Well, folks, it’s been one of those days…just a series of…oh,
let’s lump them all under the heading of “misadventures”
and leave it at that, mostly because at this point I’m honestly far too tired
and brain-dead to try and figure anything else out. (Also, this post might not
be my best, in terms of…what is it? Um…right “vocabulary”. Oh, or “clarity”.
Or heck, even “basic sentence
construction”. I’ll do what I can, but I’m not promising much—there, you’ve
been warned!)
Well, I suppose if I had to choose a moment when the whole
ridiculous thing started to slip off the tracks, it would be when the copier at my office decided it hated me. You see, it’s printing and duplicating things just fine and dandy, but it utterly refuses to perform my perfectly reasonable
request to scan and email a document to me. It used to do this, back when we were on good terms, and I really don’t have any
idea what I did to offend the blessed
machine, but this is something I need to do quite
frequently as part of my duties, and when I’m thwarted by technology
that’s simply acting up for no good reason, I get…increasingly…peeved. And possibly employ some…”work-inappropriate
terms”…directed at the recalcitrant hunk of metal….under my breath. Hey, at
least I refrained from kicking the
damn thing. (And how about the use of “recalcitrant”, eh? Without a thesaurus,
I’ll have you know! Maybe I’m not as far gone as I feared…yeah, jury’s still
out on that one…)
Then, not much later, I received a text…and an email….and a voicemail message…about “possible fraudulent activity” flagged by
the credit card company on our account. It was a ludicrously small amount (I’m
not kidding—ONE DOLLAR) and I figured perhaps Husband had left the confines of
his home desk, as he sometimes does, and gone out for…maybe a soda, or something. So I ignored all of
the communications until I could go home and confirm…that he in fact had NOT
used the card today. Many, many very bad
words ensued, NOT delivered quietly at all, as I cursed everything from
unforgivably jerky crooks to insecure technology to…the perils of
living in the modern world, for
crying out loud.
Why all the drama? Well, the last time this happened was:
January 7th, 2016. That’s right--we went through this whole delightful process just over 2 months ago. Oh, and all together, this
is the 4th time….in 3 or 4 years…that we’ve been hacked. In each
case, both of our actual pieces of plastic have remained firmly in our possession, so I haven’t a clue what’s happening, here. In this
case the…person…who’d been using our number for a couple of days had made
several trips to McDonald’s—which for
a moment almost made me sympathetic,
like “Aw, he or she is hungry and
needed breakfast”—that is, until I
spotted the $150 at Dick’s Sporting Goods.
Duuuude! Buy your own freakin’ sneakers!
I spend enough money on those for my own family, thankyouverymuch!
The worst part is, I can’t figure out how to prevent this from repeatedly occurring.
I mean, short of pretending it’s the 1880s,
and we live on the prairie, and travel
into town once a month to make all
our purchases…with bills and coins.
Or, you know, bartering with…livestock…or
pretty rocks…or what have you.
So, dealing with all of this left me feeling quite hyped up and frazzled—but wait, I know the solution: I’ll take a bike ride! It’s a gorgeous 84 degrees in
March, what better time to set off on the first pedal-around-the-neighborhood tour of the year? I went to the
garage to grab my helmet…and noticed
a suspiciously large pile of dry leaves
that seemed to have somehow accumulated in it over the course of the Winter.
“That’s weird,” I thought, as I
removed it from the package it came in, where I usually store it when not in
use. Aaand…the entire box was also
stuffed with a plethora of…natural…stuff. Suddenly I vividly recalled the
small bundle of feathers that had gone whizzing past me one day recently,
exiting the garage in a flurry of panicked chirping. Ah…that little….birdbrain….had obviously—albeit
foolishly—chosen to construct a nest…in
my athletic headgear. With a sigh, I
unceremoniously dumped the ragged bunch of nature’s leftovers into the yard--and
of course I immediately went inside to relay the latest episode of silliness to
Husband and boys. When I came back to the garage, I swear to you, the creature was sitting in the exact spot previously occupied by its box-nest, with a scrap of
something or other I suppose it wanted to add, looking around in what can only
be described as a perplexed manner, as if asking, “Hey, lady—you seen my crib? I left it right
here!”
Ay yi yi. With that resolved, I was free to take my lovely time-out on 2 wheels, right? Ha! I began to walk my bicycle down our very steep
driveway, as is my habit…but I noticed something wrong. It was a familiar “sticking” feeling, and I knew it meant
that the chain had slipped. Now, I might
be able to diagnose the problem, but
this doesn’t mean I can actually, you know, fix
it. But Husband can, so I went back inside yet again to seek his
assistance. As soon as he turned the bike over to address the chain, however,
he realized that the rim on one of my
tires was bent, and therefore scraping the brake pad on each revolution…making my nice bike ride an impossibility until I get it repaired at
one of the (fortunately plentiful) local shops.
Okay, I. Give. UP! Already dressed for workout-ish-activity, I opted for a stroll in the nearby forest
instead. And—thank the heavens above—absolutely NOTHING out of the ordinary
happened on my foray into the Great Outdoors. Perhaps the Wednesday Curse ended with the…Bird-and-Bike
Incident (as it shall hereafter be known).
Please join me in crossing my fingers that this is true? And perhaps,
just for good measure, I’ll get some cash
(I know, right: what the heck is
that?), buy some bird seed, and put
out a peace offering for the avian I insulted…evicted….whatever. Getting Mother
Nature on my side? It can’t hurt,
at this point…
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