Two technology-related things and one nature-related thing happened last week.
1) My beloved HTC cell phone stopped working.
As I have written about here before, my HTC (yes, I am a proud Android-user!) is a miracle worker of sorts. The last time it died was after it helped me accomplish a great act of tzedakah in Atlanta . It died this weekend after no such great act of tzedakah unless you count not yelling at my kids (a lot) and falling asleep before Shabbat started as a great act of tzedakah. This left me cut off from the internet, text messages, and any phone calls and voicemails. As luck would have it, Fancy Assistant Brandon had borrowed my laptop for the weekend to do some accounting (since I don’t use my computer on Shabbat anyway), so I had no access to internet at all. I realized this weekend just how attached I am to my phone in ways I have never been before. I found myself obsessing/wondering whose texts I was missing, what news I was missing (Nelson Mandela, Aaron Hernandez, Kaley Cuoco dating Henry Cavill!?)…I felt very cut off from the outside world indeed. It was disconcerting and made me yet again appreciative of Shabbat, when I refrain from that kind of hysteria, if only for 25 hours.
2) We lost power.
It was in the 100s here last week in Southern California. As in, 107 at my folks’ house deep in the valley and a comfortable 99 here where I live. I took the boys out for Sunday night Chinese food and we came back to all of our power being out, presumably because everyone is running their AC, even frugal people like me. The first thing we did was grab the freezer-pops I had made the day before and eat them, since if the freezer defrosted, I’d never hear the end of it from my boys. I.e. “We made those freezer pops and now they’re melted melted MELTED!!!!!” Since I had no cell service, no internet, and no way to text my friendly neighbors, I grabbed the boys and we ran next door to let said neighbors know we had no way to know what was going on
They had already called the power company. Turns out our entire neighborhood lost power, and the power people said it should be back on by 3 am..! My older son who is almost 8 helped me hand-crank our nerdy hand-crank flashlights and prepare candles and he seemed kind of excited about this no power thing. My younger son who is almost 5 was flat-out scared about the whole thing, and I reassured him that since they go to bed when it’s still light out, he wouldn’t even notice that the power was out. He wasn’t convinced and asked to sleep in my bed to feel safe. Fine. The power actually went back on as I was putting them to bed. More accurately: I fell asleep while putting them to bed and the lights flashing on, the AC rocketing to life, and the neighbor across the street hooting in excitement woke me up. I got up, shut off the lights and then fell asleep.
3) The nature-related thing that happened really freaked me out.
Seriously. I live in a canyon and there are lots of canyon critters and things surrounding my house: raccoons, deer, snails, bugs, lizards…and slugs. The heat–I suppose–drove one happy slug into my house where it died a lonely sad death in the corner of the bathroom. I discovered the dead slug while vacuuming up some other crazy canyon bugs that seem to be invading my house in the extreme heat and I almost lost my mind. Yes, I’m a vegan and I cry when I see aquariums and I don’t go to the zoo because I cry there too…But this wasn’t vegan issues. This was just a plain old-fashioned case of me being totally utterly and completely creeped out by dead things. Blech. I got the chills, I had to physically shake to get those feelings off, and I bundled up so much toilet paper that there would be no way to feel the dead carcass of slug beneath my hand (I swore I could feel it anyway). I ran outside and threw it away. My sons were at this point equally freaked out and reminded me to wash my hands really good before coming near them. Gross. Bleeeeeeccccchhhh.
As a result of this weekend’s happenings, I can safely declare the following:
1. I love the HTC people. Thank you for sending me a new phone, HTC people. I love it. It’s even better than before and the fact that I can take pictures of me “just like an iPhone” makes it the best phone ever.
2. I don’t like not having someone in my house to take out dead slugs. I hate it. If Fancy Assistant Brandon would have been here, I would have asked him to do it. Or someone like my mother-in-law, a fearless not-freaked-out-by-anything woman. I’m not a misogynist; I didn’t need “a man” to take care of this. I just did not want to be the one to have to deal with it. But I did. Phew. Blech.
There is never a dull moment in life, is there? Natural, unnatural, it’s all part of God’s world.
Want more Mayim? Get the best of Kveller delivered straight to you inbox.
