Mercury must be in retrograde

 

Or else there’s a spot on the moon. Something is out of whack. This morning, nothing electronic would work for me. Turned on my computer to find “No Wi-Fi connection.” Usually this isn’t a problem—I know how to reconnect in seconds. But this morning, the connection wouldn’t hold. Before I could get back to whatever I was reading, I was disconnected again. I finally rebooted, and it has, knock on wood, seemed okay all day.

In the emails I was checking, I found something I wanted to print. Printer was offline. I did everything I know to do—turning the printer off and on, checking the cache, and so on. It would print one document and then nothing. Then it began to print multiple copies of anything—including a ten-age document I printed by mistake when I thought I was getting a 1099 or whatever it is we need for tax purposes. I got so many copies of an air fryer recipe for Brussel sprouts I sent one into the house for Christian and used two others for scratch paper.

An email from my bank informed me that I had an inactive account and please contact them before they had to retrieve it from the State of Texas lost accounts. So I called the 24-hour number and could hear someone on the other end saying, “Hello? Hello?” while I was shouting, “I’m here! Can you hear me?” She couldn’t, and I heard her say in disgust, “No response.” Called back and began the conversation with “Can you hear me?” which no doubt confused the representative on the other end. She could, was pleasant and helpful, but it took a long time.

Next I called the alarm company because my security system was out of whack, and I forgot the password. Got a truly nice gentleman who helped me along. Without the password I had to identify the two emergency contacts, who no surprise turned out to be Jordan and Christian. But when asked Christian’s phone number, my mind went blank. I began guessing at figures. The rep suggested I look it up on my phone and assured me I would not lose his call. I lost his call. Bless him, he called me back. He asked me to go to the keypad, so I had to explain about the walker and how slow I am. He was patience personified. I went to the keypad, followed his instructions, and alI was good. At his request, I went back to my computer to schedule a routine service call—and somehow muted the volume on my hearing aids. If he hadn’t yet figured out he was dealing with a doddering old woman, he knew then. I put the phone on speaker, but everything he said was fuzzy. He finally worked it out, I have a service call on my calendar, and I have unmuted my hearing aids (I didn’t even know there was a mute function—might be good to know).

The day wasn’t over yet. I called the company that handles TCU retirees’ benefits, waited through that “We are experiencing a high volume of calls” message, and got a representative fairly quickly. But she could not help me and connected me to a licensed insurance counselor. I waited … and waited … and when I finally talked to him, he advised me to call my dentist and my insurance company. I gave up for the day.

All this on top of the fact that last night I “invented” a turkey meatloaf. It was meh. And now we have leftovers, which I had for lunch. Slathered with mayonnaise it was a bit better. Tonight I’m going to try hamburger Stroganoff. Wish me luck.

Stay safe, folks. Now there’s a new subvariant of Omicron and nobody is sure how serious it is, but they seem sure that it is even more contagious. Some days I think we can’t win. My mom taught me, however,  that tomorrow will be a better day. Mom, I hope you’re listening, and I hope you were right.