A quick phone post: I’m sitting on my front porch, waiting for Frontier, my awful rural Internet service provider, to show up to fix my connection, which has been down slightly over a week.

That’s right: I’ve been without Internet access at home for one week.

I can see Spectrum trucks down the street running high-speed fiber optic lines. I’ll be switching over to them at the earliest opportunity, two-year contract be damned (that’s right: in 2019, there are still ISPs that make you commit to a two-year contract).

It’s not been all bad: I’ve watched some great DVDs, like Evil Dead and Big Trouble in Little China (“China is here”), and I’ve gotten more sleep.

On the other hand, so much of our lives and work are online, and it’s been quite difficult getting everything done during the day. In addition to teaching high school and maintaining this little blog, I also teach classes online. Talk about a conundrum.

So, here I am, desperately using my planning period to wait at home during my four-hour appointment window, which expires in about thirty minutes.

When Frontier installed my Internet—about six weeks after I placed the original order—I burned an entire personal day waiting for their arrival. They simply never showed. After a series of angry phone calls, a nice technician arrived two days later.

They also charge a mandatory modem rental fee of $10/month. ¡Ay caramba!

I don’t have much else to say. This post is pure self-indulgent complaining. But I do have some takeaways:

1.) Life in a rural town, while very pleasant, comes with certain challenges. Everything operates the way it did thirty years ago—for better and for worse.

My mail wasn’t delivered for two weeks because the rural mail carrier wouldn’t stop because I put my mailbox in front of my house—not across the street, like the only other box on the street (most folks still get mail delivered to the local post office). Finally, my neighbor—not anyone I talked to at the post office—told me my carrier wouldn’t stop until I moved the mailbox across the street.

2.) Adults are meant to work in pairs: a breadwinner and a household manager. My “wife” is my job, unfortunately, and she’s an overbearing, possessive bitty. That’s the case for most everybody. Someone needs to be at home, keeping the home fires burning and keeping the place running efficiently.