I have gone through a serieous medical crisis in which I died twice. You would think that with something that epic in my background (and memorable), I would not be rattled by the little things in life. I should be able to brush them off and just laugh. After all, I beat death with one hand tied behind my back. Twice!
You would be wrong.
For the first six months or so after I left the hospital, yes, I was pretty much immune to the pettiness of life.
I am in the third year of my new life. I can now say that I am more annoyed by the little things than by dying. One, it’s recently bias as Ian pointed out. The little things tha irritate me are now and me dying (twice!) was so 2021. Two, dying has no effect on me now. I am incredibly fortunate that I did not have to do rehab or physical therapy after what happened to me. I’m about 95% of what I used to be. I am so damn lucky, and I know it. I don’t have to think about what happened to me or deal with the ramifications. Well, not being able to drive as well is the biggest one, but it’s not that big a deal because I don’t have to drive much.
There’s something wrong with my phone. It won’t work. This is my landline, by the way. It just says ‘check tel line’. I tried to unplug and replug. I tried the main phone on a different socket. I tried just having the cordless plugged in.
Nada. I talked to my brother (on my cell, which I hate), and he confirmed, after walking me through the steps I should take, that it was the line. He advised me to call CenturyLink. They have work hours, which were only during weekdays. They had a toll-free number for emergencies, which I reluctantly called. I knew what was going to happen, and I was not wrong.
I got a bot. I had to go through their questions, and none of them were exactly right. Which meant I could only give them an estimation because I could not actually talk to a real human boing. The bot said I could have a technician come on THURSDAY (so almost a week later) anywhere between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. Come on. Oh, and if I had to cancel and didn’t do it ahead of time ,I could be charged a fee. Same with if it was fixed ahead of time and I did not call them. I could get charged a fee. Or if they came and no one answered.
This is all bullshit.
Just to add to my minor irritations that really bothered the shit out of me, I bought a magnifying glass from Amazon. It came and the back of it had poppped off so one of the lens was out of the frame. And, it runs on 3 AAA batteries (for the lighting)–which it does not come with. I’m sure it says it somewhere in the description, but nowhere prominently. I am fine with the no battery thing. I can just pick some up the next time I go grocery shopping–but the lens thing was so annoying. To make matters worse, I put the lens back in the wrong way so everything was upside down as I tried to read it. I had to pry the lens out (and that took some doing–I was afraid I’d break the lens or the frame), but I was also getting angrier and angrier as I could not get it out. I finally did. And I put it back in the right way. But I’m still unreasonably mad. It’s a seven dollar magnifying glass. Calm the fuck down, Hong!*