Well, it’s been an interesting weekend!
Order out of chaos work (Read that moving closets and drapes!) going on in the house. Also, painting. Lots of painting! Mostly art. Only a tiny bit of touch up on walls.
After my ortho doc assured me, provided I rested a bunch in the meantime, that doing the Abundance Workshop I have coming up next weekend wasn’t going to make what hurts worse, my current Muse painting, who insists on going along, has been in quite the rush to get things done.
It’s the resting part that has presented a bit of a challenge.
I can paint sitting down, which pretty much counts but, in order to get my legs up, I need the magic chair. No problem with the chair.
The problem, instead, is with the TV and internet. There hasn’t been any!!!
Now, I realize that, in the face of hurricanes and wars and crushing poverty and a huge lack of health care and major challenges with our educational system and tragic mass shootings and overwhelming questions about human rights, this is not actually a big deal.
I, however, am a pattern learner.
You know how, if you happen to have a front lawn, and you head out your door every day and walk to the mailbox by the exact same route, pretty soon you’ll have an actual path worn in your lawn? You know… grass mashed down, then worn away, then soil compacted until there is, essentially, a very obvious groove in your otherwise lovely lawn.
Well, our brains work the same way. Doing the same thing, the same way, over and over again, actually creates neuro-pathways, or grooves, in our brains and then we tend to “stay in the grooves,” as it were, and keep doing things the same way.
Loathe as I am to admit this, after all the years of knee surgeries, one of my grooves is put feet up… turn on TV. Lots and lots of Food Network and Cooking Channel. Lots of HGTV. (Well, less these days. I mean, even I can only stand just so much house flipping!)
Then there’s the wonder of ROKU and Netflix. The West Wing, whenever I want it. Tony Bourdain.
And, just between us, it took me a while to wear a new groove in my brain to juggle two remotes and figure out which buttons to push and when. I am not a techie person. (At least, historically, I haven’t been!)
This weekend, since somebody put a huge roadblock in my path, and Bill was off communing with tens of thousands of techie/geeky folks at Dragon Con, and the thing called a router, which may be part of the problem, lives in the basement where I can’t get right now, doing some new things was called for.
Here’s what I’ve learned…
YouTube TV doesn’t work on a laptop though they don’t mention that until you’ve already signed up for the free trial.
You can get a whole season of Next Iron Chef in your I-tunes library. (Probably more!)
There are a couple of music mixes on YouTube that actually work for me and I can knit while I listen. Next task… figuring out how to get rid of the ads!!!
And, I can watch Netflix on my laptop! Who knew???
(Feel free to laugh!)
All of these miracles, and this blog post, are possible because my dear neighbor shared her internet access with me. Apparently their signal works at our house, too!
Here’s the cool part… I’ve downloaded apps and figured out how to find them again. I’ve found some stuff that works for me and some other stuff that doesn’t. I’ve had some new experiences to learn from. Which is, just as my old friend Steve Glenn promised, empowering. And the Muses all agree!
One of the songs from that music mix on YouTube keeps running through my head. Here it is… just in case you’d like for it to run around in your head, too….