Managing the practical things

First of all I just want to say that if you don’t have a back up power cord for your phone RUN, don’t walk, and get one. It’s what saved me. Especially if you don’t have another phone. Now in my case I do have a Vonage phone for emergencies (I pay less than $7 a month for it.) but I seldom ever use it. It has most often come in handy when I couldn’t find my cell phone and called myself so I could hear my cell phone ringing, but I usually always have my cell phone right next to me or in my pocket. However like last night it helped when my phone company needed to talk to me on another phone so we could fiddle with my cell phone. And we had to do a lot of fiddling. I did however realize last night that if my cell phone had gone dead I’d still have been sunk because ALL of my contacts/phone numbers are in my cell phone, not my Vonage phone. I am going to get an old fashioned paper phone book and write them all in there. This is something essential and which I think we don’t think of.

The crazy thing about what happened last night was that I went to charge my phone — it was still at 70% but I never like for it to go down low — and it wouldn’t charge and I got a nasty little message saying that my phone did NOT recognize the device. (Power cord) This of course made no sense to me because it is the power cord that came with the phone, it never leaves my desk or gets used in a sketchy manner, and it had worked fine that morning as it has every single morning since I got the phone in April 2017. It worked, and then it didn’t, and I found out that this can happen and it can happen suddenly. At first I didn’t even think about the back up cord because there hadn’t been a problem with my cord hours earlier (Or ever!) and I thought it was the phone itself. They had me get on the Vonage phone with them and try all kinds of things on the iPhone. In the end it was decided that the cord itself had gone bad and they are sending me, free of charge, a whole new charging cord + the wall plug part just in case. I only have a back up charging cord because after I gave up cable tv a year and a half ago I found that I could watch my news programs and other things on my iPhone which of course takes a lot of the battery charge so I got an extra 10′ long cord so I could sit in my recliner and watch the news on my phone. It is what saved me. If I hadn’t had the extra cord I’d have been up a creek without a paddle. Please do make sure you have an extra one!

The thing is I became quite unglued when I couldn’t charge my phone. I think being older and living alone makes one feel quite vulnerable especially as night comes. If I fell, if I got sick, if I needed help, and my phone didn’t work I don’t know what I’d do. As I said, the Vonage phone, which is supposed to be my emergency backup, wouldn’t help if I didn’t have the phone numbers I needed. I am actually on hold for my phone company again to see if there is some way I can get my phone contacts on the computer to download and print out. And here’s something else and I am sharing this here because these are things we need to know and I don’t. At my age I’m used to thinking about the days when we dialed “O” and got the operator who could help us get a number, or dialed 411 for information. And I know that I can dial 911 for emergencies on my cell phone but what if I had to use the Vonage phone? I’ve no clue. We need to know these things. I am checking into these things today as well as ordering an inexpensive paper phone/address book. Okay, I just ordered a paper address book + talked to my phone provider and found out how to access the contacts for my phone online as an additional backup. (And no you can’t just print them out easily because you have to click into one contact at a time to get the number. I’ll have to write them all in my little book when it comes.) I’m getting there.

I spend so much time being afraid. Afraid of living alone. Afraid of not knowing what to do when things go wrong in the house. Afraid of all kind of things. I want, now, to try to find out as much as I possibly can so when I need to handle things I know what to do. That has been part of my job for today.

I know these kinds of things are pretty routine for most people, they are not for me.

I just got up the nerve to contact someone about repairing the arms of my recliner where the stitching is coming undone at the ends of each arm. It’s pretty bad, it’s looked awful for some time. But I’m going to get the arms repaired and then I found a company that uses a natural, non-toxic citrus cleaner that will clean my recliner and the other chair in The Cozy Room where people sit when they visit with me. These things are huge for me. There are so many things that need to be fixed here, especially outside and it is all so overwhelming and then of course money is a factor but I need to inch my way along and figure out how to get some of these things done because it makes me afraid of my own house. I said to one of my dearest friends yesterday, well, I actually made a little 4 minute video so she could see what things are like here, the deck is filthy and needs badly to be powerwashed and even painted but that’s far too expensive a job for me right now. One of the shed doors is broken, My green gated fence where the garden is is rotting along the bottom and it and the pink fence need to be fixed and cleaned. After the fire I kind of gave up. This used to be a darling cozy home. Now it is a house where I essentially live in 2 rooms more or less. I don’t know how to make this house feel like a home. It makes me feel lost.

There are a lot of things I need to do in my life, a lot of things I need to figure out, but in the year ahead I want to inch my way through all of these practical things that frighten me and try to find my way. It’s hard to plan for big life things when you live afraid of handling the things that are right there in the house where you live. I think I need to make friends with my house. I think I need to figure out how to live here. I’m making a list. It’s all so overwhelming I barely know where to begin. But now, today, I’ve made a plan for having my contacts in my phone transferred to a paper book where I can always see it, and I have contacted someone about repairing my beloved recliner where the dogs and I rest and sleep (and hide from the world when we need to). And the 2 chairs in there will both get cleaned. It’s a place to start. I don’t know what will come after that but today I started taking a few baby steps. For today it is enough.