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.
