Becky Clark

The Teriyaki Salmon Saga

PROLOGUE… When Becky’s power went out, she and her hubs realized their battery back-up for their important stuff wasn’t working. Hubs got a new one and hooked it all up before leaving for work one morning.

ACT ONE

BECKY ENTERS, a look of befuddlement fixes to her face, and remains for an uncomfortably long time.

Why? Because while she is finishing her morning’s work, the new battery back-up starts clicking and beeping. “Must be because it’s new,” she thinks.

Two seconds later, the power goes out. “La di dah, it’s lunchtime anyway. Excellent excuse to get some Japanese take-out.” She calls in her order. Ready in 10 minutes. Perfect. She gets her shoes on and lets Nala out to piddle.

At nine minutes, Becky pushes the garage door opener. “Ha, ha. Silly me. The power is out.” She pulls the red handle to release the door. She tries to lift the door. Nothing. She tries again. Nothing.

She calls her husband. “Wah. Can you either rescue me or my salmon teriyaki?”

“Try the handle on the outside of the garage door,” he says helpfully, while eating his own lunch.

“Of course,” Becky says. “Silly me.” She skips out the front door and stares at the garage where she finds no handle.

Not wanting to suffer starvation at the hands of a stupid door, she goes back into the garage, yanks the red handle harder, then executes a perfect dead lift, flinging the door to the top of the track. “I am Woman, hear me roar,” she proclaims proudly to nobody.

Still feeling all Helen-Reddy-tastic, she gets in her car, parks in the driveway, then emerges from the car to pull the garage door shut.

“THERE’S STILL NO HANDLE ON THE OUTSIDE!” she yells in her head to Helen Reddy.

Becky then gingerly inches down the door using the dangerous gaps in the sections. She tries mightily not to get her fingers pinched, all the while wondering, if the worst happens, who will hear her plaintive cries of pain and humiliation?

Not to worry, Best Beloved. The door closes, she drives away to picks up her food.

“Enjoy your lunch!” says the cashier.

“You too!” Becky says enthusiastically and nonsensically.

She gets home, takes her first bite of miso soup and the power is magically restored.

ACT TWO

After lunch, Becky cleans up then collects the containers to dump in the trash bin in the garage. Earlier, because the garage was dark, she had opened the side door for light. In the garage, Becky sees Nala staring at her. “What am I doing in the garage?” the poor dog wonders. “I don’t belong here.”

The two of them get that straightened out and Becky decides to bring the car back in. “I know how to do this,” she thinks, flexing her biceps.

And she did. Becky heaves up the door, drives in and parks. On her way in the house, she hits the button to lower the door. Garage mechanism screeches. She hits the button again. Silence. Gently pushes the button. Screech. Silences it.

Hmm. Becky decides she must pull it down by hand one last time and live the rest of her life inside her darkened house, leaving only to haunt the neighborhood like Miss Havisham wearing her tattered wedding dress and clutching a handful of cake not even fit for the mice.

She pulls the door down by hand and hears a grinding of metal that hurts her teeth. It slams to a stop about 6 inches from the floor.

“Now I’ve ruined the door. Perfect.” Becky walks away, hatching a plan to blame hubs when he tries to open the door when he comes home after work. At the threshold of the house, because Becky is a bear of very little remembery, she hits the button.

The door automatically closes the rest of the way.

Becky doesn’t look back.

THE END

How has your relationship with electronics been lately? Can you proudly claim dominion over some machine? Bested by anything? Who would you blame for its demise?

44 thoughts on “The Teriyaki Salmon Saga”

  1. Becky I am so glad your battle with the garage door was won with no casualties. Loved the telling of the tale!
    My battles are not with machinery, since we have moved to a retirement community and all that stuff is done for us, the battle is with technology.
    Move in day, IT came and set up a new WiFi router so we can run our laptops and other such gadgets. Since I am somewhat tech savy, I was able to pair, our adjustable bed, the Roku stick, our phones, computers and printer to the new system pretty easily. On to Alexa. We have 3 Echo things. The first 2 worked like a charm. Number 3 keeps telling me it is not compatible. WHY????? It is the same thing as the other 2!!!!
    I finally gave up. We only have 3 rooms, I don’t really need 3 devices. On to my new bird feeder that has a camera. It is supposed to pair to my phone so I can see the birds in action. It worked at the old house. But for some reason it is giving me grief by not being able to find any networks. I sent an email to tech support. They sent me detailed step 1,2, and 3 directions, which I LOVE. Nothing…… But I am getting notifications from the feeder app on my phone, that I have visitors at my feeder. How can that be? The camera is on my desk in our apartment. I open the notification and it is a gorgeous bird that I know for a fact is not in New England. I did some digging and find that I am getting notifications from a feeder in New Zealand.
    This is a quest. I will get to the bottom of this. Miss Marple is on the case…….

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    2. WHAT?? That is ka-razy! But the Pollyanna in me says, “hey … birds AND a travelogue!” It’s much weirder than our ceiling fan that randomly turns on for no reason, or those baby monitors you can hear next door. Be very afraid if you hear babies cry all the way from Auckland! Or if you overhear a New Zealander plotting some crime ….

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  2. Becky, too funny. This reminds me of all the shenanigans I used to have to do when my wireless printer would “forget” the WiFi and need to be hooked back up. The printer does not have a screen, so I can’t enter the WiFi password. I have to go to a website – but I kept forgetting it because it’s an IP address, not a URL. I finally wrote it on a sticky note and put it on the router, then threatened everyone with unpleasant things if they threw it away.

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    1. Ohmygosh, Liz, hilarious! I have printer stories too. For no discernible reason, sometimes my printer refuses to print the thing I asked it to print, and instead prints 58—yes, I’ve counted them—blank pages instead. What the what?? But you can bet if I asked it to print 58 blank pages, it would refuse to do that as well.

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      1. Ours is doing that right now, Becky. Just after we invested a fair chunk of change in fresh ink. The ink costs triple because our printer is “old.” (Less than 5 years.)

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        1. LOL! Mine is a black-and-white laser printer AT LEAST 20 years old. (And probably much older because I’m daft about stuff like that. I mean, I’m just out of college, right??) I’ve definitely got my money out of it, which was zero because it was a hand-me-down from the printshop. Every time I upgrade my computer I hold my breath. One of these days it’ll be too old to recognize the newbie. And then … ugh … another learning curve.

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  3. Garage doors! Enough said, Becky. We had one that was the name of our existence for years as it loved to close, then immediately start going back up. This summer, we remodeled the garage and got a new door that behaves AND is quiet. Life is much better now!

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    1. I think we had that door too, JC. We finally realized that if we actually cleaned the garage every decade or so and removed the leaves, webs, and small children that got stuck in view of the electronic beam, everything would tend to work better. Cheers to a better garage door existence!

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  4. Gosh, Becky, that was quite the adventure–and sadly very relatable. At least you got your food and the door sensor wasn’t broken so the door didn’t come down on your car. That’s a good thing, right? You’re always such an upbeat person, so I’m sure you’ll see it that way.

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  5. Ha!! Our garage door opener hasn’t worked since about a year after we bought the house in 1998. It’s original to the house, which means it’s from 1960. Since our garage is a storage facility – no basements in SoCal – Jer is in charge of the garage door. I don’t think I’ve opened it since we lived here!

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  6. I haven’t struggled with a garage door recently. But I do have laptop woes. I guess ignoring fuzzy lines running across the screen isn’t a real resolution.

    A couple weeks ago, my laptop up and died on me. But after a few days of retrying, I was able to reboot and restore it. It’ll probably combust on me at some point, so thank goodness for early Black Friday deals for a spare computer just in case…

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    1. Ugh. Computer issues make me hyperventilate. I have a 2012 MacBook that runs like a champ, but every so often I have to restart it. It makes me so nervous I have to walk away while it does its thing.

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  7. Electronics–oy! Don’t get me started. I’m such an idiot about these things, so when they stop working, I’m always at a complete loss. Which is the router and which is the other thingie? How do you turn the power on and off? It’s not accepting my password! Aaaaargh!!!

    Luckily, Robin is pretty good at this stuff, and is (generally) kind enough to help me out. As long as I leave the room while she’s doing it, that is….

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    1. I can push buttons like a monkey on the router and our complicated TV set up and get it to work again, but I dread the day I have to go out and do something to the breaker box. For one thing, I can’t reach it!

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  8. I’m not sure what I did to anger the gods of technology, but a couple of months ago, it felt like everything that relied on a current was breaking. My laptop stopped working. (Not good since that’s how I make my living.) My washing machine quit. (Naturally, it was filled with clothes.) And my new-to-me vintage soda machine (which will likely make a guest appearance in an upcoming post) stopped being chill, turning the machine into an expensive pantry. All were eventually repaired, but my GOLLY , what a pain!

    (And can I say that I have a phobia of my garage door becoming inoperative? I’ll have to consult your post for tips on how to escape the garage!)

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