GIMME AN F!

I find it amazing that I happened to be stitching the F last night. You see, Aunt Chrissy and I went to the Targets for the prescriptions that we were supposed to pick up on Saturday, and after we went to the sushi place, we went back to her house so that I could wash some underpants.

(No, I don't normally require adult supervision while doing laundry....it just so happens that I now have a new washer and dryer sitting in my laundry room awaiting the installer guy to come figure out how to get the water into things properly.)

(And yes, I'm supposing that there will be a lot of posts about said washer and dryer coming your way, since both have more buttons and gizmos and whatnot than your average space shuttle.)

(I'm not complaining, mind you. Without said washer and dryer, I'd be down at the river beating my clothings against a rock. So yes, I am EXTREMELY happy and thankful for the serendipitousness that is my little sister's professional life. What can I say? She hooked me UP!)

Anywhoose....Stewey and I were at Aunt Chrissy's doing a load or two, and I sat on the couch stitching the F while Aunt Chrissy tried to get her cable box fixed. When she came home from work yesterday, the cable box in her living room was kaput, but the actual cablevision seemed to be working fine in the other rooms of her house. So she assumed (like I would have also) that it was a cable BOX problem and that the nice Comcast lady could send a magic signal to it and all would be well.

Aunt Chrissy was on hold (the first time) for about 37 minutes. And then when she finally did get "Andy" on the phone, he told her that it was a cableVISION problem and that they were working on it and that the storms had affected the service in our area, blah blah blah. So Aunt Chrissy tried to explain that it didn't seem to be a cableVISION problem, but rather a cableBOX problem, and could he please send a magic signal to it and fix it so all would be well.

It wasn't.

(Hence, the appropriateness of the "F".)

So Aunt Chrissy futzed and futzed and disconnected and then reconnected and then hauled and moved and plugged and unplugged all of the various cable things in her house until she proved that it was not, in fact, a cableVISION problem, but rather a cableBOX problem as she originally reported.

So she called them back.

Another 40 minutes or so on hold, and she got a nice lady named "Felicia". Felicia seemed to understand the problem a bit better than "Andy" did, but alas, cableBOX fixedness was not to be.

(Again, with the "F".)

So we watched a little of the TeeVee (in black and white only, mind you), and then it was time for Stewey and I to pack up the now-cleaned underpants and head for home.

I think what struck me about this whole adventure was something that Aunt Chrissy said to Felicia after trying to figure this whole mess out for the better part of an hour: "You know, Felicia. All I wanted to do was come home and sit in my chair and watch television and do my needlework."


That's all.

She's a woman of very simple wants and demands, and yet somehow the universe wasn't able to accommodate even THAT little request.

When I woke up today I decided that I was going to unplug my cablebox, haul it over to Aunt Chrissy's house, and then re-plug it into her TeeVee, but I remembered what she told me at Christmastime when we got these new TeeVees. "If I ever catch you doing anything other than turning this damn thing on, changing the channels, or adjusting the volume, I'm going to break your fingers. One by one."

Considering how much I'm enjoying my Daisychain ABC's sampler, I figured I would need to have unbroken fingers, so my cableBOX is going to stay exactly right where it is and Aunt Chrissy is welcome to come over here to watch television and do her needlework until the nice people at Comcast can go to her house to make things right for her once again.

So that's the Tuesday report from here in steamy Hoosierville. Stewey sends his fondest regards and says that although he is feeling a little better, he does think that the sniffles are the result of allergies and NOT a summer cold, as I had earlier reported. So meds are now on board and he'll be back to his cheerful little self very very soon.