Ye Auld Hag!

"Ah, this old grey mare just ain't what she used to be!"Hilary declared. It was a sunny Sunday afternoon. Old Ben looked up from his fixation, sport on television. He grumped, but that was all perfectly normal. The summer sport of golfing was only a merely pallid substitute for his tortured real world of supporting his crud football team in the winter months.

Old Ben thought he should show understanding of Hilary, aka Hilaria. Maybe she was going through another stage, now they were both retired, in their elderly stage.

"Never mind, neither is the old grey dude," he smiled vaguely surfing his boring world of summer sports. "There's nothing on television." Hilaria tried to ignore this comment, she had heard it all before. It was a lazy senior afternoon. Meanwhile, at the back of the couch Old Ben was sitting on, their adopted cat was starting on her next project.

Queenie, the fluff ball from Hell, was shredding now the beige carpet. Only the parts she had not vomited on, to be fair to her selective simulations of a shredding machine. Queenie was living life in the ageing family home in Hometown on her own terms. She was born to boss, and have independent thoughts. She considered Pavlov's dogs to be quite impaired. Queenie rang the bells around here, and food appeared.

Hilaria briefly scolded Queenie, who promptly ignored her, and continued to rip the carpet. Cats gotta do what cats gotta do. Hilaria opened her laptop. "I know," she said to Old Ben, "I am going to email the vet, book Queenie in with a pet psychologist. She needs behavioral therapy. Can't phone, it is Sunday." Old Ben just moaned.

Hilaria gazed at her tatty looking decor, and got on a roll. "I am going to redevelop my retirement. I am planning to redecorate all this shredded furniture and drapes. I shall google for fabrics and upholstery stores." Old Ben looking bemused. Yes, Hilaria was going through another stage.

"Then, " his loving wife continued," I shall take stunning photos of our new decor, and sell images to Home Beautiful. I shall be a star. But first the vet!"

Had Queenie learnt to understand human chats? She emerged haughtily from behind the couch, and expressed her regal displeasure of pet psychology by doing a cat spew on Hilaria's shoes. Queenie glared, Hilaria browsed, found the vet website.

"Where do they study animal behavioral therapy?" Old Ben was mildly interested. "Sounds like an expensive scam."

Hilaria disregarded that remark to trash. She was a golden oldie, navigating the internet, like a lot of seniors. She sat there at her laptop, seeking to 'log in' to a website. This was urgent. Queenie was getting worse, a cute, but uncuddly, tyrant.

Hilaria tried her password. Wrong! She tried her alternative password. Wrong again. Then she tried her old password. Even more wrong. What was her password? Now she might have to reset her password. She forgot to write it down, in her ever expanding inventory of passwords.

Hilaria had a password for the vet website, as she was a regular. She had a password for her banking, and a password for her library. She even had a password for her lotto entries. And so on. They all had to be strong passwords, with a mixture of numerals and letters, capital and lower case. But which one today was the correct password? Hilaria sat, staring at her screen, despairingly wondering.

"So, website, what was wrong with that password?" Hilaria muttered at her laptop. Old Ben was napping again, over it. There was no adequate response from her inanimate object, her digital appliance. Did someone invent passwords to make adult humans feel inadequate and stupid? Hilaria pondered. She asked herself, "Why doesn't each website just post a message? Get off our website. We don't want you on our website, ye auld hag." Of course, Hilaria did acknowledge the necessity for passwords. It was a world of scammers and hackers after all. But not today, please. Her grandchildren all regarded her and Old Ben as affable dinosaurs. Their young ones' grandchildren would be thinking something much the same.

But Hilaria was undeterred. "Thanks for sharing, not." Hilaria was now talking to this silent screen device. She logged in again, wondering if this happened anyone else. She had planned to enrol Queenie with the pet psychologist first thing in the morning, preferably a boarding school for naughty kitties. Might be life-changing.

But now she was still dithering over which password to use. Was it her old password? Or latest password? Her damn passwords just were not good enough. Passwords on her computer were a constant, but could change. Tell Hilaria and Queenie.

It was time for Hilaria to stop being so philosophical. She logged in to reset her password again. Yes, finally, success. Hilaria had negotiated a phone text, a temporary password of digits. She had pressed enough buttons, demonstrating her flexible keyboard skills. She had a new password.

Hilaria made sure she wrote down her password as well. This had taken way too long. It was now dinner time in old Hometown. Queenie was staring at her food bowls, a firm believer in delicious protein appearing at magical, regular intervals. Everyone got fed in the usual way. Hilaria did not quite get her goals achieved to have Queenie reformed by her animal behavior therapist.

Maybe tomorrow Hilaria would phone some answering machine, desperately seeking any vet assistant or carpet layer to ring her. Chance would be a great thing, if people returned phone calls. Her new career in her redeveloping retirement stage was to be coordinating new decor, all on hold

Hilaria had closed her laptop. The silent message was still the same. "Get off our website, ye auld hag." Temporarily defeated, in silence, Old Ben and Hilaria went off to bed. It had filled in a lazy Sunday afternoon, and achieved nothing. Now she could not remember where her passwords notebooks were. Queenie sprang on their marital bed, and proceeded to attack Hilaria's toes, which were under the blanket. This was Queenie's bed, after all. It was back to square one.

Hilaria sighed. Old Ben snored. His wife had wrinkles on her wrinkles, thinking about passwords. The old grey mare just ain't what she used to be.......