Saturday, November 25, 2006
What do you do about Christmas...
...when you are so drained you have trouble finding something left to give and can barely, only barely, act on your own behalf? I awoke with this question badgering my mind, this morning; and a few others.
What do you do in "The Season of Giving" when you are so depleted you are floundering in your attempts to give on any scale, let alone the grand scale required by your care recipient? What do you do if you are not Buddha, thus, every word out of your mouth directed at anyone, let alone your care recipient, every act of assistance, every thought of compassionate cooperation and mutual appreciation feels as though you are slicing and offering a bit of finger, here, a bit of cortex, there, bit of heart someplace else?
Give until you are nowhere to be found?
Or, sit back and receive? What if you know, from past experience, that everything you receive will fall woefully short of what you and your care recipient need and will, somehow, put you in a position where you have to give some more...and you have so little left that, if you have to respond with one more "Your Welcome" to one more "Thank You" hurled your way from someplace too distant for you to actually feel its effects, you will surely sizzle, to a crisp, the vestiges of a major organ in order to appear even dimly belit by the Season?
I guess you suck it up and hope that enlightenment finds you before you disappear, before the electric company rakes in its last decorative dollar, despite the fact that you haven't the wherewithal to meditate under the bodhi tree.
That's probably what I'll be doing, this year.
What do you do in "The Season of Giving" when you are so depleted you are floundering in your attempts to give on any scale, let alone the grand scale required by your care recipient? What do you do if you are not Buddha, thus, every word out of your mouth directed at anyone, let alone your care recipient, every act of assistance, every thought of compassionate cooperation and mutual appreciation feels as though you are slicing and offering a bit of finger, here, a bit of cortex, there, bit of heart someplace else?
Give until you are nowhere to be found?
Or, sit back and receive? What if you know, from past experience, that everything you receive will fall woefully short of what you and your care recipient need and will, somehow, put you in a position where you have to give some more...and you have so little left that, if you have to respond with one more "Your Welcome" to one more "Thank You" hurled your way from someplace too distant for you to actually feel its effects, you will surely sizzle, to a crisp, the vestiges of a major organ in order to appear even dimly belit by the Season?
I guess you suck it up and hope that enlightenment finds you before you disappear, before the electric company rakes in its last decorative dollar, despite the fact that you haven't the wherewithal to meditate under the bodhi tree.
That's probably what I'll be doing, this year.
Friday, November 24, 2006
No, we won't be hitting the stores, tomorrow...
...rather, today, I guess. If we were so inclined, though, Prescott would be the place to do it. The latest tally of Prescott's population advertises "90,000". I think this is fudged, including lots of people living outside the city in unincorporated areas and maybe even stealing a few residents who the post office considers part of one of the other two "cities" (as they optimistically call themselves) around here. At any rate, holiday shopping is never a swarm, as it is in other areas, not even on Black Friday. Too, many people still don't think there are enough material goods here among which to chose and migrate to Phoenix or Tucson for the heavy shopping days. It'll be a little more hectic than a "normal shopping day" but nothing like the holiday hullabaloo the world-class cities in this state will endure.
Chances are, it'll be a low key day for us. I'm going to try, again, to entice Mom into some moving, although I'm not going to berate myself if I fail. Maybe I'll do a little final before winter yard work. Most everything is done, but I imagine the eaves could use a good deleafing, since most of our trees are now bare, and, well, maybe I'll convince myself that tomorrow is the day to finally top off the pyracantha. I just hate wrestling with those damned spikes, especially when they're above me, rather than level with me. I can't tell you how many times I've had a falling cutting gouge my scalp or arms, even when I'm on a ladder that brings me eye to eye with the roof. Although she didn't used to, my mother gets nervous, now, when I do ladder work, inside or outside. I understand her concern. What would happen to us if I fell off a ladder? Although I am unreasonably certain that this will not happen as long as she's alive, that I will not, in fact, suffer any physically devastating circumstances throughout the rest of her life, she, of course, remains unconvinced. Thus, I try to keep work that appears to her to be dangerous infrequent and to a minimum. I haven't yet, though, found anyone to replace our Miracle Yard Man who was "called by the Lord" to preach in Winslow, and this is not a good season to find such people up here in the mountains. I enjoy doing this work, too (well, except for topping off the pyracantha, but this must be done before we get a snow that bends and freezes the branches to the driveway).
We've almost re-viewed our entire, measely collection of Christmas movies. We have one left, which we'll probably watch tomorrow. Mom is really enjoying herself with these movies. We animatedly discussed, yesterday, whether or not It's a Wonderful Life is a "real" Christmas movie.
I seem to have calmed down quite a bit since I got that Wouldn't it be funny if... post out of my system. I've got a couple more similar posts to disgorge. Maybe this weekend. I think I'm beginning to feel enough remove do them justice.
The pot roast, by the way, was the best I've had in my life. My mother was so pleased with it she suggested, several times, that I should "be sure to write down that recipe." The simmering liquid made a delectable sauce, whisked with a little roux, and the vegetables were perfect.
Ahhh, I'm yawning. Good sign.
Later.
Chances are, it'll be a low key day for us. I'm going to try, again, to entice Mom into some moving, although I'm not going to berate myself if I fail. Maybe I'll do a little final before winter yard work. Most everything is done, but I imagine the eaves could use a good deleafing, since most of our trees are now bare, and, well, maybe I'll convince myself that tomorrow is the day to finally top off the pyracantha. I just hate wrestling with those damned spikes, especially when they're above me, rather than level with me. I can't tell you how many times I've had a falling cutting gouge my scalp or arms, even when I'm on a ladder that brings me eye to eye with the roof. Although she didn't used to, my mother gets nervous, now, when I do ladder work, inside or outside. I understand her concern. What would happen to us if I fell off a ladder? Although I am unreasonably certain that this will not happen as long as she's alive, that I will not, in fact, suffer any physically devastating circumstances throughout the rest of her life, she, of course, remains unconvinced. Thus, I try to keep work that appears to her to be dangerous infrequent and to a minimum. I haven't yet, though, found anyone to replace our Miracle Yard Man who was "called by the Lord" to preach in Winslow, and this is not a good season to find such people up here in the mountains. I enjoy doing this work, too (well, except for topping off the pyracantha, but this must be done before we get a snow that bends and freezes the branches to the driveway).
We've almost re-viewed our entire, measely collection of Christmas movies. We have one left, which we'll probably watch tomorrow. Mom is really enjoying herself with these movies. We animatedly discussed, yesterday, whether or not It's a Wonderful Life is a "real" Christmas movie.
I seem to have calmed down quite a bit since I got that Wouldn't it be funny if... post out of my system. I've got a couple more similar posts to disgorge. Maybe this weekend. I think I'm beginning to feel enough remove do them justice.
The pot roast, by the way, was the best I've had in my life. My mother was so pleased with it she suggested, several times, that I should "be sure to write down that recipe." The simmering liquid made a delectable sauce, whisked with a little roux, and the vegetables were perfect.
Ahhh, I'm yawning. Good sign.
Later.
Thursday, November 23, 2006
This year's Thanksgiving Dinner preparation...
...has led me back to Caring. About Food. [The link will take you to the second of two posts I've published over there in the last 24 hours.] I'm surprised, but pleased. Mom loves days when I spend a lot of time in the kitchen preparing meals and inciting food aroma. I've been inviting her into preparation much more than I used to, since reading What Are Old People For?. Sometimes she'll help, sometimes not, and, of course, it's debatable how much help she really is. I'm careful, as well, about what chores I give her and especially careful when she decides she wants to chop food, although I continue to allow her to do this. Today, though, she wasn't interested in helping, just smelling and commenting.
Just wanted to mention the two latest posts over there, in case you're interested.
Later.
Just wanted to mention the two latest posts over there, in case you're interested.
Later.
Nightmare
I retired at sometime between 0230 and 0300, Mom having retired late, as well. We'd had a good day: I'd finished shopping for ingredients for Thanksgiving dinner and had successfully lit Mom's excitement about it. She and I retired feeling great.
The dregs of the dream awoke me at 0356 (I looked at the clock).
The dream took place in what I take to be a suburban housing development. Mom and I were living in a ranch style house with an expansive, grassy front lawn; I'm not sure which state we were in, but the weather was summery; not hot summery like the Phoenix metroplex, though. One of my sisters (I don't think it matters which one) had arrived to stay with my mother for some hours while I was performing some sort of out-of-home errand. I remember spending a large part of the dream instructing her on the kind of attention that needed to be paid to Mom.
I arrived home to find that my sister had passed the care of my mother off to someone else in the neighborhood and taken her to that home. I was shocked and upset but spent little time expressing this. My sister and I immediately went to the house in question to retrieve Mom.
Mom wasn't there. The woman (unidentified in the dream) who'd volunteered to watch Mom explained that Mom had wandered off. She'd assumed that Mom had "gone home".
I was thrown into a panic. I assigned my sister to stay at the house, in case Mom managed to find her way back home by default. I headed out searching for Mom; checking back periodically to see if she had arrived home. On the third check, while I was dumping on my sister about her carelessness with and lack of attention to Mom (I remember asking her in the dream why she had volunteered to be with Mom when she had no intention of performing the watch herself), the doorbell rang.
There was Mom, at the door, dressed in an outfit that she used to own, in reality, and in which we have a picture, somewhere, of her mowing the the front lawn at the farm she and my father owned in Wichita Falls: A red 1980's type polyester outfit with bright red pants and a red and white jacquard, short sleeved, front button-down blouse. Her hair, as well, was styled the same as she wore it, in reality, at that time, and had not yet grayed. She stood at the door with a stricken look on her face, her arms folded tightly across her chest, just below her breasts.
I approached her to lead her into the house, with much expressed relief. She backed away, arms remaining in the same position, turned and headed across the lawn parallel to the house. I went after her, caught up to her, took hold of one of her hands to lead her back to the house and her arm detached, mid-upper arm, from her body. I was horrified. I rounded her, stopped her in flight and discovered that her other arm had been similarly detached. It was as though her arms had been pulled, to drastically thin the upper arm, then cut, the incisions lasered closed (they were neatly done and completely healed), and her arms stuffed back into the sleeves of her shirt. I immediately "saw", in my mind, in the dream, the culprit who had done this to her; a bald man, tall, hefty, muscular; no one I would recognize in real life, but, in the dream I knew who he was; the husband of the neighbor with whom my sister had left Mom.
Mom and I were beside ourselves with horror and shock and grief. I replaced her arms into her sleeves, recrossed them over her chest and pulled her into a close embrace, during which we both wailed and sobbed while my sister looked on, detached, from the porch of the house.
This is when I awoke. I hadn't been dreaming long enough to begin sobbing in reality while I was dreaming, but immediately upon awakening I started to sob.
The dream so astonished me that I immediately reviewed all I could remember and made careful mental notes to record later. It took me awhile to settle myself down and return to sleep.
I have no idea what the dream "means". I imagine I'll speculate on this, although I'll let the meaning creep casually up from just-outside-of-conscious-attention. I assume the elements will organize themselves, attach to ingredients in my sub-un-conscious soup and create some Aha! moments over the next few days. Or, maybe not. Sometimes dreams, for me, go only as far as REM and no further. We'll see what happens.
Terrifying, startling dream, though, especially in the context of the last few days, which have been laid back and easy going on all the levels of which I can think, at the moment.
Time to awaken the Mom.
Later.
The dregs of the dream awoke me at 0356 (I looked at the clock).
The dream took place in what I take to be a suburban housing development. Mom and I were living in a ranch style house with an expansive, grassy front lawn; I'm not sure which state we were in, but the weather was summery; not hot summery like the Phoenix metroplex, though. One of my sisters (I don't think it matters which one) had arrived to stay with my mother for some hours while I was performing some sort of out-of-home errand. I remember spending a large part of the dream instructing her on the kind of attention that needed to be paid to Mom.
I arrived home to find that my sister had passed the care of my mother off to someone else in the neighborhood and taken her to that home. I was shocked and upset but spent little time expressing this. My sister and I immediately went to the house in question to retrieve Mom.
Mom wasn't there. The woman (unidentified in the dream) who'd volunteered to watch Mom explained that Mom had wandered off. She'd assumed that Mom had "gone home".
I was thrown into a panic. I assigned my sister to stay at the house, in case Mom managed to find her way back home by default. I headed out searching for Mom; checking back periodically to see if she had arrived home. On the third check, while I was dumping on my sister about her carelessness with and lack of attention to Mom (I remember asking her in the dream why she had volunteered to be with Mom when she had no intention of performing the watch herself), the doorbell rang.
There was Mom, at the door, dressed in an outfit that she used to own, in reality, and in which we have a picture, somewhere, of her mowing the the front lawn at the farm she and my father owned in Wichita Falls: A red 1980's type polyester outfit with bright red pants and a red and white jacquard, short sleeved, front button-down blouse. Her hair, as well, was styled the same as she wore it, in reality, at that time, and had not yet grayed. She stood at the door with a stricken look on her face, her arms folded tightly across her chest, just below her breasts.
I approached her to lead her into the house, with much expressed relief. She backed away, arms remaining in the same position, turned and headed across the lawn parallel to the house. I went after her, caught up to her, took hold of one of her hands to lead her back to the house and her arm detached, mid-upper arm, from her body. I was horrified. I rounded her, stopped her in flight and discovered that her other arm had been similarly detached. It was as though her arms had been pulled, to drastically thin the upper arm, then cut, the incisions lasered closed (they were neatly done and completely healed), and her arms stuffed back into the sleeves of her shirt. I immediately "saw", in my mind, in the dream, the culprit who had done this to her; a bald man, tall, hefty, muscular; no one I would recognize in real life, but, in the dream I knew who he was; the husband of the neighbor with whom my sister had left Mom.
Mom and I were beside ourselves with horror and shock and grief. I replaced her arms into her sleeves, recrossed them over her chest and pulled her into a close embrace, during which we both wailed and sobbed while my sister looked on, detached, from the porch of the house.
This is when I awoke. I hadn't been dreaming long enough to begin sobbing in reality while I was dreaming, but immediately upon awakening I started to sob.
The dream so astonished me that I immediately reviewed all I could remember and made careful mental notes to record later. It took me awhile to settle myself down and return to sleep.
I have no idea what the dream "means". I imagine I'll speculate on this, although I'll let the meaning creep casually up from just-outside-of-conscious-attention. I assume the elements will organize themselves, attach to ingredients in my sub-un-conscious soup and create some Aha! moments over the next few days. Or, maybe not. Sometimes dreams, for me, go only as far as REM and no further. We'll see what happens.
Terrifying, startling dream, though, especially in the context of the last few days, which have been laid back and easy going on all the levels of which I can think, at the moment.
Time to awaken the Mom.
Later.
Wednesday, November 22, 2006
Wouldn't it be funny if...
..."we" discovered that the ingenuity, mental acuity, emotional flexibility, social assertiveness, fortitude and spiritual expansion acquired through taking intense, hands-on, moment-to-moment care of our Ancient Ones was exactly the type of neurological "exercise" needed to protect us from Alzheimer's and other types of systemic dementia?
Suppose it turns out that the drastic reordering of mid-life priorities and assumptions about what it means to be human required of the full time caregiver are responsible for a psycho-somatic chemical/electrical reaction that intervenes in the physical processes that lead to dementia? What if "Brain Age", crossword puzzles, learning a new language and physical activity were only the insignificant tip of a profound protective iceberg?
Further, what if it didn't matter whether the caregiver fought to "stay cheerful" and "find time for oneself"? What if what mattered was the depth of the bond created between caregiver and intense needs care recipient and the ability and willingness to recognize, use and best, with one's native faculties, the inevitable discouragement, depression, rage, helplessness, hopelessness and sense of loss with which the intense needs caregiver must deal; and that the more involved one becomes in the care recipient's life, thus the more rigorous and sustained the neurological workout, the more protection one achieves?
Can you imagine everyone's (including intense needs caregivers') surprise when the results are tallied and it turns out that the only current study of caregivers, the lone one that suggests that caregivers are better off than their peers when caregiving ends, is the only study with even slightly accurate results? How much of a flurry will it cause, once we baby boomers have, as we usually do, submitted ourselves to rigorous study, when we realize that all the "negative", "regrettable" circumstances surrounding caregiving, if surrendered to, are exactly the circumstances that catalyze the organism to guard against what seem, at present, like the inevitable infirmities of old age?
What if "we" learn that those who have decided to take on the world and what we now call "the burden" of caregiving for the Ancient and the Infirm have, in fact, done exactly what one needs to do to prevent the systemic development of senile dementia: Taken on and adjusted to the twin yokes of exceptional compassion and empathy for one human being for several years?
Wouldn't it be funny if, out of pure self-interest, people were, then, motivated, globally, to become acutely other-interested in the most vulnerable segments of our population?
Wouldn't that be a hoot?
Suppose it turns out that the drastic reordering of mid-life priorities and assumptions about what it means to be human required of the full time caregiver are responsible for a psycho-somatic chemical/electrical reaction that intervenes in the physical processes that lead to dementia? What if "Brain Age", crossword puzzles, learning a new language and physical activity were only the insignificant tip of a profound protective iceberg?
Further, what if it didn't matter whether the caregiver fought to "stay cheerful" and "find time for oneself"? What if what mattered was the depth of the bond created between caregiver and intense needs care recipient and the ability and willingness to recognize, use and best, with one's native faculties, the inevitable discouragement, depression, rage, helplessness, hopelessness and sense of loss with which the intense needs caregiver must deal; and that the more involved one becomes in the care recipient's life, thus the more rigorous and sustained the neurological workout, the more protection one achieves?
Can you imagine everyone's (including intense needs caregivers') surprise when the results are tallied and it turns out that the only current study of caregivers, the lone one that suggests that caregivers are better off than their peers when caregiving ends, is the only study with even slightly accurate results? How much of a flurry will it cause, once we baby boomers have, as we usually do, submitted ourselves to rigorous study, when we realize that all the "negative", "regrettable" circumstances surrounding caregiving, if surrendered to, are exactly the circumstances that catalyze the organism to guard against what seem, at present, like the inevitable infirmities of old age?
What if "we" learn that those who have decided to take on the world and what we now call "the burden" of caregiving for the Ancient and the Infirm have, in fact, done exactly what one needs to do to prevent the systemic development of senile dementia: Taken on and adjusted to the twin yokes of exceptional compassion and empathy for one human being for several years?
Wouldn't it be funny if, out of pure self-interest, people were, then, motivated, globally, to become acutely other-interested in the most vulnerable segments of our population?
Wouldn't that be a hoot?
Monday, November 20, 2006
It'll be pot roast for Thanksgiving, this year...
...not ham, even though that is, of course, Mom's first choice. I mentioned to her, though, today, as we were making a shopping list for Thanksgiving dinner, that we'd had ham so many times this year and, too, had so much left-over ham in the freezer from all hams past, that I wasn't looking forward to fixing yet another ham.
"That's all right," she said. "I imagine MPS's will have ham for Christmas."
Maybe. They're pretty good at varying holiday dinners, though, which is something to which I look forward.
Yes, the call has been made, I've uninvited us, MPS is in good humor over it, we laughed and joked throughout the phone call, particularly about Christmas. It seems she remembered (so did I) about my much earlier post, when Mom was traversing an activity hill and I was feeling optimistic about the holidays, that I considered inviting everyone here for Christmas and taking everyone out. She ribbed me mercilessly about this and we laughed until we cried.
I am going to try to see to it that we make it down there for Christmas, regardless of how hard it is. I'm hoping the my personal ambiance will cooperate. Perhaps that earlier mentioned miracle in-spira-tion will have flown over and shat upon me by that time. I'm expecting it to not only bring me to some sort of internal anger resolution but to work a little magic with some of the fringe "benefits" of this anger.
I continue to label posts over at the archives. Reading those old posts yet again, by the light of this anger, is a searing experience. I've come quite a long way since those posts were written. Most of the distance, it seems, was covered in the last nine months and that distance throws those posts into a surprising perspective. It is as though I was wise, then, and am now innocent. I guess rage does that...wipes the slate, bangs the erasers, prepares the board for a new lesson. That's good. I'm always up for learning something new.
Later.
"That's all right," she said. "I imagine MPS's will have ham for Christmas."
Maybe. They're pretty good at varying holiday dinners, though, which is something to which I look forward.
Yes, the call has been made, I've uninvited us, MPS is in good humor over it, we laughed and joked throughout the phone call, particularly about Christmas. It seems she remembered (so did I) about my much earlier post, when Mom was traversing an activity hill and I was feeling optimistic about the holidays, that I considered inviting everyone here for Christmas and taking everyone out. She ribbed me mercilessly about this and we laughed until we cried.
I am going to try to see to it that we make it down there for Christmas, regardless of how hard it is. I'm hoping the my personal ambiance will cooperate. Perhaps that earlier mentioned miracle in-spira-tion will have flown over and shat upon me by that time. I'm expecting it to not only bring me to some sort of internal anger resolution but to work a little magic with some of the fringe "benefits" of this anger.
I continue to label posts over at the archives. Reading those old posts yet again, by the light of this anger, is a searing experience. I've come quite a long way since those posts were written. Most of the distance, it seems, was covered in the last nine months and that distance throws those posts into a surprising perspective. It is as though I was wise, then, and am now innocent. I guess rage does that...wipes the slate, bangs the erasers, prepares the board for a new lesson. That's good. I'm always up for learning something new.
Later.
Sunday, November 19, 2006
Well! What do you know!
Pending one operator (me being the operator) error, which I quickly fixed, the new Label Index is working fine! As usual, I am continuing to get "Server Error" notices when I publish my template, but publishing posts is happening "successfully" and in short order. I'm satisfied.
Mom bedded down quite late, last night, rather, this morning; 0215, I think. I roused her at the 12-hour-sleep mark and she asked for another half hour. She leaked quite a bit, last night, probably from the dregs of the furosemide, so I'm giving her that requested half hour. It'll probably be a lazy day around here, although I might try to get in some walkering with her, since she's perking up a little since the furosemide pulled fluids off her. I'm not sure I'll be able to get her outside. That would be nice, but, if not, I'll trot her back and forth in here, just to give her a little exercise. Time for me to prepare for the Mom.
Later.
Mom bedded down quite late, last night, rather, this morning; 0215, I think. I roused her at the 12-hour-sleep mark and she asked for another half hour. She leaked quite a bit, last night, probably from the dregs of the furosemide, so I'm giving her that requested half hour. It'll probably be a lazy day around here, although I might try to get in some walkering with her, since she's perking up a little since the furosemide pulled fluids off her. I'm not sure I'll be able to get her outside. That would be nice, but, if not, I'll trot her back and forth in here, just to give her a little exercise. Time for me to prepare for the Mom.
Later.
Well, folks, this is my first post here since I transferred to Blogger Beta this morning.
All my journals are transferred, now. I took the complete plunge because, as Blogger updates its servers to Beta, I've been having trouble making global changes to my templates. As well, my experience with using Beta isn't any more frustrating than using the original Blogger has been and, in some cases, notably template publishing, it's much, much more reliable. There is one change I made to this template about a month ago and I haven't been able to get it to register on back archive pages until this morning when I republished my template through Beta. Hallelujah!
It will be quite awhile, I imagine, before I begin labeling the posts on this and all other sites except the Mom & Me One Archive site.
My guess is that quite a few of my problems result from two circumstances:
One more glitch I want to mention about labeling. While labeling one of my posts over at the archive site yesterday, I ran into a unique problem. I attached several long labels to the post and when I attempted to publish I got a message indicating "Must contain no more than 200 characters". I wasn't sure whether this applied to the label box or to the actual length of the labels. I did notice, though, that none of my labels were 200 characters. I scoured them for disallowed characters, none of which they contained. I tried deleting some of the longer labels, which didn't work, either. I also compared numbers and size of labels with other posts and noticed I had one post that rivaled, if not exceeded, the labels on the post in question. Finally, I decided to add and create (when necessary) labels through the "Edit Posts" facility. Although this was time consuming because you can only attach one label at a time, it worked.
After fooling around with Mozilla, Safari and Firefox, I am using Firefox exclusively on both my computers when I want to publish anything. It's speed and number of error messages is about equal to using Firefox but Firefox allows me access to all the "Create Post" buttons. Safari does not.
This post will also contain my first label on this site. Immediately after publication, I'll attempt to set up a Label Index over on the right side of my template. We'll see how that works.
Later.
It will be quite awhile, I imagine, before I begin labeling the posts on this and all other sites except the Mom & Me One Archive site.
My guess is that quite a few of my problems result from two circumstances:
- I'm ftping all my journals to remote servers, which do not have the Blogger Beta software embedded. Blogger Beta has given no indication whether they will release their Beta software, a la such sites as WordPress, to be copied onto remote servers. It's anybody's guess. Frankly, I'm fine, for the time being, with their software not being available for remote servers. This gives me a chance to breathe a bit more before I start trying to figure out how to recreate my templates in the skin/variable/widget style.
- My templates are full of "fat" that could use trimming. I expect that this fat is probably responsible for at least some of the false error messages I receive, and for the slowness of publication of both posts and templates.
One more glitch I want to mention about labeling. While labeling one of my posts over at the archive site yesterday, I ran into a unique problem. I attached several long labels to the post and when I attempted to publish I got a message indicating "Must contain no more than 200 characters". I wasn't sure whether this applied to the label box or to the actual length of the labels. I did notice, though, that none of my labels were 200 characters. I scoured them for disallowed characters, none of which they contained. I tried deleting some of the longer labels, which didn't work, either. I also compared numbers and size of labels with other posts and noticed I had one post that rivaled, if not exceeded, the labels on the post in question. Finally, I decided to add and create (when necessary) labels through the "Edit Posts" facility. Although this was time consuming because you can only attach one label at a time, it worked.
After fooling around with Mozilla, Safari and Firefox, I am using Firefox exclusively on both my computers when I want to publish anything. It's speed and number of error messages is about equal to using Firefox but Firefox allows me access to all the "Create Post" buttons. Safari does not.
This post will also contain my first label on this site. Immediately after publication, I'll attempt to set up a Label Index over on the right side of my template. We'll see how that works.
Later.
