I feel like I'm having a lesson in not being materialistic -- and it's driving me nuts. I blame every single maker of shower curtains in the world.
When I was in Morocco, I bought a cute little kilim for my bathroom. The colors don't quite go with the current decor but, I though, it'll be fun to update the towels and shower curtains and have a fresh look. Fun? My eye! As of last night, I have been to twelve (TWELVE!) different stores (some online only, but mostly brick-and-mortar) in search of a shower curtain that is (a) made of fabric, (b) not hideously ugly, and (c) some combination of navy blue and white -- but no luck. You'd think I was after the Holy Grail. WHY IS THIS SO HARD? I mean, honestly, once you eliminate everything that is plastic and/or hideous, you're left with about two options, of which one will come only in red, and the other will come in every color imaginable other navy blue (if I was going for "Aegean" or "Tuscany" or "slate", I'd be fine).
But, you say (or you would say, if you'd seen the rug), why don't you get the red shower curtain? After all, there's red in the rug. True. But red is an accent color -- and a minor one at that. I have a very clear idea of the blue-and-white bathroom (with a tiny bit of red and yellow) that I want, and for some reason the universe is withholding it from me.
[Fist shake at the universe.]
And, then, to make matters worse, I lose my phone. While traipsing through stores hunting for non-hideous blue shower curtains, my dear little piece of consumer electronics disappears without a trace. At first I think I just left it in the car. Then I'm confident it's on the kitchen counter. Then I realize it's GONE and I get that horrible, anxious feeling you get when you realize that you have basically no way of communicating with the outside world short of lighting a bonfire next to the pond on your balcony to make smoke signals. Well, that and email. But email is not the same thing as a telephone. For example, you can't call the 87 different shower-curtain stores you just visited to see if they happened to have found my phone. Which means that you now have to go back to each store in person to see if they found anything. No. No. No times 85.
Dang it.
Now not only do I have an ugly bathroom, I also have no way of coordinating dinner with friends, mapping my way to the restaurant (yes, I have a roadmap in my glovebox, but surely that's more like a stone-age artifact than something useful), calling my family, taking pictures (because my other camera died in Spain) and uploading them to my blog, reading scriptures in church (again, I suppose I could pull out the old paper copies, but let's not lose sight of the drama of this situation), or a million other things that I can do with my phone but never actually do.
You might say that I should bask in this disconnectedness and enjoy living a more in-touch-with-nature life sans electronics. To which I would respond, please, I'm not Amish. Besides, even if I wanted to pretend to be Amish (though I don't have the overalls to do it convincingly), how am I supposed to enjoy a technology-free life when some creep has found my phone and is at this very moment racking up the data usage, texting inappropriate things to all my contacts, and hacking into my bank accounts and stealing my identity. Sure, I could prevent all of that by simply suspending the service -- but what if the creep has a shred of decency and decides to use the phone, instead, to call me and tell me where to find it?
I held out hope on that last point for (almost) twenty-four hours; then I contacted Verizon and pulled the plug. If the phone hasn't been found and returned by now, it probably never will be. R.I.P. litle friend. I'll give all the stores another call in the morning (from my office) just to make sure nothing turned up since the last time I went by -- then I'll just have to suck it up and buy another phone at full price (gasp) and start the tedious process of tracking down all my lost contacts.
Until then, I'll be incommunicado except by email or Skype by appointment. In the meantime, I'm going to see if the Amish have any good shower curtains.
When I was in Morocco, I bought a cute little kilim for my bathroom. The colors don't quite go with the current decor but, I though, it'll be fun to update the towels and shower curtains and have a fresh look. Fun? My eye! As of last night, I have been to twelve (TWELVE!) different stores (some online only, but mostly brick-and-mortar) in search of a shower curtain that is (a) made of fabric, (b) not hideously ugly, and (c) some combination of navy blue and white -- but no luck. You'd think I was after the Holy Grail. WHY IS THIS SO HARD? I mean, honestly, once you eliminate everything that is plastic and/or hideous, you're left with about two options, of which one will come only in red, and the other will come in every color imaginable other navy blue (if I was going for "Aegean" or "Tuscany" or "slate", I'd be fine).
But, you say (or you would say, if you'd seen the rug), why don't you get the red shower curtain? After all, there's red in the rug. True. But red is an accent color -- and a minor one at that. I have a very clear idea of the blue-and-white bathroom (with a tiny bit of red and yellow) that I want, and for some reason the universe is withholding it from me.
[Fist shake at the universe.]
And, then, to make matters worse, I lose my phone. While traipsing through stores hunting for non-hideous blue shower curtains, my dear little piece of consumer electronics disappears without a trace. At first I think I just left it in the car. Then I'm confident it's on the kitchen counter. Then I realize it's GONE and I get that horrible, anxious feeling you get when you realize that you have basically no way of communicating with the outside world short of lighting a bonfire next to the pond on your balcony to make smoke signals. Well, that and email. But email is not the same thing as a telephone. For example, you can't call the 87 different shower-curtain stores you just visited to see if they happened to have found my phone. Which means that you now have to go back to each store in person to see if they found anything. No. No. No times 85.
Dang it.
Now not only do I have an ugly bathroom, I also have no way of coordinating dinner with friends, mapping my way to the restaurant (yes, I have a roadmap in my glovebox, but surely that's more like a stone-age artifact than something useful), calling my family, taking pictures (because my other camera died in Spain) and uploading them to my blog, reading scriptures in church (again, I suppose I could pull out the old paper copies, but let's not lose sight of the drama of this situation), or a million other things that I can do with my phone but never actually do.
You might say that I should bask in this disconnectedness and enjoy living a more in-touch-with-nature life sans electronics. To which I would respond, please, I'm not Amish. Besides, even if I wanted to pretend to be Amish (though I don't have the overalls to do it convincingly), how am I supposed to enjoy a technology-free life when some creep has found my phone and is at this very moment racking up the data usage, texting inappropriate things to all my contacts, and hacking into my bank accounts and stealing my identity. Sure, I could prevent all of that by simply suspending the service -- but what if the creep has a shred of decency and decides to use the phone, instead, to call me and tell me where to find it?
I held out hope on that last point for (almost) twenty-four hours; then I contacted Verizon and pulled the plug. If the phone hasn't been found and returned by now, it probably never will be. R.I.P. litle friend. I'll give all the stores another call in the morning (from my office) just to make sure nothing turned up since the last time I went by -- then I'll just have to suck it up and buy another phone at full price (gasp) and start the tedious process of tracking down all my lost contacts.
Until then, I'll be incommunicado except by email or Skype by appointment. In the meantime, I'm going to see if the Amish have any good shower curtains.
2 comments:
I'm not sure about Amish shower curtains, though they make some great pies! ...and I do know one who will do a great job replacing your roof...
That is the best bit of DRAMA I have read in a while! Thank you! I'm about to enjoy the rest of my day so much more! Lady
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