A Disconnected Evening

It was strange to leave work today, knowing I was coming home to a house without phone or internet. Yesterday I was running late coming home from work, so I tried to call Bethany to let her know I was on the way home. The phone rang and rang and the answering machine didn’t kick in, which usually happens only when the power is out. The town fire alarm had just gone off, and I could hear lots of sirens, so I figured maybe  a car accident had taken out a utility pole and knocked out power to the house. Nope. I got home and found out that our phone had no dial tone, inside or outside at the box. I called Verizon and found out they couldn’t come out to fix it until Friday. Lovely.

So, with no landline and no internet (we only have dial-up at home), I came home to a quiet house. Bethany was staying late for a play practice, and Ron would pick her up after work. No phone messages, no e-mail, no Facebook. To be honest, I felt sort of lost. I have an ad running in this week’s Pennysaver to sell a clay pot (SchlemmerTopf), so this isn’t the best time for the phone to be out of service. Hopefully if anybody is trying to call, they’ll try again tomorrow when the phone is back on.

Eventually, I felt sort of free. I pulled out my to-do list and started to attack it. I made Ron’s favorite bread, I stripped the bed and put on sheets more suited to our new spring temperatures (and in the process found a sock Bethany has been missing for a while. Apparently it got tangled up in the sheets during the laundry. I found the match in the mis-matched sock bucket and put both socks on Snowball to surprise Bethany when she came home.

I cleaned up my desk area, caught up on paperwork and bills, got ahead on my current puzzle-proofing assignment, and made a big batch of roast cauliflower to go with dinner.

There were plenty of times when I’d think of something I wanted to check on the internet, or a message I wanted to give somebody. Oh, well, I just added it to my to-do list for later in the week. I think having internet access available can really sap my time, since I will go online to look something up quickly and get drawn in for fifteen, twenty, or thirty minutes… or more!

So tonight, I’m not really missing the phone and the internet all that much. I took time to smell my “Administrative Professionals Day” flowers. I got myself more organized than I’ve been in a long time. I took time to pray about some things that have been weighing heavy on me today. I did ten miles on my exercise bike.

I’m typing this into a plain old Word document to upload to my blog tomorrow, when I’m back to being connected again. I think that an evening of being disconnected has helped me to step back and evaluate my time management skills a bit more. Let’s see if I can finish off my to-do list by this time next week!