Out Of My MInd, Back In Five Minutes

If I had a Facebook page, my relationship status would have to read "pretty much out of love with technology".  If I tweeted, I'd have blown up my friends' and family members' cell phones with the events of this little (and not yet over!) weekend.  I'm so far over any sort of relationship with "progress" at this point that if it weren't for having to use an outhouse, I'd become Amish. 

Even though I do enjoy having a computer at my disposal, I've always thought that less was more when it comes to complex technology in items that we use daily.  That little automatic window down feature on my vehicles is handy, but deep in my heart I'd prefer an old-fashioned hand crank, especially when it's 20 degrees Fahrenheit outside and the window goes down but refuses to go back up 63 miles from home on a weekend evening.  My trusty rusty Maytag washer might not have been the ultimate in modernity, but I knew it inside and out and could fix most anything on it.  When it was finally beyond all hope of redemption, I reluctantly replaced it with the oldest model Maytag that the local second-hand store had to offer.  I know that among my peers I am considered strange at best, but the events of this weekend have convinced me that I was right all along. 

It all started oh-so-innocently on Friday morning.  In an uncharacteristic burst of domesticity, I had decided to clean my oven in preparation for a marathon baking session I have coming up for my husband's surprise 50th birthday party.  My broken left foot was making my usual method of just scrubbing the heck out of my range considerably more difficult than usual.  Cranky from pain, I decided to throw caution to the wind and use the self-cleaning function for the very first time.  A little tickle at the back of my brain reminded me that an appliance repairman had once told me that the heat from the self -cleaning oven could overheat the computerized controls and fry its circuitry. Ignoring his words ringing in my ears, I locked the oven door, pressed "Self Clean" and then "On".  I blithely went about my morning's duties and did my best to ignore the niggling little sense of impending doom lurking somewhere in the nether regions of my brain.  The range went through its cleaning cycle and dutifully announced via a series of insistent beeps that it was now ready for use.  I unlocked and opened the door and wiped the accumulated ashy residue from the oven floor and sidewalls.  The sound of angels singing filled my humble kitchen as I surveyed the results: it was gorgeous!  Show-room-floor shiny, it was prettier than a speckled pup.  Cheerfully I went about mixing up one of my killer meatloaves, a fan favorite at my house.  Meatloaf in pan,  bacon arranged lovingly on top, I pressed the buttons necessary to preheat the oven.  "Unlock Door", the display proclaimed.  Actually it read "unloc dor", but I was in no mood at that moment to critique an appliance's lack of command of the English language.  Mildly panicking, I pressed buttons in what hopefully almost approximated a logical sequence, to no avail.  I re-locked and re-unlocked the door,  and again pressed the appropriate buttons to set the oven to "Bake", with the same lack of results.  The niggling little sense of impending doom instantly matured into full-blown panic.  Openly frantic now with just over an hour to feed a hungy husband and get him out the door to work, I ran (hobbled) the meatloaf over to my mother-in-law's house with instructions as to its care and feeding.  Placing a call to the appliance store where I had purchased the range and a matching refrigerator at a premium price barely eighteen months earlier (I insist on buying American-made appliances, not just "North American" made either, good old red-white-and-true-blue U-S of A, American made appliances) I was told to cut the power supply to the range and let it "rest" undisturbed for a few minutes (let it rest for a few minutes?  I was the one under stress here, for pete's sake, and "it" was the cause!) to let the circuitry reset.  I was then to turn the circuit breaker back on and again attempt to set the oven temperature.  Reassured by the appliance store manager that, no, it was perfectly safe to use the self-cleaning function on modern ranges, I breathed a bit easier for those few minutes. Sadly, my relief was short-lived.  Now, just over 48 hours later, having tried running another self-clean cycle in the hopes that it would magically reset the oven's brain, and leaving it unplugged for 24 hours, I am still sans oven.  And six days, 22 hours and 47 minutes from the instance of this writing, I have a bevy of friends and family coming who will be expecting home-made birthday cake.  Lots and lots of home-made birthday cake.

Later Friday afternoon, I needed to run some errands. I made myself presentable, and armed wtih my list of to-do's, headed out the door.  As soon as I opened the door of my Jeep, the feebleness of the "keys left in the ignition" dings made my heart sink.  I had been having trouble starting it of late, but my husband assured me it was because it had been so cold at night.  So much for that theory: here it was sunny and 48 degrees out and all I could get out of it was a half-hearted "rrrrr...rrrrr... click, click, click".  It was the perfect capper to a dilly of a day. 

So, on Saturday with the beginning stages of a techno-phobia forming, I decided to enlist the aid of a neighbor's teenaged son to try to figure out why my new laptop wouldn't connect to the internet via wi-fi.  I had been trying on my own for nearly a week, and had finally come to the conclusion that it was beyond me.  Imagine my non-surprise when it became apparent that it wasn't me, but technology that had once again failed.  Even with an available wi-fi signal (as evidenced by another laptop and two smart phones being able to access it) my computer insisted that no connection was available.  Helpfully it suggested that I contact the manufacturer via the internet (!) if I needed additional help.  To say that I was now completely and thoroughly disgusted with anything that post-dated the Civil War would be a grievous understatement. 

Sunday morning, I vowed to put the previous 48 hours behind me.  It was all over but the shouting, so to speak, and no use crying over spilt milk.  Besides, misfortune supposedly arrived in threes, right?  So I was safe.  Hah.  The humidifier had needed to be filled the night before, but in the bad mood I was nursing, I had opted to simply shut it off and deal with it in the morning.  I filled two 1-gallon jugs and the humidifier reservoir with treated water and was just about to turn it on when I noticed that the humidifier's housing didn't look quite right.  Closer inspection revealed that it had indeed begun to melt.  Hallelujah for being too exasperated to deal with it the night before.  Had I filled it and started it in a dimly lit room as tired and frustrated as I was, it could easily have started a fire.  I'm glad that I've retained my ability to see the silver lining in clouds.  At the very least this weekend has reminded me that I've usually tried to see the positive aspects in less-than-ideal situations. 

While writing this, I'm reminded that our current spate of mechanical misadventures all began about two weeks ago with the untimely demise of our furnace's fan.  So I'm left to wonder if I'm two-thirds of the way through the second set of three inconveniences, or if this is simply the way life is going to be for me from this point forward.  Oh joy.  Find the silver lining in that, Pollyanna.  ``

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The previous was written just over two weeks ago, and I still haven't figured out my oven.  I'm either in denial or being insanely optimistic believing in the possibility of a spontaneous healing for my poor, crippled range.  I'm stubbornly resisting having to pay a $75.00 service call plus parts and labor on something I believe should be covered by the manufacturer, and anyone who knows me knows how very well I do stubborn.  I do have a new battery in my Jeep (what that says about my priorities I don't want to know), and I purchased a new humidifier.  And I spent over an hour on the phone to tech support in New Delhi, India speaking with Rahjeet and his supervisor Kumar (I kid you not) about my laptop connectivity issues.  After fully 5 minutes of Rahjeet trying to tell me how to locate the "F2L" key, he finally exasperatedly said, "F2L key.  You know, like F One Two?"  It was then that I finally twigged to the realization that he meant the F12 key.  Duh.  Pressing that magical little key turned a tiny light from orange to blue and that beautiful little wi-fi icon lit up like a Christmas tree.  Miracle!  And the very first thing I did after getting connected to that wonder of wonders, the internet?  Why, I got a Facebook page, of course.  After discovering the joys of Facebook and rediscovering the annoyances of spam and pop-ups, I have decided to blog.  Rather than pester my friends and family with updates every time I have a new thought, I thought it would be prudent to confine my mind's wanderings to a site where people could access them or not, as they chose fit.  So, for better or worse, here I am and here I'll stay. 

Unless I have something I abolutely have to tell people.