Of Last-Minute Panics and Quick Solutions by Konnie Enos

One recent morning, my husband came up to me and asked if we had paid to renew our tags this year. Well, not that I remembered, but being our age, consulting records to confirm things was in order.

I quickly pulled out my computer, logged on and opened Quicken. After a couple of quick searches, I was able to undeniably confirm we indeed had not paid to renew our tags. We hadn’t even done the required smog test yet. We also searched for the card, or email, we would have gotten to remind us.

I did not have it.

Big problem. According to my husband, they were due THAT DAY.

Mild panic.

Now pre-pandemic you either had to take in the paper the smog test people gave you or wait 24 to 48-hours for the information to reach the DMV. If you aren’t waiting that means a trip to the DMV, with all necessary proof and paperwork, then waiting hours to do a few minutes transaction. For us, one of those proofs had to be processed in person. Their kiosks wouldn’t even accept it. (I know this because we tried once.)

Post-pandemic our DMV started doing appointments, but they do allow walk-ins if it’s not too busy. Which is fine in the smaller cities, but Las Vegas isn’t small. Our local offices are packed, even with appointments only. Oh, and appointments are 60 to 90 days out. Obviously, we can’t wait that long. They also have online solutions for getting licenses and tags renewed, and wonderful news, it takes all our proofs online. Though obviously, you can’t renew tags online if the tags have expired.

Since the tags expired that day, I assumed this option was not available to us, but I knew about trip permits. For $1 you could get a 10-day trip permit. This would buy us 10 days to figure out getting the smog done and the fastest way to get the tags renewed. Which probably isn’t the DMV, but perhaps one of their kiosks. I mean if online can take all our proofs, I would assume the kiosk now could too.

I quickly got online and searched for the option to get a trip permit. This required the driver’s license number of a registered owner of the vehicle. I am not one of the registered owners of our car. That would be my husband and daughter since they drive it the most.

I ask my husband for his driver’s license, but he tells me he is in the middle of something and can’t hand it to me at the moment.

Considering he is a major worrywart and would refuse to drive our car anywhere without up-to-date tags, I assumed he was even more panicked than I was.

So, what was he doing?

He was on the DMV site himself looking for the quickest possible solution. In the end he does not give me his license number.

What does he do?

Well, one, he found and showed to me that our tags were still active, as in not expired yet, though the last day was, as expected, that very day. Clearly we needed to act fast.

That’s exactly what he did. He grabbed a super quick shower, got dressed and ran out the door. He drove to the nearest smog testing site. Got it done and hurried back home.

Then he quickly pulled up the DMV site again and navigated back to the portal for renewing our tags.  One thing of note, post-pandemic, the smog test is now immediately transmitted to the DMV. My husband did everything but enter our payment options, which he had me do.  

Once we had the payment confirmation he printed everything up and gave all our proof to our daughter, who needed the car.

Done!

In roughly an hour we went from full panic to completely taken care of.

Again, pre-pandemic this would have taken an entire day minimum. Probably several days, considering the extreme amount of time a trip to the DMV consumes in and of itself, assuming we wouldn’t also have to wait for an appointment that was 60 to 90 days out.

We can say a lot of things about what we went through during the pandemic, but had we not had to deal with all those restrictions, the powers that be might not have worked out ways to help us avoid in-person transactions.

I mean now we can order groceries for pick-up or delivery. Pre-pandemic our neighborhood was in a blanket “do not deliver” zone. Not even the literal closest pizza place a couple minutes’ drive from here, would deliver in this neighborhood. Now we can get stuff delivered anytime we want. Yes, it costs, and isn’t exactly cheap, but it's a convenience we didn’t used to have.

Smile. Make the day a brighter day.

 

Of Time Blindness by Bonnie Le Hamilton

 

In the Harry Potter book Goblet of Fire, Harry experiences a strange phenomenon where time seems to speed up or slow down. He found it disconcerting; I found it realistic. What I always had a hard time believing was Data on Star Trek the Next Generation knowing the exact second of elapsed time.

Then again, Data is a machine.

Real humans are not machines.

I, for one, am someone people refer to as time blind.

One minute it’s not even eight o’clock, the next it is after eleven, and that’s normal for me, not just some weird phenomenon, like Harry experienced. My whole days and weeks; time jumps ahead in leaps and bounds. Well, except in the middle of the night when every ache and pain is making it hard to sleep, then it crawls.

I’m used to the leaps and bounds. It has been like this my whole life. I’ve learned to compensate for it. If I have an appointment, something that must be done at a certain time, I set an alarm to alert me to the time, to let me know it is time to get ready and out the door. I need to set more alarms. Like when I just need a five-minute break and end up taking a two to three-hour break.

It’s hard to get anything done doing that. It’s terrifying and annoying when, after the time has elapsed, I remember I had something sensitive I needed to get done.

Yeah, writing this post almost got lost in my time blindness.

I remembered, but at a point when I was so tired I couldn't see straight. Impossible to write that way. I needed rest first.

Which brought me to the time going slow problem. I had trouble getting to sleep. I had trouble getting comfortable enough to sleep. I just plain had trouble. And every time I thought hours had passed in misery, only minutes had.

I hate long nights like that, but I finally found a comfortable position and got some sleep, only to wake up with my blood sugar so low I was about to be sick. I hate having a half a dozen things to get done post haste while the final thing is what my body needs most.

Of course, part of that is that I have to consider my cat’s needs before my own. There has to be a balance there. It might be easier if I had someone in the house to help me finish all the tasks, but, unlike Konnie, I live alone, unless you count Patches.

Though Patches doesn’t have an opposable thumb, he can’t serve up his own breakfast, nor can he make mine; I have to do both.

Now, though, I have the issue of having to write a post when my brain is still yelling for sleep.

And, as I am out of time, I’m leaving my post right here.

Happy writing, everyone!

Of Record Keeping and Remembering Things by Konnie Enos

At some point I realized that this was my week to post and Tuesday was the third. Not only was I not prepared to post, again, but I always spend a good portion of the third of each month dealing with finances, paying bills.

Wonderful. Two time-consuming things to deal with in the same day.

Tracking finances and paying bills can be even harder than finding the right words to use. As Bonnie can attest, there have been times when it’s taken a couple of days to get it all done. Though it was admittedly worse when everything was all on paper.

When it was just me, it was a simple matter of keeping my checkbook register up-to-date. Adding my husband ended up meaning more accounts and trying to keep track of what he was spending too. Believe me, that’s not easy. Actually, it sometimes took a week to make sure I had everything up-to-date and write out all those checks for our bills.

I thought getting a computer and a program to track finances would make it faster and easier and I guess it did make it somewhat faster, but also more complicated.

You see, I quickly found out that not only could computers and programs glitch, but computers could, and did, give up the ghost, effectively losing all my files for me. Both events that have happened multiple times to me. Backups helped but where my finances were concerned continuing keeping our checkbooks up-to-date was vital.

Having the paper backup has also made it easier to balance accounts now that everything is online. I don’t have to switch between screen constantly in order to check what has and hasn’t cleared. Someday I’ll get a dual monitor set up so I can have both on their own screen and can see them at the same time. Until then, the paper records are necessary.

All of which takes time, though admittedly no longer having to write out all those checks each month makes things go much faster. I can get everything done in one day now, as long as there are no glitches or I didn’t miss tracking a transaction or two. (Yes, that’s happened too.)

And yes, my tracking program does still occasionally glitch, but I usually spot it fairly quickly since I always double check the totals with my paper records. And yes, there are occasions when I spot errors in my paper records too. But balancing everything three ways makes those errors much easier to spot and correct before they cause headaches.

All in all, using this three-way tracking system means that it can still take most of the day to pay our bills and update our records each month.

What this means for writing my post is that I not only didn’t have time to type anything, but I couldn’t expend the brain power to think about what I would write. And the honest truth is, even knowing that today was my day to post, I didn’t give it a single thought until after dinner.

A couple of fleeting thoughts that did not materialize into a substantial post, or even more than a line or two. Then, by 10 p.m., I started yawning. At that point, I was useless at any attempts to put words on paper (or screen for that matter). I finally gave up and went to bed.

Yes, I made sure my alarm was set to wake me early so I could write this.

The issue then became finding a subject and getting it out in a coherent form. And watching the clock inch toward the deadline without having filled the page yet completing my thoughts just makes the whole process even harder.

Though I did actually type up a nice long document before realizing I was rambling. I deleted most of it and started over. I didn’t even want to read the jumbled mess I first typed up. At least I realized it and fixed it.

Now for my final thoughts this morning.

Well, one of my fleeting thoughts from yesterday.

You see an online friend mentioned her birthday and specifically that she is a Pisces. Now I’m going to blame this on being worn out, because it was after I started yawning, but I did not immediately comprehend who else I know who is a Pisces. Seriously, I was looking at that for a minute or two trying to figure out who else I knew with that zodiac sign.

Then, slowly it dawned on me that it’s March. Only then did it click that March 5^th is only a couple of days away. As in, the other person I know who has a birthday this week.

So, happy birthday to my sister affectionately known as Dictionary.

Smile. Make the day a brighter day.

 

Cooking vs Baking by Bonnie Le Hamilton

Konnie called me the other day, which kind of caught me off guard, because I wasn’t expecting to hear from her. Yes, we do talk frequently, but not daily, and we talked just the day before.

I asked her what was up. Again, we had just talked for nearly an hour the day before. And let me remind you that Konnie is busier than I am.

Konnie asked me for a recipe she knew I would have. Uh, yeah, I do. Not written down, but my memory is still good.

The thing is that at one point, she said she tried to look up the recipe online, but couldn’t find anything close. She was a bit shocked when I informed her, “Of course, it’s not online; I made it up.”
So let’s make this quite clear. When we were ten, I was in the kitchen trying to see if I could make something like the soup our grandmother frequently served us, despite not having all the ingredients or knowing for sure what all of those ingredients were.

Well, I gathered what I had, what I could work with, and tried. I do remember at one point thinking the water I was using should be brown, and eventually landed on adding bouillon cubes. At the end, I still felt it needed more flavor, so I grabbed the first tin of spice I could reach and dumped some of that in.

When I tasted the results, I thought it was rather good and shared it with my siblings.

All this time, Konnie thought I had made it from a recipe grandma taught me, when in reality, I was trying to copy her from memory, with fewer ingredients, and not a complete knowledge of what she used.

The thing is, I never realized that she didn’t know I made that recipe up!

I thought that was common knowledge; after all, I was in that kitchen that day alone.

And it isn’t like Konnie doesn’t know I’ve made up another recipe.

Of course, in that instance, she watched me working on and perfecting it and tasted all the attempts until I got it right. She knew I made that one up.

So, the record is that I have made up two recipes. One soup recipe and one cake recipe. She called me about the soup recipe.

And no, I do not fool around in the kitchen that much anymore.

I can still just throw stuff together, except when it comes to baking, but I don’t do it as often as I used to.

One of the other things I came up with was frying up diced meat (as a teen I used hotdogs), adding diced precooked potatoes (as a teen I used left over baked potatoes peeled and diced), some diced onions, and when that was all nice and browned, I stirred in a couple of eggs.

These days, I use sausage or bacon, frozen O’Brien Hash browns, and a few onions, green and sweet peppers, and (if I have it) green onions, along with the salt and pepper. And if I’m feeling bold, or have a tall glass of milk, I stir in a little red pepper flakes.

I might also add that for me, the onions and peppers were pre-diced and frozen; I just use what I need and put the rest back, same with the hashbrowns.

Quick and simple, and no prep in the morning. All my prep could have been weeks in advance. So, it’s simple.

I keep telling myself I probably could also make my hashbrowns using baked and cooled potatoes and freeze them just like I do with the onions and peppers.

The thing is, I’m not a chef. Any dish I make can be easily memorized and adapted to what’s available, except for that cake recipe.

Baking is a lot harder than cooking. In fact, I once watched a Rachel Raye show where she said she could cook but couldn’t bake, and she didn’t know why.

It took me a few days to think about that one, because, well, my husband could cook but not bake. But I eventually figured it out.

With cooking, you can guess amounts and just throw things together that should complement each other.

You can’t just throw things together in baking; you have to be precise, or the results are going to be awful.

So, cooking is art; baking is chemistry.

Plain and simple. But it also means cooks like Rachel Raye are not as good as chefs like Gordon Ramsey, who can cook and bake. Just remember, it takes two different skill sets, even if both result in something edible (when done right).

Anyway, happy writing, everyone.

Of Internet Access and Generating Ideas by Konnie Enos

Last night I had just remembered that I still had not gotten my post ready when I found out that I had no internet access. Now, to simply write something, I do not need the internet, but I often find myself looking up something. Sometimes to clarify a tidbit of information, other times to get some inspiration on what to write. Though I think the resource I use most often when I am trying to write is Dictionary.com (Thesaurus.com) because I know the word I want but cannot possibly get close enough to the correct spelling for spellchecker to provide me with the correct one.

Since I was still debating what to write about today, some inspiration was necessary. Bearing this in mind, I attempted to see if I could get restore my connection, though I did not restart my computer. I thought my normal steps in these situations would be sufficient.

It was not. So, backup plan, hope my son was awake and could figure it out.

I was in luck. He responded quickly to a simple text and came to my room to figure it out. His first step was to see of there was an outage.

Sigh.

No outage. Scheduled maintenance.

I looked at the time, which was frankly, the middle of the night. So, getting some sleep was something I should consider doing. But deciding whether to do that or not required understanding how long the internet would be down. I asked my son when they said it would be back up.

The answer was morning.

I decided to sleep on it.

So go to bed, which obviously wasn’t just lay down and turn out the lights.

I had to shut down my laptop and put it away, and then clear other paraphernalia from my bed. All tech related stuff, like my phone and tablet, which I’d used to see if they could connect to the internet, and my headphones and lap table. ‘

Then I did get myself comfortable in bed and turn out my light. I don’t even remember if I went to the bathroom first, which in hindsight was not wise. I ended up getting up a few hours later to do that.

Now for this morning.

When my alarm went off, I was still to tired to consider getting up. Let alone that I wasn’t prepared to write anything. I also wasn’t sure if the internet was back up, and I would definitely need it because I couldn’t post without it.

I only got up when I noticed two things.

My husband was already up, and presumably on the internet, and the sun was obviously rising.

So, I pulled out my laptop and opened it. And yes, the first thing I checked was if I had a connection.

I was in the mist of deciding if I could come up with anything to post and wondering if it was too late to beg off and let Bonnie do a post today, when she texted me to let me know she not only couldn’t do a post today, but she might also not be able to do one next week either.

When my back is out, I can sit up. In fact, it is one of the most comfortable positions for me, because I have excellent support for my back sitting up. Since I am limited to sleeping on my side, laying down isn’t the best position when my back is out.

She, however, can lay on her back, and that’s the only position she is comfortable for very long when her back is out. She cannot type from that position.

Now, with no working ideas, I fall back to my tried-and-true method. Free writing whatever comes to mind until something presents itself. The only thing I can think of is why I didn’t write this last night. And of course, the fact that I didn’t get up right when my alarm went off like I should have.

I was barely getting a word flow going when the alarm letting us know it’s time to feed pets went off. Noticing that, I also realized that my husband was not hearing it. I had to pause long enough to get his attention onto the matter. Not that our tripod, Xavier, wasn’t enthusiastically letting him know that it was time to feed him.

There are two times in the day when he’ll bark incessantly. Both when he wants his bowl filled and put where he can reach it. The other two dogs are far more chill about it and just wait until we present their bowls to them, though I ended up typing this listening to Lakota chew her food.

So, that was my evening and this morning so far.

Smile. Make the day a brighter day.