The Plus and Minus

Hi, everyone, Today the world stopped for a minute or two, but I mananged to get it going again. I have a wonderful electric clock which I bought in Kelowna, just before moving back to the States in October, 2009. It had no normally numbered sequence around the outer edge like most clocks. Instead it showed all the numbers fallen to the bottom of the frame, and above the pile of numbers, was written "Whatever". I love that clock! It was to be symbolic of my future life down in Tucson, with my family, my jewelry business, making new friends, finding a beautiful place to live, and getting on with my life. This morning I was starting to answer emails and the cursor suddenly stopped. Couldn't get it to move and I realized that my mouse probably needed a new battery. I keep a stash on hand, so I went to the utility closet and found various batteries, presumably to restart up various parts of my life. I opened things up and took the dead ones out, then picked up the two for the mouse. Oh, dear, I should have taken them out and laid them on the desk in their correct position. Now I had to look for the plus and minus and it was hard to see in the black interior. The same was true of the dead clock. As I struggled to see which end was "up" I finally got them installed. As I reset the time, and started swirling the mouse to watch the Cursor move around my screen, I casually thought how many things run on batteries, much like the way we run our lives. Life is full of pluses and minuses, and if we don't get them in right can slowdown or stop what we feel or think and eventually cause us to run on Empty. But if we choose the positive side instead of the negative, we're up and running smoothly. Nowadays, during the Pandemic, the fires in California, the inertia of Congress, and the rage echoing from the White House, I tend to think of it as everyone having put the battery back in with the minus side. Get the negative out of your lives and turn the battery around. Push it down till you hear a click. Then get on with your lives. The clock will run around and the hands will point to the corect time even without numbers being there. And the mouse will scoot all over the monitor, allowing you to contact all your friends. The past week I discovered from my Writers Group that Yes, indeed, the copyright laws do exist and they forbid my including the contents of any song from my chapters. In which the lyrics of the song perfectly depicted what I was trying to say, but said it much more poetically than I ever could. So that is that, friends; I have to find every chapter that contains lyrics, delete them then try to re-create the meaning in my own words. What a great way to "dull down" a chapter! Oh, yes, I can use the title, but that's it. The complete irony, if not idiocy, is that you can Google the title, and instantly up pops the words, and the several different artists who recorded the gem, So it's right out there for the public to read or listen to. And it's not the composer who gets the fee charged: it's the Publisher! They might grant you permission to use, but you have to pay anywhere from $400 - $900 for the privilege. So, back to the computer, rewrite many of my chapters, and hope I've put the battery in right side up. Till next week, Love, Janice