Not Enough Time or Motion

I like to think of myself as a time/motion kinda gal. If I’m working on a project, it needs to be moving along at a pretty good clip, or I get very creative or very cranky. Today I had the ominous task of working on our taxes for 2008 and I opted for cranky. I didn’t get far because it wasn’t very satisfying in the “time/motion” department, and I ran out of patience as I need to gather so many little numbers to complete it. I immediately switched over to another of the 71 items on my “to-do” list. By the time I had crossed five items off the list, I had added eight more. That wasn’t very satisfying either. I got smart and at least had Kory make some phone calls – even though he’s not the world’s best communicator and he hates to talk on the phone, I knew the bulk of the time would be on hold anyway, and being on hold in no-way fit into my “time/motion” plans for today. He actually was a tremendous help getting three things crossed off my list by making those painful calls. Kaleb winched when I gave him his own to-do list as he was certain I couldn’t expect him to do all five of those things. When I told him I’d swap any of them for any five on my list, he changed his tune after I read him the items on my list. It was a production kind of day around here with spurts of fits by me when my patience ran thin.

This is an example of how things went. I signed up for Netflix (a movie rental place) so Kory can watch movies while he’s lying around the next four weeks (we are at the half-way-to-healing point today!). After the tedious signing up process, Kory wanted to see a “watch now” movie that streams over the internet right onto the laptop, rather than wait for a DVD to show up in the mail tomorrow. I gave him my laptop and some brief instructions and headed up to my office. He was unable to get it to work apparently because of the same glitch I encounter when trying to open my mail on that laptop. He called me on the intercom so I left my office and went down to hook up Kaleb’s laptop and get him set up on Netflix there. When I plugged in that computer I saw the power cord was from Norway. I found an adapter, but it was too wide to fit into the extension plug along with all the other things plugged into the outlet so I had to find another extender. When I went to plug THAT in, the electrical wall outlet is so old and worn out, the entire extension plug with all the cords just fell out of the socket and wouldn’t stay in the wall because it was so heavy. I had to find a small bench to push up against the outlet to keep everything plugged in. When I set the laptop on Kory’s lap and clicked on “play,” it was obvious the volume wasn’t loud enough for his ancient ears. I went looking for headphones. The first set didn’t work. The second set worked, but the volume still wasn’t loud enough for his liking even with the computer’s volume turned up all the way. As I was trying to figure out why the volume was so low, I bumped the laptop and all the cables were so tight that they came cascading out of the electrical outlet, as the internet modem also came unplugged and fell to the floor. I slammed the laptop shut, let out a high pitched scream and left the room. So much for trying to help Kory watch a movie. I thought it would take five minutes and it was a half hour wasted out of my day.

I had no better luck when I later took the internet modem to my office to see if I could get my trusty old office computer fired up and functional so I could print things. I discovered my printer had been disconnected from my computer and I needed Kaleb’s help to run the cable under my desk to reconnect it. I found out the ink was empty and a new cartridge was needed. The paper was also out of stock. When I got everything loaded up, the printer needed a bit of time to align itself, test itself and clean the roller. When I was able to actually send the 1040 form from the IRS website to my printer to print, it came out with little squares and lines and no words because apparently I don’t have the latest version of Adobe Reader. After installing that update I finally had some luck but then found out I needed to update my version of Windows and my Virus protector software had expired. It wasn’t fun. During the forced technological pauses today, in order to keep the time/motion thing going, I did things like pay bills and get Kaleb signed up for school activities. I had to call a friend to even find out how much stamps are these days, as I had no clue. I also wrote “2008” on all the checks for some reason, as I haven’t written a check in over a year. They seem so archaic, cumbersome and time consuming now that I’ve been paying bills on-line for so long. I also discovered not a single pencil eraser in the house works. They all dried out over the course of a year and none of my mistakes could be removed. Lovely. My mouse clicker takes three clicks to work and my keyboard is gritty. It’s like a bad movie, only this is one no one would enjoy watching.

On the upside, Kory felt well enough (or hungry enough?) he made a simple dinner tonight. Smart man. He knew not to ask.