I am currently tethered to an electrical outlet in order to write this piece because a week ago, my laptop battery gave up the ghost. This has thrown me into a tizzy because I am used to moving to the sofa in the living room to write. There’s an outlet behind the sofa, but in order to get to it, I have to contort myself in ways I no longer contort very well. And so, until my new battery arrives, I’m stuck in my office near the closest wall outlet.
I am wondering if my iPad battery is going to be the next one to go because it sure seems to drain down awfully fast. To charge that little technological time-waster, I need to plug it in. If I want to use it while it’s charging, I have to dangle the top half of my body over the arm of the love seat because the cord is too darn short. This makes all the blood rush to my head and my eyes all wonky.
My phone battery is fine. However, since things always seem to go to pot in triplicate around here, I give it about a week. That’s just how it goes around here. Don’t ask me why. It’s a mystery.
In other news, I had lunch with a group of old friends today. We shared happy things and a few sad things, too. Mostly, we laughed and filled in the blanks for each other. There seem to be more blanks to fill in all the time. It is good to have friends. It is better to have old ones. Old friends know which blanks to fill.
In the two hours we visited, none of us checked our phones. Nobody wasted a single minute on Facebook. Other restaurant diners may have seen us and thought we were just a group of older women having lunch. They didn’t know that what we were really doing was re-charging. They could not know that when we said our goodbyes, our batteries were full.
The cord of friendship tethers us, one to the other.
It stretches, but never breaks.
The Loon Whisperer 