Up on the Housetop, safe from pain

There's backstory to this, sort of. My new computer, wonder of wonders, is fucking up royal in so many ways that I want to scream and just leave the house, I mean permanently. I can't attach photos to emails, I can't edit photos, I can't send a link to anyone of a YouTube video or anything else without great arabesques involving "hyperlinks" and all sorts of shit I don't want to know about.

My old computer KNEW how to do all this stuff and never gave me a bit of trouble. It realized I did not need a whole bunch of fancy shit to get in the way of basic, clear, easy function. I could do everything I needed with one or two clicks.

I will never get that back. My husband and I are at the sizzling point because he lumbers over to my computer, fucks around with it for half an hour, then tells me he can't do anything and I'll just have to live with it the way it is.

I don't understand why, when I try to email someone a photo, it is embedded, HUGE, in the body of the email, in a form I am certain they do not want. I don't understand, furthermore, why I must be humiliated over and over and over again for being stupid.

I wasn't supposed to be stupid. I started out with great promise.I took Grade 3 and 4 in one year, then was put in a super-advanced Grade 5 class in which I learned exactly nothing, but had great fun giving the teacher a nervous breakdown.

I had a very high IQ and my reading skills were at high school level, and great things were expected of me. NONE of it came true, I mean none.

I don't know what it is. I was the youngest, and all the disappointments of the other three siblings (who were much older) were somehow heaped on my shoulders. I remember my Dad once saying in his usual drunken state that every one of us had let him down in innumerable ways, especially me because I was the only one left to clean up all the wreckage. I was his last, most desperate hope.

I don't know why, because all of my three siblings became very competent professional musicians and were supersmart.

Anyway, this has nothing to do with the video. I wandered in search of distraction, wondering if I could find a non-sticky/sugary version of a Christmas tune I like, Up on the Housetop. To be honest, I heard it on a commercial for Canadian Tire or something, played in a sparkly way with something like a banjo in the background.

This was the only non-sticky version I could find. I like the mellow tone of this dulcimer: some of them sound like garage doors opening (and don't get me started on the psaltery, a scream on strings). It has that relaxed banjo-y flavor to it. This isn't a professional player, but that's what I like about it: it's the sound of someone working on proficiency who obviously has musicality and plays with pleasure and enjoyment, the very thing that was forbidden to me while my Dad stood over me with a big stick.

I find myself deleting paragraphs these days, lots of them. I just can't put all that pain out there. Melancholy dogs me. This isn't the best time of year for me, though I love attending Christmas concerts with my grandchildren in them - could anything be more magical? - and some of the music, and looking at twinkly lights and things.

But, maybe because of my early experiences and all those failed expectations, life seems essentially melancholy and even tragic. I don't know how people walk around with smiles on their faces.