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Serious Whimsy » Jolana Malkston » Page 37
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No, No, NaNo!

 Serious Whimsy  8 Responses »
Nov 052013
 

Jolana Malkston 2On impulse, I signed up to participate in the National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) Challenge this year. I am determined to complete my Work in Progress (WIP) by the end of November. I thought the challenge to write 50,000 words within a one-month deadline would be the kick in the derriere I needed to finish the damn book.

There was a slight problem with that capricious decision. I am not a linear writer.  I cannot write straight through to the end of a manuscript without grinding to a halt and turning back to change something that no longer works because my story has taken a new direction. It is my ingrained writing process. I am powerless to fight the siren call to go back. Every time I try, I fail.

I circle around. I backtrack. I tinker.

Yet, despite my compulsive fixit process, I signed up for NaNo. What was I thinking?

Obviously, I wasn’t thinking—not thinking clearly, that is. If I were thinking clearly, I never would have signed up. I only began thinking clearly after the fact, fat lot of good that did.

My initial panic subsided when on the Eve of NaNo, I realized that what was done could just as easily be undone. I still had time to go back to the NaNo website and delete my account before I made a complete fool of myself or lost my mind or both.

Or not.

One unavoidable obstacle to that plan existed. I blabbed. I told all my writing buddies what I was doing. Me and my big mouth—fingers, actually.

Yes, before I came to my senses, I posted my NaNo signup on the Mid-Michigan RWA (MMRWA) list serve. The five other MMRWA writers who signed up and I formed a local NaNo email support group to post word counts and words of encouragement.

If I were to back out before even attempting the NaNo challenge, I would be reviled as a wimp, a wuss, a quitter before the fact humiliated in the eyes of the local NaNo support group and the rest of my chapter mates. There was no dignified way out and no reprieve in sight.

I was stuck. I was trapped. I was doomed.

There are times when I am my own worst enemy. This is definitely one of those times. My only recourse is to soldier on and try not to embarrass myself by posting a puny word count, so I had better cut this sob story short and get back to my WIP.

Yipes! My iPhone just pinged at me, and I cleared my chair, dang it. That new email ping can be extremely unnerving when I’m concentrating.

Whoa. This is so eerie.  I’m writing about NaNoWriMo and NaNoWriMo is the sender.  What are the odds?

Let’s see what’s up. Oh, it’s NaNo Week One Breaking News—NaNo has a writing marathon planned for Saturday, November 9 for added motivation. Seriously? A thirty-day diet of extended daily writing time is not challenging enough? Give me a break! Please say it isn’t so, NaNo, because I have the sinking feeling that my local NaNo support group will be gung ho to participate in that marathon. [Gulp!] I would weep, but I’m afraid the torrent of tears might short-circuit my MacBook Pro.

If you are participating or have participated in NaNo, please post with your experience—good or bad. Despite the whimpering and whining above, I can handle the truth—I think. 🙂

Missing: One Shop-Till-You-Drop Gene

 Serious Whimsy  8 Responses »
Oct 302013
 

Jolana Malkston 2Most of the women I know love to shop. Monthly. Weekly. Even daily. It doesn’t matter for what: jewelry, clothes, cute shoes—you name it, they’ll shop for it. They live to shop and will shop till they drop.

Not me. I was born without the shop-till-you-drop gene. I often wonder if that reflects on my femininity somehow.

I only shop when it becomes so absolutely necessary that I can no longer avoid doing so. Case in point: Macho Guy’s $100 challenge.

A number of years ago, when Firstborn and Little Brother were still school age, a T-shirt and jeans—sweatshirt and jeans in cold weather—were my eminently practical uniform of the weekday, and I had a few Sunday-Go-To-Meeting Outfits that I cycled through. One day, which happened to be the first day of the month, Macho Guy handed me a one-hundred-dollar bill.

ME: [eyes wide as dinner plates] What’s this for?

MACHO GUY: I want you to buy some new clothes. I’m tired of seeing you wear the same old stuff all the time.

ME: What’s wrong with wearing jeans and T-shirts? I’m raising two boys. You know what they’re like. I’d be crazy to wear good clothes around them.

MACHO GUY: It’s the good clothes I’m talking about. Look, I appreciate that you don’t spend a lot on yourself, but you need to get something new.

ME: But I don’t need anything new.

MACHO GUY: Yeah, you do. Let me put it this way. If you don’t spend this hundred on some new clothes by the end of the month, I’ll take back the hundred and I’ll take all your clothes out back and burn them and you’ll have nothing to wear.

ME: You wouldn’t dare.

MACHO GUY: Try me.

[Flash forward one month.]

MACHO GUY: Did you spend the hundred yet?

ME: No. Why?

MACHO GUY: Today’s the last day of the month. You’d better get your butt to the mall or tomorrow you’ll be a nudist.

He had that really macho don’t-mess-with-me look in his eyes that told me he meant business. I decided it was not in my best interest to mess with him. I took my butt to the mall.

My timing could not have been worse. I arrived to find a mall-wide sale going on. O joy. The place was a credit-card-flashing zoo, just the sort of bargain-manic mob I wanted to avoid. I shopped in haste, spending the hundred bucks on coordinated pieces I could mix and match to create several outfits, and I couldn’t get out of there fast enough. I figured my new duds would definitely placate Macho Guy, and I was relieved that I wouldn’t have to shop again for what I hoped was a long, long while.

The fact is that I don’t understand the appeal of shopping. I can’t work up any enthusiasm for it. I’d rather do just about anything else.

Grand openings don’t entice me. Sales leave me cold. Black Friday is just another day.

I do make an exception for books. I love to shop for books. I can spend countless hours browsing in a bookstore, and I have. Bookstores for me are equivalent to Godiva chocolate boutiques.

For some unknown reason, clothes shopping doesn’t do it for me. No one will ever refer to me as a clotheshorse. Of course, it doesn’t help that current fashion trends lean toward the coyote ugly. I open women’s magazines—MORE, for example—to see fashion editors gushing over the latest trends. Are they serious? Are they that easy to please? Are they color blind?

More often than not, the latest trends embrace unflattering and uninspired designs featuring discordant fabric patterns in clashing colors too bright or too sickly drab. One look at them and I put off shopping—dieting too. Call me a fashion curmudgeon if you will, but I refuse to starve myself to fit into an outfit that appears to be stitched together with fabric scraps from a ragbag.

I don’t even bother shopping for cute shoes. I can’t buy them. Shoe manufacturers decreed that I am not allowed to wear cute shoes because I have wide feet. I have very wide feet. I have the widest wide feet, actually—doublewide to be exact.

Easy Spirit shoe stores used to be the place to shop if you had very narrow or very wide feet. That was Easy Sprit’s claim to fame. I used to be able to find attractive shoes there in various colors in my size and width. Not anymore. The Easy Spirit honchos decided, in their finite wisdom, to manufacture doublewide shoes in black only. Wide feet are not allowed to wear colorful shoes. Wide feet are a serious inconvenience to shoe manufacturers and do not deserve colorful shoes. Wide feet must wear black shoes and look as if they are perpetually in mourning. As a consequence, I wear a lot of black outfits so the rest of me also looks as if perpetually in mourning—or like a New Yorker.

I’m not much for jewelry shopping either. Expensive jewelry has never been a turn-on for me. I’d rather wear inexpensive fun pieces or no jewelry at all, except for my wedding ring, which thrills Macho Guy no end. He’s the envy of several buddies whose wives keep various jewelry stores in business.

Unfortunately for non-shoppers like me, we are fast approaching the stress-filled holiday gift-shopping season. Soon it will be November and there comes Black Friday, the shoppers’ and retailers’ high holy day. As I mentioned earlier, Black Friday is just another day to me. You won’t find me camping in the middle of the night outside a store that advertises the sale of a limited number of Christmas specials—first come, first serve—when its doors open before dawn. I’ll be at home all Thursday night and Black Friday morning, warm and toasty in my bed, and visions of sugarplums will not be dancing in my head.

Giving Big C The Whimsy Treatment

 Serious Whimsy  4 Responses »
Oct 242013
 

Jolana Malkston 2You’re probably wondering how I could consider giving something as serious as cancer—The Big C—the whimsy treatment. October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. What could I be thinking? Well, Breast Cancer Awareness Month got me thinking about the effect of any type of cancer diagnosis.

I was diagnosed with colon cancer. I was cured. I was well aware that cancer is serious business.

During the colonoscopy that I had four years ago this month, my gastroenterologist Dr. S found a low-lying cecal polyp that could not be removed easily and would require surgery.  She took photos and two biopsies instead.  When I heard the word biopsies, I figured she suspected it was cancerous. She called me early the next morning—yes, that soon—with the biopsy results:  diagnosis of malignancy—a tubulovillous adenoma with high-grade dysplasia consistent with intramucosal carcinoma. The only good news was that the cancer was stage one. We caught it early. Dr. S mailed the lab results and photos of the cancerous polyp to me.

Doctors will tell you that maintaining a positive attitude is essential to a successful recovery from a serious illness, so I elected to be immensely positive. I wouldn’t let cancer define who I was or how I lived my life. I figured if I could laugh at Big C, it had no power over me. I cracked silly and darkly humorous jokes about my condition, and I watched lots of funny films and TV shows that made me laugh—and laughing made me feel better. People cope with life-threatening illnesses like cancer in different ways. My way was somewhat unorthodox, but it worked for me. True, it’s not the way the average person would normally deal with cancer, but hey, I never claimed to be normal.

After I received the photos of the cancerous cecal pole polyp, I emailed a friend who shares my screwball sense of humor.

ME: It’s definitely cancer. My gastroenterologist sent me a sheet of photos of the polyp–in living color.

FRIEND: Are you going to frame it and hang it on your living room wall?

ME: No, I was thinking Christmas cards. I could superimpose tinsel on the polyp.

FRIEND: Don’t do that. I have a great Christmas wreath graphic that you could put around the polyp.

ME: Even better. Thanks! 🙂

[You will no doubt be relieved to know that I decided against the “Merry Polyp” cards and sent out a Christmas newsletter instead.]

When I consulted Dr. C, one of the surgeons I interviewed and the one I eventually selected, he offered robotic assisted surgery as an option. (The doctor sits at a console and controls the robot’s movements as it performs the surgery.) I hadn’t heard of robotic assisted surgery before, but I’m a long-time science fiction fan so naturally I thought it was completely and fabulously cool. My immediate response was, “You mean you have R2-D2 assisting you in the operating room?” I elected to have the robotic assisted surgery, of course.

I was certain from that point on that The Force was with me.  In fact, I made sure of it. I visited my pastor to receive the sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick.  I felt better having God in my corner for this fight.

You shouldn’t be surprised to learn about that. Despite evidence to the contrary, I do have a serious side–as in Serious Whimsy. Get it? Serious Whimsy? Oh, well.  Never mind.

At the last critique group meeting before my surgery, the girls toasted to a successful surgery for me. I responded: “The condemned ate a hearty last meal of chips, salsa and margaritas.” Not exactly true. I feasted on steak quesadillas too, and it obviously wasn’t my last meal—or my last margarita.

I had a CT scan prior to the surgery to ascertain if there was cancer anywhere else in my body—thankfully, there was none.  I had to drink two bottles of barium beforehand.  It wasn’t the tastiest drink I ever had, but compared to the colonoscopy prep, it was downright delicious.

Without question, the prep is the worst part of the colonoscopy procedure. Mankind landed astronauts on the moon. Mankind built an international space station that orbits the Earth. Mankind has yet to develop a bowel prep solution that tastes good. Really?

Medical researchers need to find a better way to clean a colon out—a way that doesn’t involve gagging down gallons of vile-tasting, nauseating liquids and scurrying to the porcelain facility every ten minutes.  Eww.  You know what would be fantastic?  If we had a working matter transporter like the one on Star Trek’s Enterprise, we could set the transport coordinates to the interior of the colon and beam the poop into outer space where it would freeze and become tiny asteroids.  No fuss, no muss, no prep, no poop!

On the morning of my surgery, when Macho Guy and Dr. C met for the first time, I introduced Dr. C as Robby the Robot’s brother. Macho Guy cleared his throat and said it must be the drugs talking. A definite possibility; I was feeling no pain at that moment. I also said I was looking forward to meeting the robot, but the anesthetist dashed my hopes. He said I would meet the robot but because of the anesthesia drugs dripping from a tube into my bloodstream, I wouldn’t remember anything about it when I regained consciousness. He was right, dang it. After the surgery, he told me that we had a chat about what I was writing at the moment and that I got to see and ask numerous questions about the robot. I remembered none of it. Bummer.

The good news I received was that the cancer hadn’t spread; I had a surgical cure (no chemotherapy or radiation necessary). Also, I only had small poke-hole scars on my abdomen that eventually disappeared. The bad news was that I had to have annual colonoscopies from then on.

I went back to Dr. S the next year for a follow up colonoscopy. I asked her a question that seemed perfectly logical and sensible to me:  “Since part of my colon is missing and you have less to examine, shouldn’t I be entitled to a discount?” I’m still waiting for that discount . . .

The Perfect Storm

 Serious Whimsy  8 Responses »
Oct 152013
 

Jolana Malkston 2The perfect storm struck my house yesterday evening. No wind. No rain. No thunder and lightening. This perfect storm had nothing to do with weather conditions. The weather yesterday was gorgeous. No, this perfect storm developed from a comedy of errors, memory lapses, oversights, ambiguities, omissions and just plain failure to communicate.

About a year ago, Macho Guy and I bought tickets to three dinner theater events at our local university club. These events begin at 5:00 p.m. with a four-course dinner at the club, and then the club buses us to the theater at 7:00 p.m. to get there in time for a 7:30 p.m. curtain. The first event was scheduled for October 10.

In previous years, the person in charge of the club’s dinner theaters always sent out email reminders a week before so members wouldn’t forget the dinner theater dates. A new person took over this year; she did not send out email reminders.

We didn’t have a 2013 calendar yet, so the dates of the dinner theaters didn’t make it onto a physical calendar that we normally keep on the wall behind our centralized communication center [tiny phone desk] in the kitchen. However, I dutifully entered the dates into my iPhone Calendar.

Flash back to when Macho Guy and I bought our iPhones. Firstborn recommended that we share an Apple ID because we could also share any apps either of us purchased and would not have to pay for them twice. We followed his advice and shared an Apple ID. Since that time, I learned that Apple recommends against sharing an Apple ID, and now I know why. Macho Guy and I also ended up sharing items we would rather not share, such as birthday reminders for my writer friends that also appeared on Macho Guy’s iPhone and iPad, and sports apps Macho Guy bought that also appeared on my iPhone and iPad. When I set all my devices to share and backup to the iCloud so I wouldn’t need to reenter data manually on each device, Macho Guy’s iPhone inherited all that input too. He whined and complained so much that I finally disabled iCloud. Big mistake. Half my contacts and reminders that were linked to the cloud disappeared and so did nearly all of my calendar entries. I had to enable iCloud again, but I noticed that a number of items were missing; many of the missing items were reminders and calendar entries. I reconstructed my missing data as best I could. Unfortunately, I could not remember everything. I did not remember the dinner theater dates.

Flash forward to yesterday. My critique partner didn’t feel well and had to cancel our afternoon meeting, so I changed into my comfy writing garb (a “write your heart out” T-shirt and baggy sweat pants) and plugged away at the next chapter of my science fiction romance epic. Macho Guy returned home early from his temporary gig and changed into his lounging around the house garb and proceeded to read the newspaper. Neither of us were dressed up for a night on the town. We were dressed down for a nice, quiet, uneventful evening at home. In actuality, we were thirty minutes from Situation Normal All Fouled Up. [I believe soldiers use a different F word for their version of SNAFU.]

At about 4:45 p.m., I received a very ambiguous call on my iPhone from a friend of ours. He urged me to tell Macho Guy not to take the usual route because of the homecoming traffic.

Huh? What homecoming traffic? What usual route? What’s going on?

He said they were on their way and asked if we were.

What? On the way where? I had no idea what he was talking about, but I thought maybe he’d explain so I said, “No.”

He asked if I heard from another couple we knew.

Why is he asking me about them? Again, I said, “No.”

He said he was five minutes away, said he’d see me later and hung up before I could ask what he was talking about.

Five minutes away from where? Our house? What the hell?

I went to tell Macho Guy about the freaky phone call. Before I could, he started asking me questions about something else and I clean forgot about the phone call.

At 5:45 pm, while Macho Guy and I were getting ready for our weekly wine and cheese date night, the phone rang and I answered. A staff member from the local university club was on the line.

CLUB LADY: Are you planning to use your dinner theater tickets tonight?

ME: [stunned] Dinner theater? We signed up for that?

CLUB LADY: Yes.

ME: It’s tonight?

CLUB LADY: Yes.

ME: It’s not on our calendar.

ME: [Aside to Macho Guy] The first dinner theater is tonight! She wants to know if we’ll be there.

MACHO GUY: [Looks at the clock; it is now 5:50 p.m.] We’d have to leave here by six. I can be ready to go in ten minutes, can you?

[We will pause here until the people who know me well are able to stop laughing.]

Did Macho Guy seriously expect me, the slowest moving human on the face of the earth, to be ready in ten minutes? Was he mad? Was he joking? Was he dreaming?

ME: [Aside to Macho Guy, thinking of how much it would cost us to blow off those dinner theater tickets.] I can do it.

ME: [To Club Lady] We’ll be there.

Was I mad? Was I joking? Was I dreaming?

I put all the food away in a flash. I dashed to our bedroom, stripping on the way. I yanked underwear and a dressy T-shirt out of my dresser, slacks and a cardigan from the closet and threw them on the bed. I splashed my face, dried it and smoothed on tinted moisturizer, brow pencil and lip gloss—all the makeup I figured I had time for. I brushed my hair, applied a shaping wax to keep it out of my eyes, slipped into my underwear, clothes and shoes, draped a couple of flashy chains around my neck, grabbed my purse and ran for the door. I did it all in ten minutes. Macho Guy now expects me to do it all the time. Bummer.

We arrived at the club at 6:20 p.m., an hour and twenty minutes late, and were greeted by our friends with a round of applause and a tremendous amount of teasing. When Macho Guy told them I was ready to go in ten minutes, it sent shock waves around the table and their jaws all dropped in unison. Can’t hardly blame them given my reputation for never being on time.

We all did a postmortem on our late arrival while Macho Guy and I wolfed down our dinners. I told the friend who called that he never mentioned the club or the dinner theater, and I had no clue why he called or what he was talking about. The couple who rode with us to the last dinner theater didn’t call to see if we wanted to ride with them this time because they were running fifteen minutes late and they knew how important it is to Macho Guy to be on time. Another couple we sometimes ride with didn’t call this time around because they thought we’d ride with the other couple. I mentioned not getting an email reminder from the club; no one else did either. I also told the gang about our iPhone woes and losing my reminders and calendar entries and how the dinner theater never made it onto our 2013 calendar once we had one.

We all agreed that those separate occurrences taken together created a perfect storm that almost caused us to miss a very enjoyable evening out with our friends. Fortunately, we weathered that storm, mainly because I somehow managed to channel the spirit of a quick-change artist. I can’t help wondering if I’ll ever be able to do it again. What do you think?

Brace Yourself

 Serious Whimsy  6 Responses »
Oct 082013
 

Jolana Malkston 2See that semi-smile in my photo? All lips. No toothy grin. A bit Mona Lisa-ish. There’s an excellent reason for that.

At the time that portrait photo was taken, I had unphotogenic braces cemented on my teeth, and they were exceedingly camera shy. Frankly, I wasn’t anxious to have my picture taken either, and wouldn’t have but for my RWA National Conference roommate. She had an appointment to have her professional portrait taken by Studio 16 and was nervous about it. She didn’t want to go alone and pleaded with me to go with her and hold her hand. (Oddly enough, my hand did not show up in any of her photos.)

When I saw how well her portraits turned out, I was a bit envious. I whined about my braces keeping me from having a photo taken too. The photographer said it shouldn’t be a problem. He used digital cameras and he had photo-editing software. Translation: no matter how unphotogenic you look in the actual photo, you will look so glamorous in the edited photo that your own mother won’t recognize you and will ask for your autograph. Oh? Okay . . .

The next thing I knew, I was posing for the camera. The photographer got me to grin once—only once. We both agreed on immediate deletion of that pose. I was not about to pay to have my metal-mouth grin immortalized in that photo, and he didn’t want his professional reputation destroyed. We wisely stuck to the Mona Lisa smile.

I wish that I could have had my teeth straightened when I was a youngster. Orthodontia for adults is a seriously inconvenient business. Seriously regimented business. Seriously painful business.

Yes, my teeth needed straightening, but I resisted the idea of braces. I reasoned that I could get my dentist to camouflage the crooked teeth with veneers. My dentist did a thorough job of pointing out all the holes in my logic. I will spare you his lengthy explanation of why it wouldn’t work and wouldn’t look attractive. He assured me that I would keep all my teeth longer if they were straightened because I would be able to do a better job of brushing and flossing. And they would look much nicer straightened of course. They sure couldn’t look any worse.

My first appointment was with an orthodontist who took impressions of my bite that tried the patience of my gag reflex. My second was with the oral surgeon she sent me to. Huh? An oral surgeon? Now wait just a minute. Wasn’t orthodontia supposed to help me keep all my teeth? The teeth my orthodontist wanted the oral surgeon to pull were perfectly healthy—no cavities or chips or anything. Who pulls perfectly healthy teeth? The sadist who pulled four of my healthy cavity-free teeth, that’s who.

The orthodontist said it was necessary. My teeth were crooked because they were crowded; I had too many teeth and some would have to go. She pronounced the death sentence on all four first bicuspids. She said they were unnecessary and were expendable. Her heartless words brought forth a chilling revelation. I was having my teeth straightened by The Tooth Nazi.

Mere days after the four hapless healthy bicuspids were forced to make the supreme sacrifice, the rest of my teeth selfishly spread into the vacated spaces and began to straighten themselves out. I, on the other hand, appreciated the sacrifice. I was thankful. I was relieved. I was under the impression that I wouldn’t suffer as much as I initially feared. All right! Piece of cake!

Not so fast. Once my gums healed, I went in on a Friday afternoon for my next appointment with The Tooth Nazi. She said we needed to move the molars forward and she jammed spacers between them. The spacers introduced me to nerve endings I never met before.

Ow. Ow. OwieWowWow.

Macho Guy and I didn’t realize the amount of discomfort—no, make that pain—which the spacers caused. He always liked going out to dinner at the end of the workweek, so that Friday evening we went out to dinner as usual. He thought it would be a great idea to take me to a steakhouse for what he figured would be my last steak dinner for a while before the braces went on. Once the braces were on, it would hurt too much for me to chew steak until I got used to them, or so he figured.

My mouth tried to tell me that Macho Guy figured wrong. My mouth hurt when I swallowed. My mouth hurt when I smiled. My mouth hurt when I spoke. I hadn’t tried chewing yet. I was afraid to open my mouth that wide, so I chickened out and had applesauce for lunch.

I was leery of ordering steak, and I almost didn’t. Oh well. No guts, no glory. I suppose I should have ordered a nice, tender filet mignon, but being the frugal hausfrau that I was, I ordered the less expensive—and less tender—New York Strip, medium rare. I cut a very small piece and bit down on it.

ow-ow-ow-ow-ow-ow-ow-ow-ow-ow-ow-ow-ow-ow-ow-ow-ow-ow-owie-wow-wow!!!

Taking that first bite of steak was a profile in courage for me. I did not scream. I did not cry. I did not swear. Well, not aloud. I did whimper a tiny bit. I may have whined some. Maybe I moaned a little. Oh, all right. I was not courageous. I was a wimp. I acted like a big baby. So there.

Macho Guy finished his steak in record time and then for an hour watched with an expression of pity as I cut tiny pieces from mine and minced each one with my front teeth to lessen pressure on the molars. My favorite part of the meal was the iced tea. It was the only thing I didn’t have to chew. In hindsight, I should have asked for a box to take my steak dinner home so I could put it in my food processor, liquefy it and drink it.

That steak dinner had to be the low point for me in the orthodontia process. Chewing steak with those spacers between my molars hurt worse than anything else. I know that for a fact because I remember that dinner in excruciating detail, but I remember very little about having the bicuspids extracted or having the braces cemented on.

In spite of the two years of aggravation and discomfort wearing braces caused, I have to say the suffering was worth it in the end. Once the braces came off, I was able to smile without feeling self-conscious. My dentist assures me that I’m doing such a good job of taking care of my new smile that I won’t lose the teeth I have now and there’s no need to worry about having to eat baby food one day—or drink steak.

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