In Sickness and in Health

I’ve been sick for the past five days; not I think I’m going to die sick, but just, I feel miserable sick.  I’ve slept 19 out of the past 24 hours.  I’m hacking up chunks of greenish-yellow phlegm and my throat hurts.  I’m tired of being sick and the spouse is tired of me being sick. 

“That’s what you get for hanging out with the homeless,” he tells me. 

Left without supervision, he manages to find trouble.  I spend the day sleeping, so he decides to figure out why he can’t get the Wi-Fi extender to work.  He wants Wi-Fi in his shop building so he doesn’t have the inconvenience of having to come into the house to use his I pad.  (He solved the not having a bathroom problem another way…just make sure you make a lot of noise approaching the back side of the shop so you don’t startle him “appreciating the outdoors.”)

From my sickbed on the living room couch, I hear him on the phone to tech support in India or Pakistan.

“I don’t understand what you’re asking me to do,” he yells into the phone, “I can’t hear you over the static.” 

This goes on for at least a half an hour with a few silent moments while he waits for Jagavi to call him back on another line.  After four tries they get a connection with less static.  “I don’t understand what you’re asking,” he yells again, “let me give you to my wife.”

He brings me the phone.  After teaching ESL students for many years, I am pretty good with accents, but I couldn’t understand Jagavi. I hand the phone back to my husband and he goes back to the office and continues the discussion.  After another 15 minutes I hear him thank Jagavi and finally hang up.  Unfortunately the story doesn’t end here. 

He decides to research the connectivity problem on the Internet.  As I start to doze again I hear his phone ring and he starts another conversation about the computer.  Ten minutes later he yells for me, “Quick, quick come here.  You’ve got to see this.  We’ve had 1,700 attempted hacks on our computer.”  He’d fallen for one of those phishing scams and now our computer was being hacked.

I tell him to unplug the computer and not to plug it back in.  We’ll eventually take it in to the computer repair and have it looked at….or just buy a new one.  The old one will never be hooked back up to the internet.  We realize our tax returns are stored on that old computer.  The next day I check with our banks and am reassured that our accounts are secure; I order new credit cards. 

I’m glad all that excitement is over.  I’m still working on getting my energy level back.  The weather has been nicer and the warming station for the homeless has been closed.  When I go back, I'll be compulsively washing my hands.