How to fix your telephone line
Oct. 5th, 2005 02:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pameladeanStay up too late reading Gerald Durrell, because it's raining and raining, and you wouldn't be a bit surprised if a lion came and ate two of the cats and part of the porch.
Wake yourself up an hour and a half early with a stupid anxiety dream involving fallen trees and six hundred lily bulbs.
Decide that you might as well call the Fitzgerald Theater and get the tickets to the Richard Thompson concert.
Discover that you can't get a dial tone. Discover that you can get on the Internet. Discover that you can call your house with your cellphone. Look at the Qwest instructions for determining whose problem it is.
Go back to bed.
Wake up feeling very wonky because you overslept your medication time.
Eat cereal, take medication.
Call the Fitzgerald Theater on your cellphone. Be told that if you are not a member of MPR, you have to use Ticketmaster. Call Ticketmaster.
Go about the house seeing if it's your ancient telephone or everybody's. It's everybody's.
Call Qwest and discover halfway through the voicemail dance that you have to determine whose problem it is. Yes, you already discovered that, but your memory has reset itself.
Take a shower and get dressed, realizing in passing that the third shower curtain is still in the washer. The floor survives.
Tell Raphael about the problem. Be reminded that there are actually two phone lines. Raphael has ascertained that the main one does have a dial tone, but Line 1, the subsidiary one (yes, I know, don't go there) has not.
Look up the never-used telephone number on an ancient telephone bill. Reminisce briefly about 2002.
Realize that you have not had any coffee. Make some.
Unplug the telephone in the downstairs hall (this is an amazingly lengthy process involving moving a box, a cat bed, and a jug of cat litter, and is assisted, if that is the right word, by two cats).
Take the telephone outside to the little gray plastic phone box. Stare at the phone box. Realize that you need a screwdriver. Go inside and get one. Come back out, unscrew the screw, finally use enough force to actually get the door open. Gaze in rapidly increasing annoyance at the inside of the box. It does not have a modular jack into which you can plug the telephone to see if the same problem pertains outside the house. You have a vague notion that maybe there is a place in the basement where you can perform this test instead, but you can't remember where it is.
Go back inside. Plug the phone back in. Absently pick it up to see if you have in fact got the plug in properly. Hear dial tone.
Go about the house, checking all the phones. Dial tones.
Go have coffee.
P.
Wake yourself up an hour and a half early with a stupid anxiety dream involving fallen trees and six hundred lily bulbs.
Decide that you might as well call the Fitzgerald Theater and get the tickets to the Richard Thompson concert.
Discover that you can't get a dial tone. Discover that you can get on the Internet. Discover that you can call your house with your cellphone. Look at the Qwest instructions for determining whose problem it is.
Go back to bed.
Wake up feeling very wonky because you overslept your medication time.
Eat cereal, take medication.
Call the Fitzgerald Theater on your cellphone. Be told that if you are not a member of MPR, you have to use Ticketmaster. Call Ticketmaster.
Go about the house seeing if it's your ancient telephone or everybody's. It's everybody's.
Call Qwest and discover halfway through the voicemail dance that you have to determine whose problem it is. Yes, you already discovered that, but your memory has reset itself.
Take a shower and get dressed, realizing in passing that the third shower curtain is still in the washer. The floor survives.
Tell Raphael about the problem. Be reminded that there are actually two phone lines. Raphael has ascertained that the main one does have a dial tone, but Line 1, the subsidiary one (yes, I know, don't go there) has not.
Look up the never-used telephone number on an ancient telephone bill. Reminisce briefly about 2002.
Realize that you have not had any coffee. Make some.
Unplug the telephone in the downstairs hall (this is an amazingly lengthy process involving moving a box, a cat bed, and a jug of cat litter, and is assisted, if that is the right word, by two cats).
Take the telephone outside to the little gray plastic phone box. Stare at the phone box. Realize that you need a screwdriver. Go inside and get one. Come back out, unscrew the screw, finally use enough force to actually get the door open. Gaze in rapidly increasing annoyance at the inside of the box. It does not have a modular jack into which you can plug the telephone to see if the same problem pertains outside the house. You have a vague notion that maybe there is a place in the basement where you can perform this test instead, but you can't remember where it is.
Go back inside. Plug the phone back in. Absently pick it up to see if you have in fact got the plug in properly. Hear dial tone.
Go about the house, checking all the phones. Dial tones.
Go have coffee.
P.
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no subject
Date: 2005-10-05 07:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-05 07:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-05 07:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-05 08:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-05 08:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-05 08:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-06 12:13 am (UTC)*hugs*
I am tempted to send you Icelandic coffee. Having previously slid this slope, I forbear, not easily but even pixies can be sensible if they focus, and just leave the hugs. Hope things are better by the time you read this.
no subject
Date: 2005-10-13 04:00 pm (UTC):)
no subject
Date: 2005-10-23 10:29 pm (UTC)Oh: reminds me of when my daughter was an infant, and I happened to check on her before I went to bed. She was very hot! I frantically got out the thermometer and discovered that her temperature was 104.
We rushed to the emergency room, stayed forever, and she got checked out by a doctor, who told us she was fine and probably would have no symptoms in the morning.
Which she didn't.
If I'd just stood in the doorway and seen that she was nicely covered up and sleeping, we all could have had a peaceful night.