Petunia Collar

Couple of unrelenting frustrations, the blasted spinning beach ball keeps showing up on the desktop of my MacBook and freezing all action.

Thinking there may be too many applications or files open, I keep closing everything, but may move all but the most active two or three files to my cloud site to see if that helps. Help on line says run DiskWarrior and add more RAM. When I had regular PCs nothing was a problem, I could run all that stuff and take the machines apart and put them back together, add parts and replace parts. A couple of times, I even took two or three bad computers apart and cannibalized into one working machine. But in nearly four years, I've mastered nothing with the Apples, which I switched to for security reasons, not because they're easier or better, they're not. And they sure as azalea aren't cheaper.

Other thing, in the past few days the computer has gone off extremely slow on line. Not just the laptop, it’s my iPad and Linda’s iPad and the desktop as well, a wi-fi issue, as I keep having to restart the booster and the router and the modem. Maybe it’s time to have Geek Squad come out, IDK. Frustrating. Nearly bad word time.

Speaking of which. Years ago at a clergy conference someone said something extremely asinine and several others agreed, and in anger and disgust I stood up and humiliated myself by using my most foul Navy sea language in the midst of a bunch of camellia alphabet preachers. The gasps and shocked outcry were such that the bishop adjourned the meeting for fifteen minutes. When we reconvened it was my place to stand and apologize. Which I did. It was the only time I’ve ever wished to be back on deck with stripes on my sleeve instead of wearing a stupid collar around my neck.

The next time the bishop came to visit us I apologized again for the intemperate language I had used. He told me that once long years ago, as a boy he was playing baseball, was ready for a good hit but was struck out. In a rage, he fell to the earth pounding the ground and cursing in the most violent language imaginable. Thinking he was hurt or something, a bystander ran up to him to see if he was OK, only to be taken aback at the filthy language coming from a young boy. When the future Episcopal bishop rolled over, he was looking into the shocked and horrified face of his father’s best friend. He told me that from that time forward he never used foul language. Instead, he developed a wide ranging vocabulary of flowers to use instead. One of his most violent curse words, for example, had for many years been “petunia.”

That was eons ago. It hasn’t worked for me, but as the years go by and I notice myself becoming more and more crotchety I need to revisit. Maybe a good project for Lent.