Roomba Revisited

~ riggledo ~ 7 Comments

You’ll recall that about a month ago, I bought a Roomba and I have been thrilled with that purchase every day since!  The docking station where it charges is right by my front door, partly because that was the only free outlet I could find that wasnt’ blocked by furniture and partly because I want it there so I can (and will remember to) hit the button and start it up as I leave for work every morning.  This means, of course, that it’s also the first thing I see when I come home at night.  During these short Standard Time days, it is already dark by the time I get home from work and I do not leave any lights on while I’m out, so when I open the door, the bright green glow of the charging/charged light glows up at me.  On Monday, I came home, opened the door and looked down into darkness.

“Uh oh,” I said to Mischa.  “Where’s Roomba?”  You’ll be glad to know, I was not expecting, nor did I receive an answer.  I went searching for Roomba, looking under chairs, peeking into the kitchen.  My bedroom door is kept closed so I knew she wouldn’t be in there.  And then I found her, peeking out from under the bathroom vanity, just sitting there.  (Don’t ask me why Roomba is a she…  She just is.)

I have double-sided bathroom rugs.  My family learned a long time ago, that cats seem to be attracted to the rubber non-skid surfaces of bathroom rugs for the purposes of peeing.  We learned this not from my problem child who is notorious for peeing in inappropriate places, but from my mother’s perfect little angel of a cat who never did anything wrong, ever, except for repeatedly peeing on rubberized bathroom rugs.  Once my mother bought the first double-sided rug, the peeing stopped.  Naturally, when I was out on my own, with my problem chid who is notorious for peeing in inappropriate places to think about, I went in search of double-sided rugs for my own bathroom.

The thing is, when you mix a robot vacuum cleaner with rugs that don’t hold their position and you throw in a marble tile floor to boot, you get a recipe for trouble.  I never know what I’m going to find when I come into my bathroom in the evenings.  Some days Roomba goes right over those rugs like it’s nothing, other days, Roomba pushes those rugs, inevitably folding them over.  I happened to be in the bathroom one Saturday morning while Roomba was doing her thing and I watched as she went over the first rug and under the vanity, but when she came back around and started making her way for the door again, she pushed the rug in front of her, until it folded over and became an obstacle that Roomba’s sensors are programmed to avoid.  Suddenly, Roomba was stuck in a four-foot square room frantically crossing between wall, bath tub, toilet, trash can and folded rug with nowhere to go, until finally I rescued her and sent her on her way.

When I came home on Monday, I found a similar scene with the rug folded over on itself and Roomba hiding under the vanity, her batteries completely drained of power.  I had to coax her back to her charging station to prepare for the next day.

I’ve had my Roomba for more than a month now.  I’m just as thrilled today as I was on the first day with this product and the developments it has brought into my life.  I never thought I’d have consistently clean floors again until I moved out of my current home.  This stuck-on-the-rug show is a rare occurence and nothing to diminish my satisfaction with the product.

So you can imagine, when I came home again on Tuesday, looked down into the black void that should have been my Roomba, peacefully sleeping and awaiting her marching orders.

“Again?” I said to Mischa, still not expecting an answer.  I went searching again.  checked under furniture, peaked through the kitchen, glanced toward the bathr–  I started laughing.

The bathroom door was closed, but I don’t close the bathroom door unless there’s someone else in my house.  I walked to the door and pushed it open slowly.  Sure enough, Roomba was sitting in the middle of the floor, completely drained of power, with one rug pushed up into a pile by the bath tub, another rug shoved into a corner behind the toilet and my trash can, the trash can which normally stands in the way of Roomba getting behind the door, in the opposite corner of the room.  I told you Roomba was assertive!

Roomba had trapped herself inside the bathroom and run around in circles (well, circles, random straight lines, whatever she does) until she ran completely out of juice and gave up.

I’ll pick those rugs up as soon as I can, but as I said, I have marble floors and the average temperature in my house this time of year, particularly in the mornings is 60 degrees.  Those rugs stay down as long as the temperature does.

I wonder where I’ll find my Roomba tonight…

Wednesday Bonus: Friendship

~ riggledo ~ 8 Comments

In addition to the weekly fiction writing prompts on Write on Edge, there is also a weekly non-fiction or memoir writing prompt called “Remembe(red)”  (Write on Edge used to be known by a different name…”The Red Dress Club” I think it was.)

This weeks Remembe(red) prompt as about friendship.  Four hundred words exploring a friendship, past or present.

Enjoy:

 

When you walked into my life, I never thought we’d become what we have.  Me with my judgmental, depressed, unforgiving attitude.  You with your insightful wisdom and huge, open heart.  We were never meant to be friends.  How could it even work, two souls, so different from each other?

You saw things in me that I didn’t even know were there.  You coaxed them out of me, gently, cautiously.  You had all the time in the world.  You helped me to see things clearly.  Helped me to open my own heart – more importantly, my own mind – to the world around me and the possibilities that surrounded me.  You helped me to become a better person.  And the best part is you never even tried.  You did all this simply by being there, simply by loving me for whom and what I was…even when I couldn’t love myself.

I don’t know if you even realize how much you affected my life…how much you affected me.  In so many ways, I would not be the man I am now, if it hadn’t been for you.

You moved away and it broke my heart.  The emptiness I felt at your absence was too much for me to bear and when you came back the world was right again.  So naturally, I moved away and when I did, I knew I’d never see you again and it broke my heart all over again.  I knew it was something I had to do, though, for me.  I knew I’d never have you all to myself and I couldn’t hold myself back hoping that would change.

Fate brought us together again and for one beautiful day, each year it was like we had never been separated.  I cherished those days; counted the minutes until we would be together again.  Until Fate intervened again, putting an end to those days and now I don’t know if I’ll ever see you again.

I think of you often, and not just because of Facebook or Words with Friends.  I know you think of me often, too.  You are my dearest friend and I cherish our relationship, knowing that no matter what, no matter when I see you again, it will be as if no time has passed at all.  Thank you for that.

Thirty-One in Thirty-One

~ riggledo ~ 4 Comments

Check this out:

Pretty cool right?  I don’t know if I’ve ever accomplished that before.  Possibly a millenia ago when I first started blogging on my old and long forgotten, top-secret blog.  I think that’s pretty neet though.

I said I was going to make an effort to write more and clearly I did.  Some of it was fluff, but hey, I can’t imagine you want to read deep and insightful every day any more than I want to write deep and insightful every day.  And yes, I’m giving myself credit for being deep and insightful even if I’m not really.  LET ME HAVE THIS!!!  🙂

It’s been a pretty fascinating experience too.  I’ve actually seen my blog readership grow this month.  Crap! I swore I wasn’t going to do this!  I find it kind of annoying when people write about how many people read their blogs but in this case it seems kind of important.  See, I used to want to be a big famous blogger.  I wanted to have thousands upon thousands of readers and I wanted to make money off my blog and I wanted to be able to quit my job and live off the revenue.  (Oh, who’m I kidding?  I still want that, but it’s not going to happen.)  I realized that I don’t have the right stuff for that.  I don’t have an interesting enough life, nor the ability to be all cute and quippy about my life, nor an endless influx of blogging material to draw from.  I also don’t have the business acumen or the social skills to promote myself enough to make it work.  (That’s something that may become a problem for me, which I’ll be discussing further in the near future.)  And don’t even get me started on my lack of technical skills when it comes to web development and making all the different features and applications and websites at my disposal play nicely together.

So I know I’m not going to be a big, rich and famous super-blogger and I’m okay with that.  But here’s what I am.  I am a writer.  I write about my feelings.  I write about my experiences (however uninteresting or few-and-far-between they may be.)  And I write about my views.  Nobody asked me.  And nobody has to read my opinions, but that’s why this is my space and not someone elses.  And that’s all well and good, except, I AM a writer and as a writer, I want people to read my words.  So I like to watch my statistics and see the numbers growing.

Last month, I assume due in part to my increased activity, I went from four blog subscribers (2 by e-mail – and both the same person – and 2 on WordPress.com), to 29.  (Don’t be fooled by the 372 listed at the top of this page.  WordPress is being generous and including my twitter followers in that number.  I guarantee you, most of them are not coming to my blog.  Hell, half of them aren’t even people.)  In addition to the subscribers, I seem to be getting a lot of people randomly coming across my blog through search terms, or because they’ve saved my URL as a favorite instead of using a reader or e-mail subscription.  The truth is, the most hits I’ve gotten in a single day is about 45 and that’s rare, but my numbers have still climbed considerably from where they were a year ago (or even a month ago.)

Thanks to my participation in the Write on Edge community, I’ve gained some additional periodic commenters; it’s no longer limited to only Terri.  It’s awesome to see more participation on this page.  I’ve also been more actively participating on other people’s blogs leaving comments more regularly…  That may have helped with bringing people here too…  Maybe.

Anyway, it’s really been a lot of fun, this month of writing.  It’s been surprisingly invigorating.  I remember, now, that writing is something I need to do.  It’s why I’m on this earth, I think.  (It may not be the only reason, but it’s certainly a reason I can’t ignore.)

So I’m grateful to all of you who read this.  I’m thrilled that you’ve stumbled across these pages and that so many have continued to come back.  I hope you’ll tell your friends…  No really.  Tell your friends.  That’ll be relevant later when I get around to that problematic, self-promotion thing.

Your Gay Friend Doesn’t Speak For Me

~ riggledo ~ 10 Comments

A few months ago, a friend of mine, whom I know not to be racist or homophobic or otherwise filled with hate posted a comment on Facebook to which I took offense:

The cars with the reindeer decorations are gay. I have seen 2 today

I replied by saying that I didn’t realize cars could be gay, to which she said this one was.  I said, “Dislike” since Facebook hasn’t been kind enough to provide an “I don’t approve of this” button – yet.

A friend of her’s, someone she knows face to face (I’ve only known her through on-line interactions) responded and said that there’s nothing wrong with saying “gay”.  I agree, and I said so before adding, “it’s not OK to use ‘gay’ as a derogatory statement.”  He provided a nasty, spiteful comment that doesn’t bear repeating and that really demonstrated to me that there’s still a long way to go, even in the realm of gay’s bashing each other.  And I opted to see my way out of that conversation.  The last thing I saw before “hiding” that “story” from my timeline was a statement from my friend who said that she meant no harm by it, that she would never want to hurt me and that there was no “cause for ‘ugliness'” as a result of her comment.  She said that her gay friends have “given me permission” to make gay jokes.

The other day, after a much too long absence from her blog, she talked about “Me and my bestest queer* are going to…”  The asterisk pointed to a footnote that read, “*He allows me to call him the queer so it’s fine.”  One has to question:  Why was it necessary to point out his permission, if “it’s fine.”  Clearly my friend is aware of the potential for offense at the comment.

First, let me say that I am not calling this friend out, personally.  This is a commentary on society, which uses these two relatively recent events as examples of the issue I’m discussiong.  I’ve made a point of not naming her and I’m pretty sure she’ll be the only one who knows who I’m talking about, so let me also say that she is the only one who could out herself if she chooses to comment on this post in a way that will make it clear that she’s the one I mean…

Second, let me say that I know my friend is not a homophobe and that she does not personally harbor any ill will or negative feelings about me, or the gay community as a whole.  On the contrary, she loves us.

Third, let me say that I don’t, personally, take particular offense at the use of the word “queer”.  Webster’s dictionary defines the word queer as:  Different from the normal or expected : strange.  So, maybe I should take offense at the word, but I don’t.  Just like I don’t take offense at the word gay.  Personally, I am gay, and that’s not a bad thing.  I am not queer, because there’s nothing different or strange about me.  However, when those words are used to describe anything or anyone with a derogatory connotation involved, then those words are offensive to me.  And they ought to be offensive to you, too!

So here’s the thing.  In discussing this friend of mine and her “bestest queer” (whom she revealed to me, in a separate communication, that she refers to as “the queer”) she can call him whatever she wants in private conversation between the two of them.  If he has no problem with her referring to him as “the queer”, than more power to them.  If he doesn’t feel that saying something which she clearly doesn’t like “is gay” is a derogatory use of the word, and she wants to say it to him; more power to them.  But just because the two of them don’t think there’s anything wrong with it, doesn’t mean the whole world agrees with them.  It doesn’t even mean most of the world agrees with them.  And I’ve got news for the two of them:  It doesn’t even mean that the majority of that particular community agrees with them.

So, okay.  The two of them are having a private conversation and she wants to tell her friend that cars with reindeer decorations on them are gay, and he thinks it’s funny, but they happen to be having this conversation in the middle of a restaurant and other people hear them.  That is not a private conversation and instead of making a funny joke, they’ve just utilized hate speech.  To the people in that restaurant, they’re not two people having a joke, they’re a couple of homophobes (or at the very least, very insensitive people), using a perfectly valid word that describes a perfectly valid portion of our society and comparing them to something that is unwanted and negative.  You can make the argument that “it’s a private conversation between the two of them” if you want, but it’s not.  It’s just not.  (Certainly Facebook isn’t.)    And just like that (*snaps fingers*) It’s not “okay, because my gay friend gave me his permission.”  Your gay friend doesn’t speak for me.

But let’s take this just a little bit further.  Let’s say my friend and her “bestest queer” agree that it’s not okay to use this language in public, but they are sitting around in the “bestest queer’s” living room using gay slurs (in a “humorous way”) and making jokes in which the term gay is used in a derogatory manner and they both think it’s funny and they’re completely at ease with it.  How long is it going to be before one of them slips in public and makes one of those jokes where other people can hear (or read) them?  When you allow yourself to think of something as being okay in private, before long you start thinking it’s okay in public, too.  Before long you lose your perspective and you stop censoring yourself when it’s appropriate to do so.

Even worse!  Suppose my friend and her “bestest queer” think I’m crazy and there’s just no way they would slip up in public and so it’s okay to make there jokes in private, just between the two of them.  This friend of mine has a young son; a toddler.  If she and her “bestest queer” sit around her house behaving this way, not only are they losing their own perspective of what’s appropriate, but they’re setting the example for her son that it’s the proper way to behave, or even worse teaching him that there really is something wrong with being gay, teaching him to judge, hate or otherwise criticize homosexuality, and if he happens to be gay, there’s a good chance that he could feel shame and fear of telling his parents because it’s been portrayed as something to be made fun of.

Outsiders do not get “inside jokes”.  The people around you can not read your mind.  The only thing people can go by, in understanding your beliefs and developing a sense of who you are, is your words.  It is necessary, therefore, that you use a sense of good judgement in determining how you use certain terms in modern society.

A person can make the argument until he is blue in the face that he doesn’t mean any harm with the use of certain words, but the bottom line is, when you use a term, like say, “gay”, in a context in which that term does not fit by definition, like say, “cars with reindeer decorations are gay”, one can only go by what they hear (or read).  Webster’s dictionary defines “gay” as:  1. Merry.  2. Bright and lively, especially in color.  3.  Inclined toward social pleasures.  4.  Homosexual.  — n. A homosexual.  I don’t think cars are capable of either emotion or sexual identity/behavior, therefore, I can only assume the statement is a derogatory statement which should not be made.

The bottom line is this:  No matter what is in your heart, when you make a statement that has a negative context and you use a term that describes a particular section of society (particularly one that is already persecuted) to convey that negative context, you are, in fact making a statement of hate.

And it should. not. be. done.