This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things

Ever feel like you’re just trapped in one of those days when everything is doomed to be

broken? And not normal broken, where stuff just breaks. Oh no. We don’t get normal broken

around here. See, a couple weeks ago, we went to turn the light off on our ceiling fan and

the switch broke. With the light on. Over our bed. At bedtime.

So we unscrewed all four bulbs, went to bed, and contacted the landlord in the morning. Two

weeks later, the repair people are finally supposed to show up at noon today (the repair

company is slow, not the landlord), so I’m waiting until they get here and can fix the

switch on our ceiling fan and we can once again have light in the bedroom. It’s terrible,

but I’m sort of half-hoping they’ll have to replace the entire fan, because then maybe we

can get a nice neutral looking one instead of this FABULOUS 70s faux-wood laminate with

gold trim. I would like one of the cheap white ones that blends in to the ceiling. And has

more than one setting for fan speed. A remote would be awesome too, but I’ll settle for a

chain that’s not extended by a piece of yarn.

And if that weren’t enough for today, the internet died. And not one of those wake up to

find it off days. No, I was in the middle of stuff when suddenly pages stopped loading

without warning. The laptop doesn’t connect either, and, more importantly, the router has a

pretty orange light where the green one for internet connectivity should be. So I called

Verizon and waded through their menus. After being on hold for 20 minutes, I called back.

We’re about ten minutes into the second phone call. After this, I call again and stop

playing their pretty menu games. I will just mash buttons until a human picks up. I can

understand a long wait at lunch time or after work hours. But at 10:30 am?

So, finally got a human (and she’s very nice). She suggested an outage in Suitland due to a

car taking out a utility pole, which seems a bit far to actually be affecting us, and

according to her system won’t occur until 11:23am (they have very advanced systems at

Verizon, it seems). Then she did a little network magic on her end, and suddenly I had

internet again. But, of course, she had absolutely no idea why it went out in the first

place. Figures, right?

So now, I’ve got 45 min until the repair folk are scheduled to show, during which time I

think I need to have second breakfast, and maybe call the community management people to

figure out why we haven’t gotten our pool passes yet. See, preggers wants to swim this

summer, so they better FIX IT.