Pot Luck

So I think I'll call this blog entry "Pot Luck" because there is a little bit of everything in it. I'm not entirely sure where to start to be honest.

"Hand in Hand" - CarolLyn Simpson

 

So a very good friend of mine, CarolLyn, is an artist, and a good one at that. I have absolutely no idea why, but I felt the overwhelming urge to come out to her a year or so ago and so I told her all about who and what I am. She was going through a tough time in her life and I probably couldn't have picked a worse or more selfish time in the world to put yet more on her plate, but I guess I just really wanted to be her friend as the real me. Does that make any sense? 

I had very little doubt that she would be 100% fine with me and I was not at all disappointed. After all, artists don't tend to be narrow minded ya know? I've seriously admired her courage in life and would have to admit that I envy her in many ways. She has been doing a lot of work involving the space program lately, which I think is the coolest thing in the world. I've been a huge fan of the space program for as long as I can remember and would kill to play any part at all in it. I remember talking my mom into letting me go to school late when I was small, because I desperately wanted to watch one of the moon launches. In her personal life, Carolyn has also taken great strides as an artist and has had several exhibits of her work! How cool is that?! To top it all off, she is just an absolutely beautiful person. If I had a list of people I wish I could be just like, she would be pretty near the top I think. And now I notice that I am gushing again. . . 

I did that with her once, when I'd had enough of adulting and got trashed one night while traveling for work. I probably spent an hour chatting with her on Facebook and telling her how awesome she was that night, and then got to feel like a complete ass the next morning when I realized that I had almost certainly made a fool out of myself. Important note to self - copious amounts of alcohol and Facebook should never be mixed.

Anyway, she recently was part of an artistic project where artists were given a color of the LGBT flag and a topic, and they were to combine the two. The artwork must be at least 80% of the required color and obviously have some connection to the topic that was given. The color and topic that she was given were pink and female/male sexuality and off to work she went! One of the things that really impressed me was just how much she cared about getting it right. Not just the nuts and bolts of the painting, but that she really wanted to make sure that it was appropriate and meaningful to the community. In other words, she really put her heart into it. Knowing how much she cared about it, and how much of herself she had put into it, I will not bullshit you - I teared up when she told me how she was dedicating it. Thank you Carolyn. Thank you on behalf of all of those like me, who live somewhat complicated lives that few are willing, let alone capable, of understanding. Thank you for caring. Thank you for your art. Most of all, thank you for your friendship.

I've hesitated to write about this for several reasons, the most significant being my daughters privacy I suppose, but she is very vocal about it herself and has assured me that she is fine with my writing about it.  Anyway, my 14 year old daughter has informed anyone that would care to listen that she is pan sexual, but as a general rule prefers girls. To say that my feelings about this are a bit conflicted would be a huge understatement. The first thought to cross my mind was "holy shit, you're only 14 and have never even kissed anyone, so how the hell would you know what you prefer yet?!"  Then I recall that I knew for absolute certain that I was different at only 5 or 6 years old, so maybe it's not so unreasonable to think that she has a clue at 14. Don't get me wrong, there was never a question about whether I'd support my daughter or not, but I would have to admit to a feeling of loss. From the moment I first held her in my arms, I've envisioned a life for her that involved first dates, a marriage, motherhood, and grandchildren for me to adore. Much of this now seems unlikely to ever take place and I do indeed feel some grief at the loss. Still, she is not responsible for the dreams that I had envisioned for her life. Having lived a somewhat unique and outside of the box life myself, I also do not envy her the complications that being different will bring to her life. Many times through the years I've wished like hell that I'd been normal, that I had either been fully male or fully female, without the confusion and complication of being so different that many people can't stand the very idea of who and what I am. I would have much preferred that my children not know such discomfort and complications in their lives.

By the time that she decided to tell my wife and I, she had long since already told all of her friends and school mates, so my advice that it might not be in her best interests to be too vocal about it while living in small town Texas were far too late. For better or worse, she is out and vocal about it. Out of sheer curiosity, I asked her the other day why she felt the need to throw caution to the wind and be so quick to let people know about her sexuality. She gave a small pause to consider the question before answering.

"I don't want to invest time and effort into getting to know someone just to have them back away after they find out."  Hmm, fairly logical there I suppose.

Not that I can take credit for who she is, but I am terribly proud of her for her self-confidence and her willingness to be herself regardless of what others might think. She has always done her own thing and never been one to follow the crowd. 

Do you remember being 14 at all? I have some memories of it, but of course they are getting a bit vague. I do recall that it was about this time when I really started to notice the opposite sex, and I don't mean that in a sexual way, but more of a longing for someone to love. It was around then that I might look at someone and daydream about walking with them, holding hands, staring into beautiful eyes, and just existing with someone else that just might adore me back. That was hard enough when considering someone of the opposite gender as society expects, but now imagine having those same wants and dreams, but preferring someone of your own gender, thus making it infinitely more difficult to find someone. In the year or so since my daughter shared this with me, she has hinted at some of her thoughts on this with me; how it is hard to know someone that she cares about in that way, but be unsure how or if she should approach them.

On the upside, while I can't do much about the complications this will bring to her life, she knows for absolute certain that she has love and support at home. While I already miss the grandchildren that it looks like you're not gonna give me, I got your back critter!

Of course all of this has me thinking a good deal about my own life style and the cost of it. The other night I had to get up at 2:30 AM to get ready for a flight, and so I went to bed quite early. When I told my wife good night, she was kind of short and terse with her reply. We've been married for thirty years now, so I know the signs. After all, I'm slow, but I aint that slow.

"Are you angry at me about something?" I asked her.

"Yeah, a little." She replied without looking up from her computer.

"What did I do?"

"I don't want to talk about it."

"Umm, we haven't hardly seen each other for days - what could I possibly have done to piss you off?" I asked her.

"I think you can probably guess," was the answer I received.

So, my best guess is that she was angry because after she had been gone for the weekend and we hadn't seen each other, instead of spending time with her, I was getting ready to take a trip as Kim. Getting clothes and makeup together, going to bed early because I'd have to get up early to get ready, etc. Of course I'm probably wrong and missing something obvious - I'm good at that. 

Right or wrong, this has had me thinking this week, and I'm wondering why the hell I bother to do this? Years ago, I felt wonderful spending time in the world as Kim. I felt real, I felt right, I felt at peace, and yes, I even felt beautiful. Truth be told though, I haven't felt that sense of fulfillment in years. These days I feel almost entirely like an ugly old man desperately trying not to be perceived as such. As I’ve aged, I’ve gone from passing and being accepted as a woman probably 75% of the time, to being pegged as male the vast majority of the time. In addition to my own dissatisfaction with my appearance, I’m almost constantly a nervous wreck. Scared when I leave the house that my neighbors may just happen to walk out the door at 5AM as I am loading my suitcase into the truck, and then I’ll have to have “the talk” with them and then deal with my wife who would no doubt be angry and hurt at such a thing. Scared when I have to use the bathroom, because these days I put my physical and professional life at risk any time that I enter a bathroom. Scared that my wife may eventually just say “Piss on it, I’ve had it with you” and our family will crash and burn.

I am not ready to fall upon my own sword or anything, but it definitely depresses the hell out of me. I'm not looking for sympathy here, and would really prefer not to get a bunch of comments trying to bolster my confidence, I'm just continuing my long standing tradition of being honest and blunt about my life and feelings here on the blog. The point is, I cause my wife hurt and anger and I'm pretty much unhappy and miserable most of the time myself anyway, so why do I bother to still do it?

I don't know.

I don't understand it myself.

I can't bear not being me, but I can't bear being me either.

It's the proverbial unstoppable force meeting an immovable object with all of us caught right in the middle. Shit. . .

This week I headed for the Philadelphia area to help a customer that has been unable to use her spectrometer for about two weeks. I'd been trying to help her solve her problem by phone and email while I was home with the pneumonia, but ultimately had to throw in the towel and prepare to go fix it myself. Others at my company had reached the conclusion that it was a very complicated and expensive component at fault, while I insisted that I didn't think so. Since I had failed to prove my case remotely, I kind of had to go along with their recommendations though and so had to wait for the replacement part to be purchased, built, and setup for me.  So, the customer was down and out for two weeks waiting for a part that the factory told her she needed, and that I had argued was probably not the faulty component - needless to say there was some anxiety going into this.

I had to laugh as a young couple got onto the airport shuttle bus behind me carrying two huge suite cases; one bright blue and one bright green.

"I'll bet y'all have no trouble what so ever spotting your suitcases!" I laughed. We ended up chatting the whole way to the airport. I told them of the time when I was traveling on a bad weather day and had arrived at the Austin airport several hours late to find easily a thousand bags from delayed travelers piled up on the baggage claim floor. Staring at that huge number of bags and trying to pick mine out of the mess, I had sworn then and there to never buy a black or dark blue suitcase again.

The shuttle bus at the other end of the trip was a bit more awkward. Here I am with a 50 pound suitcase, a 50 pound tool box, and a thirty pound backpack, trying to heft it all in and out the rental car shuttle bus. To make it a little harder, the bus driver refused to open the middle doors, and only opened the one up front by the driver, so I had to not only get these bags in through a crowd of people, but had to hook them around the corner. Being the graceful person that I am *cough* I ended up rolling my suitcase right into this poor woman's toes. She was most understanding about it though, and assured me that no harm was done, but I still felt about six inches tall. Having started my day at 2:30AM and still getting over the pneumonia, I was worn out when I arrived and pretty much got dinner, showered, and went straight to bed.

The next morning I felt almost human, but suffered from a major case of the nerves. A large customer of ours, I'd already failed to identify the source of this customers problem by phone, and I'd already argued with experts at my factory over what was wrong with it. More or less, they weren't seeing any infrared and our experts were insisting that it was the IR detector itself. I argued that it looked like the detector was fine, but there was just no IR to be detected. There was just a bit or pressure here if you know what I mean. When I examined their instrument, I couldn't help literally laughing out loud, much to the non-amusement of my customer. Over the phone, they had insisted that they had never touched a special set of mirrors used to align the IR, but someone had fibbed. Not only had they touched them, but someone had completely removed them and they were now entirely missing! The best analogy of this whole mess that I can think of works with cars:

Customer says engine won't run.

Factory says engine needs to be replaced.

I insist I think engine is fine, but it sounds like a carburetor problem.

I ask customer "Did y'all adjust the carburetor?" and I'm assured that no one would dream of touching it.

I arrive to find that the carburetor is completely missing.

So, an hour later they finally find the missing adjustment mirrors, and a mere three hours after I arrived I've got the thing aligned, tested, and done. All of that anxiety over something so silly. 

I'd told Sophie and Linda that I was gonna be near them, but didn't expect to have any free time, and yet here it was 11 AM and I'm done for the day. Time to give them a call to see if they are up for getting together after all! The three of us met at the King of Prussia mall, which Sophie, the font of all trivial knowledge, assures me is now the largest mall in the world. We started at Macy's, and then made our way to DSW, and then on to Nordstrom Rack. At DSW (a shoe store) I walked past a woman who was trying on two colors of the same sandals - one foot white, the other blue. Without thinking, I spoke up as I walked by her.

"Yes, they're cute on you!" I said with a grin. She quickly looked up with an expression that implied she was relieved to get an honest appraisal.

"Yeah, but which color?"

"Definitely the blue one!"

"Yay! That's two votes for blue then!" She said with a laugh. 

In all three locations I found only two things that I really liked - two skirts at Nordstrom's Rack. The catch is that they were well out of my budget, so cute or not, they stayed right where they were. Ultimately I laughed and told Sophie and Linda that we could leave any time that they were ready because I clearly didn't make enough money to be shopping there, and so off we went for an early dinner.

Linda Lewis, Myself, and Sophie in the King of Prussia Mall

My flight home left at the miserable hour of 6AM. It doesn't sound so bad until you put it all together. The hotel was an hour from the airport and you have to get there two hours early. Do that math and that means my happy ass was up at 2:30 AM again and leaving for the airport at 3. I could have got flights that left at a more reasonable hour, but it would have almost tripled the cost. The flight leaving at 6 was $300, and the flight leaving at 8 was $800.  I'm ok with spending a little of my company's money for a reasonable schedule, but that significant a cost difference would be a hard sell to the boss.

So there I am, a tired old man pumping gas into a rental car at a small deserted convenience store in Philly at about 3:30 AM, when up drives this beautiful woman with long braided hair down to her bottom. Gotta be honest, even as an old soldier, I wasn't entirely comfortable in this location at this time of day, and I couldn't help wondering how she must feel. If I was nervous, I couldn't help wondering what it would be like to be her; a small and attractive woman pumping gas in a relatively dark station at such an awful time in the morning. Funny thing is, she didn't seem half as nervous as I felt. Maybe I'm just a coward that over thinks things. . .

Next week it's off to Denver!

Parenthood and Insecurity

You know there is just no way around it; while born male, I clearly am not and have never been typical. Being raised by a single handicapped mother, I never learned many of the things that most of your average boys learn.

I never got into sports, and at the age of (almost) 53, I still can’t throw or catch a football to save my life.

I think I went fishing twice, once with my alcoholic father. We spent the day floating on a lake with him drinking beer after beer. I don’t recall if he caught anything or not, I just remember being horrified when he told me that I either had to pee over the side of the boat, or pee into one of his beer cans and then pour it over the side. Most little boys would have been golden (pun intended) with just peeing off the side of the boat, but as I said, I wasn’t your typical boy.

“Rough housing?” Not so much. Never had a father or father-like individual around that wanted to rough house, toss each other around, etc. The closest I had to this was my big brother, but most of the time that we tussled with each other, it really wasn’t in fun; it was brothers giving each other shit. I’d give him hell with my mouth and my words, and he would reply by knocking me on my ass.

I never went camping as child but the US Army made damned sure that I experienced that particular past time to the fullest. When I was stationed in Germany, my unit would watch the weather report, and when the weather was going to be cold, wet, and absofrickenlutely miserable, we would pack all of our gear up and go live in the woods for a few weeks. I grew to absolutely hate these field events, and 30+ years later I still flat refuse to go camping. Some days I’d swear that my toes are still cold from my last field exercise.  I actually do enjoy time in the wilderness and am happy to spend the day out in the dirt, dust, and bugs, but by God when it comes time to call it a night, I want a shower and a clean bed to sleep in. If you really wanna make my A-list, throw an air conditioner into the mix. I aint sleeping in the dirt anymore. No. Nope. Done with it.

So fast forward lots and lots and lots of years and here I am, the father of three beautiful children. I’ve had zero role models for being a good father and pretty much my main plan for dealing with fatherhood is to try not to suck at it as bad as mine did. So no real plan to excel at it, just the desire to not totally screw it up.

Recently my wife has become almost obsessed with a fitness class based on self-defense that is given in a neighboring town and she goes pretty much every night. I’m delighted for her as she is clearly profiting from it, both physically and mentally. She was so impressed with the way that this class made her feel so much better about herself that she enrolled our 8 year old son in a similar class in the same building, where he is just beginning to learn the very basics of martial arts. I absolutely love the way it is changing his attitude! It is giving him confidence and teaching him both respect and some self-discipline. It also has the advantage of getting him off of the couch, out from in front of the TV, and gets him doing something physical.  A few weekends ago, we watched him test for his next belt, and it was a serious pleasure to see the smile in his eyes, and just to watch him be a little boy. At one point I looked at my wife and told her that I thought this was one of the best ideas that she has ever had.
“I know!” she replied

“I think hanging out with Anthony (the instructor) is good for him. It gives him the chance to hang out with guys that  . . .” and here she paused and got that look on her face that after 30 years I’ve come to recognize as her looking for a way to say something without hurting anyone’s feelings.

“Guys that act like guys?” I finished for her with a laugh.

“Well, yeah. Sort of.” She agreed with me.

There was nothing mean or ugly meant here, and she certainly wasn’t trying to hurt my feelings. It was just a simple statement about the way that things are. Still, it left me more than a little depressed and I probably spent the next two weeks obsessed with the thought that I’m not doing right by my son. Not sucking as bad as my father did is not good enough. Sigh . . .

I’m off to see two customers and my big sister this week. A small perk of my job is that on rare occasions it takes me to where it is feasible for me to see family and friends that live thousands of miles from me. In this case, I’m off to the University of California at Berkeley, which just happens to be only a two hour drive away from my big sister. I’ve scheduled the flights so that I will get to spend Saturday with my sister, and then head straight from there to Indiana for my next customer Sunday morning. My sister and her husband will be taking two of their grandchildren to baseball games that they will be playing in. You know, one of those things that most fathers probably do with their sons? Maybe I’ll learn something from the experience – who knows?

Due to my ongoing medical problems and my sedentary life style, I’ve gained some weight in the last year or so, and so finally have had to start buying some new clothes that will actually fit. I bought this skirt, fully intending to wear it under my top, but much to my surprise and delight, I thought it looked better to wear the blouse tucked in, with the skirt over it as it was intended to be worn. Tucking a blouse in is something I’m pretty sure I’ve never done before due to a serious lack of a proper figure for pulling it off.  If I’m wrong and it looks terrible, do me a favor and keep that to yourself, because for the first time in a long time, I actually felt pretty.

So as I’m getting out of my truck at the airport parking facility, I could feel that there was something stuck to the bottom of my shoe. Mind you, it’s dark and I’m dragging two large bags to the shuttle bus so I can’t give it proper attention at first, but ultimately I had to as it was so large it was making it hard to walk. I stopped to pull the offending item off of my shoe just to discover that the offending item was in fact the sole of the shoe itself. Apparently the glue had given out and the sole had peeled back, and it was now being dragged along under the heel itself with each step. “Drag, clop, drag, clop, drag, clop” it went as I made my way onto the shuttle bus dragging my tool box and suitcase behind me.

I wasn’t feeling quite so pretty anymore.  .  .

Anyway, I made my way off of the bus, found a quiet place to sit down, and pulled another pair of heels out of my suitcase. Being a multi-color plaid-like pattern, they don’t really go with the outfit, but that’s pretty irrelevant at this point as I can at least walk in them.

Having my shoe dilemma resolved, I then made my way through the TSA inspection point where I received a mixed blessing. The inspector looks at my ID for a moment, then he looks at me in confusion.

“Matthew?” he asks relatively loudly, “I’m sorry – where is Matthew?”

I looked at him for a moment, trying to figure out if he was messing with me or if he was serious, but I was absolutely certain that he was sincere. I was just about to explain exactly who ‘Matthew’ was when it apparently clicked for him.

“Oh!” he said quietly, then initialed my ticket and handed it and my ID back to me.  I smiled at him as I took my documents back, then raised my finger to my lips.
“Shhh!” I told him softly, winking at him as I walked by.

When I got into my rental car, I connected my phone to the cars Bluetooth, and was soon listening to Vikki Carr as I was making my way to the exit. For just the briefest of seconds, I found myself thinking “Hey, I’ve got to call mom and tell her about the new Vikki Carr albums I found!” The thing is, my mom died years ago, but I still catch myself thinking things like this from time to time.

Did you try turning it on?

So the day got off to a bit of a rough start. Normally I am up and at it at about 3AM to catch flights, but today's flight didn't leave until almost noon.  As the flight left so late in the morning, I figured I'd wait until after the wife had gone to work and the kids were gone to school to get ready. I told my daughter the night before that I was gonna let her walk to school in the morning as I wouldn't have time to take her and get ready, and she assured me that she was fine with that. That was the plan anyway, but it didn’t work out that way.

The following morning, it turned out that my wife was not feeling well and so she decided to stay home and take a sick day. The catch is that at some point, she told my daughter that she would take her to school, but the more that I thought on it, the more I figured that I was being an asshole if I let my sick wife drive my daughter to school instead of doing it myself. So, on this rare occasion, I stepped up and did the right thing instead of the selfish thing, and I took the critter to school.  My daughter has taken to drinking coffee lately, and when she got into the truck, she more or less balanced her coffee mug on the dash and I failed to notice it.  About thirty seconds later, as I made the first turn, her coffee mug fell over and landed on the floorboard at my feet, soaking the carpet, and splashing coffee up on all of us.  Sigh. . .

Since I was still wearing sweats and would be changing anyway after I dropped her off, that was no big deal for me, but her skirt had several prominent coffee spots on it, and so I offered to take her back home so that she could change.  The thing is, she knew about my plans to fly pretty today, knew I wouldn't have the time to get ready if I had to wait for her to change before taking her to school, and so she flat out refused.

"Nope, I'll be fine.  Besides, my tunic covers most of it, see?" She said while tugging her top down over her skirt to prove that it would be covering the worst of it. 

"Are you sure?" I asked her. "I don't mind taking you home to change sweetheart."

“No. You don’t have the time to take me home and get ready!”

“Yeah, but maybe I should take mom being sick and all of this as a hint from the universe to not do it this trip.” I told her with a grin.

"Nope, not a problem.  You don’t get the chance to fly pretty much these days so you go and have a good trip!" She insisted.

I'm thinking that both her and my wife are better people than I am. They both tend to put other people first when I am pretty sure that I would have been selfish and insisted on going home to change. Anyway, I got her off to school and then did indeed have plenty of time to get myself ready. It was a wee bit awkward as neither my wife nor I are terribly comfortable with her seeing Kim these days, but it is what it is.

As much as I thought it wasn’t possible, the problem with the huge bumps on my legs has actually gotten worse. It has often hurt so bad, and with such a sudden and stabbing pain, that I often find myself reflexively looking down and expecting to see some sort of open wound or a knife sticking out of my leg. Well, for the first time in all of these years, I wasn’t totally disappointed when I pulled up my pant leg, because I found a large wet spot on my sock over one of the bumps where nasty stuff actually was leaking out of the nodule. Needless to say, there was not going to be bare legs in my future for a while, not even with tights, and so I broke out a pair of boots that I had bought over a decade ago but only worn once. I bought them for those occasions when I was traveling to very cold places, but I found them to be quite a bit less comfortable than your average heels, and so never really wore them. It’s not that they pinch or don’t fit well, its just that they kind of force your calve and foot to stay at an angle that doesn’t feel as natural as your typical heels. Say, did you know that the interior of boots tend to degrade and shed material with age if you don’t wear them for years? Yeah, when I took them off to go through airport security, my calves and feet were mostly black and covered with little flecks of fabric. This, in concert with the large red nodules all over my legs, definitely didn’t make for the most attractive legs that you have ever seen. The mornings mishaps, the discomfort in my legs, and the fact that I was going to train a customer on a machine that I haven’t seen in a decade, all combined to make me a jittery and nervous wreck. I honestly wasn’t that surprised when my IPAD slipped out of my hands, fell to the floor, and went skating down the aisle of the plane while I was trying to put my bags into the overhead bin. I looked at it in disgust and seriously considered leaving the damned thing there for its impudence, but it cost me too much to leave it there regardless of how irritated I was with it.

Once I arrived in Omaha, I had to stand in a short line of people that were waiting for the shuttle bus to the rental car lot. There were two men standing behind me and talking to each other, and one of them decided to strike up a short conversation with me.
“So that’s tools I assume?” he asked me, pointing with his chin at my toolbox.

“Sure! That’s how I earn my paycheck!” I told him with a smile.
“Yeah?” he asked, clearly not at all amused with me or my smile. “What do you do?”

“I’m a field service engineer.” I replied to him.

“No kidding.” He responded with the driest, most sarcastic tone of voice I’ve ever heard, and then he immediately turned back to his friend, quite obviously dismissing me. Mind you, I am an expert at sarcasm and at being an asshole, but I was seriously impressed with the sheer contempt that this man managed to convey with so few words. I think I’d have to give him at least a 9 and perhaps even a 10 as a score.

At one time I was extremely comfortable with the system that I was here to provide training on, I’d even written the software that once automated an optional version of it. The thing is, I hadn’t laid hands on one of these in a decade or more, and so was way out of practice. Imagine my anxiety when I turned on the main breaker on the rear of the instrument but only half of the systems powered up. Not only was my customer standing there watching me trying to figure out where the problem was, but our regional sales manager was also there from Colorado to try and learn a bit about the system. The customer had offered to take us on a tour of their factory, and so I encouraged them all to go on about their tour while I grabbed a volt meter and tried to track down the source of the lack of power. They had been gone for about 5 minutes when I realized what I had done wrong, and I pretty much had to talk myself out of pounding my head against the wall in frustration at my own stupidity.

“Well, I’ve got good news and I’ve got bad news!” I told them all when they returned a few minutes later.

“Yeah?!” the customer asked me with a serious look of concern in his eyes.

“Welp, the good news is that there is absolutely nothing wrong with your system.” I said, pausing for the dramatic effect.
“And the bad news?” asked our regional sales manager.

“They sent a complete idiot to train you.” I replied, hanging my head in shame as I reached out and pressed the bright green indicator/switch that was clearly marked “Power On” on the front of the instrument. I’d noticed it when I was setting everything up, but I’d forgotten that it was an indicator and a switch, and so I’d failed to press it. So here I was to train a customer, in front of our regional sales manager, and I’d forgotten how to turn the darn thing on. Sigh . . .