Used to be when you got home from a trip you were anxious to check your answering machine. Well, now it's your e-mail. Unless you have a Blackberry. Which I don't, and also don't want as I don't want to be found every second of my life. I really don't want to feel like I always have to answer.

But when you do come back after five days away... Oh - I was just in Florida with my family for Passover and while I was there I was promoting LOOKING FOR MR. GOODFROG, so I didn't let all five days go by. I did need to go online to retrieve e-mail and do work. But there was still a bunch of stuff to do when I got back Sunday night. And besides, the e-mail in Florida was on my mom's pc. And not only was it dial -up, but it was a four-year old version of AOL.

That meant when I ws down there I was missing a bunch of functions and could not find a lot of mail because AOL is like that. And when I got home I had no record of the e-mails I had sent from her machine because AOL is just plain weird. So I was anxious to square a few things away before bed last night. But I didn't. Because it's not just AOL that's weird. It's also Verizon.

I'm making coffee this morning in the kitchen, and hear Regis and Kelly talking behind me. Reege is lambasting Verizon. They told him on Saturday they'd show up to his house between 8 and 5, but did not arrive until 6:20. And they never called to check-in. He was pissed! He was funny... but he was pissed.

Now you may remember I was in Uh-Oh-L Hell a few weeks ago, so breaking up with AOL is on my to-do list... right up there after promoting LOOKING FOR MR. GOODFROG which, by the way, is hard to do on AOL. Did I mention my account got SUSPENDED for sending out too many e-mails? So my first step to end my relationship with AOL was to get my DSL modem through Verizon.

Verizon left me a message that my DSL service would begin April 11th. They informed AOL they should discontinue my DSL service with them on April 12th. And then they did not even send the modem out, UPS ground, until April 13th. So I was unable to connect to the Internet.

This morning I was on the phone with Verizon. I told them this was a very bad beginning to our relationship. I already wanted recompense. I was strong in my demand and I got it.

Unable to go online I opened my mail, the snail-mail that arrived in my absence. And it seemed that AOL, assumedly cheaper since the account was now modem-less, had decided to raise my rates. WHAT???

So I called them and demanded recompense. And I got it. And then I tried to connect to the Internet via dial- up. But I could not.

Next came the calls to all the robotic people, and after only four calls I luckily stumbled upon a tech support guy we'll call B. B. heard my sad story of Uh-Oh-L and felt bad. He really didn't want that to be my lasting impression of the company. He wanted to help. And he didn't want to transfer me to another tech person when he knew my calle would wind up in India and make me even more frustrated. But B. could not figure out why the dial-up would not work. In the end it almost did, but then did not. I had to hang up. B. was super upset that we would not be getting off the phone on a high.

"You see why I am going out of my mind?" I asked B., talking to him while editing and re-editing the dial-up phone numbers, adding a 1 before the area code, taking it away, saying I did have call waiting and then saying I did not. I was talking to B. on speakerphone, while on my hands and knees clipping cables into filters and plugging them into every phone jack in the apartment, hopeful one of them would connect me to cyberspace. "Don't you see why have to break up with AOL?"

"Weren't you ever married?" asked B. who by this time had perused my web site, seen my photos, and wanted to know if I woke up every morning lying next to a frog-prince.

"No," I told him. "No."

"But don't you want children?" he asked, while I only looked over to Charlie, my dog, who was lying on top of the desk as to be included in the mess.

"I want to connect to the Internet," I told him. "And I want to get away from AOL. But how am I going to do that after all these years? I mean, how in the world will I ever even transfer my address book!"

"You don't want to leave AOL. Really. You don't." B. told me. He then asked me to listen to him. He wanted me to understand. "It's like any relationship," he explained. "It goes through its ups and downs, but that doesn't mean you have to leave."

"But I do!" I said. "I can't spend the rest of my life like this. It's suffocating. Everything about it is always so hard. It's just not compatible with anything!"

"But you know the ins and outs. You know how to figure it out. You have history. Don't you want to stay?"" he asked.

"No. I want to go. It'll be hard, but please. I've made up my mind. I've been trying to get away for years. And I really need to go."

We got off the phone. I got the dial-up to work. A few hours later the new modem arrived from DSL. It's also a router. I hooked it up. Then I called Verizon tech support and got it all configured.

B. wrote to see if I was doing okay. I told him I was. I said it's a process and it will take me time. But I do plan break up as I plan to move on.