Never Talk To Men

I don't know why on earth I ever try to talk to my cousin. I never under any circumstances get anywhere.

This morning he discovered that his television wouldn't work, so he immediately handed me his phone (mine still being dead on account of no money to pay bill) and wanted me to call the cable company to fix it. Well, okay, but first (being a woman and therefore sensible) I went upstairs to check on the computer. It seemed extremely unlikely to me that it was a cable problem, because the cable guy was here on Tuesday replacing worn out equipment for us (that's why you haven't seen me blogging - our equipment failed) and everything was working fine this morning when I got up.

Well, the upshot of all this was that Joshua still kept insisting that I call Time Warner to get them to fix his TV. You see, he is completely incapable of understanding that there is only one - ONE - cable system in here, and he cannot be convinced that if a TV is not working, it's the TV that's at fault, not the cable system, presuming that the computer and the other TVs are working. (Yeah, I know - three TVs seems like overkill but when Matthew and I did it originally, there was a perfectly good point. First of all, we could afford it - always a good place to start. Secondly, in terms of keeping peace in the household, a big TV down in the den for sports, family movie watching, guests and so forth made sense. Then we needed one in our bedroom because Matthew couldn't sleep without a TV on. And then it just seemed reasonable to put a small one in Sarah's room because quite frankly, a lot of the junk she watched made me gag - not to mention the fact that when she had friends over to watch whatever, the shrieking and giggling was enough to drive anybody mad. So yeah, a little TV overkill there.)

So now Joshua is down in the den using up all his phone minutes with Time Warner Cable keeping him on hold forever to tell him that the problem is his TV, not the cable. God knows I tried.

And I gave him his damn birthday dinner on Thursday, and if he whines all year again that it wasn't the caviar soaked bash he actually wanted, fuck him, if you'll pardon the expression. It was a nice, low key chicken and potatoes with garlic meal with some green beans. And lots of wine. Even, courtesy of Sarah, a nice festive bottle of Prosecco to start things off. So there. Happy goddamn birthday and please shut the hell up. (He actually wanted me to bake a ham, which I was perfectly okay with because I'm getting pretty sick of chicken even though you CAN do almost anything with it. However, he returned from Western Beef telling me that they didn't have any ham. Now this I cannot believe for one single second. I think the problem here is that Joshua is a man, and therefore won't ASK anybody anything. I know good and damn well that Western Beef has carried hams for all the thirty odd years I've been shopping there, and I know good and damn well that they haven't stopped carrying them because - according to Joshua - "Hispanics aren't big on ham." Please. I am quite sure that the store is more than aware that other people shop there as well, and I am also quite sure that if I go to Western Beef and don't see a ham, I will be able to ask someone where one is and buy same. Honestly.)

I worked yesterday at my ongoing (for another two weeks or so, anyway) Friday job mailing things to Burkina Faso and other remote points...ah, well, it fills in the day and gives me at least SOME money.

I'm now hoping that my pal Carolyn's Trader Joe's gift card arrives today so I can get over there and indulge myself...I still have visions of cheese running through my head (so much so that when I looked in the mirror this morning, my eyes had turned bleu) (sorry). Of course, Trader Joe's on Saturday will be a madhouse of epic proportions, but on the other hand, I hadn't planned to do anything else today anyway. And I've discovered that while the checkout lines LOOK unending, they actually move fairly quickly - and one can always bring a book.

Love, Wendy