March has come in with a roar. Two nights ago, a rowdy thunderstorm. Cut to yesterday: no school. Snow days seem to be over for now, but surprise! There is no end to the reasons we might cancel school!
“It’s fine,” I think. “I’ll just do my best to work and experiment with letting them entertain themselves.”
But sometimes I forget that I’m a writer. Ten minutes later, we’re all still in our pajamas, I haven’t even answered one email, and they’re in the living room screaming I HATE YOU and shoving each other off furniture.
By 9:48 am they have eaten breakfast four times:
-
Bliss bowls from scratch
-
Granola
-
Banana slices with peanut butter and sliced apple
-
Homemade carrot muffins
These are definitely my children.
They, however, are being raised in the digital age. Phoebe brought home an encyclopedia about cats from the library. Before school this morning, she flipped it open, turned to the index, and asked, “Can you type in calicos?”
Um, with my eyeballs?
My life lately has been a tug-o-war between digital and analog. Recently, I was without phone for several days, and for the last three weeks, I’ve been trying to get a landline set up in our house.
I haven’t had a landline in literal decades, and I loathe talking on the phone, but it’s scary not having a reliable cell signal when you live with young kids who occasionally necessitate emergency calls. A few weeks ago, I had to call poison control when one of my daughters accidentally chugged a glass of hydrogen peroxide. I couldn’t get the call to go through for at least ten minutes, which was not that awesome.
I was mistakenly under the assumption that, should I ever want a landline again, I would simply call the phone company. But that’s not a thing anymore. I’ll spare you the long, loooooong saga of trying to get this phone installed, but so far it has involved:
-
Being on hold with Comcast for hours
-
Finding my internet bill $30 higher just because I tried to get a landline hooked up through Comcast (never do this, it’s not a thing)
-
Cussing at the Comcast rep
-
Changing tactics and waiting on hold with another local provider
-
Finding out that our residential address is totally wrong and that we actually live on Stony Hill South, not Weatherhead Hollow — a scenario I had to sort out, in person, at the town office
-
Bidding on antique rotary phones on eBay and losing
-
Realizing you can still actually buy a brand-new rotary phone on Amazon and winning
-
A nice chat with the fellow who finally came over to turn our landline on in person, but will now have to return, and I quote, “with a chainsaw and a climbing harness”
Oh dear.
So far, no phone. I refuse to give up, though. My taxes are due, work is bananas, I’m feeling the pressure to get summer camps lined up, and everything is chaotic as usual. But I am not giving up until I have an 802 number I hope to never, ever use.
