Disconnected

I didn't even notice I was light in the pockets until half an hour or so after I got home. Then, wondering where I had set my phone, I tried to buzz it with my watch, and that's when I discovered that I did not have my phone.

Oh, I knew where it was. 

I had spent a lovely evening at Bill and Emily's for a family birthday dinner, and I had deliberately set my phone aside so that I could focus on the people rather than the device. In general, I don't think I'm too bad when it comes to staring at a screen instead of the face in front of me, but I know the allure of easy answers and photo illustrations can arise in almost every conversation, and so I put my phone down.

And I was very good! I participated in conversations and never looked at my phone once-- even when it was time to go home.

What is in Word?

To me, the word "binge" is negative; it implies unhealthy consumption and a lack of self-control. So when folks started talking about "binge-watching" TV shows, all I could picture was pale people with sunken eyes sprawled in the glow of a screen in a darkened room surrounded by empty soda cans, chip bags, and pizza boxes.

Turns out, binge-watching can also mean dedicating your viewing to a single show, which, after the stay-at-home months of 2020, makes quite a bit of sense to me. Then, we watched shows we had never seen for a couple of hours each night, from the first episode to the last. Since not much new content was being released, each show was our entire viewing experience for the weeks, or months, it took to watch it in its entirety.

I still remember those days in terms of what we watched. Spring and summer of 2020 was Once Upon a Time, late summer was Heart of Dixie, fall and early winter was Revenge, followed by The Resident because, well, Emily Van Camp. And our viewing habits have evolved to pretty much be one show at a time, with the exception of a few network shows, mostly reality format, or new episodes of shows we have binged and caught up with, and the occasional movie.

There is an instant gratification, to be sure, in being able to punch a single button on the remote and find out what happens next. Gone are the days of waiting a week, or even the whole summer to find out who shot JR or what would happen with Ross and Rachel. But gone, too, is the shared experience of waiting and then watching together with family and friends, and knowing that a lot of other people, across the country or even the world, were watching, too.

Self-Advocacy

I get it. Small businesses depend on getting butts in seats and keeping them there. Which is why I was willing to wait 40 minutes without complaint at our local nail salon. It didn't seem that busy when we entered, and they brought us to our chairs as soon as we chose our polish. 

But. 

We waited without explanation for over 30 minutes as all the technicians worked on other customers. And it was without a word that one of them twisted the water on in our basins and gestured for us to put our feet in. There was nothing added, and she turned the water off on her way back to the manicure she was working on. 

"Should we just leave?" Heidi finally asked a few minutes later. 

I sighed. I knew Heidi wanted her toenails done before she left for the beach, and it was hard to let go of the time we had already waited without getting service. "Let's give them 5 more minutes," I suggested. 

Within two, a technician came and began working on Heidi's toenails, and I felt optimistic. A few seconds later, they brought another customer back and sat her next to me. She couldn't have been there more than 5 minutes before she loudly asked, "Who am I waiting for? They said they would take me right away up front."

All the employees stopped what they were doing and stared at her in alarm. "Soon, soon," one of them assured her, but that was it for me. I pulled my feet from the tepid water and slipped them back into my flip-flops. Heidi's toenails would be done, and mine could wait.

"I'm going grocery shopping," I told Heidi. "Text me when you're done."

As I stood up, several of the workers shook their heads. "No, no!" they told me.

"I'm finished!" one of the technicians promised. 

It was the first time anyone had spoken to me in 45 minutes. "Nope," I told them. "I've been waiting too long! Maybe next time," I shrugged and I strode out of the salon, feeling liberated.

Oh, they tried to explain to Heidi that they had been unexpectedly busy, but the truth was this was the second time that this had happened. Back in June when my sister was in town, the three of us had gone for pedicures and had ended up waiting a long time. Then, I had been willing to believe it was a one-off and give the place another chance.

"Do you think you'll ever go there again?" Heidi asked later.

"I might go while you're at the beach," I said. "I kind of want to see if walking out made any difference."

Pro Tip

"You just have to show up at the court and play with whoever's there," Heidi's personal trainer advised her when she asked him about improving her pickleball game. 

So imagine our surprise on this glorious day when all our neighborhood courts were taken and we drove up the hill to the county rec center-- the first person we saw was Patrick, Heidi's trainer. There were plenty of open courts though, and so we played singles for a while, Patrick cheering on whoever was on the side closest to his own game.

A little after noon, though, the place almost emptied out, and we were just hitting lobs to each other, practicing shot placement and backhands when a dad and his two teenage daughters began playing a court away from us. The girls were good, and I wondered if they might become the Venus and Serena of pickleball when their dad asked us if we wanted to play doubles with his daughters. 

Kyra and Naomi handed us our asses for two games straight before their dad suggested we mix up the teams. It was closer then, but the girls carried their teams to victory. Even so, I felt like I was able to take my game up a bit.

"That was fun!" I told them as we knocked paddles at the end of the last game. "Thanks for playing us!"

Too bad Patrick wasn't there to see it!

An Abundance of Caution

It was breezy up on the pickleball court this afternoon, and hot, too-- we called it after a couple of games in 86-degree heat. Even so, we weren't prepared for it when Heidi's phone began to blow up; all of her water aerobics folks were abuzz about the tornado watch that had been issued for our area.

"Tell them you'll be at the pool if it's open," I advised.

"But they are sending me news articles and weather sites," she said with indecision. "And the Federal Government is closing at 3. Should we just call it right now?"

"You don't have to do anything; they'll close the pool if it's too dangerous."

"But they are predicted derecho force winds!" Just then, her phone dinged again. "The pool is closing at 5!" she reported.

"Well, that answers that," I shrugged and crossed my fingers that everyone was overreacting.

Incentive/Disincentive

I love using my smartwatch to track my activity. I have it synced to all sorts of activity and nutrition apps on my phone, too, to provide me with as much data as possible. Although I use the goal feature on several of those apps, I am not a fanatic about meeting the goals so much as I am about recording the relevant information, because you know what they say about data collection-- garbage in, garbage out. And I do like to know when I've bettered my past accomplishments; at my age, it's good to have reminders that there is still a chance to improve physically.

Last week we were half a mile or so into the holler on our way to the waterfall when our phone service dipped out. I wasn't concerned; I had downloaded the map of the Graveyard Fields hike onto my phone, and so I just switched from the internet to the saved file. 

A little while later it started to sprinkle and then rain in earnest, so we waited out a 10-minute cloudburst under a pine tree. By the time the storm rolled by, the stream was double its size, the trail was much muddier than when we started, and our feet were soaked when we made it back to the main loop. 

Even so, we pushed on to the second falls, and our dirty dog, Lucy, got cleaned up by taking a dip in the swimming hole at the top of the chute. A brief climb back up to the Blueridge Parkway brought us back to our car, and we turned back toward Ashville for a shower and dinner.

Somewhere along the line, my watch battery died, as it does more and more lately, especially when it's tracking my activity. It is an earlier model, though, and I understand what I have to put up with until I choose to replace it. 

But the next morning? I didn't understand what was happening after I fastened my watch to my wrist. All the activity indicators started going crazy, and there was a lot of dinging, too. When at last my device settled down, a few taps here and there failed to explain what the big deal was, so I reached for my phone. There I noticed that the trail app was still open, and having finally connected to wifi again, was giving me credit for hiking not only the 3-mile Graveyard Fields trail, but also the 39-mile drive home. 

Try as I might, I couldn't delete my 42-mile "accomplishment". So there's a garbage record I'm never going to beat.

Or will I?

For the Assist

I was feeling a little bored this afternoon, so I tapped open my bike share app to find myself a nearby ride. There was a well-charged e-bike about 10 minutes from here and so off I headed on foot. It was an ideal afternoon for such a pursuit, low 80s and sunny but breezy, so I headed west on the bike trail, and that pedal-assist made my 15-mile ride, well, a breeze.

I did feel a bit guilty as I trundled easily past many a bike without a motor, and I was glad when the serious bikers on the trail called out to let me know they were passing on my left, but in the end? An hour of steady pedaling is an hour of steady pedaling.

I just made it a bit farther than I might have otherwise.