Our first splurge was on the smart toilet. In order to transition from a four-bedroom house into a two-bedroom apartment, there were some things that we had to give up because obviously, there was no room to accommodate everything. One of those items was the bidet. Rafael could not care less about the bidet, but I was not ready to part from it. Therefore, when we visited Ferguson last fall, we were sucker-punched into acquiring a smart toilet. The sales lady told us that we would love this toilet, and we dumbly believed her. As a great sales person, she told us that the smart toilet could pretty much do anything, including serve as a bidet. That was sufficient to convince me. However, she failed to tell us that learning to operate this fancy toilet would require a degree from Harvard School of Smart Toilets. I must confess that I don’t have such degree, and thus, I was very intimidated by Flushing Flora (FF). The first day, I kept using the regular toilet in the other bathroom. When I finally found the courage to approach FF, I could not get it to flush. Oh no... first test and I already got an F. I literally had to find a bucket to flush FF the old fashioned way. No matter how hard I pressed the manual button, FF refused to flush. It took me an hour to figure out that somehow our smart toilet that needs electricity in order to work, was not getting electricity. The outlet just wasn’t working. I checked the breaker, and it was on. Then I realized that none of the outlets in the master bathroom were working, so I called our general contractor. When Rafael got home, he also inspected everything, including the breaker, and we still could not get anything to work. Therefore, the electrician paid us a visit the next morning only to realize that instead of turning on the breaker, we had actually turned it off. Needless to say, we felt really dumb.
After three days in the apartment, I still have a love-hate relationship with FF. I have managed to learn most of its idiosyncrasies, but I can’t say that I love them all. The seat warms up when you sit down... this should be a great feature if you live in Alaska, but in my case, I’m a bit terrified that it will burn me. While I’m trying to concentrate on doing number two, it squirts some odor control crap that hopefully won’t give me the hives. Smart FF flushes by itself. However, this can be very annoying, especially when FF kept flushing itself every six seconds whether we used it or not, thus the reason why I baptized it FF. But we finally figured out how to program it so that now it only flushes itself when we use it... most of the time. And then, there’s the love portion of our relationship, the reason why I convinced Rafael to invest in FF in the first place... the bidet. I can set the spray strength, the width, the temperature and the direction. Heavens, I can practically take a bath in FF. I may just need to set myself a timer or I may end up spending too much time with FF.
There is one member in our household, though, that will never love FF. It took less than a day for Penny, my dog, to learn to hate FF. She was sniffing the new apartment, and when she approached FF, it scared her out of her wits sending her running out of the bathroom. The good news is that she will never bother me when I’m sitting on FF like she used to do in our old house. You see, FF is so sensitive that as soon as she senses movement near her, she opens up to welcome you. If I approach the sink to wash my hands or brush my teeth, FF opens up. She’s like an evil temptress trying to lure you in. And she has outsmarted me for sure, but not my Penny, she ran out and will never get near her again.
Our second splurge was the Nest thermostat. This time, it was my hubby the one that convinced me to invest on this very smart gadget that can learn your temperature habits and program itself without you needing to do it. However, as we soon learned, in order for the Nest to learn your habits, you first have to program it, and Dumb and Dumber missed the memo on when the Nest learning seminar would take place. Therefore, on our first night in the apartment, we froze to death. And that’s a lot to say for my hubby, who is never cold. I am always cold so you can imagine. I woke up at least ten times shivering during the night. The next morning, my hubby decided that this would never happen again. We are both “smart” after all, so it could not be that difficult to program the Nest. He grabbed his smart phone, he downloaded the Nest app, and he figured out how to control the temperature. After just five minutes, we started feeling too warm. I walked into the closet, and noticed that the air blowing out through the vents was very hot. Somehow, while programming the Nest, he switched it from air conditioning mode to heater mode. As much as we both tried to figure out how to switch it back, we simply failed miserably. And the worst part is that we just could not turn off the heater. When we began to sweat bullets, we turned off the breaker... yes, this time we made sure we had turned it in the right direction. We had to learn how to operate the Nest the old fashioned way... by reading the manual. And yes, the Nest can be programmed manually. There is no need to allow it to control our habits and thus make us feel really dumb.
And last but not least, we decided to really splurge and we got ourselves an smart bed. After all, we are getting old, we told each other, and sleep is very important when we are about to spend one third of our remaining life sleeping. We did a lot of research this time around, and we decided to invest, yes, because it is truly an investment, on the Sleep Number bed (SNB). We spent two hours at the store, laying down on one of their magnificent models. It was so comfortable that I almost felt asleep while I listened to Maria, the sales lady, explain to us all the wonderful qualities of this bed and how it would change our lives. She convinced us and we ordered the SNB. She gave us a booklet that explained that on the day of delivery, it would take the technicians two hours to put our bed together and give us a personalized demonstration on how to operate the bed. On delivery day, the guys put together the bed not in two hours, but in just 45 minutes. Great, I thought, we have 75 minutes for the lesson, and dumb me will need every one of those minutes. I was ready with pen and paper to take notes on everything they said. I told the delivery guys, I’m ready for my lesson. They looked at me, dumbfounded... “It’s not that difficult,” they said. My 75-minute lesson took just 5 minutes. All they showed me was how to operate the remote control. One button switches the control from head to foot, another one changes it from the left to the right side of the bed, and the third button controls the up and down movement. “Any questions?” It seemed simple enough, except for all the other buttons in the remote control that they did not teach me. As they were leaving, I remembered... “Wait, how about the nightlight?” Yes, the bed even comes with its own nightlight, a very important feature for me that needs to get up at least once in the middle of the night to pay a visit to FF. He showed me how to operate the nightlight, which I could not see on the daylight but he pointed it out, “see, it’s on,” and since I did not want to look any dumber than I already felt, I trusted him.
On our first night, we got into the smart bed, pushed all the buttons just as they taught me and it’s a miracle, everything works fine and it’s not so difficult. Finally we got a smart gadget made for dummies... or so we thought. I tried to turn on the nightlight... it didn’t work. And wait, how am I supposed to inflate and deflate the mattress? They didn’t teach me that very important feature. Then we remembered... there’s an app. So instead of going to sleep like we would have by this time on a regular mattress, here we are at 11 o’clock at night, figuring out how to work the stup..., sorry, the smart bed. We finally figured out how to inflate it and deflate it. In the store they had given us our numbers but we just couldn’t remember them, was it 40 or 60? We decided to try it out at 55 and see what happens. The nightlight... did not turn on. Oh well, we guessed it was better off than on. We went to sleep and woke up, at least ten times during the night... however, we were cold so we decided not to blame the SNB just yet. The app is supposed to show you how you slept. According to my app, I was only in bed for one hour and twenty minutes, and in that time, I only slept nine minutes. I guess my app is not so smart after all because I was definitely in bed for longer than that... but maybe it did get the nine minutes of sleep correct.
After just three days in our new apartment, I feel exhausted, overwhelmed and dumber than I have ever felt. Thank God, the Brandsmart salesman did not caboodled us into buying a smart refrigerator. We got a regular one and I am so happy for that decision. I think I can figure out if I need to buy milk without the fridge telling me. Right now, I’m at the Poconos for a wedding, and I am looking forward to spending a normal weekend away from FF, the Nest, and the SNB. Maybe here I can feel smart once again.
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