall to inform me that Mother won't wear her partial. Every time I visit her, she sighs and says she's been waiting for me to take her "someplace". She can't even pull out the correct words "take me to the dentist". I'd hoped that this might blow over but now she's refusing to wear her upper partial as well. This makes no sense whatsoever to me that both bridges suddenly would be out.
In the meantime, the dentist is swamped because of the shortened holiday week. It took five phone calls to get through. I found a message from his office on my machine last night after work and she's set up for next Wednesday morning. At least that's settled. Now Mother's latest idea is to have all her remaining teeth pulled and get fitted for dentures. I've vetoed that with a resounding "no". Getting this exceedingly slow, fuzzy brained, walker bound woman any place is a major effort (I almost wrote undertaking-whoops). It's not a quick process. Nothing is quick with the very old and it requires every ounce of patience to shepherd her to her appointments. I love her, but this part ain't fun.
I told Mother about Robert Fulghum's way of assessing a situation as either a problem or an inconvenience. A problem is your house burning down, losing your job, or not having enough to eat. Anything less is an inconvenience. It is wise to know the difference. Life is lumpy, he says. There are lumps in your oatmeal, lumps in your throat, and lumps in your breast. They are not all the same.
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