SOL Tuesday: Planning

Last night and this morning, I promised myself I would make a plan and stick to it, not fritter the time away reading the newspaper and Facebook. The plan: get up, do the laundry, go to the gym, and see the movie “Neruda,” the subject for my next movie discussion group. But of course, it wasn’t that easy.

            I did get up and took the laundry to the laundromat in the basement of my apartment building before eating breakfast. While everything was in the washers, I went back to my apartment and had breakfast, reading the paper until the clothes had to go into the dryer.

            After bringing the dry laundry back home, I remembered that I also needed to make a phone call, to the management company for the co-op I live in, to get more details about removing my dead husband’s name from our shares in the co-op and adding my daughter’s name. (I’d meant to do that while the clothes were in the dryer, but forgetting that was the first false step.)

            I dialed the number on my cellphone, and waited for the phone to begin to ring. And waited, and waited, and waited. Nothing. That’s strange, I thought. I dialed again – still nothing. I dialed my own number – still nothing. Panic.

            My first thought was, here I’ve got my day planned out, and now my phone doesn’t work, and I’ve got to spend time I don’t have trying to find out what’s wrong. I almost fell apart. I tried texting to see if that worked, and it did. Tried the phone again, and still no success. More panic.

            Then I remembered the time-honored tech fix, known in our house as “plug and unplug.” Actually, it’s turn the power off, let it rest a few minutes, turn the power back on. So I powered off the phone, folded up and put away all the clean laundry, and came back to the phone. Power on. Dial. Success.

            By the time the call was completed, it was time for lunch. After lunch, there was time for the gym or the movie, but not both. Having missed the gym for a couple of weeks, I did the virtuous thing, and went to the gym.

            The real lesson to remember: power off—rest—power on.