Now That We're Famous...

The next morning, here we all go to blog about the Portland Bloggers get-together last night at KATU-TV.

Actually, the station had a nice table of food and drinks, and I want to estimate almost 60 people came, and I would have enjoyed it more if one of my pals had gone with me, but no.
They were probably afraid it was going to be too much like a Star Trek convention, Dork Factor 11, Mr Sulu! I chatted with some people who didn't put their blog names on their name tags, so Alison from where? was nice, and Steve from where? was just getting his feet wet with writing, and Brad from where? hoped KATU would do this again sometime, and Kat from where? wanted pictures... I sound like I'm kvetching, but it was fun to watch all the guys make like weathermen in front of the green screen and give their outrageous forecasts to their "viewers" off-camera---"By mid-afternoon, it will begin raining frogs in Medford, and hailing locusts in Klamath Falls, Armageddon at 11." The shrimp was good.

And I have some pictures of us milling about in the News Studio, people making like Chevy Chase at the news desk, beer in hand---and I realized I can't get them out of my camera. No picture mail in my Plan. Along with the gift bag, souvenirs of an evening of shy writers talking to shy writers about writing. Funny. Good thing there was alcohol.

The Grinning Reaper

No words, no mere utterances of lowly mortals can begin to describe the rapture of this harvest.

On the left, an almost ripe, pink pleated heirloom Zapotec. On the right, the pleated wonder of a fully ripe pink heirloom Zapotec. * sigh *

The Black Princes, lovely and splendidly flavoured, were unable to make it intact to the photo shoot. The Reaper is not big on delayed gratification.

So now I stalk the strip-ed Brandywines, following their every movement, listening to their plans to escape their doom, dispersing their feeble attempts to group together and trip me in the bark mulch. It is inevitable. They know this. And still they plot to avoid their Fate by staying green so damn long that they think I will lose interest and go away.

Silly Brandywines, sheltered heirlooms that they are, lacking in the hybrid's street sense that outwitting the Reaper is impossible. They smile and pretend they don't see me, la la la la la and play their stupid heirloom tomato games. What do you expect from such upper-crust stock, always being catered to, protected, hand-watered like pansies, out of touch with the grim reality of life in an urban garden? What do they think the Squirrels will do to them? Well, I can tell you, what! They will visit upon those pompous Brandywines a slow torture the likes of which they've never seen, a nibble here, a nibble there, pulling them from their fellows, stretching their stems, swinging from them like drunken sailors from chandeliers. Then a gang of those long tailed Inquisitors will yank that sanctimonious tomato from its bristling stem and sink its needle claws into it, then go in for the kill with its foul yellow gnashing teeth. Tumbling along the path, gathering dirt and bark and squirrel spit along the way, that now-humbled Brandywine will cry all the way to the compost pile, boo hoo hoo, where he now thinks the punishment is over, how low he has fallen, oh how he misses his tender loving gardener.

But it isn't over. Oh, no no no. Night falls. The whimpers of the injured Brandywine have quieted, and he's thinking of how his progeny will be sprouting next spring in this disreputable spot, but he at least will live on somehow. A small solace upon his deathbed. His tears dry, and he's comforted that it's so quiet. Peaceful.
Then, a rustle, and a scamper over the fence, thump. Could it be, that damned squirrel again, oh the humiliation of it all! But, no. So dark, so evil, so menacing---it is El Rato!! The glint in the darkness comes closer and closer, above which appears beady narrowed eyes and forward-pointing whiskers. The breath is horrible and the black bony claws grasping the helpless tomato are caked with the lost souls of now-forgotten garden victims. The Brandywine has no chance of escape now, and dies beneath this rodent vampire like the wimpy little twit he was all along.

Tomatoes, surrender to your fate! Resistance is FUTILE!!

Alternate Universes

I said vehemently that I wasn't interested in having my own store. And repeated this to anyone who was nearby and probably not listening anyway. In renting a booth space at House of Vintage, I was splashing in the kiddie pool of a shop-thing, but not really committing. 'Easier than a continual yard sale, yadda yadda' and felt fine with this. Fine, I said. Really.

But that's all changed now.

Thanks to CRAFTzine's blog, I am now hopelessly in lust for my own funky green/sustainable/vintage fabric-textile-fiber-sewing shop.

Rhett, whatever shall I do now? There's no hope for me.

This picture is from Ambatalia, a fabric nirvana in Mill Valley CA, and I'm so beside myself with love and inspiration and envy that I may need to walk around the block a few times and eat ice cream or something. Good god. Like the time I first stepped into the former Hexafoo retail space on Belmont and felt faint and pierced like St Ursula with raptureous pain. Here is my ready-made life, just with someone else's (husband's?) money and some sexy younger woman living it. And a small artsy staff. Maybe I can re-adjust the time-shift sequencer and do this again slowly...

No good. The owner of Ambatalia is named Molly, and her inspired visionary oasis has classes and things for kids and moms and non-moms and our ilk of fabric fanatics; anti-mall, anti-plastic, pro-sustainable and renewable, un-crassly-commercial, very creative and unique. She begins her store blog last October 31st by talking about her reluctance to throw up the usual obnoxious Xmas window display, and how her store is so not about that. I hugged my monitor. There's lots of pictures of Molly and her store and her amazing staff, and her beautiful goods, and the website is fun.

I think it was the crappy weather this past weekend for the Hawthorne Street Faire that sort of deflated my hot air balloon of love with Groovy Rhubarb, that I didn't get the sales and turn-out that I was hoping for and honestly, counting on for revenue for August. I was kinda blue-ish and not on fire this morning to whip up stuff. I spent an hour with Sunday's job classifieds, drinking what felt like really bitter coffee, but that was just my mood. Another gray chilly day, blah blah blechh. Where's my Muse today? Should I abandonez-vous?

Then I opened the link on CRAFTzine to Ambatalia's weekend fabric sale, and I decided to live again (with deep envy) and stay on focus with my own funky alt-business. If Molly can do it...

Belly Full of Beans

Another rapturous morning moment spent in the local Garden of Eden, surveying how the midnight rain refreshed K & H's plantings. So I can be forgiven for grazing on some tender green beans while singing to cats and other Deva garden spirits? I'm keeping your Mojo going while y'all are away. There's plenty of time and many sunny days ahead to replenish your stock by the time you get back. Then I returned home to water the porch planters that were teased by the rain but got no love, and then polished off a few handfuls of gold and red cherry toms. I like this hunter-gatherer stuff. This was truly a Breakfast of Champions.

The tide has turned on this summer, it is really noticeable in the evenings now. Not being one of those folks who hungers for autumn anymore, I am hanging on to this cooler and gentler summer for dear life, the green that lasted throughout, the earth unscorched for a change. Maybe we in the Willamette Valley can slide slowly slowly into a two month Indian summer, some spicy notes, some golden hints in the trees, lots of southern sloping sunshine and crisp blue skies, liquid honey sunsets. No rains, no frosts, no permaclouds, no gray windows, not until November anyway. The tomatoes can last that long without frosts, the ones that were on their way to ripening before the sun fell away. I wish.

This year we are thinking about enclosing the porch with the kind of panels that come down in the spring, so the front porch is another room for all but the coldest winter days. Keeping the cold winds out, and letting the warming sunshine through, almost like a public house biergarten.
What else would we be doing out there in the cold? There are three home brews on the schedule---Rubus Maximus, a ruby IPA for our girl Rhubarb romping in the Elysium Fields;
Zephyr Golden Ale, beautifully clear and bright, but packs a wallop; and Bruno Bitter IPA, a dark and robust strong flavored brew with a handsome head. This Autumn will see us swimming in hoppy heaven, so if you are on your way over and hear Jimmy Buffett's live CD and people singing along to "Cheeseburger in Paradise"---you're at the wrong house. But park any where you find a space.

From my window this heavy gray bank of clouds looks like snow, as we used to say in Michigan. Coming from the coast, they look like waves and waves rolling in on the black sand. Two blocks over I can see the top of a maple tree already beginning to go gold the top three feet. This is a huge Japanese maple with small leaves that look like baby dragon feet, and it turns earlier than any other tree in the neighborhood. More accurate than a calendar, with black bark like wrought iron fingers, the tree hovers for a few days as a glowing lantern, before they all fall at once. Sure enough, it's usually the third week of September, and the other trees seem to take the cue.

Not such great weather for the Hawthorne Street Faire this weekend, however. Cool is okay, chilly and rainy is not. Dang. Lots of pedestrians the past few days, and the street renovation is officially done (fanfare) with new crosswalks that drivers still zoom through, and two more lights to snarl up 5pm traffic. I love it that the #14 is a straight shot downtown, but it takes 45 minutes during rush hour to get between downtown and 39th St or vice-versa. So let's add a few more lights...But I digress. Since the turnout at House of Vintage might not be what we all planned on, I hope once the sun returns this coming week, the newly arriving college kids needing STUFF will come here and stock up on funky with mom & dad's SUV to take it back to the pad. Forget about that Scandinavian Nightmare by the airport, don't go! Don't conform!

Keep the Local Love Happening, my brothers and sisters. Peace.

What's the Password?

The phone rings, and I'm the type who thinks, 'Hmm, is there anyone I want to speak to today? No, not really,' and listen for the machine to kick on. Sorry friends of mine, but you know I'm like this and you still love me. If there were a finger of the Pacific Ocean that reached all the way into the coastline to an isolated outcropping of land, upon which clung a driftwood cottage, that would be me, Hermit Crab Woman. The sign on my front door says "Go Away!" so don't take it personally. Just because I have a phone, doesn't mean it gets to interrupt me. I even go so far as to find a great, hefty black 1940s model, my own piece of film noir, to trick myself into wanting to answer it. Funny, but the ringer doesn't work except at night between 10:30 and 11:30, when it chirps twice, but no one is there. This is a true story, and I don't want to solve the mystery.

Someone I used to work with in the bookstore keeps calling me. And I don't call her back. This sounds bad, I know.

Why not? you ask.

Lets be honest. I don't feel nostalgic for the bookstore. I don't miss everyone I worked with. I don't want to rehash all the last days of closing it down, and where is so-and-so now? Some of us have moved on, most of us, actually. But she hasn't. I'm not her boss anymore, she's not looking for a reference from me, either. She wants to dish, and remind me what she used to do for me this time of year, and how amazing and helpful she was, and how much she misses it and the gang, and weren't those the good old days, etc. She was one of the most high-maintenance employees I've had in years, and I don't feel obligated anymore to hold her hand and play nice because it's my job.
Three times she's called me, and I don't call back. I don't even want to put my mind into the space it would have to be in to have this conversation with her, even for 20 minutes. If she worked during one of my days off, she would call and leave long snarky messages just to bug me and try to make me call the store. The time is long past where I am obligated to call her back. Move on already, please!

So I'm a jerk. Delete. Lower the volume on the machine so I can't hear it from the other side of the house. Get on with my projects. Turn up the music. Decide to finally cancel the land line. I'm such a crab.

Post Script to Jasmine Trees in August

Tuesday night I dreamt that I was having a little party at my house. There was music playing, and my lovely neighbors were over, and there was a large table loaded with platters of food. We had all of the windows and doors opened, and the party was spilling out onto the yard and the porch, I could smell meat cooking and wood smoke. I was happy. I looked around at all my friends, all of these wonderful people who I did not know until I moved to Portland, and just in the last few years we had entered each others' lives. We were all laughing and talking, glasses in hand, smiles and friendly faces, like a classic Woody Allen film. Here I was, in the midst of a party in which I felt completely at home, relaxed, blessed with such good people around me, genuinely enjoying myself and reflecting that I loved my life here.

The doorbell rang. Which was odd, because everyone was just walking in casually, calling hello and coming into the center of the house with bottles of wine and dishes to pass. Who would stand on ceremony and ring the bell, staying outside?

I walked through the groups of friends chatting and eating, picking my way from the back to the front of the house and into the vestibule. The wooden door was open, but the screen door was not. Standing there on the porch with a timid smile and sparkling eyes, a mohair shawl around her statuesque shoulders, was my sister-friend, looking very much as she did 20 years ago, rounder, warmer, and with beaded cornrows in her thick chesnut hair. We hugged for what seemed like hours, standing there in the doorway, and it just felt so healing to my heart, that she was back in my life. The way she was before, during those early years we were so fierce and loyal, to the death and beyond, always seeing the grace and the beauty. In my ear she said, "Are you glad that I came?" and I just let the tears roll down onto her shoulder and held her tighter.

Jasmine Trees In August

It stops me in my tracks, transfixed and speechless. I wait for the full depth and complexity of the perfume to take hold, a split second of timelessness that unlocks so much from my heart. Sometimes I tear up, other times I smile with eyes half-closed, but I always stop whatever I'm doing and wait for the moment to fully bloom and then fade to merely a fragrance again. Looking around, I locate the Jasmine tree and make a mental note of who's yard it's in, how far it is from where I live and where I was going, and if the tree is a magnificent specimen or a parking strip treasure. Usually I continue on with what I was doing, although a little distracted.

Naturally there's a story with this, and since it has many layers, I am still loosening the knots of it and trying to see the larger pattern and beauty of it, and my part in it, good and bad. Taking a deep breath, I almost want to start by saying, "Once upon a time---" again, the people taking on archetypal roles, our behavior now mythical, our failures tragedies. And it would all be true, but my usual tactic, so I won't paint the larger than life mural story, surrounded with Jasmine trees.

When I first moved to Portland, I stayed at some friends' house for a few days before my stuff from Florida arrived and I moved into my apartment. They had this huge leafy tree shading their house in their neighbors' yard, and it was just beginning to flower. The tree kept their house cool all summer long, and then in August, bloomed profusely with little star-shaped flowers that smelled like your Auntie's jasmine perfume from long ago. I took this as a magical sign of the rightness of my decision to relocate here, jasmine being one of my absolute favorites.
An entire tree, just casually blooming in the heat of summer, not spring, and making a cool lazy sanctuary of my friends' bungalow, where I spent hours and hours that first month just getting my head around the idea I was actually here, in Portland. On the Pacific Ocean side of the country. Everything about that first month here, in August 2000, in that house with those two people, is carried along by the perfume of that tree in my mind. Having meals with them after work, sitting on the back deck in the long evenings talking in the dark, taking refuge from the sun and heat on a Saturday afternoon with all the windows open and the wind chimes playing, talking and laughing and loving every moment of being there, being here, finally. I truly believed it would stay that way, and would never ever be any different.

That's why the perfume overtakes me on the street, I'm flooded with all of this, all at once.

Because everything changed, of course. And I'm still making sense of it. I think there was one pivotal moment, for me anyway, but there were a few years of bewilderment and uncertainty when I put my best face forward when I saw them, and tried to figure out what was going wrong. My friends split up, sort of, and I worked too much, and the commute was way too long, and I was stressed over money and store politics, and she moved further away, and and and...
It all came apart. Almost 25 years in, everything unraveled. My heart was broken and I grieved for a long time. Work more, feel less. Finally this past winter, even that structure was broken beyond repair.

This summer I feel her absence in a way that I didn't allow myself to before. I wish she could see my life now, what I am now, how I live now. This is how she always envisioned me living before, all those years we were sisters and best friends, and I was scared to death to be an artist. She knew I could do it, and that is a comfort to me these days, like the Jasmine trees in August and the smell of antique roses and timber creaking in the hot sunshine. She was the main reason I came out here, and that is her greatest gift to me.

Last week I drove past the house and slowed way down. There it was, nothing changed, and the Jasmine tree shading half the neighborhood and looking so majestic, the canopy over 50ft tall. The windows in her old room were open, and I could see the same pale green paint on the edge of the wall.

You can be in two places at the same time.

Maybe I Need a Truck

(so many topics for this picture, thanks U-Handbag!)


Da-da-da-DAH!! Groovy Rhubarb is my new occupation, and I even considered ending the blog, because the 6 months of post-Borders life is behind me now, and that's how I started writing here. Re-inventing myself, the dreaded Mid-Life Crisis, dumped for a younger business plan, etc. Boo-hoo.

But, this is the first stage of this whole process, I think, and it now has little bearing on Borders, or bookstores, or being a manager. Publishers' Weekly online reported the 6 month straight decline in bookstores' sales for 2007, and 2006 was not great. My former industry is undergoing some ruthless anorexia nervosa right now, will they survive? I think I got out at just the right time, and would be dancing on eggs right now if still running my old store. So I'm trotting my extensive skill-set on to this newly hatched project, and we're going to fire the second stage booster rockets and leave orbit. The Hawthorne Street Faire is this coming weekend, and we'll have great weather and mid-80s temperatures, so lots of foot traffic. I want to sell insane amounts of stuff, and charge ahead into September in the black already. (should be sewing, not writing, dang!)

One of the great archive pieces of my overland migration was hauled to the booth today, my 1880's domed-lid steamer trunk, that I've had since high school, and am wanting to be free of it.
It's emblematic of the clinging to the past, the stockpiling of treasures, antique ideas needing airing, and besides, I can barely move it by myself anymore. Someone will give it a good home and take over from me as the New World guardian of this sturdy wooden chest, and I can look forward, into the light wood of my future. It doesn't need to be Ikea, it can be Mid-Century teak or birch, whatever. My old trunk would make a great scary Halloween prop for a haunted house business (hint hint hint) and you could re-sell it afterwards! Wow, smashing idea!!

There's a seductive stack of freshly washed linen tablecloths whispering to me and I must go. The sink of dishes is trying to get a work in edgewise, but my hearing is selective today, in spite of the aroma of Mrs. Meyers' lemon verbena, one of my favorites. And that new Martha mag arrived in the mail this morning...hmmmm. NO. Load the bobbins and grab those scissors, girl.
Time to make money.

The Midnight Lab

No, this isn't a cute dog story---

To facilitate sleep, it's great to have a bit of a routine. The dimming of lights, comfortable nightwear, lower activity, no big meals, a bad book or bad television, the usual. A nightcap? Sure.

Off we all go to Dreamland.

Or not.

There is the phenomenon of The Midnight Lab. As in Laboratory, factory, sweatshop, workhouse.

I think most of us are sleeping by this point, and the Night Shift carries on without us supervising it. Brain wheels whirling, obelisks raised, bridges erected, hammers slamming down, neuro-chimmneys steaming ideas into the contained holy of holies in your head. We dream through this most of the time, transforming back into the child without a care, weightlessly embraced by a hammock of oblivion. Oops, surfacing, gotta pee. Resume position and continue until morning.

I know about insomnia and the Tilt-o-Worry-Whirl, that's different than this. What I'm finding out is that my Midnight Lab requires more attention from me before it will shift into cruise control for the night. It reminds me of closing a large retail store, and needing to change the download back-up tapes in the refrigerated computer room before going home by midnight.
My inventing mind wants 30 minutes of my attention before lights out to download the newest brainstorms, make a few sketches or diagrams, make a ToDo list for tomorrow, put the wild ideas down on paper, capture the inspirations before rebooting in the morning. And the last few months, I will have to turn the light back on after two hours of not-sleeping when I don't take the notebook to bed with me.

You'd think I'd quit resisting and just do it, but no.

Last night it was the same again, so I thought this morning I would share it with you. And it's only occasionally flashes of brilliance, like ideas of time and space expansion, or the mass of light particles. (I'm not telling, so don't ask) Often, it's a cute bag handle idea, or a logo design for someone I know, or a lino cut I want to make, or a new duvet cover with vintage tablecloths, or how to rearrange my studio for better efficiency, or how to finally get the community garden in Steven's front yard idea going, how to build cabinets with the rough pine shelving racks from Fred Meyers as the base structure(with cut-outs). It goes on like this for pages, usually around one page a night, sometimes more. It often includes diagrams, which is why I think of it like a Lab, pages and pages of experiment ideas, A to B to C to D, on and on.

Then I can turn the light out again, and glide into the slipstream.
Writing in the morning can follow if the dreams were interesting and I remember them fairly easily, but I've already gone into that before.

Are you in touch with your Midnight Lab? Do you out-source? Is yours a Salon of sparkling characters, or a Cinema of Surrealism? What would your dogs or cats say? Think it over.

Breakfast with Zephyr

There's a warm and cozy trend lately of posting mouth-watering pictures of your daily breakfast on your blog, or having that be your entire blog content, or a weekly feature and educational snicket (halloumi, how have I lived my whole life without it?).

I don't have a picture of the contents of this morning's breakfast, that may follow some other day with more sunshine and before I have actually eaten it. But what I can tell you about is the delight in coming down the stairs and onto the porch in the morning, sitting on the porch stairs, and having coffee and well-buttered sourdough toast with m'girl Zephyr Golden.

We sit and she listens as I sing meaningless lyrics to her, then she purrs and starts her morning bathing, and we greet the neighbors and their dogs as they pass by. Recently, we were gifted with a snug gold velour armchair, and it has become Zephyr's porch perch, and frequently she sleeps the night in it. This makes an early breakfast with her easy to manage before our hectic schedules carry us off the porch and out into our busy day. The chair also makes a impetuous afternoon snooze very stealthy, when she allows me to nap with her on my lap as she curls up to sleep. We dream wonderful summer afternoon porch dreams, with the warm breeze carrying us over the hydrangeas and Japanese maples, over the bungalow eyebrow roofs, beyond the giant jasmine tree just beginning it's siren song of perfume, to the enchanted bamboo groves where there are endless shadowy paths to explore. We move silently through the slender fronds of black bamboo, arching to become invisible, creeping low to be silent, then folding to sit and watch and wait. For the right time.

Zephyr always sniffs the cafe au lait to determine it's variety (ethiopian) and that the milk is organic, but she's not a coffee drinker. She prefers organic butter to lick off the Portland Sour-dough Wheat toast, but about that she is not as picky. I usually have Yoplait vanilla custard yogurt, and that, as all cats know, is really inferior and too sweet. She returns to her hind leg grooming.

This morning we had another visit from our friendly neighbor dog, who had rushed Zephyr off the porch yesterday morning. This time, the little white dog only came up the first two steps to say 'hi' to me, and didn't press her luck with Zephyr "Hellbeast" Golden. Harmony was maintained, no one got hurt or lost face. By then, we were done noshing, and it was time to get to work. She makes her neighborhood inspections (someone has to do it) and I go back inside and fire up the sewing machine/computer/paper cutter/glue gun/knitting machine/printer and think about tomatoes.

Same time tomorrow, m'girl.

Houston? Hello, Houston? Are you there Houston?

There's the weird phone message from the inside of someone's car, and the beginning is scrambled and incomprehensible. Who would call me from inside their car with a speaker phone---OnStar, oh, it's Betty, naturally. She has the 500 free minutes to burn inside her Cadillac.

She's on her way to dinner with my brother after playing computer Geeks all afternoon, and she's calling to let me know they are canceling all the arrangements we agreed on during the four hours a day hand-holding calls I had with her and the new laptop last week, and I get to hear where they're going to eat, and how far it is from main roads I don't even know the names of in her town, and I realize it's the minutes burning that's the thrill for her at that moment. And I really hope she's not the one driving the yacht while chatting. You can imagine.

I had to go out to the porch and sit for a spell. It was all just too much for me.

She defers to men every frickin' time, it never fails. I've built computers, used them for years, know her better than anyone on earth, and will sit (no longer) and talk her down for hours to get her aimed in the direction I know she needs to wind up in, and will wind up happiest in. Then she does a 180 because she talked to some guy for 15 minutes, and obviously he's the expert.

And will she call the guy when she's frustrated at how her progress and situation is lagging behind and she's impatient for the faster system, the zippier program, the instant results???

No. She'll call me.

Help.

So, after sending her a snooty email yesterday after coming back inside from the porch, I sent her a nice white picket fence and garden path email today, like the snooty email never happened, and went on and on and on about me. I have to chuckle at that, she has a-ways to catch up on her typing, and her emails so far have been 1 or 2 sentences. Heh heh heh. She now knows more about the health and growing habits of my tomatoes than anyone should ever have to endure. Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha! And the domestic dramas of my neighbors, including dialogue and how many police cars showed up, and which cops were cute, and what kind of pen they used and how short the night shirt was, and and and... Mwah-ha-har-ha-ha-ha-ha!!!!

My brother-----you are Officially tagged IT.

Gotta fly!!

Betty Crashes on Planet Dell

My 68 year old mother just got a computer.

After years of nagging her to get one, I may have been wrong-headed.

Most of Wednesday and Thursday of this week has been spent on the phone with her in Florida talking her out of the tree she ran herself into when the Dell boxes arrived. We literally had to begin with, "Okay mom, open the boxes," and I kept speaking very calmly and slowly.

Somehow, I had assumed that with her many part time jobs over the last ten years, she'd come into contact with Windows and basic computer operating experience, maybe even created a few documents in Word, and she certainly did alot of computer cashiering. Didn't most of us learn the basics at work or for school? Those of us over 35, I mean?

Honestly, I had so much compassion for her, she was ready to chuck it all off the condo balcony, and refused to pour herself a glass of wine to regroup. "No, I need a clear head for this nonsense, I'm so out of my element as it is," so I didn't make fun of her. But I was astounded.

BTW, the Dell people could put more in the way of an Owners Welcome Package in the top of the box for the other newly brave computer buyers to orient themselves. No wonder the various Geek Squads are doing so well. And don't pack all the power cords in with the printer box, pack the laptop adapter and cords in with the laptop, sheesh. We had 10 minutes of freak out because she swore there were no cords for this thing. Her shiny new laptop came with Windows Vista Home Premium, and her icon flags are different than my old XP Professional, and the frustration was dangerously mounting.
"I'm just going to shut it off and deal with this another day," she said after we finally got it fired up.
"NO, LEAVE IT ON!" I came at her through the phone. "Then you'll just walk by it everyday and dread starting this again,and weeks will go by ---we're doing this today!"
Big sigh from her. "You're right, that's just what would happen, and you'll never want to answer your phone again, thinking it's me with this stupid thing again, so okay, now what?"

Thursday we were haggling about dial up, DSL, broadband & WiFi, calling my brother to drive over and help her, how rude the Dell support guy was and how she couldn't understand a thing he said and how much he made fun of her, couldn't I fly there to just take care of all this and the eBay store thing, too? Plus, she needs a digital camera, and what's a megapixel?

"You know, I've never sent an email in my life," she finally confessed.

"You said you had done all the notifying of customers at the store about orders being received, repairs completed, you mean you weren't emailing people?"

"Why would I go through all that when I can just pick up the phone?"

My head is in my hands at this point. What have I done? Unleashed her into the world with a loaded gun?

My five year old Sony Vaio is still overheating along, whirring and inconsistently recognizing the CD/DVD-ROM drive, low RAM, crappy graphics capability, and I'm stuck with it for now. And here's mom, driving a Porsche laptop in comparison, and doesn't even know how to start the engine. I could cry. I realized I couldn't help her from here, the parts of my advice she actually listened to she wasn't doing anyway, so I told her to make an appointment with the Geek Squad and tell them she needs the DSL kit in a box along with their technical support to install it, and at least an hour scheduled to show her around Vista.

"I wish you were here to just do this!" she snapped.

"I wish I had the brand new laptop and you had my old one to punch keys randomly on," I replied wistfully.

"Why would I bother to go through all this with a five year old computer, someone's cast-off?"

I didn't say anything. I'm a smart kid.