By Kathy Hughes

Contributing Writer

I’ve never been much of a Woody Allen fan, nonetheless, I’ve taken away several memorable quotes. One of them, I believe from “Sleeper,” was something like “I haven’t any eggs. Where are the eggs?” It referred to time-consuming activities that are essentially unproductive.

This line came back to me vividly one Saturday morning while I was going through my weekly routine: cleaning the fish tank, changing the kitty litter, watering the plants, all as a prelude to cleaning. I found myself choring away like a farmer: feeding the chickens, milking the cow and hoeing the garden, but without any reward. Absolutely, there weren’t any eggs.

Now, some years later, I find my situation has deteriorated even further. It seems that I have unrelenting demands from my technology aids to keep up their performance. I have five devices that require charging: a toothbrush, water pik, a Fitbit, iPhone and an iPad. Nothing frustrates me more than picking up my iPhone, only to find it is stone dead. Where’s the convenience in that?

The Fitbit is my most recent acquisition, and is the one that finally put me over the top. The battery gives out without warning and the charging cord is about four inches long. I have yet to gauge how long it takes to recharge, which doesn’t matter much since I forget about and go about my day (sometimes several days) without it. That silly four-inch cord makes it difficult to find a convenient place to plug it in; I hesitate to just leave it dangling on the wall, where it might fall on the floor and, presumably, break; alternatively, it may be mistaken as a toy by the cat.

My most recent experience was that I couldn’t find the charging cord to the Fitbit. If this seems careless of me, you must realize that I have charging cords for five devices spread throughout the various outlets in my apartment. However, the number of outlets is limited and they are needed for other functions apart from charging my various accessories and I may forget where I last charged my Fitbit, for example.

One outlet is next to my bed, which is most convenient, but leaves my bed strewn with wires, which aren’t comfortable to sleep on. I have discovered it helps to order cords in various colors as a crude system of color coding, so pink, blue and green wires snake across my bedspread. These are attractive not only to me, but also to the cat who is trained to leave them alone. Unfortunately, she needs to be retrained upon the arrival of each new wire, every time.

Returning to the Fitbit problem, I decided that I should have a spare cord, as this situation was highly likely to recur. Not even an hour after I invested in ordering a new purple cord to replace the black one, I casually was using my iPhone which was plugged into the wall, still charging, when I smelled something burning. It was the fancy, hot pink iPhone cord, whose wires were laid bare where it plugged into my phone.

Again, lest you think I am a charging cord abuser, everyone has this problem. The cords are cheaply made, expensive to buy and with constant use need to be replaced every three to six months. I now needed to order a cord (pink) for the second time that day, since the Fitbit order was already completed and on its way.

It is aggravating to be juggling multiple chargers for multiple devices just to keep them going. Talk about “high maintenance!” Ultimately, I am enslaved by my need for convenience and technology, and one fact remains: I’m not getting any eggs, where are the eggs?