I'm really not up to blogging today.  It's ME/CFIDS flareup/recovery time.  I have been running on empty, pushing the envelope, keeping on keeping on until the wall popped up and stopped me.  Having hit the wall, I'll veg here until I can get up and go again.

Yesterday's town trip left me too tired to sleep well last night.  This morning, I spent what energy I had trying to catch up with email I'd missed while the computer was down.  I need support to walk today, and have to use my hands to help lift my legs to get out of bed or straddle this ergonomic chair.  Now I'm going to try to get to the kitchen and eat something, then make my way to the couch until Doug gets up and helps me to bed.

I'm glad that Doug is willing and able to work on restoring our software and getting this machine back toward something recognizable.  Neither of us understands the reasoning behind the way the tech who did the restoration divided the programs between our two hard drives.  I guess Doug's first task when he gets up today will be to get on the phone and ask some questions.

 I agree with lupa that if a man expects his wife to wear a ring, he needs to be willing to wear one himself.

Those who mentioned hazardous occupations (including the handling of raw meat), hit upon my main reason for not wearing jewelry.  I got out of the habit of wearing earrings when Doug was a grabby little baby.  Rings have always either gotten in the way of various work for me, or they have cut into my finger when it was swollen, or fallen off and gotten lost when I'd lose weight.

Quitchick asked, "about the women's movement and men's rings, interesting, but I still don't understand how that worked. Did men WANT to start wearing them in an attempt to preserve tradition, or did advertisers just try to convince men to start wearing them so their bridal jewelry business didn't go under?"

I think it was probably a bit of both, beginning with the reluctance of a few libertated women to wear that symbol of servitude and chattelhood.  Anyone wishing to examine the history of the marital institution can find it here.

Doug and I have stopped off at the Willow Library on our way to pick up the computer in Wasilla.  We were told that it was a virus that destroyed our OS and corrupted most of the data on our hard drive.  It will be like a new computer, no convenient cookies, all my photos gone... *sigh*  We have no idea what virus it was or how it got in, so of course there's no confidence that it won't happen again.

 The book I read yesterday had two female characters who were married but didn't wear wedding rings, for different reasons, neither of which reflected any philosophical or political preference.  That the author made an issue of the absence of the rings was what got my attention.  I did not receive wedding rings from any of my latest three husbands.  It was no big deal with Michael or Charley.  The relationships were what they were without any need for symbolic reinforcement.

Rings became an issue with Greyfox because he offered me the ring his first wife had worn.  It has their initials and wedding date engraved inside.  I declined, and his reaction appeared to be somewhere between bafflement and offense.  I felt that the offer was inappropriate, but he seemed to think that the gold band was the important thing and that its history, and the engraving inside, didn't matter. 

He had already given me a ring, a gaudy thing in silver with a naked woman coiled around it, holding a cornucopia with a jade cabochon at its mouth.  He considered it our "engagement" ring when I didn't even consider us to be engaged, so I later let him slip it on my finger as we stood before the judge in an empty conference room in a Virginia courthouse.   The ring was too big, too showy for my taste and, I thought, not very taseful, so it hasn't been worn much.

So, how do you feel about wedding rings?  Not just whether you are for or against them as symbolic bonds, but, if you think they are appropriate or important for a woman, do you think men should wear them also?  Are you younger women aware that in the 1960s it was very rare for a man to wear a wedding ring, and that rings for grooms became more popular as the women's movement tried to do away with rings for women?  Some sort of compromise, do you think?

That book, Nothing to Lose, is the best so far in the Jack Reacher series, I think.  Reacher has always been somewhat of a mythic hero, and this story takes the mythic status to new heights.  It is the first time Lee Child has taken on politics and religion with such hard-edged feeling.  About halfway through, I paused and looked at the pages remaining and thought for a millisecond about slowing down to make it last longer.  Then I got back into it and finished it.

I'm at the Willow Public Library today, on my way to Wasilla to drop off the computer for repair.  It is possible that I might get another hour at a public computer at the Wasilla library later.  My time here is running short, so... seeya later.