25 Random Things

If you're a Facebook user, you may recall a lot of your friends in 2009 posted lists of "25 random things" about themselves as a Facebook note. A friend of mine, Gary, recently posted his list from that era and suggested others do the same. I think this is a great idea and I'd love to read others' lists if they're up for posting them.

I dug mine up and post it here. Of course I would, as it states in #1, I'm my own favorite subject, so I'm happy for the option to share this stuff about me. In rereading the list, I see that a lot has changed in the 3 years since I wrote this. My Dad and my favorite dog ever, Sally, have both died. Sally just over 2 years ago. My Dad in May of 2010. I no longer have a job (yay!).

Without further ado, my 2009 25 random things ....

1. I am my own favorite subject (so this kind of exercise is really fun!).
2. Because of #1, I often share too much information about my personal life to those I know only professionally or as casual acquaintances.
3. In my best moments, I wonder how Skip (my wife) has been able to put up with me for almost 28 years.
4. Even at 52, I still don’t know what I want to be when I grow up. By this, I mean I have never found a job that aligned with the things I’m passionate about. And, I also have trouble figuring out my passions.
5. I have an excellent vocabulary and love to use it to good effect. While I think this provides greater clarity in my speaking and writing, I suspect it often has the opposite effect, as the words I use are not always understood by my audience.
6. At times, I try to focus on what’s really important, such as the love of others and loving them in return. But, it’s really, really easy for me to get mired in the crap of daily life and forget how privileged I actually am.
7. My parents never thought I’d graduate from high school. I flunked 5 of my 6 classes freshman year (passed algebra with a D-). After I got suspended 7 times in my sophomore year for cutting classes, my parents sent me to private school. For some reason, I excelled there and managed to graduate when I was 16.
8. I live in the house I grew up in. For the first 10 years we lived here, that was totally intimidating to me, as my parents were frequent visitors and I worried what they thought of how we maintained it. I eventually grew out of that mindset and now mentally “own” it. We’ve now been here 20 years.
9. We have two dogs, piebald mini dachshunds. I always related to dogs as dogs, not pseudo-people. However, all that has changed with one of them, Sally, about whom I am absolutely besotted.
10. 2008 was the worst year of my life. Too many bad things happened to me and those around me; worst of all were my reactions to those occurrences. I look forward to the return of my resiliency in 2009.
11. Sad to say but my musical tastes pretty much calcified when I was in college.
12. I have huge respect for my dad, who is a real renaissance man. Now in his 80’s, with significant health issues, my respect continues to grow as I see how he grapples with those issues.
13. Speaking of health issues, I am continuously impressed with how Skip deals with her MS. She’s had it for over 20 years and it has robbed her of so much, yet she manages a positive outlook most of the time. In her shoes, I suspect I’d not deal with it with such grace.
14. I’ll read just about anything I can get my hands on.
15. My parents didn’t own a TV from the time I was 8 or 9 until I was in college. I think this helped me develop the love of reading that I have to this day.
16. I am at my best in the early morning. It’s strictly downhill from there.
17. My ears have been ringing for 30 years and my hearing, left ear especially, is not so great. Ironically, the cable box in the bedroom makes a low hum that I can hear and find quite annoying while Skip can’t hear it.
18. I have passed out from the violence in two movies, and almost passed out from a third. They are Le Chien Andelou, The Piano and the almost was Catch-22. I have a reputation for squeamishness about movies that is not entirely deserved as one of my favorite movies is Fargo, which has a lot of violence. However, I am very careful about screening movies for this before viewing them and find it’s best to watch a questionable movie at home, so I can easily stop it.
19. I am fortunate to have a job where I can work from home. To date, the most extreme thing that’s happened while I’ve been working at home was the time Skip fell out of her wheelchair and turned her ankle 180 degrees, breaking it in 3 places. When she called out to me for help, I was on a conference call that I was facilitating. Through instant messaging, I got a colleague to carry on and went to help Skip. When I got back on, no one knew I’d been away.
20. My mother thinks I’m too conservative.
21. I am a huge Red Sox fan, but perhaps don’t have the right temperament for baseball fandom. Even a good season usually has about 60 or 70 losses and each one is hard for me to take.
22. I have been fat since I was 5 or 6. I figure it’s in my genes. My mother’s father weighed 400 pounds and I’m distantly related to America’s fattest president. Lots of other fat folks in my family tree.
23. Starting in my teens, I developed the perspective that my size wasn’t a problem, instead it was society’s reaction to it that was a problem. My mantra: being fat isn’t inherently unhealthy, you can be fat and lead a healthy lifestyle. In my early 40s I had an epiphany: I was eating unhealthfully, my weight was creeping up year after year and decided I’d better shape up or I’d start feeling the effects on my health. Lost 98 pounds. Put a good portion of it back on in the last 6 years, but still working on the healthy lifestyle.
24. My favorite personality type to work with? Curmudgeons. You always know where you stand with them.
25. I’m a true child of the 1960s; I still have problems dealing with authority figures or being told what to do.

New Cranky Reason #4: It Never Ends

I'll tell you what makes me cranky pretty much every day. The caregiving never ends. Never is there a point where I do something in caring for Skip and I say to myself, "well, that's done then."

And the demands have increased over time and will increase as the years go by. Unlike kids, who grow up and become independent (yeah, yeah I know they're always your kids, but the active care for them day in day out ends in the vast majority of cases).

It's important for me to get breaks from the demands of caregiving. Without them, my ability to approach caregiving in good humor diminishes to almost nothing.

Out and About With Skip

For those of you who don't live in New England, you may not be aware that we're having the freakiest week of March weather ever in these parts. Continuing the trend of mild weather we had all winter, March has been very warm, with temps in the 70s on Wednesday. Thursday is forecast to hit the mid 80s, over 10 degrees above the previous record high.

Skip and I had to take advantage of this weather, and get her out and about. Sadly, she has not been out with me in the car since dinner with friends on January 12th, the night before her flap surgery. The other day, she made a foray out onto the patio for a bit of fresh air and sun. Besides that, she's been truly housebound this winter.

We had planned to take in a movie, but there really wasn't one thing showing at nearby theaters that interested us. So, a late lunch out at Legal Seafoods was followed by a drive around to two 55+ condo communities that I wanted to see.

Legal Seafoods is a chain that started as a fish market then single restaurant in Cambridge, Mass about 50 years ago. Now, they're a chain that, I believe, has locations up and down the eastern seaboard. It's our favorite place for fish and Skip was hankering for one of their lobster rolls. We got there around 3. Our waiter greeted us warmly. He's seen us every few months for a meal there for years and years. Skip got her lobster roll and I decided to try a crab roll. I'm too embarrassed to list all the sides we had. Suffice it say it was a feast!

Eating out at off hours is good for us. Skip's hands are so weak now that, even with her specially adapted silverware, she can really struggle eating. What often happens is she'll start off eating on her own but as the meal progresses that becomes harder and harder as her hand gets weaker. I eat faster than she does, so when I'm done with my own meal, I take over and feed her. A quiet restaurant with only a few other patrons is a much easier setting for Skip as she's embarrassed by having someone else feed her. I say, screw it, don't worry about the other folks, but of course I have no idea how I'd feel were I the one in her shoes.

After rolling out of Legal's, we went off to scout out two condo communities that are limited to 55+ and have units for sale in our price range. The first consists of 150 2-story townhouses that are built out in little clusters of 8-10 units per street. In the listings online, they show a second story, but the units only have a very large loft room there, both bedrooms are located on the first floor. This community is appealing because it's in our preferred area and the housing stock consists of townhouses, but all the units are larger than I'd like - in the 1700-1800 sq ft range. I am more interested in 1100-1200 sq ft. At that size, though, the units you find are typically more like apartments in mid-rise buildings. Which, coincidentally, was the configuration of the other condo community we drove by.

Driving through the first community, I tried not to sing "Little Boxes," by Malvina Reynolds. The chorus goes something like, "Little boxes on the hillside, little boxes made of ticky tacky, little boxes made of ticky tacky and they all look just the same ...." All the houses were all tan, some had two garages, some had one. Some had walk out basements if they were built on a slope, some did not. But, they all looked virtually the same. I could live with that, though I'd prefer a bit of individuality. What surprised me a bit was that each entry had 2 steps up to a small landing and then a step up from there into the house. Aren't these places built for old folks with limited mobility? It makes me wonder if there are steps from the garage into the house. And, is a single car garage wide enough for us to lower the ramp out the side in The Toaster and for Skip to wheel in and out of the car? These and other questions will be answered when my realtors and I go for a tour of some units there

We then drove over to the other community, which has a couple of units available now at the bottom of our price rangeThis place is a recently built 3 story building with about 20 units. It looked nice, with a low row of garages across the street from it. Behind the building looks treed, and there's water in the name of the place, so maybe there are walking trails by a river there. It's surrounded by townhomes that I expect are also 55+ but are probably outside of our price range. Also, they looked to have the bedrooms on the second floor, which is clearly an impossible setup for us. Also in this complex, there's an "Inn." Inn is a euphemism for an assisted living place with an Alzheimer's unit attached. I was offended that they couldn't be more honest in their naming.

As I drove home, I mused over the possibility of staying in our current home. That says to me neither community, from the outside, knocked my socks off. I really hope those little houses on the hillside knock them off when I get to see their insides.

One other thing I was musing about on the drive home. The weather felt like early summer, but it's just the second day of spring and there isn't a leaf on a tree anywhere. It's a very strange combination to have: this wonderful balmy weather without the usual green leafy trees and bright green yards everywhere.

I'm glad Skip and I got to spend time out together. Great meal. Good data gathering. It's nice to see her getting back to a bit of normalcy. Now, if only a good movie hits the big screen, we can head out to a weekday matinee.

Twofer: A Hooker Story and a Stripper Story

The poker blogs I read have been writing stories over the last few weeks about hookers and strippers. I didn't think I had any stories that would fit these categories, but, while reading a post from Very Josie, I remembered a couple anecdotes that would fit right into these two themes.

Hooker Story
In my freshman year at Simmons College in Boston in 1973, some friends and I went together to see Aretha Franklin at the Boston Garden. They were coming into town via the subway, and we agreed to meet in front of the only landmark I was sure they'd be able to find -- Madame Tussaud's wax museum, across from the Boston Common -- as we'd gone there together a few years prior.

I got to the meeting place before my friends. I'd guess it was around 6:30 or 7, and it was early winter, so already dark. I was dressed in my usual attire: flannel shirt, jeans, boots and a plaid wool shirt for warmth. No makeup. Long hair tied back in a ponytail. After standing in front of Madame Tussaud's for a while, I realized that the other folks lingering there were, shall we say, ladies of the evening and their clientele. Accidentally, I caught the eye of an older fellow, who raised his eyebrows and gestured with his head as if to say, "come with me." Sheesh! I figured that a tall, fat female dressed like I was (I was straight-identified at the time, but still dressed mannishly) would never be taken for a prostitute, but I was wrong! I moved away from this guy, staying as close to the street as possible, but still in the area for when my friends arrived. After some more loitering, this same guy came over to me, grabbed my arm and said "c'mon, let's go!" After some resistance, he finally got the message and left me alone. I'm sure he was greatly disappointed! .

Soon thereafter, my friends showed up and I was rescued from any further unwelcome advances. We had a good laugh as we headed over to the Garden for the show. The seats sucked but the show was great. Gotta love Aretha.

Stripper Story
This story actually happened to Skip, but it's a goodie worth retelling. In her late 20s, Skip was still healthy and worked as the bar manager at a Japanese restaurant on the waterfront in Boston. We lived in Boston's South End. Sometimes I'd go pick her up after the restaurant closed but other times she'd get a ride from the restaurant manager, a gay guy she was good friends with.

One evening, Jim the manager and she decided to go to a strip club called the Naked I in the Combat Zone, which used to be where Boston's strip clubs were located. The Zone doesn't exist anymore, largely because land values got too high downtown to waste the property with some sleazy bars, brothels, XXX theaters and XXX-rated bookstores. They went to this club because the bartender was an old friend of Jim's. Skip was always ready for an evening out back in the day.

Skip decided she'd buy a drink for one of the strippers, a woman named Misty. Skip wanted to know why Misty had become a stripper. Her answer has faded into the "mists" of time ... this was over 25 years ago ... but they chatted for a bit and then Misty went back to her performing.

Some days later, Skip and Jim went back to the Naked I again. When they arrived, Misty was up on stage doing her thing. Bent over, looking back at the crowd between her spread legs, she saw Skip come in, she waved and shouted out, "Hello, Skip!" Now there's a memorable greeting!

And now, we shall return this blog to its regularly scheduled programming.

It's Almost a Reality

Yep, the house is getting there. Having secured the services of a handyman/painter combo, the handyman projects and painting work is about 80% complete and should wrap this week. My brother and his sidekick completed their project today, building a custom window well cover. It's a thing of beauty! Another friend of my brother's, who's worked with us on cleaning out storage units, has been doing a bunch of odd jobs (like cleaning and organizing the garage, cleaning off the roof and gutters) and he should be done with my to do list for him within 7-10 days. I've still got some work getting things to look a little less cluttered and more organized, but I'd say that's about 75% done. So, you know what that means?!? We're going to list the house before month's end. When I stop and really think about what that means, it's sad, freeing, scary and exciting all at once.

It's sad because this house has been around in the family for virtually my whole life. When I was 7, I came to this houselot with my parents, brother and sister virtually every weekend for months (I think it was that long) and cut down the trees where the house was eventually built. My father wielded the chain saw. When the tree was felled, it was our job to cut off the branches with axes. My dad would cut the logs down to fireplace size. We'd stack up the cordwood in rows between two trees; we had dozens of these log stacks all around the property.

My parents worked with an architect to design the house and, let me tell you, the place is unique. It's a contemporary in the land of colonials. It's built so you enter on the top floor and have to walk downstairs to get to the other floor. This design was used so my parents could live here even as they aged and were less mobile. We moved in in 1964 when I was 7 or 8. Other than boarding school and college, I lived here until 1977. Skip and I moved back here 23 years ago when my parents retired to a house my dad built on Cape Cod. A house that's remarkably like this one in many ways.

So, it'll be a loss to say goodbye to this house when we move out. I hope the next owners appreciate it and learn to love it. I'll have to leave them some information about it, like how the pine paneling in the downstairs playroom/rec room is from some of the logs we cut down to build the house.

It'll be freeing because, in some ways, owning the house was a burdensome responsibility. Let's be honest here, I'm not handy and don't really want to be. Home projects are not my cup of tea. I never yearned to update the kitchen or knock down a wall. In my free time, I don't want to oil a doorsill or paint a room or any of that jazz. We took over this house from the handiest man on earth and I always felt I came up short on the home stewardship front.

If we move to a condo, the exterior of the place is someone else's responsibility. We'll share the cost of maintenance in our monthly fees, but we won't have to do the work.

It's scary because it's a huge change. And, we have some special needs with Skip's disability that limit our housing options. Will we be able to find someplace that meets those needs? We're planning on moving into an "active adult" community. We'll probably be the youngest folks there and, I'll betcha, we'll be the only lesbians. Will we be able to find a place that's the right mix of price, location, accessibility and community that we hope for? Will the dogs be good neighbors or will Addy bark at every sound and person and leaf that blows as she does today, making our neighbors hate her and us?

Exciting is the flipside of scary. All this change has the potential to work out bringing wonderful new possibilities to our lives. Expenses will go down, making it easier for me to focus on caregiving and not trying to cram in a full time job. We'll have neighbors nearby, and it will open up possibilities to make new friends. In a home configured with a more open floorplan than we have today, Skip will have easier access to the whole house. And, it'll just be new and different. A shakeup will be welcome.

So, with all that said, let's get this puppy on the market and see what happens. I think I'm ready!

Foxwoods With Friends

Gary, Josie and me

Yesterday, I had a great day. Met in real life some friends I'd made through blogging. And, I liked them even more in person than online (or at least as much). Won money. Got a break from caregiving and was comfortable knowing that Skip was in the capable hands of the intrepid MW. And, I got to test my new glasses while driving at night.

Josie and Gary - It was only the second time I've ever met anyone in person who'd become a friend through blogging. As I drove down to Foxwoods to meet Very Josie and the Crafty Southpaw (Gary) for some poker, I found myself wondering if we'd like each other in person as much as online. I hoped I wouldn't suck too much at poker, since I have rarely played over the last few years and wasn't the greatest even when playing regularly. And, overall, I found myself being excited at the prospect of meeting new people.

Josie is smart, funny and has a great table persona. Gary is smart, too, and had me laughing all afternoon. I guess Josie liked me because she called me a biatch and, at various times while playing poker, said we were fighting. Gary was very intent when playing a hand and I finally figured out I should stop jabbering when he was doing battle.

Let me just say right here that Josie and Gary are much better players than me. (I'm sure they already know this but were too polite to say it to my face.) I've read a jillion books (okay 15-20) about holdem and Omaha and played tens of thousands of hands online, but truth be told, I just never really had the feel for the game that folks like Josie and Gary do.

Poker - Unlike my last visit to Foxwoods, I had almost no quality starting hands yesterday. A few hours into the day, I had KK but completely misplayed it preflop (as in, I didn't raise out of the big blind and so 5 of us saw the flop) and ended up folding on the turn when the board just got too scary and I knew KK unimproved was no good. My last hand of the day was 99. I had a few suited Aces with crappy kickers. But I managed to make do with hands like 79s, K8c and the like. After starting out losing, I finished up winning a bit over $400 at poker.

Craps - After some dinner together, Josie and Gary headed out. I went into the land of the smoky casino to find an open craps table. If you've never played craps, suffice it to say it's a good way to win or lose money quickly. At a hot table, you can rack up the dough with lightning speed. A couple of cold rolls, and it all slides back to the house. The first table I tried was choppy. Some up, some down rolls. I had the worst roll of the night -- crapping out instantly after setting the point. I stuck with the table for a bit, but each short roll was slowly but surely cutting into the day's winnings.

I picked up my remaining chips with the thought of cashing out and heading home. But, decided I'd try one more table. Went past a few that were too full to get a spot at; the third I came to had some room in the corner nearest one of the dealers. The dice were with a shooter on the other side of the table and he was doing fairly well -- he won us all some dough. After he sevened out, the next shooter did okay, and the trend continued for half a dozen shooters. No great rolls, but all solid, money-making ones. Suddenly, my down $200 at craps was up over $500 and, when the dice came around to me, I passed the option, picked up my chips and happily made my way to the cashier. Time to head home.

I've been wearing my new glasses for about a week. After 10 years wearing only reading glasses, I wasn't happy to find that I needed them full-time. I've had a lot of problems with the middle and reading portions of the progressive lenses. Driving last night, their real value was "driven" home to me -- I saw better at night than I had in years!

Getting home at 11:30, the dogs came out from the bedroom to greet me. Heading into the bedroom, a drowsy Skip greeted me warmly, happy to have me home. I set the clocks ahead and went to bed.

So, Gary and Josie - I'm open every weekend in April (how sad is that!). Just say the word and I'll see you there!

I Got Carded and Other Recent Activities

The last time anyone asked me for ID to prove my age was in my early 30s and a waitress asked to see my license before she'd serve me a beer. I was quite happy to show her how old I was and she seemed a bit sheepish when she realized I was many years past 21. Wednesday, I went with my two realtors to a 55+ condo community to look at some units. The realtor from the listing side didn't believe I was 55 and insisted I show him my license before we started looking around. He was very surprised that I actually was 55. That was fun! Unfortunately, they allow only one pet per unit, so we won't be looking at that development anymore.

It was good to get a view at what 1100 square feet looks like. Oh man, I've got a lot more clean out to do in the garage. The kitchens in those units didn't have much storage, so if we move into a similar kind of space, we'll have a lot more purging to do. For example, we have a few hundred cookbooks that fill one entire set of shelves in the kitchen. Those'll mostly have to go. Of course, I don't really use cookbooks; they are all either from my mother (who left them behind when moving out 23 years ago) or from Skip, who used to be a chef and continued to buy cookbooks for years, even after she'd stopped cooking.

On Tuesday, I went to 3 storage auctions. Bid on a number of units but wasn't willing to go as high on each as other bidders, often by a significant margin. The first auction had 40 attendees and 5 units available. I'd say the crowds were of similar size for the other two and, coincidentally, there were 5 units at each of those as well. The last unit I bid on was the one I wanted most. It was mostly filled with older, wooden furniture. Hanging from pegs on the ceiling were 7 chairs for the kitchen or dining room. Smack dab in the center was a treadle sewing machine. I still have the treadle machine we got last summer at an auction although it was on Craigslist for months and is now in the furniture booth we have in central Mass, so was a bit concerned about the ability to move this one. I figured $300 would be a good price for the unit. The other bidder countered me on every bid and I finally gave up at $500. I couldn't rationalize that I'd make even that on the furniture and I would have other costs as well, including the effort of the guys who'd clear out the heavy stuff.

Ideally, to determine my max bid, I estimate the value of everything I can see and divide it in half. That mode doesn't work very well when most things are in boxes or the unit is very deep and you can only see a small fraction of the stuff. Then, you have to get clues from the way things are packed and cared for and the type of stuff you can see. I am tired of going to auctions and getting nothing, though. Sooner or later, I'm just going to go for the gusto and buy something even if I think it's overpriced.

On Thursday, I got a handyman over to give me a quote on the bits and pieces of work that needs to be done. He brought along a colleague who paints. Their prices were excellent! The repairs and painting begin on Sunday. They're going to paint all of downstairs, the upstairs bathroom, 2 exterior doors, 2 garage door and stain the low fence that surrounds the yard. Whoopee! All the repair and paint work should be completed by mid-week.

On that same Thursday, my brother and the two guys who helped with my mother's move came over to do a variety of projects. They took the entertainment center, a glass front cabinet and a grandfather's clock along with a bunch of boxes over to storage. This really cleared up a lot of space in the living room and dining room, so they look bigger. While my brother and one of the guys worked on building a window well cover, BW (who is a really really hard worker) took it upon himself to organize and clean up the garage. That night, for the first time in 9 months, I pulled The Toaster (aka the Honda Element) into the garage!

Shortly, I'll be leaving the house for a day trip back to Foxwoods. Had so much fun 3 weeks ago, I've decided to go back. And, to make the trip more interesting and fun, I'll be meeting up with 2 folks I've met through blogging, Very Josie and the Crafty Southpaw (both their blogs are on my blogroll to the right).

One final note: I had to put word verification back on because I was getting a ton of spam comments. I figured word verification was the lesser of two evils; the other being not allowing anonymous comments.

New Cranky Reasons #3: Incompetence!

Let's just say it right here and now: I'm good at everything I do (except for handyman projects). Skip often comments that no one does (insert task here) better than me. Which strikes me as funny since I'm the amateur and she has lots of people helping her who are paid professionals.

As noted before, we had to switch to a new agency for visiting nurses and home health aides when Skip came out of the hospital because of the need for IV administration support. We were told the agency Skip had been using for many years did not have that service so we switched over to another provider. We now have home health aides from the new agency M-F for 2 hours a day. They are a lot like the aides from the other agency, except the physical therapist from the new outfit trained them on range of motion exercises for Skip, so they are helping her with that every day. A definite upgrade in my book.

The 5 day a week visits are divided between 2 aides. The one who comes twice a week, MG, is very nice and has figured out that Skip is high maintenance but easy to tease about it. They've developed a good rapport. When MG is here, I can hear the two of them chatting away during Skip's bath. MG has been to the house about 10 times so far. On her 2nd or 3rd visit, when she was emptying Skip's catheter drainage bag, she neglected to close the bag's nozzle. Because the bag was hanging low, just above the rug, it was somewhat out of sight and the problem wasn't discovered for 18 hours! During that entire time, pee was dripping onto the rug. (To add to the annoyance, the rug that was dripped on is an oriental carpet once owned by my great-grandfather.)

I have never called an agency to complain about an aide. But, I had to in this case because they were going to have to reimburse us for the rug cleaning. The next time MG came, she had been spoken to at the office and was quite contrite, apologized and swore it would never happen again. Apparently, never is about 4 weeks long because she did it again yesterday! This morning, while I had the rug rolled up, cleaning the floor, cleaning the rug, getting towels under the rug to protect the floor while the rug dried, etc., I was having a good ol' rant. I was cranky! This woman has been a home health aide for more than 10 years. She must empty drainage bags multiple times a day for multiple clients every single day of work. How does she not close a nozzle twice in 10 visits? Apparently, we can't trust her to do this task right so I'll have to take care of emptying the bag on the days she comes.

We hadn't had the rug professionally cleaned from the first incident yet (I gave it a good cleaning and drying at the time) because we were waiting for Skip to be out of bed and for my brother to come over and help me with furniture moving and rolling it up. Those two events haven't occurred together yet. We haven't decided yet if we're going to inform the agency of the 2nd occurrence. We'll definitely tell MG when next she comes. But, unless we decide we want to ask to have MG be replaced by another aide, we probably won't give her agency a call about it.