Our Disconnected Christmas

"What did y'all do before the internet?"

The Engineer asked me this on Christmas Eve.  The Engineer is 22 years old, almost 23.  In February.  And he does not remember life without the WWW.

This Christmas our internet connection disappeared.  To be exact it disappeared on the Sunday before Christmas.  Which was the day all the "kids" were home for the holiday.  Without internet, netflix didn't operate.  We couldn't download a movie on DirectTV.  We were using the data on our phones lickety split.  I.T. Bear girl had a hotspot on her phone that we used for a while but wow, the data it pulls!  Too much.  So we saved it for emergencies.  Like sugar in war time.

Then when things couldn't get any more BORING, our DirectTV went out.  That's right, folks.  No internet, no TV.  And very spotty 3g.

Now, you might thing "well, it's Christmas.  You should be turning off the electronics anyway"  And you'd be right.  Kinda.  You see, Ironman works from home many days.  Without internet, it's impossible.  He has a business to run.  He can't be out of touch.  The Engineer had a girlfriend to keep in touch with.  (ha)  I.T. Bear girl had classes to register for and tuition to pay.  Oh, paying bills!  I couldn't check on my Target Debit Card.  For all I know some guy in the Far East is treating his friends to a big old celebration courtesy M.E.!  Yes, our lives are technologist managed.  I made up that word.  Or I thought I did.  The computer didn't correct me.  Hmmmm  Guess I didn't make it up.

So what did we do?  We ATE.  I cooked.  In fact, I baked so much that our top oven started making this weird sound AND started locking us out!  So I quit using it for long roasting recipes.  We played games:  Risk, Life and Battleship.  You Sunk My Battleship!  We worked a puzzle.  We played instruments.  We took naps.  We went to the movie.  The one in the theater.  I had almost forgotten about that!

Then our freezer died.  Our deep freeze.  Years and years ago, my MIL gifted me her freezer.  She warned me that it was 25 years old but worked perfectly and so, not being one to turn anything down even something I felt totally unnecessary, I gladly moved it to my house.  For probably the first 3-4 years all we kept in it was popsicles and ice cream.  Boy did that change.  Now all these years later I keep TONS of veggies and fruits, frozen servings of recipes I made too much of, Eggo waffles (!) and big bags of ice.  You can never have too much ice.  R.I.P. Kenmore freezer.  You've served us well.

So with no internet, no TV, a small freezer stuffed to the gills with food, we celebrated the birthday of our Savior.  And it was nice.  It's always so nice.  And fun.  As a girl who grew up with little tiny no big deal Christmases, it's more than I could have ever imagined.  I do not take it for granted.  God did
do more than I could even begin to dream.


The day after Christmas I was passing by the computer in our home office carrying a huge bag of laundry.  Oh yes, we did laundry.  Forgot to mention that.  Wait…….I did laundry.  I glanced at the modem expecting to see a big fat red light and what did I see?  A GREEN LIGHT!!  I held my breath, dropped the laundry basket, sat down in front of the computer.  Don't say anything, Patti.  Just try to connect.

Click.

The glorious message from ATT
You are connected to the internet"

But just to make sure, I typed in a webaddy:  www.blogher.com.  My daily read.

Yes!  It was true!  We were connected.

I announced it to the fam.

All four of them jumped up and started scrambling for their computers.  Ironman laughed and said, "Does anybody remember where my computer is from like 10 days ago?"

And suddenly, my house was quiet.

I enjoyed the loud rambunctious unplugged family time.  But the silence was sweet.  I could feel our house take a deep breath and close it's eyes.

It was a great Disconnected Christmas.