The computer is running and a lot of the data is back in place although each of these computer guys has their own way of interpreting my needs and I am still struggling the way the data backup 
loaded and the changes to the partitions. I do not use the supplied storage files and I have yet to find a computer repair guy who didn’t ignore my plea that he not set my stuff up as though I did. Some of the software keys are still resisting my efforts to find where they are stored as well.
The upgrade to the machine was exactly what it needed and it as smooth as silk and noticeably more responsive. It handles the games and graphics with ease as well. I am glad I didn’t get the earlier Sandy Bridge version of the i5 instead of the i3 first up. The improved processors in the Ivy Bridge may not be far enough improved for those computer geeks who test and use the fast stuff but coming from this end they are very appreciated and obvious. That architecture is not so old that I am going to regret upgrading with it and it fits my 2010 H61 motherboard which was built predicting that architecture would be available and used. All nice and snug. There are processors in this range that would have been a better buy and more powerful but after a week of reading everything I could find they hadn’t popped up in the posts and didn’t until ten minutes after the other one arrived. Naturally!
The scooter is so bad that the gears are locking tight while the machine is parked and I have to rock it back and forward to free them or even push it to engage reverse which causes my body some damage. There seems to be corrosion in the drive and while I am convinced it could be rebuilt there is no one and no place to help me with it. It runs with an alternating hum and various complaining noises With the batteries also fading fast and right at the ends of their lives the range is down to about a kilometer or so. It is not an assured kilometer so the rise in personal stress levels as the clear inevitability of losing my only reliable transport adds itself to the big bag of stuff that crush me emotionally. In emergencies there is still the bicycle to get to the little supermarket but that takes so much effort that I will be housebound for days and days if something doesn’t change.
Having said that the little Merits Explorer has done a mighty job and looked after myself and its first owner for almost twenty years.
The addition of that stress on top of all of the other things that have seared and crushed me emotionally lately have made the nightmares go from a regular cruelty to a raging invasion that starts as soon as I relax and batters me mercilessly until I cannot face even resting with my eyes shut until I have no choice. I am alone here. My paintings and drawings sit rotting in piles that need that little bit of space or storage to unravel so I can work on them and develop the technical aspects. It is impossible and my skills deteriorate until they join the things I know I used to do but which are looking like broken bits of someone else’s life. The physical damage from months of being homeless and wandering about the countryside with just motels and refuges to stay in is still keeping me from doing much more than sitting in place and watching television. It has improved. There are chores I can do without using all the dregs of my energy and the apartment is cleaner. There was even enough energy to move the furniture about and make a little space to stand in the the lounge room. The plants seem to be helping with the air quality although not much as they have little surface area yet. I also discovered that the sofa I sleep on could be placed along the rear wall between the front and back door in a strong breeze that is created there and the fumes from the house are almost totally swept away. I get a nights sleep that does not end with me too ill to move when I awake. That is probably helping with the improvements in general energy levels. It is strange and has always been strange to think that such a desperate battle for life and sanity is happening with so little visual activity! I look at the other little boxes that my neighbors live in. I watch the birds swirl through the trees in the quiet little apartment complex and I wonder how desperate their battles are as they are older and just as fragile and a few are just as alone.
The computer has taken to turning on in the middle of the night. I do not understand that. It takes a physical switch for me to turn it on after it is put away at night. It is off and detached from the power via the switches and relays. Although it is still plugged in it should not be able to turn on without my input. I am usually in the midst of my third or fourth filthy nightmare and struggling through an alien night scape in my mind when I hear the click and the hard drive reading the bios prior to firing. It is a creepy feeling dropping from a desperate nightmare into a darkness that is slowly filled with the computer screen starting to run. Then it sits and does nothing. I wonder somewhat foolishly if the brother I lost or some friend, perhaps another family ghost, can see the pitiful state I am in when I face the nightmares and comes to save me. That would be reassuring but I wouldn’t bet my last meal on it.
The little dog that barks all the time is still having barking binges and it is annoying but the people who have it are trying and succeeding into keeping it quite a lot of the time. That has removed a constant stress that has been in the air the whole year and a half since I moved in.
Bob is well. Remember Bob? He/she was a tiny caterpillar I found hanging from a silk thread under a Lemon-scented Paper Bark tree or Lemon-scented Tea Tree or something like that. I wrote it down. It went from a skinny one centimeter looper to a looper almost eight cm long aver a month or so in a plastic box with a few twigs and leaves in it before falling to the floor of the box and shrivelling up. It kept shriveling for a week or so and then turned into a green pupae. It then turned black and has been sitting in a little pile of sterile sand in that same box for a month or more. It seems dead but touch it and it swings its pointy little posterior about so Bob lives! The lizards seem to be asleep under the hot water heater in the bathroom although one did come out when I was having a shower a few days ago. It bathed in the steam until it realized I was watching and they have been absent since.
I am fighting it. There is image making slowly and gruelingly being forced from this poor mind and translated to the physical by my aching and weary mitts. Something will give. I need to make images and things. I have partially worker canvases and ideas on paper all over the place. The final energy to do the technical things and the space will emerge I hope.