I don’t know about you, but my favorite days are the ones entirely free of encumbrances. No doctors’ appointments (especially no dentist!). No weekly schlep to the supermarket. No hours lost to the hair salon. No plumbing/heating/appliance breakdowns (rare, but always a time-consuming nuisance). Nothing but a whole day stretching gloriously ahead to use as I choose. Uninterrupted writing time. Unhurried hours to lose myself in a house project of my choosing. Time for a cup of java with Ed at one of our local cafes or taking our books for a leisurely read at the park down the street. A stint playing my guitar. Maybe—dare I hope—time to start an art project. A decoupage, perhaps. Or collage.

That’s the fantasy anyway. And some days, I actually manage to do several of these happy, life-enhancing activities, but all too often (and weirdly, more and more often—did someone put the 24-hour cycle on hyperspeed?), to paraphrase Joni Mitchell, “Stuff gets in my way.” Not worthy stuff. Not interesting stuff. Not some unexpected delight like my recent meet-up with a dear friend I haven’t seen for nine years who happened to be in town for the week, a guest lecturer at the local university. For that, I gladly cut my working day short and even forewent my usual five o’clock gin-and-tonic so Ed and I could have dinner and drinks with M without me doing a faceplant.   

Pounding Headaches

No, the stuff that routinely wreaks havoc on my waking hopes are things both unforeseen and unavoidable. Like two weeks ago when the contractors renovating our house informed me that it’s best to take everything off the walls while they’re re-siding the house because the hammering (and it’s a lot of hammering, weeks of hammering stretching into the foreseeable future) may cause pictures and pottery and all sorts of wall-mounted bric-a-brac to crash.

So instead of writing or enjoying a coffee out or strumming the old guitar, I took down all the framed artwork and photos, transferred all the antique bowls and vases from their shelves to the dining room table (where we will eat for the coming weeks is a mystery)—and started to box the 10,000 CDs (slight exaggeration but not by much) stashed in the CD wall-mounted case. Actually, I’m getting ahead of myself here—I first had to find a box to hold the CDs. Make that three boxes. Wide enough and long enough to hold a zillion CDs in alphabetical order—otherwise I’ll lose two days on the return when I have to put them all back into the hanging cupboard.

As of this writing, I am still searching for the floor space to stash these boxes, space where we won’t trip over them every ten minutes as we’re now doing.

One-Sided Phone Tag  

If it was just the house renovation, one could philosophically say, “It will end someday.” Some month. Some year. Hopefully. But that’s the thing about dies interruptus, there’s always something happening. And then there are the things that happen over and over, with slight variations. Like phone tag. Whole mornings, complete afternoons vanish as I wait, and wait…and wait for someone to talk to who can (maybe) resolve my problem.

A recent classic example of this occurred when I tried to do a routine annual renewal for my Carbonite back-up plan (there is no greater fear for a writer than some unexpected catastrophic glitch that erases everything one has written. Essays. Short stories. Entire novels. In a word: one’s life’s work). So, as I was waiting for visiting family to get ready for a much-anticipated day—a river walk and art gallery visit, followed by lunch at a favorite eatery—I clicked on the e-mail link that in under two minutes should have renewed my subscription for the year. The prior credit card I used was now defunct, so I typed in the new info where it said change payment method. No big deal, right? I’ve done it. You’ve done it. One card expires. You use another.

Only this time, it was a big deal. This transaction cannot be processed. No rhyme. No reason. I refreshed and tried again. And again. I scrolled down to the Contact info and dialed the number. We are experiencing an unusually high call volume at this time. Please wait for the next available representative… The mantra of our times.

No fool, I put my phone on speaker and used the time to clear 600-some emails.  A half-hour later, the family was ready to go, so I cancelled the call. Another day. Long story short, it took several more calls, consuming sizeable chunks of several more mornings to get the renewal straightened out. I could have walked to Carbonite headquarters in Boston faster, although it would have been more fun to visit their field office in Paris.

The Doctor is (Not) In 

Last November, I went to my scheduled annual physical with Doctor Z. A nurse did the usual prelim weight check, blood pressure, pulse stuff and assured me, “the doctor will be with you shortly.” I used the time to finish a chapter of my current read (I always bring a book), cleaned up some email on my phone, and waited. Forty minutes passed. No doctor. I went out to the nurses’ station to investigate the situation. “Oh, Dr. Z isn’t here,” one of the nurses gaily informed me. “She has jury duty today.”

Jury duty? Jury duty! Why didn’t someone call me or at least inform me when I arrived? Why did they proceed with the preliminary checks?!

“If you’d like to see someone today,” the receptionist said [Did they think I had arrived for some other purpose??!], “Dr. Y could give you a few minutes between her appointments.”

I will refrain from going into a tirade here about the sorry state of medical care in this country and just say that since I did have a particular concern that day, I took the few minutes Dr. Y could spare. She was wonderful—attentive and supportive for the ten minutes I saw her. On my way out, I mentioned with all the politeness I could muster that it would have been good if someone had called me to inform me about Dr. Z’s jury duty. “Jury duty?” the receptionist said. “She’s not on jury duty. She’s taking a couple of weeks off. She scheduled it months ago.”

I swear, every word of this time-wasting tale is true. But I did get one good thing out of this “lost morning.” Dr. Y. She is now my primary care doc, though making that happen is another loooong time-wasting tale I will spare you here.  

Computer Glitches

It was a beautiful day in early May. Nothing scheduled on the calendar. Following breakfast, I settled into my desk chair, looking forward to an uninterrupted morning of work on my novel, after which I would take a stroll downtown and browse the local bookshops. Ed would no doubt want to accompany me and we’d have lunch on the open rooftop of a favorite local brewery.

Ha. Ha. Nice try, Henry.

I had just opened my manuscript, tweaked my last chapter, added a new twist to my outline, and typed in Chapter 20 when my computer curtly informed me: You do not have permission to edit this file.

Permission? Permission?!! I WROTE THIS “FILE” YOU ****** MORON MACHINE. [For sensitive readers, I have edited out the longish string of expletives here.]

But, of course, shouting at your computer will only take you so far, as in “that and five bucks will still buy you a cup of coffee.” Which is to say, nowhere. So, heaving a big sigh, I started the tortured journey into ascertaining where the glitch lay. I first checked my other files to see if this forbidden thing was systemic. Nope, I could happily edit each of the five files I opened. Next stop: Settings.

After a frustrating half hour of searching likely places to no avail, I googled my problem, jotted down several possible solutions and tried again. Still… nada. Ninety minutes into the morning, I at last located the problem: I had somehow been bumped from the position of “administrator” on my novel. Just who the administrator was for my file on my computer remained a mystery. I returned to googling solutions. Found something that sounded like it might work and, crossing all fingers, knocked wood (my desk), and deleted everything under “administrator”—a string of letters and numbers I didn’t recognize. I then boldly typed my info in. Voila! I could now edit my novel again. What I could no longer do was work on it for the morning or enjoy a stroll downtown to browse bookshops. It was lunchtime.

How We Spend Our Days

I have no snappy words of wisdom to impart here. Only the observation that time is a precious commodity. No one’s time is infinite. If you’ve followed this blog for a while, you know I’m a big fan of writer Annie Dillard’s thoughts on this subject: How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.  

Some time-busters are one-offs like our house renovation. In a few months, it will be finished. I’ll restore order to the interior and move on. Others are reliable repeats—my thrice-yearly dental visits, the weekly shop. Some are not only time-consuming but utterly maddening—like the repeated attempts to renew my file protection I detailed here.

It does seem that since the Plague broke in 2020, the number of “glitches” one daily encounters has skyrocketed at the same time as easy, straightforward solutions have plummeted, but that’s where we are. And since I don’t see a likely turnabout in this state of things, and moving to a yurt on the tip of outer Mongolia is not an option—too cold, bad internet, no Quik Marts within a zillion miles—I need a way to not let the unending stream of time-zappers deflate my spirits and spoil my day (after day, after day).

When I told Ed the topic for this month’s blog, he laughed heartily and said, “The day you plan, and the day you get? They are not the same. Ever.” But yesterday was one of those rare days. Ed and I took our computers to a coffee shop downtown where I wrote undisturbed for two-and-a-half hours before we moved on to lunch on the shady porch of a café with Mediterranean cuisine. Heaven! Damn, what I wouldn’t give for a week of days like that. But…

This morning, I got a jury duty summons. Then, an incorrect medical bill that had been settled months ago resurfaced, involving a long string of messaging and several phone calls. And one of the brand-new posts for the front porch was somehow badly scratched and chipped in the installation, so I need to get in touch with the builders.

How we spend our days…