Can You Dig It?

I have a chaise lounge in the garden, one I bought years ago--in fact, since before we bought this house with its' higher-maintenance garden. The chaise was to be the scene of much lounging and reading, sipping of tall icy glasses of lemonade, in my ferny but flower-laden bower and sighing happily in the sweet summer honeysuckle-scented breeze. Not happening.

I was used to a garden that had been two-thirds flagstone and more or less minimal maintenance, but when we saw this house with its peach tree, its berry patch, rosebushes, and grape arbor, we didn't think twice. Sometimes I'm not sure we thought once. But I get ready to sit out there, putting on a pair of shorts, getting my book and a glass of lemonade, a sunhat and an ashtray, and by the time I have the mise-en-scene prepared I have noticed some crisis or another that needs doing immediately: there are carpenter ants in the peach tree, or a thousand morning glories have sprouted in the tomato bed where Dale, not quite believing in the miracle of germination, plowed under all the seed pods and dried vines left from last year. Well, I tell myself, I won't be a moment--I just want to get those morning glories up but what on earth is that? Beginnings of black spot on the roses? And the roses need to be staked, there's a lot of precarious new growth, and oh dear the peonies, too, I haven't done the peony rings yet, so before you know it I am dusting the roses with organic fungicide, transplanting foxgloves, potting up some lily of the valley for a neighbor, and weeding, weeding, weeding.

And yet, back aching, when I finally do sit on that chaise to the now-warm glass of lemonade, I still don't look around and see the progress I have made--I am always looking askance at how much I should really be doing, or how much will look bad because I didn't spray or dust in time, and assessing what went wrong with this or that. But still, there I am year in and year out, on my knees before the miracles I witness every year in the garden: the transformation from season to season when the first green shoots peep out in spring, the families of finches giving flying lessons from the high branches of the old spruce where they have their nests, the dainty maiden lily of the valley and the brazen hussy peony, the countless splendors that make the aching and the swearing worthwhile.

Meanwhile, we probably end up paying forty dollars a tomato.

Press 2 if you've had it up to here.

I found myself yelling into the phone today, screaming like a lunatic, frothing at the mouth, and using the most shocking language, never mind that I was talking to a recording. Usually when I do this I am talking to a tech support person in Bangalore, but this time it fell on the nonexistent ears of one of those automated-response machines that fail to understand complicated words like "yes" and "no."

What difficult task was I performing? What life-and-death situation was at hand, you ask? I was canceling, or attempting to cancel, a subscription to a magazine that has been arriving weekly and that I read rarely, to wit, that paragon of mammon-and-real-estate-worship, the inimitably poorly-written piece of semi-tabloid journalism, "New York" magazine. I am old enough, mind you, to remember the magazine in its intellectual heyday, when Pulitzer-winning reporters wrote thought-provoking articles and there was even a rather cerebral word-game competition in the back rather than a less than lukewarm crossword puzzle that only TV Guide's equals for inanity. (though they do still, I believe, print one from the "Guardian" in London to tack on to theirs for a tinge of pretension to respectability.) Other than the "approval matrix", the occasionally interesting article amid the spam and money-fawning didn't seem to justify the yearly deduction from my credit card that had been going on automatically for something like the last decade, and I finally decided it was time to sever ties. (Besides, they insist on capitalizing the R in the word "realtor"! If the first letter isn't capitalized in the words "lawyer", "tinker", "tailor", or "candlestick maker", I don't see why "Realtor" must be written that way: it's a pet peeve, what can I say. ) Anyway, time to cancel.

Should be easy, you say? Well, the first step was going to the magazine's website. After a bit of clicking around, I found a customer service tab which then gave me all kinds of options: renew my subscription, get a new subscription, find out when my present subscription expires, and so forth, but no option whatsoever for "cancel subscription". Finally after much clicking and swearing, I found a "contact us" tab that allowed me to ask a question, and I sent an email explaining the complicated task I sought to complete. Twenty-four hours passed before a reply was posted in my inbox explaining that my subscription was through an outside service, and that I would need to contact that service in order to cancel. Fair enough. Weird, but fair enough. I contacted them, via that ancient instrument, the telephone. And this leads you to the scene I have described.

The recording asked me whether I would prefer to punch in numbers or use voice commands, and I perhaps wrongly assumed that the number-punching would be more frustrating, so I chose the latter option. "What would you like to do?" the recorded voice asked brightly, " would you like to renew your subscription?" "CANCEL!" I bellowed into the receiver. "Okay," we can renew your subscription." This kind of thing went on for several minutes until I finally got the machine to understand what I wanted to do, and with a sigh of relief the recording gave me a confirmation number.

I should have hung up immediately then, but I wanted to make sure I had dotted all the i's and crossed all the t's, so I kept going. "We're sorry you didn't like your magazine", said the recording, "so we are going to send you fifty issues of "American Whitetail" at a price of 2.94 an issue, and a subscription to "Ranch" magazine, all at a below-newsstand price. If at any time you decide to cancel your subscription, simply..." at this point I have been bellowing "NO" into the phone for ten entire minutes while the recording prates on and on obliviously. "I'm sorry", the recording cooed into my ear, " I didn't understand what you said." "Nooooooooooo!" I howled. "Nooooooo!" "Noooooooo!" I had decided to indulge myself in a new subscription if I succeeded in cancelling, perhaps getting "The New Yorker", and/or "Harper's", but "American Whitetail?" Thank God I hadn't chosen the button-pushing options, or I'd be accidentally subscribing to "Linoleum and You" and "American Roadkill".

It took me several minutes to get to a point where I was fairly confident that the recording understood I was not interested, but I won't rest easy until my mailbox has gone a full month without any strange magazines appearing. And I am going to stay off the phone for the rest of the day, all my swearing has got my little bird giving me dirty looks, and anyway I don't want her repeating my fowl language.