The Day Nothing Was Working

​                          Books by Patti Liszkay available on Amazon:   
     "Equal And Opposite Reactions"      http://amzn.to/2xvcgRa
     "Hail Mary"                                           https://www.amzn.com/1684334888
     "Tropical Depression"                        https://www.amzn.com/B0BTPN7NYY

​The Day Nothing Was Working

      It was just about a week and a half ago, in fact it was Saturday evening, March 8, that I took in the state of my domicile and cried out, "@#$%! Nothing is working!"
       All right, that was mayhaps a bit of dramatic exaggeration on my part. Most things in my house were, in fact working. Except for the dryer,     

...the refrigerator door,

...the WIFI,

...and the three new toilets we'd had installed earlier that day.

       At the time it felt like a lot, though.       
      Everything didn't fall apart at once. Things kind of stopped functioning incrementally.
          The first thing to go was our 15-year-old dryer. It crossed over the bridge of no return on Thursday, February 27. Though we got online and ordered a new one tout de suite, we were notified that it would be several weeks before our new dryer would arrive. 
           And so we went into what I christened Little House on the Prairie mode and started hanging  laundry all around the house.

​     On the days when it was sunny and not too cold we hung the laundry out on our backyard clothesline. One day when it was too cold we hung some towels out anyway and when we took them down they were stiff as boards and frozen together where we'd clothespinned them to each other.

       A few days later the refrigerator door broke. That is to say, the magnetic door-length strip that allows the door to close broke loose from the door. 

      Now the door won't close unless one carefully guides the strip by hand into the slot that grabs it shut. As this note on the refrigerator now reminds us to do.

      On Thursday, March 6, our WIFI went out. Then it came back on. Then it went back out. And mostly stayed out. Tom called our internet provider Breezeline to see if there were internet outages in our area. The representative he spoke to assured him that all the internet connections in our area were functioning just fine. The helpful rep said he'd try clearing the flaps - or something like that - on our internet and that should take care of our problem.
        Which it did. For a little while. But by the next day our WIFI had returned to on-again-off-again mode. Tom again called Breezeline and this time was told that the problem was our modem and that we needed to buy a new one with more bandwidth. Which explanation Tom found a weence sketchy (Me, I'd of probably bought just about any explanation anybody gave me, me being  about as tech-savvy as a mushroom).
          However, we had to put our WIFI woes on hold as the following day, Saturday, March 8, the plumber was coming to install the three new elongated, easy-clean water-saving state-of-the art American Standard toilets we'd bought to replace our old toilets.

       By the end of the day we had three new cool-looking toilets in our bathrooms that hurt to sit on. It was definitely that  ultra-thin, ultra-hard, ultra-flat toilet seat. It was quite stylish-looking and punishing.     ​

      We figured that new seats, those thick, soft, cushy ones, would fix  the problem. So I zipped out to Meijer's, where there was a fine assortment of toilet seats,

...and I found just what we needed.

      So I bought three at $32.99 a pop.

      Soon my mate was at work taking off one of the old seats,

...only to find that the new one didn't fit. This high brow toilet that we'd bought was apparently too sui generis to accept a universal toilet seat bolt and would only tolerate being topped with its own sui generis seat. Which I couldn't tolerate sitting on and with which every toilet in the house was now topped.
       That realization was the moment I had my existential mini-meltdown: "@#$%! Nothing is working!"
        "I'll call the plumber," said my mate calmingly. "Maybe he'll have an idea on what we should do."
         "Okay," I sighed. "And I'll call Randy about the internet." I'd  recovered from my momentary meltdown and was now ready to take the next step in fixing a situation after whining. 
          "And then I'll go online and see if I can find a repair part for the refrigerator door," said Tom.
             "And I'll go hang another load of wet laundry," I said.
          The following morning, Sunday morning, our dedicated plumber returned and, wonder of wonder, miracle of miracles, he was able to do some fancy drilling, converting, and adapting that made the soft, cushy toilet seats fit like a dream and solved our toilet seat crisis.

       That afternoon our nephew Randy, an IT wizard, came over and informed us that the Breezline guy was full of hoggy, that we didn't need a new modem, just a modem reset (whatever that means), which he forthwith effectuated,

...and now our WIFI works like a charm.
       The new magnetic strip for the refrigerator door arrived. (And Tom will no doubt get around to installing it soon).

          And our new dryer is arriving tomorrow. Though, in truth, our current laundry situation has kind of grown on me. It's actually nice having the laundry hanging in the family room. It gives the room a pleasant, balmy humidity and a nice, clean, homey smell. 
           I may stay in Little House on the Prairie mode for a while yet.