DSL Hell Revisited

My DSL is a big tease. Since early this morning it has been popping on and off. Just when I am about to chuck the whole lot of it out the window it suddenly comes back on. And I lovingly caress it, call it baby, thank it for being so beautiful. It blinks at me..my heart swells. I stroke the mouse and tap one finger quickly. I hold my breath waiting for that moment, that wondrous moment. Anticipation. And then....PAGE CANNOT BE DISPLAYED.

Bitch.

Called the tech line...you know those people that really don't give a flying crap and talk to you like your two. The first tech asks me two minutes into the conversation..."Have you gone online and checked our help page"? **Insert dumbfounded look here**. I tell him it's intermittent. He asked me what that meant. *Big Sigh*. 30 minutes later I know nothing more than I knew before. The DSL pops on while I'm on the phone. Great he says, I fixed it. I suggest we wait because the problem comes and goes..interfuckingmittant. 10 minutes of silence and my ho of a DSL box still hasn't gone out. So we hang up. Two minutes later, she conks out again.

Bitch.

Tech line round 2 gets me Sarenita. She knows what intermittent means. She runs a test line and says the problem isn't with them. She says my computer isn't receiving the information from them. Ya think? I spend the next 45 minutes plugging and pulling, clicking and powering down as instructed my whatshername. Nothing. She suggests maybe I need a new box. Ya think? Then she tells me the cost and proceeds to try and sell me everything from cable wires to steak knives.

Just send me a new modem. Wait, is that a kid I hear crying in the background? Is that glass breaking?? Suddenly Sarenita is anxious to get off the phone...wonder why. She says we need to be sure. She'll upgrade the priority of my problem and have a technician come out to have a look. Earliest available appointment? Next Thursday. Sarenita I say, go take care of your kid. I'll handle this on my own.

Turns out that after all the drama my box was just over heated (and not in a good way). Who told me this miracle of technical information?? The Kid. "Mom, it's hot. When the Playstation acted weird, you called it some bad names and said it was overheated. You took the plug out. The box thing needs it's plugs pulled".

See that there, I'm raising a friggin' genius! Screw you tech line, I got me in house assistance! Watch out MIT...Kid Wanders is coming! (Of course it will just be to torture corrupt say hi to your geeks. She probably won't be attending. She'll be too busy trying to stay out of prison, trouble.)

*Posts tagged with "From the vault" were not written recently. I have a file full of old posts I never got around to posting. Since I'm still wrapping things up around here, I thought no better time than now to post them.*

Mom Wanders

34 years ago, on a cold winter night, a teenage girl gave birth to her only child....

Something happened in the last two weeks that changed my life. It forced me to confront and to forgive demons that have haunted me for far too long. It also gave me a sense of peace and calm I have never fully felt.

I alternate between emotions. I am wrapped in a welcoming sadness simply because I never thought I'd feel it. And that makes me happy. As odd as that may sound, the fact that I feel this pain makes me feel more like the phoenix someone likened me too.

Underneath it all. Despite it all. Through it all. I loved her. She was not Donna Reed. She made Peg Bundy look like a pro. She would have gotten on well with Joan Crawford. But she was the only Mother I had. And in those moments before she passed, for the first time in my life, I wanted her to hug me. To tell me that she loved me. To say everything would be alright. But it never came.

We walked the same path her and I. Physical, sexual and verbal abuse seemed to be written in the stone of our lives. Because she feared it, she became complacent with it and closed her eyes to what was being done to me. But I no longer blame her for my pain. She knew no other life. In a way, her acceptance of it allowed me the strength to leave her on that path and take the one she was too scared to travel.

In the days before her death I was told (by priest) that she felt I had abandoned her. She thought that I should not have left. That I should not have traveled that other path. And it saddens me to think that she thought that staying, as she did, was the right thing to do. It saddens me that she feared the unknown so much that living that life was better than freeing herself from her own demons.

I cannot change the past nor can I rewrite our painful history. But I do mourn. Deeper than I think anyone, including myself, ever thought I would.

34 years ago, on a cold winter night, a teenage girl gave birth to what would be her only child. On the back of her newborn daughters photo she wrote one word. Love.

I love you too Mom.

Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak
whispers the o'er-fraught heart and bids it break.
~William Shakespeare