FRUSTRATIONS

FRUSTRATIONS... oh shame on me for being frustrated with this computer. This will not be much of a post, mostly it will be to see if I have loaded my photo programs right... I gave all my discs to the computer dude down the street - he makes his living doing this stuff, drives a new Mercedes to prove it - but things are still never quite right. None of my photo discs got installed, for example, and that is just the tip of the iceberg. So, to see if things were working, I went out and took a picture of the pot of pansies (aren't they beautiful? Especially to those of you buried up to your knees in snow or ice today?) I got from Bobbie yesterday... and a shot thru the door of the greenhouse with its heating system on - the brooder lamp on a bucket of bricks. Hey! It works! The ordinary incandescent bulb heats up the metal and the bricks - the bricks retain the heat... and it keeps the greenhouse in the 40s or 50s depending on how bad it is outside. Here on the shore, lots of folks keep their pumps from freezing in the winter just with one incandescent bulb. So I figure if it will keep a pump from freezing in a pump-house outside that is as big or bigger than my little greenhouse, well, it ought to keep my geraniums toasty and my impatiens from freezing... and my other plants and cuttings, too.
Did you notice the size of the daffodils next to the pansies? They are up about 8 inches. This may be a year when they bloom in mid-February.
But, back to the shame on me part. Living in this country, we tend to moan and groan over the most trivial things. OK, let me rephrase that - I tend to moan and groan over stuff that is merely inconvenient at the moment, and forget how darn lucky I am. Here I am complaining about having to load a couple photo discs so I can download pictures from either of my Nikons, and for the moment not thinking about the millions of people who still live without electricity, let alone computers and cameras. Yes, it is hard to believe that such people exist, but they do. Believe me, they do. We are so spoiled here. Even the poor in this country somehow manage to have cell phones, and other devices even tho they do not have decent food on their tables. So, I am ashamed of myself for grumbling about having to install a bunch of discs myself. But then, I paid someone else to get this computer back to where it was - minus the virus - and, well, it isn't. Hard to believe that the old computer was 8 years old before it had to get wiped clean and this one was but 8 months old. So much for McAfee.
I know I am going to have to change my ISP, and I so dread that... mostly I dread trying to wade thru the crap on the phone with Verizon. You would think the phone company would have an easier system to access. Oh how I long for the old days when there was an office down on the corner where I could go and pay my bill in person, add a phone, a new phone line, change a listing, put a phone in another house 40 miles from here, and get a nice visit with the real person doing all this for me. Often Progress ain't! Yet, there are those who have to travel over 100 miles to get to a phone or to a service if they have a cell phone. So, here I am grumbling again in a house with so many phones I can't count them. There is usually one in reach wherever you are. Spend some time in a wheelchair or being unable to get up and walk and you will understand.
So I guess I need to do a gratitude list... not just that my brain worked well enuf to install the photo programs... not just that I own a computer that is working (more or less) - and a camera or two... but that I do have electricity, heat, a roof over my head, food in my tummy, managed to get myself dressed, fed the cats, and got outside to take these pictures. Then I must add that I have a wonderful friend that gave me these pansies... and I can go on and on.
Like I said, shame on me for complaining.