We Can Quit Anytime We Want

Ever notice how the first day back at work after vacation is almost always problematic? I’ve taken a lot of vacations in my day, so I should know. But, more often than not, bad things happen when you get back to the grind. It’s as if life is trying to remind you that while vacations provide a break from labor, that break is brief and fleeting, so don’t even think about getting cocky. Take yesterday, for example...

We are about to have the exterior trim of our house painted, the first step of which is a power washing. The guy showed up on time and by the time I came home for lunch, he was gone. As I sat down to eat, I noticed that the Internet didn’t work. I restarted everything. Still, no internet. I didn’t have time to investigate so I headed back to work. Pam hurried home from work so she could be at the house when the guy came to install our new dishwasher. While he was doing so, she noticed the lack of internet, and then something else...Alexa had gone silent. Shortly thereafter, the television went dark. We had been hit by the unholy trinity of outages...no internet, no cable, and no Alexa!! In one frightening moment, our house had been cast into the technological black hole of death. To make matters far worse, we both received that dreaded text from Verizon...You are now out of data and will be placed in safe mode for the next seven days. Pam, fighting back a growing wave of panic, went to work on the Verizon app on her phone, troubleshooting the cause of the problem. I blamed everything on the power washer guy...This is what we get for cleaning the outside of the house! How vain to you have to be give your house a bath!! When Pam finally completed the diagnostics, she sighed heavily, fighting back the tears...The earliest we can have a technician come out is Wednesday!! 

Pam tried to distract herself with her shiny new appliance. It is quite an impressive dish washer, with lots of new gizmos and features that makes our old dishwasher look like a washtub. Then she read this line from the decidedly thin instruction book that came with the thing...To learn the proper way to load your new Dish-Killer 2000, please consult the owners manual...online at GEAppliances.com.

Great, she cried, I spend a fortune on a dish washer and they dont even give me an owner’s manual? I’ve got to go online?? And our internet doesn’t work and we’re out of data??!!

I slowly disengaged from the room, sensing that hostilities might soon break out, figuring that the best strategy at times like this might be benign neglect. After fifteen minutes or so, I circled back into the silent kitchen. Pam was peeling carrots over the sink....We are out of ginger, she said to no one in particular, And I can’t even ask Alexa to put it on my grocery list. How will I ever remember?

I hesitantly placed my hand on her back and gave her a gentle rub. Then it hit me...Wait...we don’t have television? How will we watch the game tonight?? Well, I could either find it on my ESPN app or I could just follow Andrew Freiden’s Twitter account...but wait...we have no internet!!!

It was a long and very quiet night. We were forced to have dinner around the kitchen table instead of on the sofa in the living room. Instead of watching a Frazier rerun, we were reduced to talking back and forth about our lousy days at work. If that Wednesday story that Verizon told us is true, there will be two more days of this Stone Age silence. The only unread book in the house was stored on my iPad...a digital copy of James Joyce’ A Portrait of the Artist as A Young Man. I am here to tell you, if I have to wade through the most overrated writer in the history of the English language over the next 48 hours, I might have to kill someone.

And, just in case you’re wondering...no, we are not addicted to technology. We can quit anytime we want to!!