I’m so annoyed. SO. ANNOYED. The new year has been a drip of irritating things (to be fair, it started at the end of last year), and it’s continuing. The first tihng was my internet acting up (saying I was using a TERABYTE of data in one month after years of using 10 GB a month). My brother helped me figure out some of the problem, but not all of it. And, of course, Comcast/Xfinity was worse than useless because they don’t have to be helpful. What am I going to do? Switch to CenturyLink which is nearly as bad? (And which is causing me a current problem?)
Then, this year, I got a flat tire a week-and-a-half ago. I had to get four new tires. The last Saturady, my phone conked out. No idea why. And I could not get a real actual human being to talk to at CenturyLink. I managed to get an appointment for Thursday (tomorrow), if you can call it that. It’s any time from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Now, today, I wanted to get my meds. I went to the garage and tried to start my car. It would not start. I called my brother (because that’s what I do). It’s probably the 12-volt battery. Or it might be the cold that makes the battery not work. I remember replacing the battery during the pandemic, probably early on. So it’s been nearly four years, which my brother says is the norm for 12-volt batters in Minnesota.
Oh, and my laptop is dying. I bought it in April of 2019 so that’s not a surprise. In fact, I’ve been nursing it along for the last six months or so. It’s not a surprise, but it is definitely on its last legs now. Like, I won’t be able to use it in a month or so. I have two choices. My brother’s old laptop is still usable. He buys top quality and top-notch professional laptops that last for a decade or so. His last two laptops before this one are still in use. And the one before that still works. He’s put four years into the one I might buy, which means it has at least two to three more good years in it (if not more). It has 2 Terabytes of memory (and I cannot have less than 1 Terabyte), an SSD, and all the other bells and whistles I need. The one thing that makes me pause is that the graphics card is a 1050. That’s not very good. My current desktop is a 3070. This laptop is a 1050. But I’m not going to use it for gaming. Just watching videos and writing. And surfing the net. I don’t need a good graphics card for that.
He’s selling it for seven hundred to eight hundred, which is a good price for what I’d get. I spent a thou on this laptop. That’s not unusual for what I need from it. And, sadly, lasting 3 years is what’s expected from a laptop these days. Well, any day, really. They are not meant to be long-lasting. They are the epitome of use them and lose them. And I use them. Heavily. I have been told that I am brutal on my keyboards. I type fast, and I type hard. Ian has said that he can hear me from another room.
I type over a hundred words a minute, and my brain thinks tiwce as fast. Which means that I’m pushing my fingers to go as fast as they can. Which makes me impatient, and I tend to hit the keys even harder. Oh, and I have cherry keys, which are made for tactile satisfaction and are louder than modern keyboards.
Back to my car. I’m so annoyed and frustrated. I have said about technology that it’s great until it stops working, which is how I feel about cars as well. I don’t know much about them for several reasons. Mostly, the typical ones. AFAB with a father who had very rigid rules about gender. But, also, he knew nothing about cars. He bought a Pacer just because, ah, I’m not sure why, but it’s one of the worst cars of all times. He probably got it because he knew someone who had one. Or something.
And he was very tight with a penny, but then he would spend a ton on, say, an organ for my mother–who never said she wanted one (she did play the piano).
He had no inetrest in cars, other than how useful one was. No shame in that, by the way. I am the same way. But he did not teach me or my brother anything about them because he was simply not interested in them. My brother knows about cars because he was interested in them and taught himself about them.
I am so grateful that my brother does know about cars, by the way. I may still have to go to the pros to get my car fixed, but at least he gives me ideas as to what it might be. I don’t feel like I’m going in without any clue as to what is happening.
All of this is like a slow drip of water on my forehead. It’s not fun. And it’s infinitely more irritating than dying. Twice. As I mentioned in a previous post, that did not affect my daily life in the way a car that doesn’t work does. And I have to decide if I want to keep fixing this car or to buy a new one. Not a happy decision to have to make, especially after replacing the tires.
I’m just so tired. I have wanted to try out my new slow cooker (new as in two weeks new), but I just don’t have the energy when I’m dealing with the annoying shit of daily life.
I was telling Ian that I really admired my brother because when he decides to do something new, he just does it. He has also said that he doesn’t have any regrets, which I don’t get at all. I regret almost everything I’ve done/not done! That doesn’t mean I don’t like who I am now (I do, for the most part), but there are so many things I could have done better.
I don’t think those things are mutually exclusive, by the way. I can both be happy with whom I am now and regret how I got here. Are there things I would change if I could? Of course! Hell, yes! but since I can’t, I’ve made my peace with most of it. I think that’s the important thing. I know I can’t change what I’ve done before in my life; I can only change what I’m going to do now or in the future.