“These are the days when you wish your bed was already made.”

Lyrics from “Manic Monday”

by the Bangles

I now know why the saying “into every life a little rain must fall” came to me about a week ago and unfortunately it turned into a monsoon season. I thought I had successfully completed my Honey Do list when things just fell apart. As luck would have it, I can even blame some of my troubles on the government.

Because I turned 65 last year, I wanted to send a new IRS Form W-4 so that no federal taxes would be taken out of my retirement pay as I knew I wouldn’t have to pay any taxes. So I downloaded a W-4 from the IRS website, filled it out and faxed it to the Department of Defense finance office that processes my retirement pay. I thought all was well until I received a new pay statement in the mail showing a couple hundred of dollars being deducted for taxes. The reason for that goes back to the W-4 I downloaded from the IRS. Little did I know that I had to send a 2014 W-4 instead of a 2013 W-4 because the IRS had not updated their forms available online. At least the Army was nice and included a new W-4 form, which I completed and faxed once again. Hopefully that will correct my mistake but at this point I am not going to bet on anything.

For some reason or other last Sunday I had lots of energy and ambition so after my wife left for church I cleaned the cat litter box, the bathroom and kitchen floors and then shampooed the living and bedroom carpets. That was a huge mistake because when I got out of bed on Monday I could hardly move as my back was killing me and still is as I write this column. And for me, that was just the beginning of the horror show about to hit me in the face.

I was working on this week’s column Monday morning when I noticed something was drastically wrong with all of my gadgets and other devices that are connected, or should I state were once connected, to the Internet. Our home phone system operates through the Internet which meant it was not working, which upset me even more as I was expecting a couple of important telephone calls. Luckily with the OOMA phone system one can either receive emails containing any messages left by callers, or, like I do, have the call transferred to my cell phone so at least I could receive calls if the caller stayed on the line long enough.

My phone system box was flashing red which meant it’s not working, my computer would not connect to the Internet and our Roku box, which streams Netflix, Hulu and others to our television, wasn’t working either. Now lunch is approaching and I am in a total state of panic trying to figure out what piece of electronic equipment has failed or has the entire Internet died. So under the computer desk I go to fool with seemingly miles of plugs, wires and about 40 tons of dust and cat hair. If anyone had been watching me, they probably would have called for the guys in white suits to take me away before I burned down the house. Luckily all I ended up with was a bad bruise on my left arm that I had no idea how it happened and I still wasn’t connected to the Internet.

After a couple more hours of swearing and cursing, I came to the conclusion that my wireless router had either malfunctioned or been hacked into. Alas, it was just another day in our connected world, or is that “disconnected world.”

Lane Hiltunen of Windham is still cursing Al Gore for inventing the Internet.