Tech no Mama

OK, so last week I complained about my technical woes. Actually I always complain about this, last week I just happened to write about them. When I really think about it, I laugh out loud. All the stupid things I must endure to make the things that are supposed to make my life simpler don’t seem worth it. Do I really need to argue with my car to hear a song? Sometimes I don’t have the fight in me and I give up, I can listen to Sirius radio instead, which ironically, is another possible headache, in fact if I am in a tunnel or random spots on PCH I hear nothing.

I’m used to all the additional work necessary to get me though my day, I factor in the extra time I need to reset my home phone and interwebs, redial people five times and regain my composure after arguing with the Sync chick that lives in my car. What I don’t count on is the complete failure of any of the things I rely on to get me though my day. This morning I had my usual Vonage problems, all calls were forwarding to my cell phone and the internets weren’t working, I went into the black hole that holds our router and reset. I didn’t have a lot of time, I was meeting A for breakfast but I wanted to check out Facebook and read any pressing emails. I walked back to my laptop and nothing, still had that stupid yellow triangle with the exclamation point inside, a visual flipping of the bird to me. I went back to the black hole and saw no lights were on the router, uh oh. This was going to be bad. I called D who was still in the car and asked what was up, I had never seen this before. He said to reset again and if it didn’t work we’ll just have to deal with it later.

WHAT?

That only meant one thing to me.

No internet. NO INTERNET? OMFG What the hell was I supposed to do without the internet? I actually felt like panicking. Luckily A was waiting for me and I didn’t want to piss her off (chillax A, I’m just kidding). I checked my email on my iPhone which was almost dead, of course, and I was on my way.

A and I had a nice breakfast, after that went for a walk around Montana Avenue and had a nice complaintfest. Her daily drama involved her mother and it was pretty awful, I briefed her on the latest news from the MIL front, which is huge and deserves it’s very own post, since unfolding last week it has physically and mentally exhausted me, when I have the energy I’ll write about it. I will say that sometimes it sucks to be right.

Being out took my mind off the tech nightmare that was waiting for me at home. I called D while I was fetching K from school, he said the router was fried and Vonage was sending out a new one, apparently the one we had was known to be problematic. I hate Vonage so much, it would have been nice to know about this before the thing blew up. I got a frantic phone call from K’s agent telling me about a last minute audition, didn’t I see all the emails she sent? Uh, no, sorry. Cool, another distraction, that would help. I collected her, brought her home, cleaned her up and off we went. She was so funny today, telling jokes at the casting, skipping and laughing all the way back to the car, we had such a fun afternoon. We made her favorite dinner when we got home, oven baked barbeque ribs, baked beans and cornbread muffins. She is the pickiest eater and complains to no end about my meal plans however when I make ribs this little girl eats like nobody’s business, I loved watching her little mouth devour the sticky ribs only to ask for more.

After dinner, D called one of our neighbors and explained our internet situation, or lack thereof, and they were happy to give us their wifi password. We were back online! I was so stressed thinking that I wouldn’t be able to write even though I had nothing to write about.

Today’s tech war has taught me how much I rely on the internet to get me through my day, I need to constantly check Facebook to see what’s up with my friends, I need to check Yahoo to see what’s going on in the world and I need to check my email to tell me where to go. I actually managed to do most of this today off grid, it was strange and unfamiliar but not that bad. Besides it inspired me to write this, without it you might be reading about the new issues we have with my MIL.

That’s a whole other headache and I’m pretty sure she doesn’t have a reset button.