Unplugged

I am writing this from a Starbucks on Sunday afternoon, where I am taking advantage of the Wifi (while drinking an almond milk decaf cappuccino…). I’m working here with my 16-year-old, who is going through a list of assignments to be sent in and various messages he needs to check.

Why are we here? Well, aside from the almond milk decaf cappuccino, which my son totally laughed at me for, but did go up to the counter and order for me… Basically, our house wifi went out at 10 a.m. Friday, and has not come back.

When we finally got a human at Verizon, this person told us that the outage is “widespread.” I am not sure how widespread. But we have had very limited connectivity all weekend. I was having to go outside to get my email and anything on the internet (via my phone), until I figured out to turn off wifi on my phone (forcing it onto the cellular network). To access stuff on our laptops, though, we have to go elsewhere (the hotspot thing is very very slow).

So, yesterday I worked like a fiend at my 8-year-old’s climbing class. I got through a lot of document sending and emailing in 50 minutes courtesy of the climbing gym wifi! Today I am here at Starbucks. Good times.

Longtime readers may recall how upset my children were in Norway when we were in a gorgeous, remote mountain location…with no wifi. There has been something of the same level of whining, though the older boys’ phones can go on the cellular network too, so it has not been as bad as it could be. The 3-year-old has asked a few times to watch an Octonauts video on the computer…and has been quite confused by my explanation of why it won’t work.

My husband and my brother-in-law and mother-in-law watched the Texas A&M game yesterday all hunched over my brother-in-law’s phone. It was pretty funny. Family togetherness!

In any case, it is interesting to see what we do with our time when accessing the internet is not quite as easy as getting water out of the tap. Some of the kids have played cards with my husband. We played outside a fair amount, though it is rainy today, so we played in the garage for a while instead.

But don’t worry, this isn’t some ode to the wifi-free, simpler life. The simpler life is gone, which is why I have to take my kid to Starbucks so he can do his homework. I can do stuff on my phone, it’s just a lot harder, so we shall see what happens with my workflow this week. Hence the post on Sunday — I’m guessing it will be tough to do on Monday. Unless the wifi is fixed. Or I go back to Starbucks. This decaf almond milk cappuccino is quite good…