Clearing the air

Recently, a friend and I got to talking about a health-related issue that I was going through. I tried to make some dietary changes but ended up having dizzy spells and I suspected it was because of the dietary changes. (Unfortunately, the dizzy spells have happened many times before and usually when I tried to do this very thing. Sigh!) Somewhere along our conversation, though, I think she got confused about something, because she got something wrong about what I was saying. I don’t know where that came from or how that happened, but there it was.

After I realized she had made this mistake, I was trying to figure out how it had happened. I really couldn’t figure that out, but I realized, you know, this was just a misunderstanding. You know the saying, “What we have here is a failure to communicate”? I think that might have happened here. Maybe I was not communicating with her effectively.

In any event, I knew I had to clear the air with her and let her know that she had gotten something about our conversation wrong. She had misunderstood what I said, I think. Or maybe she later interpreted it wrong. Who knows! (Everybody’s perspective is different and there are SO MANY times people have taken things I have said the wrong way or taken mistakes I have made and twisted them around to make me look like I intentionally made that mistake or am an evil person. There was one time a friend and I had just one such misunderstanding and she really let me have it via text messaging. Later, after we had both cooled off, we both cleared the air, I was able to explain my side of the story and she explained her side of the story and we realized it was a misunderstanding and made up. We are still friends!)

So, yeah. I realized I had to clear the air with my friend. She IS my friend and I want to keep my friendship with her. And it was not a good idea to allow her to continue thinking that this wrong interpretation of our conversation was the RIGHT one. I had to let her know she’d made a mistake!

But….I didn’t want to. I knew if I said something, she might be embarrassed or feel stupid. She might take my pointing out the mistake the wrong way.

But it’s not like I was doing anything bad by pointing out the mistake! Like I said, it was a bad idea to allow her to continue thinking this particular thing when it was not the CORRECT particular thing! I had to let her know that was not true!

So, finally, at one point, I just did a mental about-face and told myself, “You have to SAY something!”

I had to let my friend know that there was a misunderstanding. I had to GENTLY let her know that what she thought I was saying was NOT what I was saying. That she had somehow misunderstood me. And that’s exactly what I said in my email to her this morning: “I think there has been a misunderstanding."

I did clear the air with her, but I didn’t do it in a way that was blatant or harsh. I gently let her know that what she thought I said was NOT what I had said. (And before we go into psychological debates, let me just say that I did not need to review my conversation with her to let her know that that was not what I had said – unlike that OTHER mistake that is going to be hanging over my head for the rest of my natural life!!!!!)

After I sent that email off, I actually felt better that I had cleared the air with my friend. I was relieved to have finally tackled this issue and get the truth out into the open. And if she really is my friend, she would understand. She would know that I was not trying to be condescending and I was not trying to make her look bad. We have never fought (though that COULD happen someday because that is the true test of friendship – if we forgive each other, we really ARE friends!) and we basically get along well. I love her, really. She’s an awesome friend and I hope to keep my friendship with her. And if the friendship is sound, this would not be a deal-breaker with her. (I have never known her to act all high and mighty about what she perceives or what she thinks, so I don’t think it will be.) But the bottom line is, I felt a huge weight lift off of me after I sent that email. A problem had come up between us and I finally took action with it. I was really nervous about doing so, but I couldn’t just let that SIT THERE! I had to clear the air with her, and I did.

And you know what? Getting THAT particular thing resolved and taken care of helped me to feel a little bit better about being able to tackle OTHER sticky issues with my friend, should any of that stuff come up.

Five days without Internet

Last weekend, I spent some time trying to finish up a project I’d been working on during the week. I had another on my plate waiting for me to get around to it, but with my very limited time on the computer during this summer, and a hundred other things requiring my attention, completing this one was slow going. I figured I would finish it over the weekend, when my husband would be at home to watch the kids, and then I could upload it and, on Monday get to work on the next one.

That was the plan, anyway!

The good news, I did finish this project (formatting a manuscript for Createspace). The bad news? There was NO Internet! I got online to try to upload it but there was no connection.

Turned out we had no cable, either. Jesse was so upset because our cable was shut off while he was watching SpongeBob and he cried when he missed out on the rest of the show.

What happened was that my husband thought he had paid the cable bill (we have a cable/Internet/phone bundle), but it had been our electric bill he had actually paid. And the funds to pay our Very Expensive cable bill were NOT available. So the cable company shut off our Internet, phone and cable. Without any warning, either! They didn’t even send a reminder. Sheesh!

To be honest, given a choice between having electricity and having cable, I was glad we had electricity! Still, I had things to do that required an Internet connection. For one thing, I have been in the process of editing/revising/updating a manuscript I had to get back to my publisher. For another thing, I had to upload this other book! I have another one waiting (actually, two more) and that one was time-sensitive. So I was pretty darn nervous each day I could not do those things.

Of course, I worried that my email inbox would overflow. This is where my smartphone came in handy. I contacted my publisher through my smartphone to let her know what was up, and I also got some other work done for other books. I managed my email account in the best way I could, but could not get done everything I needed to do to keep it from filling up. But, that’s okay! No biggie! I realize I could’ve gone to the library to use Internet there to handle email, but I’m too paranoid to use library computers for email.

I was also unable to post anything at my picture blog, for some reason, so I could not share the picture of the moon that I took on the night it was orange on account of the fires in California. Again, no biggie. Sometimes I can post on the blogs and sometimes not!

Jennifer, however, had a harder time dealing with no Internet. Surprisingly, she winged not having cable. (The kid has had to live without cable before!) But no Internet was another thing. She and a friend have been emailing each other new passages they write in a fan fiction story they’ve got going on, so no Internet meant no more writing the story! She also creates short story booklets on another site, and when she was inspired to write a new story, she was upset she could not upload it. (I told her to just write her story then she could upload it when we had Internet again.) She also missed out on using tumblr and Pinterest.

Jesse was also not happy he could not use Internet. He likes to play games. Still, the games on my smartphone were enough to satisfy his gaming fix.

I also managed to use Netflix on my smartphone, as well as Pinterest.

So, basically, we DID survive not having Internet, but it was hard. (For those five days, I was practically biting my nails off thinking Mustsendbook.Mustsendbook.Mustsendbook.)

Our Internet was finally turned back on today. (They turned on our cable first. Jesse was happy he got to watch Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles again.) I finally got to send my book back to my publisher. (Yay!) Getting THAT done lifted a HUGE weight off of my shoulders, believe me! And Jennifer was happy she got to do her Internet stuff again today. I am happy I got to do Internet stuff again, too. My email inbox still needs some attention, but I hope I can weed through it over the weekend. (That’s when I get caught up on email!)

This has definitely made us take a closer look at just how we spend our time on the Internet, what we can do when we don’t have it, and, ultimately, WHY it is important to us. What can we do on the Internet that we can’t do on a smartphone or in some other way? Indeed, the Internet does play an important role in our lives, but it’s not the end of the world if we have to do without it for a short time. There are just some things we need a computer with working Internet for that a smartphone will not be able to do for us. (I will say that it is insanely annoying typing on small keys and squinting to read the tiny screen on my smartphone, so blogging on my smartphone is definitely OUT!) Given there are flash drives, there are other solutions if we lose Internet. But it’s still a nice thing to have.

Pick-up confusion

When I posted about a “bus confusion” problem I was having in picking up Jesse at his bus stop and the little girl I’m babysitting, a friend of mine offered to help out by picking up the little girl and bringing her to the bus stop since her kids get out of that school at the same time. That has been working out pretty well. It has definitely meant less stress and anxiety in trying to be in two places at the same time. My friend is definitely awesome for offering to help out.

And while it has caused less stress, it seemed to have caused a bit of confusion.

My friend doesn’t have a cell phone for me to text her at, so we’ve been using Facebook to get in touch with each other. (And, yes, we both have email, but for some reason, we use Facebook instead of email!) We normally keep tabs on who needs to be where before all the kids are out of school. And, also, I explained to her what days are not a problem for me to pick them both up, since the times they get out on those days are different. But as it is with every busy mom, messages tend to get lost in the clouds somewhere.

That’s what happened today. Today, Wednesday, is one day I am able to pick the little girl up, because Jesse gets out of school before she does. So Wednesdays are no problem.

And so there I was at the school parking lot, once again stuck amid ALL of those cars, people and buses, WAITING for a chance to get closer so the little girl could see me. now, sometimes she’ll walk along the line of cars (rolls eyes) to find me, but she didn’t so that today, and I was curious about that.

Then I realized, uh-oh! What if my friend picked her up and they were ... gone? At the bus stop, wondering where I was??

But I had to move up closer to find out for sure. Sometimes my friend is busy talking with teachers or people and she doesn’t leave right away. So MAYBE there was a chance she was still here – along with the little girl.

Well, I FINALLY made it up closer to the front of the school (20 minutes after release! GAH!!) and there she was. Phew! What a relief! But I saw my friend’s daughters, too ... and not my friend. I wondered what was keeping her, but didn't dwell on it too much. So the little girl climbed into my car and we all waved/said goodbye as I drove off.

Then when we got to my house and Jesse and the little girl were settled in, I walked into the kitchen to make myself some lunch. While the food was in the microwave, a thought struck me: What if my friend HAD been at the school, and I just hadn’t seen her? Hm, that was something I had to take care of. So I walked back to the little girl and asked her about it. She nodded and said that, yes, my friend had been there and was busy talking with a teacher.

And I was like “oh” then walked back into the kitchen, took my lunch out of the microwave and calmly started to eat it – when a thought struck me and I almost choked on that first bite! Did I SERIOUSLY just drive off with a child my friend was PLANNING on driving to the bus stop WITHOUT letting her know I’d been there?? GAH!!

I ran back to the little girl and asked her if my friend KNEW she was leaving with me. She said she wasn’t sure but also said that I might show up to pick her up.

Well, yeah, I DID. But my friend didn’t know that! Oh my God! Did I just leave my friend in a state of panic, turning around and wondering why a child was missing??? Oh my God!

I grabbed my phone and pushed the button for Facebook to load. While I was waiting, I wanted to bang my hand against my head and yell at myself, “Idiot! Idiot! Idiot!”

Believe me, when you’re a parent, then even when you have a child who is not yours in your care, those parenting instincts take over! You watch that child like a hawk, just like you’d watch your own. You’d protect that child, make sure that child is safe and that everything is fine. And I’d just driven right off with ONE child under someone else’s supervision without so much as a fare thee well! Ugh! Epic fail!

Well, I got on Facebook, then messaged my friend an apology, explaining what had happened and how I hadn’t thought about finding her and letting her know the little girl was with me now. “I am soooo sorry,” I typed. “Please don’t hate me.”

Message sent, I tried to calm myself down, but it wasn’t easy. I finished my lunch, though I couldn’t enjoy it as much, then paced around the house while I waited to hear back from her.

And, finally, I did. My friend said everything was okay and that her daughters had told her I picked the little girl up. And she wasn’t mad.

Oh, phew! I was soooo relieved. But next time, I need to be a little more careful about that. I am glad my friend recognized I’d just committed a little faux pas and was so understanding and forgiving about it. The important thing is, no harm was done and all children were safe.  

Hacker alert

When I checked my email this morning, at my writing email account, there was an email there from a friend, who is also a writer. The subject line reading "urgent help needed" had me open it at once. As I read the email, I started to feel confusion then alarm then suspicion and concern.

The email said that my friend was traveling out of her country and was robbed. Her phone and all of her money was stolen. All she had left was the clothes on her back and her passport. And now she was using a laptop provided by a kindly Chinese gentleman to email everyone asking for help. That help came in the form of asking for $2000 to be sent through Western Union so she could fly home and be with her children.

I became suspicious of the email after I noticed that the English was not very good. (My friend is, after all, a PROFESSIONAL writer, with many books under her belt, and an editor! Surely she would be able to put together a sentence in decent English.)

My second reason for suspicion was when I saw the location for the money to be sent to: Nigeria. Right away, "Nigerian scam" went through my head. (Poor Nigeria, for being stigmatized as the homeland of so many scams.)

So instead of replying to the email asking "is this true?" I sent my friend an email to her OTHER email address, asking her if this was indeed what happened to her. (I was kicking myself for not having her phone number, but I might have it written down around here somewhere.) I was worried because she might've been hurt and she could be left stranded somewhere with nothing. I was also concerned that, if this was indeed an email from a hacker, then that meant her Gmail account had been hacked.

Thankfully, my friend responded to my email right away. She was fine, she told me. And, no, that email did NOT come from her. And, on top of this, she was not able to log into her Gmail account. Later, she told me that she contacted Gmail about this, as well as the FBI.

I was so enormously relieved that my friend was okay. I was also relieved to hear that other people on her Gmail contacts list contacted her FIRST before doing anything. They, too, noticed the bad English and also noted that, because she is a writer, it just didn't seem like the kind of email she herself would write.

Nevertheless, she made it an effort to resolve this matter and get control over her email account again. I hope she does. I also pray she hasn't lost anything.

Still, I was worried. All this time, I have assumed that Gmail was top notch in preventing accounts from being hacked. But I guess there isn't anything on the World Wide Web a hacker can't get into, if they try hard enough.

With this in mind, I strengthened my security settings on my Gmail account and changed my password. I'd had that password for over a year and never had anyone hack into my account. Still, you can never be too careful. Don't get comfortable or favorite a password. It's important to get those passwords changed!

I have not received an update from my friend yet on whether or not she was able to finally access her Gmail account but I hope that she can. I hope I will hear from her soon about this. I can imagine she would be devastated, as I would be, if anything is lost. I started to wonder if there's some kind of "back-up" in place to "rescue" emails that hackers delete or encrypt.

This unfortunate situation my friend was in made me feel really uneasy. What if the hacker took my email address and managed to use it in some way? And send that very same email to everybody on my contacts list? What if he hacked into my account despite my best efforts to protect it??? (I was kinda afraid to log out of Gmail today!) If this happened, I didn't think I could bear it if anyone on my contacts list fell for that scam.

I debated sending out a mass email to EVERYBODY on my contact list saying something like "If you get an email from me saying I am out of the country, was robbed and need $2000 to fly home and be with my kids, just know it's not from me but a hacker." But I know there ARE people on my contact list who HATE getting mass emails. And a lot of them might worry that if a hacker gets into my account, he might get into THEIR account, too! What sort of virus got a piggyback ride on the email they just read??

I didn't want to alarm anyone. I didn't want to cause panic. So, instead, I texted a FEW people who are on that contact list. With that same message.

One of the people I texted was my sister-in-law. I was surprised when I got a response back very quickly, because I knew she was at work and probably busy. But when I opened the message, it was using "text language." She usually does not type with "textspeak." (Whatever it's called!!) I got confused and told her who I was and soon enough I realized that the person responding WAS NOT my sister-in-law! It was someone who kept asking things like "who are you?" "what's your name?" "you gonna tell me your name?"

At one point, I thought it was one of my sister-in-law's teenage sons playing a prank on her phone. That's something I am going to find out about.

He or she just kept sending me messages and I had no way to block the messages, either. (Maybe Virgin Mobile should look into making that an option on the phones???) I stopped responding and thought that would be the end of it. But the person kept texting me again and again and again. It was irritating!!

I did tell my husband about this. He read the messages and told me just keep ignoring it. It'll stop eventually.

But it didn't.

Finally, while I was busy working on an article, I had the phone nearby and it went off again. I was really busy, though -- just typing away -- and my husband grabbed the phone before I got to it. He read the message, responded to it then deleted EVERYTHING. I asked him what the message said and he said he didn't know. I asked him what HE said and he said he told whoever that was "wrong number." I have to wonder if that's true. I'm guessing he said something else, because whoever that clown was didn't bother me anymore. Thank goodness! (It's times like this I'm glad I have a husband! LOL)

Later, when I had the chance, I called my sister-in-law to ask her what was up. Had she been joking around with me? Was it one of her boys playing a prank? Had she changed her number? Or had her phone been stolen?

I considered all of these possibilities as the line just rang and rang. Nobody answered, so I sent her a message on Facebook. Hopefully, I will find out what happened!

So today there was a hacker scare and quite possibly my cell phone number getting into the hands of someone who has nothing better to do than taunt others. What a day!

MySpace -- the OTHER free Internet email account

Ever notice how some people have a preference on how to be contacted? Some prefer a specific email account, some prefer texting while others prefer being contacted by cell phone.

I know a lot of people who have a MySpace profile. And for some of these people, MySpace is their main way of contacting others the same they would via an email account! One of my sisters, for example, checks her MySpace messages more than her email account. It's gotten to where I would just opt to contact her via MySpace instead of her email account, especially if my message to her is time-sensitive. (The worst part is, I have to wait for a page to completely load before I can click on "Message." Unfortunately, her page takes a looooong time to load. Yesterday, for example, her page took so long to load, I was able to write up a one-page short story while I waited for it to load. And when I was done, it was STILL loading!! I may have a new ISP now but I'm still on dial-up, which is not much fun but WAAAAAY better and faster than AOL.)

I also have a friend who has an email account, but he can't give it out since it's business-related so he uses his MySpace account to send and receive emails.

Because of this, I have kept my MySpace account. There have been sooo many times I've been tempted to cancel it because of dealing with creeps on there (I'm NOT on MySpace to hook up with anyone or "find true love"), as well as dealing with all the SPAM that keeps being thrown my way. (Seriously, if I want a new cell phone carrier, work-from-home job or free ringtones, I'll look for that myself, thanks. Your spam for these products is JUST spam and automatically gets deleted.) Still, I keep it because it's practically my lifeline of staying in touch with friends and family.

However, I have changed the way I use my MySpace profile. My main one (author profile) is for writing and book-related stuff. I have created another one for family-only stuff. On THIS account, I talk about stuff going on, fill out the surveys (when and IF I have the free time for it!), share family pics and info and just keep everybody updated on stuff going on out here with us, since EVERYBODY lives so far away!

All the same, I think it's kinda funny that some people rely on their MySpace accounts to stay in touch with other people than they would their email accounts. As far as writing goes, I have A LOT of contacts on MySpace who respond to my messages there faster than they would through their email accounts. Emails can get lost, forgotten and misplaced. Still, I've had better luck in hearing back from them via MySpace messaging.

I don't know why some people prefer this method to communicate over an email account. In my friend's case, it's a no-brainer. Perhaps for some, they prefer it because email accounts can occasionally crash, get blocked or even refuse to work right. (I've had to deal with problems logging in to certain email accounts several times.) Also, there are vigorous spam filters which block certain emails from the accounts, even emails that have cleared in the past! (I have another friend who I've been emailing regularly for 3 years and, sometimes, his spam filter blocks some of my emails from getting through to his inbox.)

But, I guess, whatever works. With me, I accept being contacted any old way, email or MySpace -- even when my email accounts can be hard to log into.