A couple of nights ago, our Internet went down for about an hour.
It was right at the time that every human being in this house was engaged in some sort of online activity.
I was struggling with the TV and before I realized what was causing the issue, four large male creatures came huffing and puffing into my area of the house (the living room is mine at night, MINE) glaring and groaning and expecting me to make it all better.
Things got real when they realized I couldn’t (because I’m not the boss of Comcast, they suck when they want to).
You would’ve thought someone had come into my home and held us all at gunpoint for 60 minutes.
There was fear, anger, outrage. People cried, and everyone wound up going to bed early without seeing one single episode of Good Luck Charlie. That, is what torture looks like if you ask my children.
You could say that the members of this family could stand to unplug a bit.
Only, no thank you.
I mean… We unplug, okay?!
It’s just that we do it in more of an organized, scheduled way.
Just like our dinner time, and our bed times, and our being active together outside time(and by active I mean I drink my ice water from my beach chair and actively try to stay away while they swim). We do not allow electronics at the table when we eat, and we also can’t enjoy them in our beds at night (we charge everyone’s devices downstairs).
So, we have rules, including times when we are all allowed to enjoy the various things that the Internet has to offer. And that means that unscheduled Internet outages dead center of So You Think You Can Dance/Dudes Do Your Own Thing and Give Mom A Break time are dramatically uncool.
Thankfully I had a Plan B.
I received the AT&T Unite Express by NETGEAR to take to BlogHer with me and to try out here at home. It’s a mobile hotspot that allows you to connect up to 10 devices and access the Internet from basically any location and, friends, it is happiness.
It wouldn’t solve my So You Think You Can Dance problem (because I can’t connect my TV to it), but it did allow me to log on and surf Facebook while my children tried to annihilate each other get some last minute work done before bed. I even let The Dudes climb into my area and use the iPad to watch Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (review coming soon!).
In addition to saving you from random Internet outages, lemme just tell you how it can change summer for work at home moms.
All of you work at home moms are familiar with the work at home mom problems unique to summer. The kids are all up in your grill and they want your attention, and you feel the pressure to take them to the pool because, um, it’s hot, but also they’re busy making it impossible to get work done anyway thanks to their sitting under your desk singing that golly-I’m-bored-because-I-can’t-entertain-myself-to-save-my-life jam.
The Unity Express has helped solve both of those problems so now, instead of suffering guilt and annoyance all day, when I need to bust out some work, I just take my laptop and my mobile hotspot to the pool, with my ice water, and my unruly children and they swim and play with friends while I work and try not to let the poolside gossip distract me too much.
It’s a better view anyway…
Think you might need a hot spot in your life? Trust me, you do.
5 Things to Know About a AT&T Unite Express by NETGEAR
1. They work anywhere. You know, basically. Anywhere AT&T 4G and LTE service goes, your mobile hotspot can go too!
2. They do NOT require a contract of any sort. They work via pay as you go rate plans that feature various amounts of data. When they run out, you reload them if you want.
3. They won’t break the bank. The AT&T Unite Express device costs less than $80 and the rate plans start at $25/mo (for 2GB). It’s kinda hard to determine how much that really translates to (like can you watch a whole episode of OITNB and the post all of your selfies and kid pics from your afternoon on Instagram and Facebook? Yeah, probably.). But to clarify, this should help (2GB is a little less than half of this)…
4. The battery is kind of impressive. I forgot to take it out of my bag and turn it off when I came back from BlogHer; three days later it still had power. They say it’s a 10 hour use battery. Ten hours is a bunch of hours.
5. They can be road trip and work from home life savers. Just in the past two weeks I’ve used it on the train (for the record, Amtrak wireless is a slower way to get on line than waiting for an AOL dial-up disk to come in your cereal box), at the hotel I stayed at in NYC (because there’s no way I’m paying $15 for wireless, never, ever), at the pool, on the football field, and for The Dudes to watch a movie via Netflix when we went to Mimi’s house for a visit (road trips are officially saved!). You can learn more about how families use them on the WiFi Family Facebook page.
Check out all of the mobile hotspots by AT&T and NETGEAR on the site so you can find one that fits your family’s needs!
*Disclosure: This is a compensated post that I am writing as an ambassador for Netgear. All opinions and snarky comments about my kids and their inability to live without watching at least one episode of Good Luck Charlie a day are my own.
I thought my family was the only family that ran into my mom’s room when the cable/internet start acting up. And I’ve been meaning to watch Ferris Beuller. I’ll read your review when it’s up!
We unplug the way you do. Mine aren’t on all the time and they do plenty of things outside, but sometimes I need my kids to have their devices so I can work!
I’d love to have this- it would make this summer wahm gig a lot easier. Usually, around this time of day, my boys start staring at me, asking when we’re going to the pool.