Good Days and Bad

As humans, we are creatures of habit. And the older we get, the more those habits become ingrained. Its not the big stuff that make up our daily lives, but the little stuff. The things no one else cares about. The things we can count on, like the sun rising and setting and a cup of hot joe in the morning. And access to American Late-Night comedy, apparently.

Yesterday, was Jeff’s bad day. He’s been getting our wifi network set up and we’ve been looking forward to getting NetFlix and Amazon Prime video ready to go. Our TV was delivered in the morning and it kicked off swearing, a march to the Vodofone store, a disgruntled walk back, and then ‘effing Firewall!’ this and ‘effing Firewall’ that. Then a LOT of phone calls and chat sessions. I heard some ‘I can’t do anything in this country!’ and a few other declarative statements.

I sat our in the living room doing my own thing and then decided to make Jeff his favorite lunch – Broccoli Beef with basmati rice, just the way he likes it – to try to smooth the way a bit. Thinking the taste of home would help. It took ‘Hangry Jeff’ out of the mix, but it didn’t make his day that much better. We found out NetFlix doesn’t like us being in Spain. And resetting his Amazon prime password wasn’t working at all.

Normally, we could kick this can down the road a bit, but we’ve hit critical mass being here for nearly 4 weeks. Jeff’s favorite shows are starting up again soon (Game of Thrones and finding out Billions on Showtime started on Sunday and we missed it). His love affair with Stephen Colbert’s nightly monologue, and his lack of access to it, is proving harder than he anticipated. Something needed to give.

I finally went to bed at midnight as he was still trying to troubleshoot continuing problems. At 2:30 am I woke up and found him on the couch, smiling, and scrolling through the Amazon Prime offering. It’s done! He figured it all out, got Amazon in Seattle on the phone and worked through it after – not kidding – 45 phone calls, text verification codes and emails. But we now have Showtime, HBO, BritBox and CBS All Access.

Today’s a better day. Now that we’re surrounded by some of our comfort shows, we’re ready to venture out and sign up for our Spanish classes and get our Tuin cards for our monthly Metro passes. I can’t complain. Everyone is entitled to tough days. Moving across an ocean, thousands of miles from what we have always known, can be frustrating. But Jeff proved that his ‘where there’s a will there’s a way’ stick-to-it-iveness is undaunted. And everyone is entitle to a bad day.