This,
that….
Well I got back from Perth last week and the first thing I did was to rush to my new beaut vegetable garden and also check the chooks. I fed and watered both with a sense of quiet glee.
The second thing I did was to go inside and log on. When nothing happened I didn’t panic since all the green lights were indicating merrily that the internet wasn’t too far away.
Six hours later, having spoken to six different technical support people, all of whom were amazingly patient, kind and positive (with the exception of one woman whose sighs, when I didn’t understand her click34xcableetc instructions, became thunderous on loudspeaker) were confident.
At one point, during this ungleeful, longwinded experience, I rang Ming who said that when he got home he’d sort it out in a jiffy. Well he tried, and even spoke to other technical support people, to no avail.
The Ming then said, with great compassion and a generous hug, “Maybe you’re just not intelligent enough, Mum….?”
I let his observation linger for the ten days during which I had no internet except via my phone. When I began to get the 5s mixed us with the Ss, I gave up.
Anyway, yesterday the replacement modem arrived at the post office and Ming picked it up, brought it home, connected it and voila!
So what am I supposed to do now? I can’t possibly answer all of the zillions of emails and comments and facebooky stuff; I can’t possibly catch up on ten days of my blog friends’ blogs; I can’t even catch up with what I was going to do before I lost the internet because my blog kind of reminded me of what to do.
I survived my ten day blip of no internet, but the person most affected by my off-the-internet-radar status was my beautiful mother. Meg and I have a strong internet relationship via email and Facebook, but she is more attentive to messages than I am, so, when I lost the internet, she was the first to miss me.
And today is her birthday. She is 81, looks 61 and acts like 21. So today Meg came to the farm to see the vegetable garden then we went to a local winery for lunch. The secret surprise was that Ming and A. would join us and that was a fantastic thing!
It’s great to be blogging again. That internet blip taught me something really profound: I need the internet!
One of the hardest things for me now is having fun – the guilt of it. Lunches with friends, learning how to garden with new friends, figuring out the future, altering and/or discarding things in this old house, renewing ….
This,
that,
and the other….
jmgoyder 
Wonderful to have you back, but seriously, Julie, delete all those blog updates (including mine and start afresh as from today). We all understand and would not dream of expecting you to catch up.
Family comes first.
PS I actually just deleted a couple of dozen emails because I’d got behind myself. Gone are the days when I felt obliged to answer every email and each new blog post. Same with F/B.
I have delete days now and they are quite refreshing!
let the old messages, blogs, notes go and start from here. everything will be fine. happy birthday to mum meg and glad you went out and enjoyed the day. no need to feel guilty about enjoying life, i think you’d want the same for anthony if your positions were reversed. no reason you cannot love them all, a heart is not limited in it’s capacity to love.
You are right.
Relieved to hear that your radio silence was down to something as mundane as lack of internet. That said, don’t know how I’d cope for ten days 😀 Happy birthday Meg!
I think we are all so dependent on the internet now!
Emails can pile up. I purposely went without email for 16 days … and returned to over 1000 messages … sure most were spam, but it took time go through the process. Good to have you back online. … and Cheers to the garden!
The garden is making me very very happy!
Welcome Back!
Happy Birthday to your beautiful mother Meg!
And you just let your heart compete with who to love more. It will give your heart a good workout. And we all know we need that kind of exercise! 🙂
Thanks so much for your kind wish to my mother.
You’re welcome. 🙂
Start afresh today Julie 🙂 Life is for living!
I am actually having quite a bit of fun now going back to comments and answering them. When it stops being fun I will stop haha!
Yes indeed Julie! 😎
So glad you are back — starting afresh and sharing your loving perspective on the world.
BTW — who said you have to love one person more than the other? 🙂
Yes I don’t know why I asked that question now!
lovely to see you back blogging.
Shucks!
That’s the thing about long internet breaks (intentional or not)…when you come back, you start over. No going backwards! It can be liberating to let those days go. 🙂 As for Ming’s comment…ummm, I’d flick his ear for that one I would 🙂 Love you Jules and love seeing the smile in your voice and the optimism in your words and the overflowing love in your heart. You, my dear, are the Maven of Marvelous!!! xoxo
What’s a Maven?
A Maven is by definition is an expert in a particular field who seeks to pass on knowledge (that’s you), one who understands (that’s you too). And as you are marvelous in all ways, I dub you Maven of Marvelous 🙂
You just love them all whenever they need you or you need them…. No room for guilt though.. It does absolutely nothing positive for anyone… You just accept everything that comes into your life… because Anthony cannot be part of some of it. The time you spend with him though is always quality… so that’s yours’ and his’ time. and you always make the most of it. Diane
Yes I am pretty good at guilt unfortunately.
I was (and sometimes still am) but someone once said something that made to me a lot of sense… “Guilt is a useless emotion… it accomplishes nothing except for making one feel bad” xxx (now really getting that inside of us.. is the challenge.. Diane
It’s 3 different types of love. ..good to have you back
Okay – and thanks Tersia x
Let all those emails go, anyone who minds will email you again. I do admire your mother.
I do too!
That question of who to love most? (my mother, my husband, or my son) Ahhhh – I have the answer for you. YOU!! Self-love!!!
If you could go in that direction, my dear, all of your guilt would be alleviated. You are precious and loved. You carry all of them with your love and loving yourself is very important.
I give this advice because I’ve been there. 🙂
Okay I have taken this on board now.
Glad you’re back, sometimes I get behind and just delete everything and start over.That is really neat that Meg is on top of things. I tried to contact an old boss and she has moved to the other side of Canada.My loss for not keeping in touch more often.
I know what you mean.
By the way that is a nice smile Anthony has on his face.
Ming doesn’t agree that Ants is smiling more but Ming doesn’t know everything ha!
You should love yourself most. Don’t you think? For loving yourself is essential to loving others? It is so awesome to see you blossoming like this. I am so happy for you and all the new things you are experiencing. It sounds like you are letting fun back into your life. Now, it’s for me to follow suit. 🙂
And Happy Birthday to your mother.
I learn a lot about resilience from your posts.
Glad you are back, friend. I know how it feels to be out of the loop for a host of reasons. We depend on our internet..or rather we may have an addiction..lol. Because of my hand surgery recently I found that the abundance of blogs to read was too, too, much so I had to delete and begin again with apologies. I think people will understand your dilemma .
I wish your beautiful mother a very Happy Birthday!!! Party on and don’t feel the least bit guilty. Your mom needs you, too. Hugs, Dale
You are such a champion, Dale!
Happy birthday to Meg from Ally and me.
That will mean a lot to her – thanks so much.
Welcome back, Julie! x
Why thank you!
I’m so glad you’re back! As for the rest, well, the consensus is to just go on from here and don’t worry about it. I agree.
Happy Birthday to your mother!
Thanks Lynda!
I was thinking that something must have been off, I’m glad that it was only the internet. MIng needs a spanking, those youths, I always tell myself just wait until they become parents, then they will understand. LOL Happy Birthday to your mother, hugs Jules xxoo
I will try to spank Ming when he gets home.
hee hee
You were missed! My laptop crashed last week. It really brings home just how dependent we’ve become on technology to stay in touch.
I know! I felt quite lost!
Great to have you back, Julie. I’m going bunkers when our internet goes on “slow-mo” called limited access. It actually means no access…but luckily it hasn’t happened recently.
So far the new modem is behaving – fingers crossed!