Momster

Some days, as my mother puts it, “It doesn’t rain but it pours.” I had a day like this recently. I woke up realizing I had scheduled too many meetings, had too many deadlines, and that getting through the day was going to be a race. My husband Dan–from the look of him–was having the same experience. “Wow,” he said, looking at his calendar. “This is going to be some day.” (This is the rain.)

Then things started to go wrong. (And now it’s pouring.)

The garbage disposal wouldn’t turn on. The tenants in a property we rent called to say the fridge was broken. Ava dropped a water glass on the tile floor of the bathroom. Cole refused to get out of bed. The dog ran off. (Okay, I’m making some of that up. The dog is fine.) I knew what my mother would say. So I said it. “It never rains but it pours.” But apparently that saying is too retro because everyone looked at me as if maybe losing my sanity was the next bad thing that was happening.

I persuaded Ava to clean up the broken glass and wake her brother up and I went to work.  But it was clear from the frantic look on his face that Dan could not handle the tenant’s problems. So I told him I’d take care of it. You see, I had a secret tool.

During my first phone meeting, I logged onto Repair.com and told it about the broken appliance. The site recommended several local repair people and showed me their schedules. I chose one that looked promising and that was available first thing in the morning and scheduled it with a couple of clicks. Then I sent an email to Dan and our tenants without missing a word of my phone meeting.

I had my doubts that there was anyone on the other side of Repair.com to see my scheduled appointment. But at least I had done something.

But then, to my surprise and right on schedule, I got a call confirming the service call for the next morning. And sure enough, the local repair person showed up on time and fixed the fridge for a reasonable price. I liked him so much, in fact, that I scheduled him to come back again to fix our broken garbage disposal. (Which I had researched and purchased on Amazon during another phone meeting. )

We got through that day just fine. Bad stuff stopped happening. And we fixed all the stuff that broke and spilled. But it certainly helped–and made me appear to be the model of efficiency–that I didn’t have to make a single phone call or stay off the phone waiting for call backs from service people to make it happen.

Christina Tynan-Wood writes the Family Tech column for Family Circle, and is the author of “How to Be a Geek Goddess.”You can find her at GeekGirlfriends.com, as well as here on Momster.com.

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