The Aggressive Adoration of Maybelline

Yesterday morning was very frustrating. The entire digital world seemed to be against me.

Remember how I recently tried to make my annual donations to the ACLU and Planned Parenthood, and I couldn't get the transactions to go through from London? I thought the problem might be my British ISP, so I wanted to try again from here within the states. But no -- I couldn't donate from here either, and when I called their donation lines even they couldn't make it happen. Apparently their systems won't accept the British billing address on my credit cards. It's the craziest thing, considering I've had no problem at all in years past and the online donation form allows me to choose a foreign country as my address. I suppose I could send them a check, but geez, how archaic!

They need to get that fixed. I guarantee you many people are not going to work as hard as I have trying to get those donations processed.

I did succeed in solving another niggling problem -- the spontaneous reactivation of my long-dormant Match.com account. About a year ago I started getting e-mails from Match wanting me to meet available guys in and around New York, where I used to live. I was like, "Ummm, thank you Match, but I'm married now." Apparently my ancient account somehow became active again (though my profile was not visible) and I couldn't delete it from England, because the UK Match site is different from the American Match site. Argh! So yesterday I successfully logged in and cancelled my account, and supposedly I'll no longer receive notifications and my profile remains unavailable to others. (I imagine it's still out there, though, lurking on some server. Nothing ever dies on the Internet.)

Sorry. I know that's all incredibly boring. Welcome to my morning.

 

Here's a little bit of joyfulness -- family dog Maybelline, welcoming me to Florida. (Getting this video from Dave's phone to my YouTube account took another feat of digital gymnastics, but I'll spare you the details.) Maybelline is much slimmer than she used to be -- my stepmother has her on a lighter diet. That's a good thing when she barrels into me like William "The Refrigerator" Perry.

And here's Manny, one of the chihuahuas, looking at me menacingly as usual.

Yesterday afternoon was beautiful -- sunny and pleasant -- so I took a long walk around the neighborhood. At first I didn't take my camera, because sometimes I just get sick of lugging it around. But as I always say, if I don't have my camera, that's when I'll see three manatees doing a waltz in Dolly Parton wigs -- and sure enough, although I didn't see that, I saw a lot of other things I wanted to photograph. So I came home and collected it and walked a bit more. Walking is an excellent antidote to afternoon jet-lag fatigue.

Finally, because I had so many requests for a close-up of my stepmother's needlework:

She assures me that it is, in fact, cross-stitch. I know nothing about these yarny sorts of hobbies but hopefully this will assuage everyone's curiosity!