It's the Internet Again. I mean...What Internet?

A quick note between the on again off again to get you up to speed. So to speak.

Mackinac Island. Not my island but close enough. I’ll bet THEY have internet! (My photo)

It’s happening again. Our ‘broadband’ (Ha!) is acting up and I’m hoping I’ll be able to publish this before it goes out again. One day it was off and on, the next day it was off completely, the next day it came on at around 2 AM and disappeared again by morning. It was a Sunday so no techs available. That was yesterday.

Today, Monday, it’s off and on. (Note: It’s Tuesday now. I couldn’t post this yesterday. I’m going to try again. Wish me luck.)

The bars start to disappear and then I see the dreaded globe. Then the bars show up again, but they’re there to fool me. They won’t take me anywhere. No matter how much I cuss and beg. Nope.

I look out the window to remind myself why I live in this place where modern technology either hasn’t quite reached or is too expensive to even consider. I see blue sky and blue water and birch trees and cedars and dappled shade and I think, what could be better?

Well, a working internet, that’s what. I’ve got work to do. My writing is my work and my joy. I’ve lived so long with it I simply can’t do without it, and I can do it much better when I’m online. That’s the truth.

As I’ve told you here, we have terrible internet, but we’re supposed to be grateful we have any at all so we probably don’t make as much fuss as we should or could. Not that it would make a difference. I think this company—our telephone company with headquarters more than 200 miles away—is our only choice. They keep hinting they don’t have to be here. They’re doing us a favor. Nobody else wants to take on a small island with only 1100 full-time residents, many of whom are not even computer-savvy and don’t ever plan to be.

So we put up with it.

I’ve been reading things on real paper, and I’ve been working on some old non-internet pieces I may resurrect if I can get them to cooperate. I like them enough to set them on the to-do pile, but can I bring them up to my own current standards without such a complete rewrite I might as well start from scratch?

I don’t know. But what’s the worst that can happen?

So there’s that. I’ve accomplished something, anyway. That’s not all I’ve done, of course. I baked banana bread and brownies and now they’re in the freezer. I made a big pasta salad. (Let’s just say I’ve had enough for maybe decades to come.) I cleaned the shower—and I mean I worked at it. I tried everything—Dawn, CLR, LimeAway, foaming bleach stuff—everything. It looks only slightly better. (Hard water stains will be the death of me.) I hung laundry on the line and the breezes cooperated and it all dried beautifully within a few hours.

And all the while I fretted that my internet service is letting me down again. I’m that pathetic.

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When I see this, there is no internet:

When I see this I know I’m going nowhere until those bars increase. Sometimes they disappear entirely. Not that it matters.

Either way, I’m stuck, Web-wise. Which means everything is iffy, Substack-wise. But this is where I am, Up-North-wise. So we’ll just have to be patient.

And by ‘we’ I mean ‘me’. Let’s just say I’m trying.

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