Golden years require extra stamina
- col-lee-elliot-aging-graciously
- June 14, 2023
- 503
So recently I decided to take stock of what I was paying out for extraneous pleasures to see if I might be able to cut back a little and save for some larger projects that have presented themselves unexpectedly.
I stopped first at my provider’s website, where I pay for internet, TVs and a land line, combined into a single bill that keeps going up without explanation each month. My intent was to cancel that service.
Just about that time, a sales person came to the door, selling a brand-new provider, the one that has been digging and hanging wires all over town this spring and summer — all things still included for much cheaper than the old program with a couple of extra perks as well, three months free and guarantee that price would not go up for three years.
Saving $40 a month and being able to keep my old phone number seemed good reason to jump in. Big mistake. The old provider is crafty, the new one untested and unready, and I unhappy — that is to say going crazy.
The nice salesperson accidentally gave the provider my old phone number with one number wrong. This created at least five hours of havoc. I couldn’t get a phone number, either old or new, and no one — I mean, literally, that currently over-used term — there was no one who knew what to do.
I was two weeks without a landline, and then, when I thought it was settled and had become somewhat attached to the new number, they said they couldn’t do that. Then they could. Then they couldn’t.
I ended up with the new number they gave me in the first place. It is a Wyoming number. When I tried to call 811 the other day to check on a larger project, I got the 811 in Wyoming, not Tuscarawas County.
I soon found changing servers requires changing every electronic device in your house: desktop computer, laptop, printer, Kindle, iPad, TVs, and anything else that hums and buzzes its way through communication. And so, as I changed, things began not working.
Now I am having trouble with my writing program on the computer. Writing, of course, is a big part of my life, and not being able to find where I am saving things, having to change email providers to new ones that march to a different beat, not being able to notify my document that it needs to be double spaced and not knowing what is going to go wrong next is a major pain, to say the least.
On top of it all, I haven’t been able to cancel the old provider because I will lose my 5,000 emails I haven’t deleted all along, and some of them may be important.
I have sought help on the computer, and the directions are there. They just don’t do what they say they will do. Besides that, I am paying for both providers right now. I could probably survive the email loss, but help, I need an 8-year-old.
I find that as I age, I’m not the only thing breaking down. Twenty years in this house has brought me to the brink of obsolescence. The money saved from the provider change was going to take care of the repair of my garden boxes, the replacement of the microwave and the getting the dryer to stop turning itself on. I mentioned it to the dryer the other day, but it just buzzed and began running with the door open.
The golden years sometimes require a little extra stamina. Still, we wouldn’t trade them for the alternative.