I had one of Those Days yesterday. I got up feeling pretty good. A bright, sunny day suggested I might want to take a few pictures. I went to open the window … and the shade did a cartoon thing, snapping itself all the way up and curling tightly around the wooden roller. When I tried to unroll it, it fell down and landed in a heap at my feet.

I should have taken that as a sign, but I shrugged it off. Just an old shade to replace No biggie. Thus the day progressed through some electrical? Software? glitch which deleted all my saved emails addressed to me from me. All the saved information carefully put in labeled folders … trashed. Thank you Google! At least you didn’t erase them. You have to be grateful for what didn’t happen. Keeps things in perspective.

I was still  working on sorting out the mess at midnight when the WiFi went out. We recently replaced the router and since then — about two months — haven’t had a minute of trouble with it.

I sighed. “Guess I’ve got to reboot the router,” I told Garry, who was deep into deciding what to record on the DVR and had problems of his own. I rebooted the router. Came back, but still no WiFi. Went back, did it again, and realized the modem looked unhappy. The lights were blinking, not emitting the steady, solid green glow I have come to associate with a happy, healthy modem. I unplugged it, counted slowly to 25, plugged it back in. Nope.

On a whim, I looked at the telephone. “No line,” it announced. The green light was out.

Charter Communications was down.

I couldn’t call on the phone since the phone runs on the WiFi that we didn’t have. I found Garry’s cell phone, looked up Charter’s number in my paper notebook. After the last few fiascos when I couldn’t get to my contacts because they are online and there was no “online” to get to, I’ve gone retro. I keep a notebook with handwritten contact numbers. The electric company. Charter. My doctor. The two pharmacies. The septic guy. The well guy. My best friend. My cardiologist. Our dentist.

I called Charter. Got the robot. I shouted my answers into the phone, probably waking all the people in the house, but not disturbing the dogs. They are never bothered by whatever mom is doing when she has that thing in her hand. It’s not edible, so it isn’t their concern.

An announcement came. “There’s an outage in your area that might be affecting your service. We assure you we are working as fast as we can to resolve the problem. Would you like us to call you when the issue is resolved? Say “yes” or “no.”

“YES,” I shouted.

“Is there anything else with which we could help you?”

“NO,” I yelled.

They started to babble on about something else, but I’d had enough and disconnected. Closed my computer. Turned out the lights. Went into the bedroom where Garry was settling down to watch something recorded using the big Sennheiser earphones.

“It’s Charter,” I shouted. He didn’t have his hearing aids in.

“What?”

“Charter.”

“Good old Charter,” he said.

I started to laugh and couldn’t stop. “They won,” I said between laughs. “They beat me. Charter. Google. Everything. They can break things faster than I can fix them.”

“Give up,” advised Garry. “Tomorrow …”

“Is another day,” I finished. But I kept laughing until I fell asleep. I had been defeated. Just one of those days. Thank you Charter. Thank you Google. Thank you for reminding me I can’t fix everything and sometimes, the only thing left to do is throw your hands in the air and surrender.

DAILY PROMPT: I’D LIKE TO THANK MY CATS

Categories: Communications, Computers, Computers, Daily Prompt, Humor, Technology

Tags: Charter Communications, Daily prompt, Google, humor, technology, thank you, WiFi