grrlTravels

Killer plants and things with wires

I'm a plant killer. Notorious. Have the blackest thumb this side of the Mississippi. Now don't get me wrong, I like plants. In fact, I like to think I am in tune with all nature. I recycle. I hike with E. I show him acorns and leaves and worms and slugs and bark. I love plants. As long as they are outdoors. But bring them into my house, and the stink of death is on them almost immediately.

I do give it a try. I water them. Usually I overwater them, because I am overcompensating for what's coming next. The watering lasts for about 3 days. And then I grow bored. And then the plant begins its the walk down the road toward expiration. How long it takes the plant to expire depends on the plant. Some of them live an amazingly long time without any water. But they all die eventually.

Some times I even try harder. After my mother died I got a plant delivered from the florist. It was a nice plant and I greatly appreciated the thought behind it. It was a gift from someone who had never even met my mother but who wanted to share my sorrow anyway. I looked at the plant and thought, "I can't let this little plant, an expression of sympathy, die like all of the others. I must try harder. I must do better. I must help this little plant to live." So I watered it and cared for it and tried to give it "indirect sunlight". I picked off the dead leaves and patted it and talked to it a bit. I actually obsessed over it a little. And then the three days passed and I grew bored with it and a couple of weeks later it looked bad enough and I could throw it away.

I've made my peace with my lack of a green thumb. If you love me, you will send me plants that are hardy to Zone 7 which I can plant outside and therefore not kill. And if not, the plants that enter this house do so at their own risk. But it's the other black thumb I have which is really worrisome. Because I also have a black thumb when it comes to computers. And that, coupled with the fact that K. and I own a business based solely on computers, and therefore our livelihood depends on computers, is troubling.

In my own defense, I am not one of those people who are afraid of wires. We have lots of things with wires in our house and I am not afraid of most of them. I can program the VCR and the microwave and the alarm clock and sometimes I am even able to set the time on the clock in my car. K. has constructed the single most complicated tv/audio/entertainment system in the Western Hemisphere at our beach house, and I have adapted and learned to use it and when something goes terribly wrong can fix it most of the time.

I have a love/hate relationship with computers. I love email and blogging and ebay. I hate the fact that computers sometimes rule my life and consume K.'s time and are just so contrary. But I have hung out with the geeks long enough to know not to open random emails and click on links and run programs attached to them and install little bits of random software that sound good but really aren't. I can fix my computer when given explicit directions. I am married to someone who understands BIOS and concatenation and polymorphism and encapsulation and object inheritance, and is still a good guy.

But still, after all that, and after all of the love, the computers, they hate me. They are resounding in their disdain for me. And they give me so much trouble that I feel like I am already living with an angst-y fourteen year old. I lavish my affection on them, I play nice, and I turn them off regularly for a little rest, and still they give me trouble. My desktop at home, a relatively new box which should still be in the honeymoon phase, has developed a nasty habit of sounding an alarm like an English ambulance and abruptly shutting off, no matter what important business I am in the middle of. And this computer is just one in a long line that has chosen to show its lack of respect by developing complicated and dangerous maladies when most machines would still be considered dewy and cutting edge and shiny, sporting that new-computer smell. When the guys at work told me it was probably the fan, something uncomplicated, cheaply replaceable, and not requiring the removal of every single file, I just smiled my saintly smile and said that's good news. But I knew it wasn't.

I'm just waiting for word of the real problem. And then I can grow bored, stop watering it, and wait for the leaves to turn brown and fall off.

Posted by grrlTravels at December 26, 2004 7:29 PM