dead phone

[dragonlady7]

via https://ift.tt/3vJmXMr

argh i cracked my phone screen in august but somehow yesterday i killed it. i’d been sawing things in the tiny house, and as part of that i cut up a bunch of offcuts into manageable learn-to-whittle chunks, and at the end i tossed those into a discarded paper ace hardware bag, and threw my phone into my belt pocket, and then carried a heavy armload of stuff back to the house– put tools away in the workshop, hauled the wood to my car, got into the house, pulled out my phone to look at it and it wouldn’t turn on.

Eventually I got it to respond and the screen was like– in a gradient. I mustve put pressure on the cracked screen somehow while carrying armloads of stuff.

So it’s dead. I have it tethered to my computer so I can check texts there as long as it stays alive enough for the pairing not to drop out, but. I can’t actually see anything on the screen, the phone itself is dead.

I ordered a new one but it won’t arrive until Friday, so I’m having it shipped to my house rather than here. So I have no phone for the week.

So far I’ve lost my mind trying to use the timer, flashlight, and of course the twitchy check-for-dopamine phone reflexes are driving me insane.

And then in the midst of that, somehow I misplaced my Kindle. It had been sitting on the kitchen table with my phone, and I said to myself, better put that on the bedside table so I don’t lose it, and I do remember it arriving there but now that I think back, maybe I’d done that earlier in the day, and then kiddo had made me read to her again, and so I’d retrieved it from the bedside table and put it on the kitchen table instead, and then– where did I put it from the table?

It is a black hole and there is no memory there. I very clearly was not recording what I did as I did it. Three adults and a child have searched this house to no avail. When my Kindle is unavailable I read to the kid from my phone. The last ditch is that you can load up Kindle books in the browser so now I have to do that, and boy it is not ergonomic.

Anyway. Mom came by in the evening for dinner, and I confessed that I’ve been under so much stress and this phone thing feels like the last straw, and she was like “wait why are you stressed?” and I just did not know what to even say to that, Mom, all of us have been under a great deal of strain with Dad dying suddenly, do you think you are the only person who is having trouble? and also the global pandemic? and maybe I’ve deliberately chosen to drive across the state every weekend but i’ve been doing it nonstop since April and I’m really tired? and it turns out I really don’t know how to talk to my mother about myself so I just sort of shrugged.

She then pointed out that it’s the tenth anniversary of my uncle dying rather suddenly, so we drank to him, and I survived the evening, but now it’s Monday and I’ve realized I have no clock in my room, my phone is for that.

I don’t know how I’m gonna survive the week, I have a timer running basically constantly and I just– checking in with the friends in my phone is how I survive my day. So I’m just in a kind of state of overwhelm and that’s how it’s gotta be, alas. (Your picture was not posted)

Comments

[oracne]

AGH. I hope at least one thing has improved since you posted this? I'm so sorry.

[szzzt]

Oh that's hard. I feel you, especially on the timer.
I got a watch that happened to have a timer feature and now I use that sucker all the time, seven or eight times a day, which I never expected I would do. What is time.