Did you ever feel like that?Like everything around you is upside down, inside out, and topsy turvy to boot?
Did you ever wonder why we say "to boot"? That one I'll have to say turned me around all by itself. Wikipedia couldn't even help. What? No help from the all-knowing Wikipedia? It is dire indeed.
We started homeschool again today. Madeleine's reading assignment was titled oh-so-cleverly "Punctuality and Punctuation." I took offense at the humor. I won't tell you which subject bothered me more. Let's just say I enjoyed the discussion on ellipses but it made us late.
It seems as though the rest of the world went back to school yesterday. And I'm just contrary.
We had some fun over the holiday break. We visited Santa Rosa and San Francisco and played with piles of cousins near and far. We were snowed in at our little farmhouse for days on end. We played a lot of Scrabble... and chess... and dress-up. We spent too much time with the dog.
Oh, and that sparkly celebrity baby there is my niece Maiya hugging on our very own Grace Hannah. Maiya can wink AND snap her fingers. Although maybe not at the same time. I'll have to get back with her people and check.
I wish Maiya would snap her fingers at my phone company. Surely they'd listen to such a force as my glittery niece.
I have spent the better part of today in most encouraging conversations with tech support personnel who are not native to our nation. Our land line has been out for about a week. That is, one of our land lines has been out while the dedicated internet line hummed right along. Small mercies.
This was all well and good while the cell towers were still standing and delivering signals.
So today I was expecting a nice repairperson to look into the mysterious problem of no dial tone on my all-important connection to calling my husband to pick up milk on the way home.
Well, I was sort of expecting someone, in that cable-guy way that means you don't make any other plans to breathe or anything for a 24-hour window of time so as to ensure that the person shows up when you're changing a messy diaper and the teakettle is simultaneously screaming.
But this is misleading. I didn't wake up today expecting to wait on the repairperson. No, I had an appointment for today that was canceled last night. Are you following? Because I barely am, and I've been here.
Last night, well after dark, a repairperson stopped at my house to say that someone had given me a new "box" during the course of the day and that I was all fixed up. Oh, thank you, thank you, I gushed. I am not kidding when I say the girls gave the man warm chocolate chip cookies for his long drive back into the city.
I did mention to him that we had not been home, as our appointment wasn't for yesterday but TODAY. He said it wasn't a problem, they hadn't needed access to our house.
Problem.
This morning I woke to no dial tone. Feeling curious, I walked outside to inspect my new box. Hmm. Should a new box be rusty inside?
I didn't think so either.
Thus began another day of tech support calls and too little time on the internet since I had to use that line to convince the usual ladder of folks in India that my phone was not yet fixed.
Then (it gets better and better) I decided to tackle the chore of reporting that our cell phones haven't worked anywhere near home for a while now... only to find that our cell provider has been purchased by our (you guessed it) land line company. Can anyone say Ma Bell? (Bonus points if it's in other languages.)
More importantly: Don't they know they're interfering with my precious blog reading time?
5 comments:
Those low down dirty snakes! It's a conspiracy I tell ya! I bet, not a one of those folks in India, er, at the phone company, have blogs.
The NERVE... I feel I've lived that day already -- whoa! Feeling strangely dizzy now... must go sip wine. =) ps: I missed you!! and I finally sent you that email I wrote.
I remember when nothing interrupted my mom and her afternoon soaps (only 3 channels to surf, too).
Now, I am offended if we have a power surge that causes my high-speed cable internet box to blink and tell me it's unable to connect to "whatever-website.com" and I don't figure it out until I've rebooted (and that really does mean I've twice kicked) the oh-so slow hand-me-down computer that replaced my laptop (which gave up the ghost---I mean harddisk 6 months ago and I can't seem to get $100 extra ahead to fix it, what with burned-out automobile starters and some kind of boot-thing that goes on the tire stuff on my dh's mail car which is evidently much more important than a harddisk
[I mean that car's only the used for the job that supports the family--not for anything important like keeping up with my overflowing email inbox!]
and costs...yep...$100 to replace!).
And I can't even blame those problems on the snow...cuz we've got nothing but mucky, rainy, muddy weather...(I can't walk off the frustration without tracking frustrating and muddy footprints back in the house.)
Maybe I'll just ditch the cable and go back to 3 channels and soap operas in the afternoons -- nope, don't have that new-fangled converter box for my old-fangled TV. But I could take up letter writing...'cept all my friends from the past would say I'm not so could with pen on paper--even if my dear mail-carrying husband assures me that more letters = job security.
Maybe if I get that number for those phone counselors in India, I too can find relief from Internet connection issues like you did. ;->
Fun post...you can see it has made me open up in a new and most whiny way. It's what I like to call blog-therapy (or maybe commentherapy?).
I'm gonna leave a teeny tiny post because clearly, you have enough to read here. LOL
GIVE THE GIRL HER PHONE BACK!!
Um. The dog is really cute! The kids are adorable! And I feel your pain, sister!
My word verification is "Subori." Doesn't that sound like Indian food? It really IS a conspiracy!
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