January 9, 2009

Frustrations


Queen Mary First Dining Room, Long Beach, CA, May 1999. The giant map on the wall had two small crystal ships that were moved several times a day as the QM and QE made their crossings from Southampton to New York.



Himself: On the A team. But not mine.

Herself: Swam, scanned, lunch with the poets, struggled with the computer all afternoon, and found two swim suits at Costco. Couldn’t get online at all in the evening. Argued. Aware now that this could happen again at any time.

Balance: Apologizing for arguing with G.

There we were like two small children, our voices raised, doors slammed, tempers frayed, and only after a moments silence was I able to figure out what happened.

A week ago, I told G that I was unable to get online for hours on end. Even at five in the morning, I couldn’t get online. I can’t tell you how frustrated I’d been with this.

So I told G. That’s usually my solution to computer problems, tell G.

When my browser crashed last week, I began deleting folders and contents off my hard drive. He began doing the same thing to the back up computer. I still couldn’t easily get online. Yesterday was the last straw. Able to get to MB’s blog only by serendipity before going swimming, I was able only to get to OD fleetingly during the day. By the time we got home from our Costco hot dog, I faced a wall instead of friendly sites and continual pages that told me the url I had been looking for no longer existed.

We argued. Heartily. His statement that he’d been having the same problems at work didn’t go over at all well here at home. This problem had only been going on here for a week. I didn’t care about work. After yells and door slamming, I apologized. I had expectations: the old I tell him and he fixes the problem expectation. “I could hire someone,” I told him.

He got online with a live/chat help person…who did nothing but try and sell G a browser/barrier/watcher/guard as an addition to their programming. No thank you we both said….and his brain woke up. We already had one of those updated devices on all three computers. He took it off Norton on his and mine. Suddenly, after an evening of miserable struggle, the internet slid by my monitor like butter. This morning too.

3 comments:

  1. Just goes to show you, we're not always wrong when we complain...at least that's my fix.

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  2. No matter who is right or wrong, you got to say sorry and thank you and make your dear one feel better. That's one of my rules. Don't know if it it is the same to you. Hopefully.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Yes, not only do we apologize, but we try and figure out what triggered the problem. This time it was a communication problem. I had expectations, and he was tired. What a mix.

    ReplyDelete

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