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My Profile
Gift from Hil Part 2 - 2014-12-30
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11:00 a.m. - 2011-11-23
From: The Nothing Is Ever Easy File� Not 30 seconds after I posted my previous entry Mick barged into my office seething and panicked over his computer threatening to shut down. (He'd overloaded it with too much stuff and had no clue how to delete). No lie. 30 seconds. That's how long I got to keep that feeling of contentment and calm. From that point Sunday morning until around 8:30 last night the boiling roiling messy bullshit just kept coming. Tears. Fights. God, it sucked. Wasn't just Mick, though he was ground zero for a lot of it, the fuckery with computers, modems, lawyers, family, money, and physical stuff added to the whole ugly mess. Let me explain. No, that would take too long. Let me sum up. Sunday afternoon I'd given up on computers altogether and did a ton of laundry. Stacks and stacks of neatly folded clothing and linens. So proud. And then for no discernable cause the stacks suddenly fell over. All that clean laundry in tangled heaps on the dusty cellar floor. My shrieks brought Mick running. Seeing me crouched and weeping and clutching my hair in the middle of the mess that had been a whole day's work Mick tries to calm me and I stand, lunge past him, and stumble. Right into the sharp pointy end of the cellar stair handrail (stairs and rail are both homemade, the rail is a lengthy piece of dowel). Ripped a big gash in my side. Bled like mad. Hurt like a bastard. Still does. But not as bad as my right shoulder. I woke up Monday unable to move my right arm without excruciating pain. Something had gone wrong with my shoulder while I slept. My smart hand is mostly out of commission. Ever try to wipe yourself with the wrong hand? It ain't easy. Have to go in for an x-ray on Friday. Wait, it gets crazier. The Geek did come Monday evening. And he got my computer working. My beloved desktop. He replaced all of my memory chips. Then before the Geek had cleared the driveway the internet went down. Mick got the Geeks on the phone and demanded our guy come back immediately. Which, after he was tracked down, he did. There had to be some connection between what he'd done and the now fubar internet. Much hassling, checking equipment and lines, calls to the cable company and it was decided it was the line installed by the cable guys which had gone bad in what was a case of the worst timing ever, but there was also a slight possibility it was the modem itself. Fine. However, Time Warner wouldn't come to the house to do anything about it until December 2nd. Mick swore he'd have the system back up the next day (yesterday) even if he had to take a cable guy hostage. Okay, whatever. Just leave me be. I'd deal without internet. Then my supposedly fixed desktop started crashing. Over and over and over. No obvious cause. It simply kept shutting down and rebooting. I shut the fucking thing off, set my laptop up again and buried myself in my Sims. Then the desktop started turning itself ON without me touching it. The single weirdest thing I'd ever experienced as a computer user. Again Mick swore he'd have this fixed. His Baby was now worse off than before all these 'wonderful' additions and repairs had been done. And this was not allowed. So while I slept in yesterday, wiped out from the pain of my gouged side and screwed up shoulder and exhausted from all the mess, Mick took the modem over to the cable company in Malltown who promptly told him they do NOT exchange wireless equipment, only service techs can do that. Go piss up a rope, mister, and wait until December. Mick wouldn't take no for an answer. He called around and found out the cable office in Rivertown would exchange it, maybe, if they had one, but don't hold your breath. Mick also called our doctor and insisted I be seen about my shoulder�NOW. Nope. Wednesday at the earliest. I could go to the urgent care, but this wouldn't get me the med refills I needed too. Meds I needed far more than having my shoulder looked at. Right? I'm not even going into the huge hassle Mick got into at work on Friday. Or the sorry news from the lawyer. Or Wolf not getting home until after midnight on Sunday and missing school the next day. Or his oversleeping yesterday and nearly missing the bus. Or the big sore on Princess's back. Or the malfunctioning windshield wipers on the Escort. Or that we're shanghaied into going to SIL's on Thursday. Keeping score here? Yeah, me neither. Finally, finally, finally our luck started changing for the better. The doctor's office had a cancellation and I was able to get my refills and have my shoulder looked at yesterday after all. Got scheduled for the x-ray. The Rivertown office did have a new modem. Our lovely Geek did come over and re-fix my crazy desktop and hooked up the new modem, which worked. The Geek was stunned. Never saw anything like it. He helped Mick and Wolf get all their machines hooked into the network too. All while sneezing his head off (he's allergic to cats). He nicely turned down our offer to adopt him on the spot. (As well he should, the guy is 32 years old, but seems like a kid to us.) But he stayed until everything, and I mean everything electronic was working properly. Phones, computers, TVs. Sour tang or not, Mick and I exchanged cards and gifts and kisses and marked our anniversary in style by having lunch at the new-to-us Five Guys hamburgers (fab, btw). I got my meds. Wolf got his meds. His report card came and was absolutely stellar. At the doc's I found out my blood pressure is still fine despite the stress and I've dropped 15 pounds. I cleaned up Princess's ouchie and she's as frisky and happy as ever. I had a bit of luck at Sam's while I was getting my meds and found a huge piece of beef shoulder that will make a fabulous sauerbraten and will be putting it to brine when I close this. Going elsewhere for Thanksgiving means no leftovers and if I can't have turkey sandwiches I can still have a killer meal on Friday. Sauerbraten, latkes, red cabbage, and thanks to you guys some lovely fresh bread made with my own two hands. (Provided I can knead again with this bum shoulder of mine.) I have a gorgeous new charm for my Pandora. Some luxe chocolate covered cherries. I have my desktop again with its huge monitor that looks like a drive-in movie screen compared to my dinky laptop's. (Actually Lappy is a 17", but my desktop monitor is a 22". Makes a big difference. Ask any woman about how nice an extra 5 inches is. Heh.) So there you go. Another unbelievably messy chapter in the life of your humble narrator. Tomorrow I will ignore all the extended family strife and be thankful for a husband who won't quit, a smart and loving son, a mostly functioning body, and that my SIL always has a ton of good wine on hand.
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