All That I Do Not Know

Will posterity wonder why I've failed to post on two Sundays in a row?  I've been sick.  Really, really, totally-wrecked in my "upper respiratory" area sick.  (Why don't we just call that "upper lungs"?  Is there something more to it than the lungs?)

I was still able to function.  I even talked on the phone with a long lost friend, though I sounded like death.  But I hardly slept due to the coughing, and so was tired for a good 10 days.  I'm mostly better now, thanks.

***

Do you have sign holders where you live?  Human sign holders, specifically?

They are ubiquitous here in the Springs.  Pizza places.  Model home sales offices.  Car mechanics.  It's hard to find a busy intersection that does not have an employed sign holder on it.

Here's what I don't know: How do these people get hired?  And how much do they get paid?  There are men wearing Statue of Liberty costumes, waving to on-coming traffic, trying to drum up businesses for the tax preparation franchises.  A couple of Uncle Sams out there, too.

Do you get paid more if you're in a costume?

Is there some sort of national monument anti-desecration ordinance that would require such sign holders to first shave their beards before donning the Green Lady's crown? 

***

Speaking of sick, Gemma had it first.  For more than a week.  Then I had it.  Then Josh woke up with a fever and I braced myself for another week of sick-tending.  (Josh took his fever as good news.  He understood immediately that the word "fever" placed him on the "un-limited popsicle" list.  Cha-ching.)

By day 2, the fever was gone.  He frowned at me when I pronounced him "normal."  This seemed an un-just duration of popsicle access.

But what remained after the fever, and had gotten a little worse, were his eyes.  They were goopy.  A lot of green stuff coming out of them.

I thought, "Hmm.  Gemma fought the germ with a fever.  I fought it by capturing it in my upper-respriatory. . .area and Josh is fighting it in his upper-head--sinus, perhaps?--and draining through his eyes.  How about that!"

The next day, his eyes were worse.  I kind of realized that morning (was it the Holy Spirit giving me wisdom?) that I hadn't exactly heard of a child fighting a germ this way before.  I called Pedro, retired pediatrician, and asked if this was normal.

Because there was one thing I did not want: to go to a doctor here, and be told, "This happens, nothing we can do, go home!" 

Pedro said that this was not normal, it was an infection, he needed anti-biotics.

All of which led to an urgent care clinic PA telling me that Joshua had a "raging case" of pink eye.

Huh!

I had never seen pink eye before!  Had only ever heard of other people getting it. 

We got the drops, have been washing our hands obsessively, and it's already clearing up.

Bryan wanted to swing into more dramatic action. 
"Should we hot-wash his doggers?"  Sure. 
"Should we hot-wash all our pillow cases?"  We can. . . 
"Should we hot-wash all the clothing he's been wearing?"  Uh. . .

"Bryan," I said, "This isn't the scarlet fever."

***

Which reminds me of the Velveteen Rabbit, who almost got tossed onto the burn pile.

I clipped one of our bushes in the backyard.  It had grown to crazy proportions and needed intense pruning.  I looked at the pile of long branches ready for disposal and asked Bryan if he could build a fire to burn them ASAP, before the children of the cul-de-sac found them and starting beating one another with them.

Sure.  He could burn 'em!

I had envisioned his using our metal, portable fire pit.  But I guess he had more to burn than my pile of branches.  Bryan set up operations in his big garden plot, which held a big fire, which made big smoke, which was sited somewhere in the neighborhood such that the fire department was called.

A full sized engine pulled up to our house.  I did not know this.  I was working out at the time upstairs and could only smell the smoke of what I thought was Bryan's small fire. 

The kids told me all about it later when I asked why they and all the other kids in the cul-de-sac were sporting fire department stickers on their shirts. 

Bryan filled in the details.  The firefighters were nice people.  Didn't give him a ticket, not even a formal warning.  They did request that he build fires in his pit from now on.

Mrs. Colorado filled in even more details the next day.  When they pulled up, the kids in front came yelling to Bryan, "There's a fire truck here!"

Then the firefighteres walked to our back gate and were peering over to, you know, see what they could see.  Bryan met them on his side of the gate and was talking over it to them, saying, "Oh, sorry!  I'm just burning some brush back here.  It's all under control.  Nothing to see here!"

They said, "Sir, we need to come back there." 

But.  No ticket.

Mrs. Colorado also mentioned, "Yesterday, of all days!  That Smokey the Bear warning system was on highest alert.  Because of the wind and dryness, there are warnings all over about controlling fires."

We were unaware of such warnings.  "Is that something that's been on TV?" I asked.  She smiled and nodded and rolled her eyes.

So.  No wonder I did not know.

***

I hooked up our new wireless router the other day.  I am not great with this sort of thing.  It requires a practical common sense that I don't have much of.  It's not embarassing to admit that.  I am a creative person.  Not seeing things the "common" way has made for a rich life so far.  It's been a disadvantage at times--not having common sense--but I married someone who has more than enough for both of us.

But he was too busy burning things to get around to the router hook-up.  So I decided, "If it takes me all day, I will do this thing.  I am certain that with my best effort, I can make it happen."

It doesn't help that we've had bad luck with wireless routers.  2 before have failed to work well.  So, if something were to go wrong with this one, it would be my inclination to curse the machine and overlook the possibility of, ahem, "operator error."

For this router, we kept shopping for one until we could find a salesperson who knew what he or she was talking about.  I finally found an ex-Airforce communications guy who hooked me up with something promising.  It includes a "set-up stick" which is the code for "made for idiots."  I felt really confident pulling it out of the box.

I put the stick in, and like a dream, it did its thing.  All I needed to do was connect the modem to the router, which I did.

But then the router couldn't find the internet.  I tried this, I tried that.  I tried re-sets. . .  Finally, I called Comcast with the hope that it was partly their fault.

The guys quickly determined that I had not, after all, done the one thing I needed to do.  I had plugged it into the wrong port, though both ports were clearly labeled!

"Argh!" I said, as I re-plugged. "I'll be you talk to idiots all day long."

"It's OK, ma'am.  This is your first time."  (That's not true.  I've tried to hook up routers before. . .)

"I'll bet you say that to all the idiots," I told him.  And he did not contradict.

The wireless is working now.  Despite my best efforts.

***

Bryan and I were out the other day when we passed a guy on a scooter.  The day was cool to begin with.  Scooting in the open-air had to have felt brisk.

He was tootling along, one hand on his handle bar, the other around a big travel mug.  He was sipping coffee at 50 miles an hour!

That doesn't fit in with my loose theme of "things I don't know."  But it made me and Bryan laugh and laugh and laugh.  How often do you and your spouse come along something that is not your kids and not in a movie that makes you both laugh?

***

Here's something else that doesn't fit:  The weekend we were out, the kids were with Betsy and Amy.  They went ice skating on Saturday, and that evening, we had picked them up and taken them to church.

Later, I was asking Joshua about his time with Betsy and Amy, and somehow, for some reason, asked whether he had told his children's church teacher about them.

Josh said, "I was going to explain who Betsy and Amy are, but I didn't think my teacher would understand, so I didn't."

This amazes me.  He's 4 1/2!

***

As for Gemma, I bought the game, Rummikube last week and taught her to play.  My dream is coming true: I am raising up children to love playing games with me.  And Rummikube is a really terrific game.  She's very clever to have been able to figure out how to play it well.

***

Back to the theme:

We went to a tax franchise located in Wal-Mart to have ours prepared.  So far, every year of our married life has included something tricky or complicated and we find it worth the fee to have someone else go through it with us. 

With Bryan, anyway.  While he's sitting with the Jesse Jackson-Hewitt-Do-It lady, I wander around Wal-Mart with the kids, finding things like Rummikube and other sundry items.  (Can I write off the total bill of Wal-Mart purchases on these trips as tax-prepartion expenses?)

Speaking of which, I should make it clear here that Bryan and I aren't the type to. . .oh, what's the word?. . ."be aggressive" when it comes to taxes.  We like being on the up-and-up.  If Taxman ever came to audit us, we wouldn't sweat a single moment.  We think God cares about this, too.  Keeping whatever amount of money isn't worth being dishonest.

That said, we want to give the IRS as little as possible.  Even if it is the government who has been paying Bryan's salary all these years. 

(The afternoon of our appointment, when I was explaining to the kids where we'd go that evening, I found myself explaining what the whole process was for, which Gemma found unbelievable.  Not the taxing part, this she knew about.  But the pay-roll deduction part and the figure-it-out-after-the-fact part and the pay-thousands-of-people-to-be-part-of-the-figure-it-out-at-the-end-of-the-year- part. . . she thought I was making it up.

Mr. Berger once announced at a block party on Hawthorne street that "The greatest act of sedition against the American people was the passage of automatic income tax deductions!"  It's the only memory I have of that neighbor.  And now I think he may have been right.)

Anyway.  I came to sit by Bryan and the tax lady as they neared the end of the process.

There was one question about something and she seemed so smug about knowing the answer.  But it was a tricky question, and knowing that the IRS code is thicker than a phone book, I asked her to look up the specific clause just to be sure "we" weren't missing something.

She found it.  She read it.  She was right.  So.  Good.  We want her to be right, right?

Then she got to talking about how when you make any improvement to your home--a towel holder, new counters, carpet cleaning--save the receipt so you can write it off the profit when you sell.

I said, "But you don't pay capital gains on your primary residence anyway, so why bother?"

She smiled smugly.  "There is a one time exemption."

What?

Still smug, she said, "You are exempt from capital gains on a primary residence one time."

I smiled at her and said, "You are wrong about that."

She shrugged and smiled.  "One time."

This made me laugh.  I couldn't believe she was saying it.  I know almost nothing about tax stuff, but I know this: no capital gains on a primary residence.  Period.  Everyone knows this! 

"You are not right about this," I said, and started listing off all the reasons I knew she couldn't be right. 

She shrugged again, and said, "I'll look it up to be sure!" as though to humor me.

I looked over at Bryan, who was staring with grim lips and a certain annoyed panic in his eyes and, surely, just one thought:  An idiot has just prepared our taxes!

She looked and looked and then said, "Oh!  I am wrong!"

Sheesh. 

I told this story to that long-lost friend whom I spoke with even though I sounded like death, and she said, "Maybe the person who did your taxes was really the person hired to hold the sign."