Financial people aren't smarter than you.

Fidelity must be dumb or something. Monday we trotted our little dubloon certificates for shares in Smelly Jack’s Treasure Chest and Loan into Washington so we could sign ‘em over to Fidelity who’d hold the shares in “street name.” You figure if a brokerage would have a pyramid tip radiating light beams as its logo, then it must know what it’s doing. So I was quite surprised when I logged on later and discovered that though we’d deposited 130 dubloons, they’d credited us with 230.

Well, I think, that’s so much more generous than a toaster that they probably didn’t intend that as a lovely welcome gift. Of course I give the briefest whiff of a notion to super-quickly putting in a sell-all-dubloons order online, but I imagine that their accounting apartment could be a little sharper than the data entry people. So I call them instead. Wham, bam, thank you ma’am, I’m back to 130 dubloons.

Fine then. Until today when I get a zippy yellow and red, extremely urgent, DHL Express envelope containing our original 30 dubloon certificate attached to a note requesting that Jeff sign away his rights to those 30 dubloons to me. But he already signed such a form. In D.C. On Monday. I was even wearing good shoes, so I remember. Several phone calls later, Fidelity’s sending me a special, certified, overnight envelope so I can return the certificate to them since they had the right paperwork after all. Good. I would hate to have to put my shoes back on to get this straightened out. But now I’m pretty sure they’re dumb.

I must be dumb or something too. I tried to sell 120 dubloons yesterday, but couldn’t quite squeak it in before closing bell, 4 pm EST. So I tried today, this time as a “limit order” which means I’d only sell my shares in Smelly Jack IF the per dubloon price matches yesterday’s closing price. That didn’t happen. Smelly Jack evidently sprung a bit of a leak today, and this naturally shows up on my Fidelity account page in technicolor, most unreassuring red. So what do I do tomorrow? Wait until Smelly Jack’s mast is listing a bit more, then unload it before my account page glows and even glarier shade of red? Chuckle, and say, nonchalantly what’re a few dubloons? I’m all about diversifying and sell at what tomorrow’s market will bear? I fear that I lack the cool, incisive demeanor I need for this business. But it’s the only business I’ve got at the moment, so a decision must be reached. And will be.

Monster in the Basement

There’s a device living in my basement which has a habit of baffling me every Fall. I guess the technical term for it is “manifold.” It is a plumbing marvel--a contorted tangle of copper tubing and valves, punctuated by several pumps and even more outlets. Its intended function is to carry water to and from the water heater, to and from the multitude of hose loops that run under the floor upstairs, and now, part of downstairs too. It was installed by Yank the plumber, but an imaginative neophyte might suppose we’d commissioned Rube Goldberg, or maybe Captain Nemo.

Here is what I do every Fall. Just as I’ve reached the end of my ability to cheerfully get up in the morning while setting cold feet on the even colder floor, and fishing around for a bathrobe, I decide it won’t hurt to fire up the furnace...just a crack. But it doesn’t work. It takes a while to figure this out, because radiant heat is notoriously slow to take decisive and noticeable action, just as it is slow to ease off once you’ve turned your entire upstairs into a too-toasty sauna. So I pad around the floor for a couple days, feeling for the tell-tale warm patches. No dice. Then I enter the netherworld of the house, and stare at the manifold with its 18 feed valves and 18 return valves, and numerous who-knows-what valves spread haphazardly along the rest. Surely I’m bright enough to comprehend the thing, and surely, with enough staring, it will all begin to make sense. This morning I noticed one thing: the feed valves above the pumps were closed. More padding, more feeling, more staring at the copper hydra, hoping something else will occur to me. This afternoon I noticed something else: the return valves that let the water out of the loops and back to the heater were closed too. Yes. One needs open loops. I just checked--the thermometer which is supposed to tell you the temp of water entering the loops has crept from nothing to at least registering warmth. It must, for the system to be functioning correctly, eventually be exceeding the returned water thermometer’s reading by 15 degrees F. The water heater has begun to kick on and roar with greater frequency. I take this to mean it’s discovered that there is, in fact, water to heat as the system perhaps has finally begun to circulate. Yank the plumber is coming over Thursday. I will ask him every possible question I can think of and this time take notes. Probably even draw a detailed diagram. The basement beast really needs to learn who’s boss.

Speaking of clutter...

When I was in first grade I had a friend by the name of Eileen who liked, above all, to take the role of pedagog. I can’t recall all of the ways in which she attempted to instruct me though I do remember her awkward demonstration of ballet first and second position. Another standout moment involved her explicit instructions re how to fill out one of the schedule blanks found in the inside cover of a black&white marble composition book. I was to write (or draw,) in this order: star, check, yes, plus, ok. Seemed like a complicated sequence for a space meant to show a clock time, but Eileen seemed pretty sure of herself, so I didn’t argue.

This is what I thought of as I tried, again, to navigate the AppleWorks database program I’ve inherited from the elderly gentleman down the road. It contains membership data for the Anne Arundel Community Concert Association. I’m sure that every single data field in that program made perfect sense to him as he constructed it, but for me it’s like rummaging through someone else’s junk drawer of random objects to find a screwdriver. AppleWorks, sadly, is a lame duck. The data, in this format, cannot be transferred to the computer of anyone who uses a PC. I’ve a strong urge to retrofit the entire computer-geek records job using FileMaker. But I can’t. Because my iBook is too old to use a new version of FileMaker. I’m not doing any major overhaul on AppleWorks because it’s a dead language. It's entirely possible that I'm just too dumb to jump into someone else's game. But I could make it make sense to me with the right tools. Which I don't have. So for now, or until my G3 processor begins showing its age enough to really annoy me, I’ll be bumbling along, trying to sort through the buttons, old bolts, and other assorted flotsam, looking for a screwdriver.

Uff Da!

A vignette from my paternal ancestry, based on what I’ve learned from participating in the National Geographic Genographic project:

Bjarni the Viking oarsman, becomes lost in the Scottish heather after a night of heavy pillaging and stumbles into a humble hamlet where he meets up with Duffy the farmer.
Bjarni: Hvar er the öl?*
Duffy: Dornt ken whit yoo're sayin' but we've got a brammer pot ay stew in th' hut.

Duffy’s comely daughter Aithbhreac bounces out to feed the flock.
Duffy: Guid day, dochter, yoo've bin pinin' since th' bear ate 'at laddie ay yoors. whit abit thes fellaw?
Aithbhreac: (giving Bjarni the once over) Och aye, yoo're bonnie enaw, but yoo'd better pit doon 'at battle axe ur yoo'll scaur th' sheep.
Bjarni: Hvar er the kjöt?**
Duffy: Lookee thaur, th' druid is reit behin' th' cabre. an' he brooght mistletoe.
Aithbhreac: Stain haur please.
Bjarni: Hvar ert the vídeó leikur?***
(Druid gestures meaningfully over Bjarni and Aithbhreac)
Duffy: Gallus! welcome tae th' fowk, laddie wi' a funay hat!

And 20 or so Y-chromosome hand-offs down the road, or roundabout 1770, Thomas Gillespie sets off for the New World.

(*where’s the ale? **where’s the meat? ***where are the video games?)

It would be ok if I were dandelion fluff.

I know that when the thought of doing a Sudoku even crosses my mind lightly, that I must be feeling pretty unanchored. And it wouldn’t have crossed if there were a decent crossword puzzle in the house. Turning my attention to numerals shows a certain amount of desperation.

Limbo always gives me an unnerving, unsettled feeling. There is the whole gestalt of Jeff’s health issue of the last several years, lately with it’s repetitive pattern of feeling like we’re teetering on the brink of a possible answer only to have the Wizard say, “go away and come back tomorrow.” There is the equally annoying repetition which involves an envelope arriving in the mail, my address handwritten by me, with a small note inside stating that my submission does not meet someone’s present needs. That brings its own cyclical form of feeling adrift without a tether. It was lovely to have such a sense of purpose as I had while composing my first fiction, but now that I must write with the bubble popped it can be hard to feel purposeful. Then, when loss of purpose is compounded by lack of quality, focused writing time, I’m really scratching blindly in empty air for something nice and concrete on which to grab, just for a few minutes of feeling grounded.

Crossword puzzles may not be everyone’s opiate, but they seem to work for me. And are a heckuva lot healthier than opium. I guess. Even when your drug of choice is word games, you somehow are still very aware that there is a reality from which you’re deliberately escaping.

I think I’m ready for my life-altering, mystical, transcendental, ineffable experience please. Such things are rarely vended on request, I’m quite aware, but I can want one. And I can want a trip to the Scottish Isle of Iona. Neither Iona nor transcendence are terribly likely to happen this week, but they’re worth keeping on the wish list.