We are WIRED

The ATT guy who came out when we moved in several years ago was the same one who showed up this morning. I was thinking about him last night, hoping it wouldn’t be the same guy, because he was huge, tall tall tall and football player muscular broad, he makes regular chairs look like they’re made for three year olds, and one could tell he wasn’t pleased with moving around in our small apartment, and even remarked on how small he believed it to be. Which was why I hoped it wouldn’t be the same guy. I can remark on how small our apartment is, but I do appreciate it when visitors, entering, don’t immediately remark upon how small they feel it to be. Let me remark on it first and then you laugh and talk about how if we lived in New York our urban apartment would be a SPACIOUS PRIZE! That’s what you’re supposed to do. Maybe I should put up a sign on the door.

Well, what da ya know, it was the same guy. And he was not happy. Again. Maybe he doesn’t care much for his job. ATT had told us he could set up our router for us (one we already had). He couldn’t figure it out. He said, disgruntled, “I’m not supposed to do this. They’ll say anything to make a sale.”

“Where’s the box for the router?” Marty asked me about this box that he had out on the table three months ago and which I put up three months ago. He said, “I had it out on the table with the instructions until you went on a CLEANING SPREE,” as I went into the back room to see if it was there.

“So, cleaning off the table amounts to a CLEANING SPREE!? I try to pick up stuff you guys leave lying around and it’s a CLEANING SPREE?!” I said.

The ATT guy called his supervisor to ask about how to do our router. The supervisor told him that he’d have to learn how to do this router stuff ONE DAY and hung up on him! I busied myself in the kitchen making sausage for H.o.p. As they were leaving (had only been able to get H.o.p. online, but not me) H.o.p. choked on a piece of cut up sausage and spat it out in my hand. Every one was tense. I felt like we’d flunked the ATT guy’s apartment appraisal. Again. All our wonderful IKEA bookshelves hadn’t impressed him at all.

Drat.

Anyway, there are people who enter your apartment and they pick out nice things to comment on, like the paintings and funky stuff you’ve collected and make you feel good about a place. One of my sisters-in-law talks about how her kids will remember it real fondly because “Everything is right there! It’s great for kids!”

And then there are people who make you feel very small, like the big guy.

After he and his assistant left, Marty was on the phone talking to ATT for a while working out with them how to get the router to work.

Then the Direct TV guy arrived.

This was our apartment’s kitchen back in April. Though minuscule, it still vaguely resembled a kitchen.

Now?

Literally. We are WIRED.

I am distressed by these big fat cables. I should have been supervising in the kitchen. But I left the kitchen and was helping with trying to get our email working and when I went back in the kitchen there were big fat cables all over the place so it looks like an octopus’ den which fits with my also having been reading to H.o.p. about KRACKEN at the time. There is no hiding them. They snake large along the back of the kitchen sink, not tucked nicely into corners (should have been snaked up above the cabinet and back down).

The same wild travesty of cords is around the door leading into the kitchen from this room. And where was I when this was happening? Sitting nearby but focused on getting Eudora to please, please work again. Which it never did. It only receives but we can’t send out email. We spent all morning on the phone and part of the afternoon and no one can figure out why or get it to work. For now we are stuck with doing our mail online as we refuse to use Outlook.

Plus, what was going on around the door was partly hidden by the drapes on the curtain rod that conceal the sorry kitchen from this room which was not nearly as sorry yesterday evening as it is now.

That will be fixed. Tonight we take out all the screws and fix that. Fortunately, most of the screws holding down the cords have already, of their own accord, popped out of the plaster.

What? You don’t like the two coolers that have replaced the colonial chair? Sorry, don’t have anywhere else to put them. What are we doing with two coolers? They’re used for the occasional party at the studio.

The coolers became a kind of pantry.

Anyway, I just kind of stared at the way the cables were done and didn’t say anything because the Direct TV guy had been nice.

The only thing I can think to do with the octopus cord above the kitchen sink is…

No, honestly, I’m stumped. Nothing comes to mind. Nothing.

But we have Direct TV now which means we have some channels, whereas before we only got TBS and sometimes snowy versions of PBS.

The first science show we turned on for H.o.p. had some creature feeding off some other creature’s eye. H.o.p. flipped out. “I will never watch that channel again!” He told us we should not have gotten Direct TV because it’s freaky.