Pollyism of the week
It’s 2018 yet it feels like 1918 at my house. There are loads of things we take for granted in New Zealand in the 21st century. Sure, we don’t have flying cars quite yet and those driverless cars seem about as safe as a brick house with a tiled roof in an earthquake zone, but we take so much of our modern lives for granted. So when things go wrong, it can get a little crazy.
The wheel has been around since someone was smart enough to look at anything rolling and say, “Ugh! Round things roll good!”
The microwave has slowly become an important part of heating stuff up. Long gone are the days when Mum would keep Dad’s dinner warm on top of a simmering pot on the stove. (I can’t believe she did that almost every night while Dad had a drink with his mates at the police club.)
Where would we be without hair straighteners for those days when our locks look like an explosion at a clown convention? And the breast pump has saved many a Kiwi mother from mastitis and rockhard boobs.
This week, however, has been catastrophic. We’ve been without the internet for six days. Six days of having the family move out to live with anyone who can give them Wi-Fi to play Fortnite or allow them to listen to Spotify. We’re only hours away from sitting around a piano and singing Gilbert and Sullivan songs, and playing board games. There is nothing wrong with either of these activities, but it’s not 1968 and things are getting weird at my crib.
As I write this, I’m typing on my PC at work, avoiding the disharmony at home. My partner is huffing and puffing about not getting important emails at the busiest time of his work year. My sons who work for him (handsome team of house washers they are) are fretting about no work, therefore no money to buy food, energy drinks and craft beer. My daughter is unable to watch her streamed series of some horrendous show where beautiful people with East End accents are sleeping with all their exes on an island.
I might as well be here at work as I’m unable to watch my fave streaming services, get or receive emails, or pay my bills online. I feel like a weirdo because I’m almost completely incommunicado and even weirder that my house is perfectly silent.
Wait ... My house is perfectly silent! There is no gaming, streaming or music. The kids have gone rogue, and I can hear birds and children playing outdoors. Jeez, we have an outdoors? It seems we do and a whole bunch of solitude.
Solitude is overrated. I need to find out what’s happening on Instagram or before I know it, I’ll have forgotten how to stalk people online and that would never do.