Housebound

  

Cold as we’ve never known, the weather service says. Two thirds of the population will be affected. I think of my lovely niece in Georgia, who moved away from Ohio thirty years ago, to avoid winter. The high Wednesday will be zero. Thursday, no better. Come the weekend and next week, fifties. That pesky Global Warming!

I just chuckled, remembering this past weekend and telling Laura we would stop on the way home and top up our half empty tank, because the weather would be turning cold. That depression era precaution I learned from my parents. It’s still taught, I’m sure, but under a different brand than “better safe than sorry.”

The loom has been “topped up” with a new warp, and the next batch of towels is “cayenne”.  The last thread on the shelf is “pumpkin”, then I will begin again.  The last warp of 120 turns yielded 82 towels, so I went for the max this time, 150 turns. I think I’ll get 120 towels, minimum. Perhaps 125. I think that should quench my Tibetan flag pole odyssey.  Especially since I know what I will do next, come spring.

Will I be weaving tonight, Laura wanted to know, and I said to go ahead with whatever she wants to do in there. I went to look, the incessant clicking had me curious. She has reduced her collection of jeans to shorts (short shorts, I’m sure), and now is reducing the scraps to six inch squares and then a quilt. “Aren’t you lucky to have a quilter in the family?”, I asked, and she grinned, broadly.

I took to heart my weekend warning of the potential of apps to abuse. I read even more than the cursory bit I began with.  There is nothing innocuous to be found. 

When Emily and Hamilton arrived seven years ago, they were as far into porn as they could be without a credit card. They were 13 and 16, leading completely unsupervised lives. Any self-respecting parent would have been on top of that like, well, a parent. Jan and I rolled out the parental controls, and even when he left here at 18, Ham’s computer shut down at nine in the evening.

What I’m heading toward, is, if any current parents are reading this, please know there is nothing innocuous about SnapChat or WhatsApp or any other thing on your child’s smart phone. I used to be in control, when the phone lived in my room from six in the evening to six in the morning. But this past year took the stuffing out of me in more ways than one.

I spent the last six months in a hospital or skilled nursing facility, and gave Laura total access to her phone, to keep in touch. And as I said, she’s a good person, but currently swept up by bad decisions. I told her tonight of my flip phone decision which will happen this weekend. She asked at once if I still would permit her mother to buy the smart phone. My instant decision was No.

Cards tomorrow! Then I expect to be housebound until the snow begins melting, come this weekend.