Powering down, learning new tricks & dreaded yellows

Dear Rachel,

I’m writing you with the last squeeze of juice on my phone. It’s doing this confounded thing where the battery is draining despite being plugged in and indicating that it’s charging. It feels like climbing a muddy slope and sliding downhill with each movement. The way they say not to struggle if you land in quicksand. Anywhoo, any advice for getting my phone back to life, knowing by the time you answer this I’ve been phoneless for days and days?

– Final Words

Dear Running Dry,

Oh you’ve just asked a great unanswerable. Both IT workers I’ve ever known admit their entire job is “turn it off and turn it back on.” You’ve presumably turned it off already. But now you can’t turn it back on. You’re caught in limbo, the great technological paradox. You are also the rare human without Wi-Fi. Run. Run far. Get out. Be free. And remember all of us fondly.

– (Can’t get no) disconnection, Rachel

Dear Rachel,

My dogs are waking me up regularly but indirectly at 5:45 every morning. Used to be they woke me up directly at 6 a.m. on the dot with a nose to the mouth. Now they are barking at something outside, every dang day, and I can’t figure out what. No wild animal is that consistent. It must be a jogger, right? One of those predawn loonies with a genetic flaw allowing them to wake up raring to go? Am I within my rights to let my dogs loose on them?

– Alarm Clocked

Dear Wake Up Serviced,

Your dogs aren’t barking at diddly. They’re barking FOR diddly. And you, my friend, are the diddly. Dogs are smart. Even the dumb ones are smart enough to learn the ol’ “bark bark bark oh hey look you’re awake while you’re up anyway wanna play and/or feed me?” trick. Ask not for whom the dogs bark. They bark for thee.

– Woof, Rachel

Dear Rachel,

I try so hard not to be prejudiced. You can’t judge a book by its cover and all that. But what do you do when experience leads to prejudice? When you can’t help but notice definite behavioral trends with a certain group of people? Because every freaking time I end up in the vicinity of a New Mexico license plate, I narrowly avoid an accident. Even if I’m not in a car! Sure, #notallNMdrivers, but I’ve yet to meet the exception.

– Defensive Driver

Dear Platist,

I once had a loaner car while mine was in the shop, and it came with the dreaded yellows. I was stunned to see just how much more room my fellow Coloradans gave me on the road. It was a luxury I could get used to. Still, I can’t defend our southern neighbors’ drivers ed standards. “Red or green?” is actually a game of chance with them. But don’t hit the hard reset just yet: my opinions warmed when I saw all the women’s health care provider maps this summer, and in a nation of “Handmaid’s Tale,” there stood New Mexico in the same safe colors as us.

– Howdy neighbors, Rachel