A Bed of Roses

I have returned to being the single person who does the entire housework load as life in the US once was. Yes, the kids and Mister are requested to help as well but reality is time does not permit for them since they are gone from 7:30am to 4:30pm at the earliest often arriving home at 6:30pm or later on most days. I have found myself plenty to do in Delhi and it has been enjoyable doing the plenty of things but that all comes to an end when there is nobody home taking care of what needs to be done within the home for everyday living. The simple task of washing dishes is made into an all-day affair because five people eating morning and night brings a batch to wash both in the morning and at night. In the US I would require all those who ate to load their dirties into the dishwasher and we would all leave the house near the same time. In the evening we would eat and, they would load, wash cycle would take place and they were required to unload the dishes from the dishwasher. Here because an automatic dishwasher is not present in most Delhi kitchens we have the manual dishwasher and she left the country when her visa came through. That task could be shared with the other four who share this house with me but again reality is, homework and eczema type dry hands prevents the older two from participating and the intolerance of hot or even warm water from the younger hands causes me to just wash the dishes myself so we can prevent some communicable diseases that could be passed hand to mouth. I can stay home in the morning and do the dishes after our morning tears through the kitchen or I can leave with everyone else and return to a messed up kitchen and still need to prepare dinner for the family. Our kitchen is very small so stacking dishes waiting a turn in the bath can be problematic as well as the health issue of leaving dirty dishes for long periods of time with bugs and rodents willing to participate in our problems. So I stay home and drop out of the things I once participated in and enjoyed.
The saying "When it rains it pours"...I also had my group email address hacked and messed up. Ameritech which became SBC then AT&T is now Yahoo email addresses saw the suspicious activity and warned me that I had my email account compromised. I had noticed as well because I had more than 50 undeliverable emails waiting for me when I woke one Saturday morning in early April. As a remedy I changed my password, although that was a hard task given that Ameritech help is now filtered through the old SBC now AT&T to help the Yahoo email account holders. After looping through on many of the links I finally changed the password and was set to warn all possible recipients to no longer respond to “Wow, take a look what I found” type links coming from my group email address. Unfortunately when open of business in the US on Monday morning came AT&T who is handling the old SBC formerly Ameritech accounts in its infinite wisdom chose to suspend my account because the account was compromised and then the password was changed within India. So I called AT&T who I was directed to call in the “You may contact customer service at 800 ATT-2020 (800 288-2020) and speak with Technical Support if you need assistance with your password” email that I received regarding my Ameritech changed to SBC now AT&T email. I explained that I had Ameritech then SBC then AT&T services while living in the US for 12 years but when I went to move to India AT&T didn’t service anything in the area so I stopped all AT&T paid accounts (Uverse cable, land line phone and mobile phone services) and kept my Yahoo delivered email address. My unfortunate mistake is that because I am no longer a paid customer of AT&T my Technical Support can only happen at a very superficial level (IE they can answer the phone and tell me to restart my computer). They do not collect money from me any longer so they cannot help me in recovering access to this group email address, period. Literally, they stopped the chat session when I was getting help online with; that is all you have for options “period”.
So being locked out of my group email accounts now puts me out of touch with PSA and AWA and any of the NGOs I was working with as well as subscriptions, bill pays, online accounts. It also means that I am no longer inundated with all the emails but I am also out of touch. All the contacts I had through these groups are now gone. Any end of the year business is now being left in the vortex of undeliverable mail and senders are not getting the message that my email was undeliverable. Their only conclusion is that I am being unresponsive. This should be a good thing because I need a lot more time to wash the dishes and clean the AC units and replenish the water and gas and scrub the floors and make the dinners and wash the clothes but it is not good. It has made my life here in Delhi that much more lonely and sad and depressing.
As humans we often blame our problems onto others and take credit for the goods. I am human so right now I am blaming all my problems on AT&T! Tonight I insist AT&T must wash the dishes, and dry and put away. So there!

Signed,

Sad, Lonely and sick of the housework in Delhi