Second Helpings

One of Those Days

Last week hubby decided to take the grand monsters to the cinema and I was looking forward to a rare, peaceful day at home. I should have heeded my own words about never making plans.

I was blasted from my sleep by a mobile phone call. I have no idea who it was apart from them having a very strong Scottish accent and saying very little apart from repeating my name. I ended the call. Two minutes later they called again and the whole process was repeated. I informed them they must have the wrong number to which they apologised and said it had been sent to them by a friend via text message. I tried to go back to sleep, but it niggled me as to what the chances are of phoning a wrong number with the recipient having the same name as the person you intended to call. I still have no idea who it was or if someone had passed my number on to them. I do tend to get a bit paranoid over technological mysteries.

So nothing for it but to get up earlier than I wanted to. At least it would give me plenty of time for all I planned to do. Ha Ha. Later my stepdaughter’s husband arrived with their twins and hubby set off to collect our son’s two eldest to take them all out. He hadn’t told me that son-in-law would be staying here to work on a new paved area in our garden. I didn't mind, but it’s not the same as having the place to yourself and entails having to make endless cups of tea and coffee. Hubby in his wisdom had also hung out all the washing and of course it started belting down with rain half an hour later. Wet washing and son-in-law returned to the kitchen, I thought I might as well get out my fairly new steamer and try it out on the curtains. Half way down the first curtain it stopped working and I was puzzled as to why or what I’d done wrong. I then noticed my radio had stopped playing and the cooker clock was blank.

As luck would have it our son-in-law is an electrician so assuming it was just a case of adjusting the trip switch in the garage which is too high up the wall for me to reach without fetching a chair, I asked him to see to it. Nothing happened. He asked me to unplug the steamer and concluded with some explanation I didn’t really understand that it was the steamer to blame and not to carry on using it. I wasn’t really heartbroken as domestic tasks are something I have to force myself to do these days. But once the electricity returned our burglar alarm started wailing. Hubby informed me years ago it no longer works and has never bothered to repair it, so it’s not been used in ages. It was certainly working that afternoon and because it’s so long since we used it I couldn’t remember the code to punch in to stop it. After trying several combinations and failing we phoned my stepdaughter who’d also forgotten, so son-in-law had to take out the fuse to shut it up.

After a quick lunch I thought I might spend some time writing to calm my jangled nerves. As always I was distracted by Facebook, but expected it would only take me a few minutes to scan down the newsfeed. The first thing I saw was a post by a dear friend and talented writer in Australia who had decided to promote some of my writing on her wall. Alarm bells went off in my head louder than the previous burglar alarm as this particular line of writing is not something I want to share with my family, who are all on my friend’s list on Facebook. I’m not sure how these things work or whether they would see the post, but I know I see things on my wall by people not on my list and I have no idea who they are. Experience has taught me to be exceedingly cautious in these matters which is one reason I rarely post anything on my own wall. It was very kind of her and I wasn’t angry, just a gibbering wreck in case anyone saw the post before I could do something about it. Not being very knowledgable about security and privacy on the site I spent ages ticking and unticking various boxes and messaging my Aussie friend to please delete the post, knowing it was the middle of the night over there and she’d probably be asleep. In my panic I managed to block my son and stepdaughter, which later caused a few laughs when I had to send them new friends requests. I crossed my fingers no one had seen the link, but knowing how hubby’s phone tends to ping with notifications from Facebook and how inquisitive he tends to be as regards my activity I feared the worst.

Never have I been so happy to see my husband return home with nothing to tell me apart from how he’d got on with the grand monsters.

Serves me right I guess for trying to be guarded and thinking I might have a peaceful day at home alone.