It’s the sort of day when even the house seems grumpy. Joists creak and pop as the old dowager accommodates blustery October winds. The kitchen fire’s warmth whooshes up the back stairs with every woody inhalation. Time to re-hang that stairwell curtain, Dee.
The weather matches my glum mood. The sun’s begun a six-month Bahamas vacation, abandoning us northerners to semi-darkness, thick clouds, and trees sparsely dressed in raggedy leaves that shiver in the cold rain.
My kitchen, always a work in progress, is enduring a facelift. The new design is delightful. The mess, and the waiting, is not.
I am the soul of impatience.
I can’t think properly amid the piles of pots, pans, cans, jars, ancient cookbooks and utensils that blanket the floor because the pantry’s stripped to the walls, and the old peninsula, with its inadequate storage, is gone. My dear friend Les, a superb carpenter, has built a beautiful island, and is shaping period-faithful shelves and cabinet doors for me at his home. I’m pestering him with calls at around ten o’clock every morning, when I just can’t stand it any longer. I need contact. (Some might accuse me of micro-managing…Nah.)
I’ll blather on about the bin pulls I found, yadayada. Then, after a fractional pause I’ll say, ever so casually, “So…what’s happening?” (Translation: Areyoudoneareyoudone?) Les cheerfully updates, never pointing out that my constant interruptions slow him down. He’ll patiently narrate his progress since my last call, and I’ll hang up marginally happier. For some weeks, now, I’ve been an irritating daily nuisance, sometimes ringing twice in one morning.
Honestly, he deserves a commendation.
Today, while I sat, sorting, the phone rang. Carefully I tiptoed through the chaos to answer.
“Hello?”
A slight pause. A click. Rats! It was ‘Rachel!’
“Hello,” squawked the phone. “My name is Rachel and I’m calling with an urgent message regarding your credit, which is just fine, but…”
She/it would always manage to recite this much before I hung up.
That computer-babe’s dial-a-dummy hour is around one o’clock. She/it, undaunted by my dismissals, has phone-plagued me every single day for weeks, determined to make a sale. I’ve tried letting the answering machine trigger, reasoning that if retail diarrhea could be dumped, my phone-y intruder would give up.
But clever ‘Sheit’ knows the difference. Only live bodies matter. Computer-pests are programmed to sniff out favorite targets – old ladies languishing at home around midday. Phone-jockey research notes that victims sometimes succumb to widget buying just to shut them up. But that’s a mistake. Once wallets open a crack, other pseudo-ladies will worm their way inside, because I suspect they’ve learned to exchange successful ‘hits’ – the phone numbers of folks pestered into purchases – with other computers.
Hmmm. A counter-attack was, ah, called for. Surely I was smarter than Sheit.
The next day the phone rang, on schedule. Grinning, I wound through the rubble of my kitchen, picked it up and said, on cue, “Hello?”
A brief silence. A click. Another fractional pause. Then, “Hello, My name…” Taking a deep breath, I blew my British police whistle into the phone. I blew it loud, and long. I hope I blew Sheit’s micronic mind.
When I picked up the phone again, there was only shocked silence. Maybe I’d RAMmed its memory, or been perceived as a virus mis-programmed to tweet/twitter too loudly.
Tomorrow would tell the tale.
Chuckling, I removed my earplugs and fixed lunch. But, unbidden, an inconvenient truth crept into my forebrain, making me squirm.
I. am intimately acquainted with someone nearly as annoying as the wretched Sheit.
Jeez.
At least I possess the micro-circuitry to blush.
The weather matches my glum mood. The sun’s begun a six-month Bahamas vacation, abandoning us northerners to semi-darkness, thick clouds, and trees sparsely dressed in raggedy leaves that shiver in the cold rain.
My kitchen, always a work in progress, is enduring a facelift. The new design is delightful. The mess, and the waiting, is not.
I am the soul of impatience.
I can’t think properly amid the piles of pots, pans, cans, jars, ancient cookbooks and utensils that blanket the floor because the pantry’s stripped to the walls, and the old peninsula, with its inadequate storage, is gone. My dear friend Les, a superb carpenter, has built a beautiful island, and is shaping period-faithful shelves and cabinet doors for me at his home. I’m pestering him with calls at around ten o’clock every morning, when I just can’t stand it any longer. I need contact. (Some might accuse me of micro-managing…Nah.)
I’ll blather on about the bin pulls I found, yadayada. Then, after a fractional pause I’ll say, ever so casually, “So…what’s happening?” (Translation: Areyoudoneareyoudone?) Les cheerfully updates, never pointing out that my constant interruptions slow him down. He’ll patiently narrate his progress since my last call, and I’ll hang up marginally happier. For some weeks, now, I’ve been an irritating daily nuisance, sometimes ringing twice in one morning.
Honestly, he deserves a commendation.
Today, while I sat, sorting, the phone rang. Carefully I tiptoed through the chaos to answer.
“Hello?”
A slight pause. A click. Rats! It was ‘Rachel!’
“Hello,” squawked the phone. “My name is Rachel and I’m calling with an urgent message regarding your credit, which is just fine, but…”
She/it would always manage to recite this much before I hung up.
That computer-babe’s dial-a-dummy hour is around one o’clock. She/it, undaunted by my dismissals, has phone-plagued me every single day for weeks, determined to make a sale. I’ve tried letting the answering machine trigger, reasoning that if retail diarrhea could be dumped, my phone-y intruder would give up.
But clever ‘Sheit’ knows the difference. Only live bodies matter. Computer-pests are programmed to sniff out favorite targets – old ladies languishing at home around midday. Phone-jockey research notes that victims sometimes succumb to widget buying just to shut them up. But that’s a mistake. Once wallets open a crack, other pseudo-ladies will worm their way inside, because I suspect they’ve learned to exchange successful ‘hits’ – the phone numbers of folks pestered into purchases – with other computers.
Hmmm. A counter-attack was, ah, called for. Surely I was smarter than Sheit.
The next day the phone rang, on schedule. Grinning, I wound through the rubble of my kitchen, picked it up and said, on cue, “Hello?”
A brief silence. A click. Another fractional pause. Then, “Hello, My name…” Taking a deep breath, I blew my British police whistle into the phone. I blew it loud, and long. I hope I blew Sheit’s micronic mind.
When I picked up the phone again, there was only shocked silence. Maybe I’d RAMmed its memory, or been perceived as a virus mis-programmed to tweet/twitter too loudly.
Tomorrow would tell the tale.
Chuckling, I removed my earplugs and fixed lunch. But, unbidden, an inconvenient truth crept into my forebrain, making me squirm.
I. am intimately acquainted with someone nearly as annoying as the wretched Sheit.
Jeez.
At least I possess the micro-circuitry to blush.