How long has it been, Gentle Reader? Time is right now its own, very weird, hard edged commodity. There’s never enough of it of course, which strikes me as strange now that we’re in this here rural lifestyle where it appears that people think we simply sit around and fan idly through magazines all day long and have oodles of it, when in fact it’s your basic sun up to sun down and beyond. Just for the basics.
Skipping over current events, or more like it dashing over sinkholes pursued by hellhounds, it seems simple survival is quite a success these days. I heard Representative Labrador (from Idaho, go figure) say that no one had ever died from not being able to get health care in response to a constituent’s disapproval of the current proposed “healthcare” legislation. So, OK. That’s so totally stupid I think we need say no more. We’re just in for a really bumpy ride before this all immolates, and it’s everywhere. One has to decide pretty quickly just how excited to get over each explosion.
Meanwhile our efforts to get at least part way into the current century in terms of “technology” continue. It no longer makes my head explode when people dismissively say, oh, you can too get internet/doctors/books there and blahblahblah. No, because we learned that the even the actual City of Redding does not have optic fiber connections anywhere. The official municipal communications apparently occur on some sort of paper cup and string arrangement. So why should I think my precarious existence should have more up to date arrangements?
Nevertheless. The telephone situation here is dismal. The ATT cel phone only works at a distance of about 14 miles from home. The Hughesnet satellite home phone connection works when it feels like it and aside from not liking snow, it’s not clear what makes the satellite say, uh, NO. Not Now. I’ve thus been casting about for a better, more cost effective and workable phone solution that might also allow me to do more marketing for my website and products. You know, like Instagram and stuff. So. I got my first smart phone. (And yes it IS somewhat intimidating and I feel like a gorilla trying to type on it.) Credo Mobile, an at least relatively ethical carrier, free (” “) IPhone, and apparently coverage even HERE in the round house. I agonized over the decision, but if all goes well I can get rid of three devices and just have one that works as it is supposed to. And save money in the process which is becoming ever more important.
However the usual key words here are: IF ALL GOES WELL. Because so far? It has been a marvelous exercise in equanimity, mindfulness, staying calm, and carrying on. I haven’t cried, even under intense provocation, and only had one small slug of vodka after the first six hour stressathon.
Initially things went reasonably smoothly and the phone came to my mailbox when they said it would, the offer had changed in the few days since my first call but not significantly. I felt a strange unease about setting the phone up, without knowing why (SILLY BEAR)….and then it all became clear. First, there was the connection for customer support, after the 2+ hour attempted online connection could not be made, to someone in Nigeria which on my phone felt very much like the aforementioned paper cup arrangement. Turned out I couldn’t have my old number ported to the new phone because I did not know what my ATT PIN was. So, fine. Give me a new number, we’ll carry on. But NO!!!! My Apple ID wouldn’t work. An hour plus into it I hung up and called Apple. An hour plus into that? My home phone died. Nothing having been successfully wrestled to the ground at that point.
AFOG, for sure. I realized I had about a second to make up my mind not to freak out about it all, to breathe, do something else, start over tomorrow. This was the part with the vodka. Then I went outside and transplanted seedlings.
I started anew the next day, already having about six hours into this. I called Apple first, where to my stupefaction (since this was about the fourth time I’d called in the past few months about this issue) the Rep revealed that? GUESS WHAT? There’s a website where you can reestablish your Apple ID. I was thrilled. Moving on, 45 minutes down, to calling Credo again to get connected, I found that the Apple ID had not been instantly updated so I still couldn’t do anything with that. Fine, fine. Another hour and another mini-death for the house phone later, it was revealed that my new IPhone was not going to power up. Period. No way. It seems it needs a new SIM card. Which we hope will arrive on the morrow when we have to go to town anyway. Then I get to suit up and do it all over again. Anyway it took the bulk of the weekend and while, yes, I learned a lot, nothing really got DONE.
I’m assuming this will all get wrestled to the ground and be fine. The lacking PIN and unfindable ID related to a time long, long ago where someone else was doing my IT. Good to sever all that and move forward into the NOW. The question really is, how does one deal with all this overwhelming frustration and time suck? Over something one doesn’t, in the big picture, really need but in quotidian context, must have. It seemed sort of like everything else- all these things move in one’s life and have impact (like health care, let’s say, or a recent mystifying spot visit from two huge sheriffs trundling up our “driveway” one morning) without one having any ability to influence any part of it. Except how one responds.
So I decided to use this as an opportunity to really work on my thoughts. Revamped my brain as follows: 1) this is manageable 2) time can be used productively even in hacked up increments, to wit our lovely bean seedlings 3) no reason for fear or anxiety, (actually really ever) but if those things rear their unshapely heads, there’s a five minute limit and 4) in spite of feeling as though one is flying into the maw of some huge devouring reptilian creature, things are really OK. Let’s ramp it back down to just thinking about a PHONE and not branch into ISTHEREAMETEORWITHGODZILLAONITCOMINGMYWAY.
Essentially, what I realized yet again was that we live in rather…interesting times. The level of discordant energy is over the moon and it’s pretty hard not to feel that to an at times overwhelming extent. Everyone really does feel it, and around here it appears to be contributing to a Night of the Living Dead atmosphere full of heroin users. However, that isn’t this. The discord isn’t about us, personally, and although things are dicey there’s no reason to assume the worst is always just around the corner. In a decadent situation, things will fall down. It is what it is, and it is where one finds oneself. The saying used to be (pardon me, guys) if it has tires or testicles you’re going to have problems with it. Now it’s more like if it has bytes? You’ll get bitten. These things are par for the course though, and the continuing effort has to be toward conscious discernment in terms of just how important any given sandtrap really is, and are there sharks. Also, even if you lose strokes you still get out of the trap for the most part so it still all boils down to learning from experience, and accepting that winds always shift.
To think I at least thought I was out of school. Now I find I’m not only still there, but I’m playing golf in another galaxy. And golf? used to be my most-detested sport but I find now it is quite calming to watch. Which I take to mean, on some level, that once you put your preconceptions down, it’s a whole new world in a rather stunning way. I’m just hoping this newest new world includes a working IPhone.
Blessings and thanks! oh, and, the Dog is fine. Even if he has lately tended a bit to melodrama- but that is a story for another time. Right now he needs to play……
Boozilla: learning to fly one room at a time 
Posted by pseudonymous on May 8, 2017 at 7:29 pm
If two sheriffs walked up to my place I’d have two cameras out recording and my mouth would be running a mile a minute starting with: Where’s your warrant? Without one they are unlawfully unwelcome and every word that comes out of their mouths is meaningless. Hopefully it was just some neighbor drama or something…but if they ever try to fuck with you with their intimidation tactics you can put your foot down.
Posted by boozilla on May 9, 2017 at 12:01 pm
Oh, they were just, you know, “curious” about the yurt. Seeing it from the constant aerial surveillance and all. They know perfectly well exactly what we do here, which is all completely within the law and humongous gray area it covers. It was weird, for sure, and yah, I suppose they were just doing the Large Intimidating White Males with Sidearms in Dark Glasses in a Gigantic Truck Routine. ( Our landlady, in her brilliance, has no gates or Postings here so essentially we are open game outside. But we DO know how to put our feet down and this is not exactly our first rodeo..) So far so good. They said they were up here doing “eradication”.(Speaking of meaning or lack thereof) Groovy. Another day in paradise…..