Our rural internet is like a Pinto with a left turn signal on — it’s just waiting to crash. Which is how we found ourselves stuck side of the road as we made our way to neared the diner with wifi.
I honestly don’t feel like eating much today. I am recovering from food poisoning last night (karma telling me to get my butt back on my diet). But things have to get done, and those things have to happen online sometimes.
We’re driving Thing1’s 19-year-old Volvo wagon, a vehicle that’s become his project car. We had to pull over because we started smelling smoke. While we were waiting for the senior mechanic in the family to arrive and diagnose the issue I started making phone calls and taking care of some needed business.
Meanwhile, the boys hang out in the car. I shuffled through the weeds in the fairway as I’ve talked with a customer service rep. She occasionally put me on hold, and I’d glance over to the car to make sure T1 and T2 weren’t killing each other and then at the weeds, each time at a different angle and each time noticing a pink or yellow blossom at the end of the green stalks that made them wildflowers, not weeds. It was a good place to be stuck.
Over at the car, Thing1 was fist-bumping Thing2, a fact he would reveal after the crisis with the exclamation,
“This is the greatest day in the world!”