Cranky Fibro Girl

Harnessing the healing power of snark

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If I Wanted To Feel This Bad About Myself, I Would Have Tried On A Bathing Suit

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Image courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net.

So, I have been having some issues with my fax machine lately. Issues that yesterday caused me to walk through my house all day long yelling about just how much I hate it, and how desperately I yearn for it to undergo a painful, explosive death.

I am the first to admit that I have absolutely NO patience when it comes to things like this. I go from ZERO to ENRAGED in less than a nanosecond. That is why my husband is in charge of All Inanimate Objects Containing Moving Or Electrical Parts.

But today I decided I would TRY and act like a responsible, mature adult, and so I called the “alleged” help line for my fax machine’s manufacturer.

Now, I will admit that I do have pretty high standards when it comes to customer service. And that is due to the fact that I, personally, have experienced outstanding customer service many times. So I know that it does actually exist.

For example, take the people who sold us our car.

My husband and I own an Audi, and a couple of years ago it was in the shop for service. Happily, our dealer provided us with a rental car to use in the meantime. We went to see a movie, and when we got back to the parking lot after the movie was over we discovered that we were unable to unlock the rental car. We called our dealer, and within a very short time someone drove out to the movie theater, popped open the trunk, GOT IN THE TRUNK, CLIMBED THROUGH THE ENTIRE CAR, and unlocked it for us from the inside. And they were GENUINELY HAPPY to do that for us. This is just one of the many reasons why we love Audi.

Or take our pest control company, Breda. It doesn’t matter how many times I call them, or what I ask them to do; they too are always happy to help me. I could call them up and say, “Um, there is a black cloud of death located directly over our house, and it’s raining down fiery, flaming scorpions on top of us, and they’re falling into a black pit of writhing, poisonous snakes, which is being whipped around by the hurricane-force winds of killer bees that is blowing in from the west,” and they would say, “OK, we can have your guy there tomorrow morning at 8 am.” And that is why we also love Breda.

I have also experienced extremely poor customer service, which unfortunately was what was constantly displayed by Our Former Internet Service Provider. Our high-speed Internet connection was giving us A Lot of problems, and eventually was “off” more than it was ever “on”. It got to the point where it would start cutting off in anticipation of any kind of inclement weather. So we’d wake up in the morning, see that, “Oh, the Internet connection’s out again,” and know that it was probably going to rain that day somewhere in the state of Georgia. So as a weather forecasting system it worked great, but as an Internet connection it totally sucked.

I called their so-called “help” line quite a bit back in those days, but all they ever told me to do was this: “Go get a paper clip, straighten it out, and poke it in the tiny hole on the back of your modem.”

So here’s what a hypothetical conversation with them would’ve looked like:

Hypothetical Me: “Um, there are flames shooting out of the top of my computer, and the screen has opened up and disgorged all of the fiery demons of hell, and there is a deep, cackling maniacal voice coming out of my speakers, and the demons are snatching up my cats and tossing them into the air to use as props in their satanical juggling routine. HELP!”

Hypothetical ISP: (in a heavy Indian accent) “OK. Do you have a paper clip?”

But, back to today.  So I called the fax machine’s “help” line and did get connected to an actual human being, but I knew I was in trouble the minute I heard her speak. Because she was talking to me in the tone of voice that said, “Whatever is wrong is your fault, because you are a total %$$@&*(^% idiot, and now I have to deal with you.” Now, there have been PLENTY of times in my life when I have, in fact, been a total &^%$#&*( &^% idiot, but to just ASSUME that I am one because I needed to call your help line is kind of a big jump in my mind. Whatever happened to “innocent until proven guilty”?

But I really need to send some faxes today so I continued the conversation, willing for her to dislike me if she could just tell me how to get my machine to work. But, no, that was not in the cards for me today. Because no matter what I said to her, all she ever said back to me was, “Hm, that could be a problem.” Every answer I gave her was wrong. It was like being hit on the head repeatedly with the hammer of, “This Is How Much You Suck!”

I could’ve had this conversation with her, and the answer would have been just the same.

Hypothetical Me: “Hi, I’m calling about my Sharp fax machine. I’m calling from Sharp headquarters. I invented every single Sharp product known to man. I am the physical embodiment of all Sharp technology that currently exists in physical form on this planet.”

Sharp Help Line Lady : (hypothetically speaking) “Hm, that could be the problem.”

EEEECCCCKKKK! THUNK! (Those are the hypothetical sounds of me traveling through the phone line and bludgeoning her to death with my dysfunctional fax machine).

So anyway, I guess I will have to wait until tonight when my husband gets home so I can ask him to take a look at The Stupid Fax Machine Which I Hate And I Hope It Dies And I Wish I Could Beat It To Death With A Sledgehammer!!!!

Not that I am bitter. Or cranky. And I definitely DO NOT need a nap! Ggrr!

My Name Is Jenny, And I MUST Have Access To The Internet

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It’s a happy, happy day here in our household, because my Internet connection has finally been restored.

For the past couple of weeks our connection has grown increasingly worse, and I have grown increasingly more crazed.

As my husband has flitted from his office, to his various business-related travel destinations, to his various hotels, all with their perfectly functioning Internet connections, I don’t think he was really getting just how frustrated I was. When I told him last night that I was ready to throw my brand-new laptop-which I had just received a month ago for my birthday-out the window, that seemed to spur him into action.

He got online and set up an appointment for a technician to come to our house today (did I mention that his Internet connection was working just fine?) So I was starting to feel much better, until he shared the following observation with me.

“I wonder if we have rodents that are chewing through our lines?”

Then he said, “What are the chances of you going down to the basement to check that out?”

Have you ever been under the influence of an irrational belief so strong that, despite absolutely knowing that you are totally making this fear up, and despite never once seeing any shred of evidence that there is cause for this fear, it still powerfully controls your behavior?

I am that way about snakes. I am terrified of snakes and, despite all evidence to the contrary, I am CONVINCED that huge groups of snakes totally surround our house. There are certain places around our house where I will never go because I just KNOW that the snakes are waiting there to get me.

That information is important to this story, because in order to get to our basement you have to go outside, down the deck stairs, and across the backyard. There is no access from inside our house. So my husband was asking me to go outside, in the dark, past two of the places where the imaginary snakes live, into the basement, where he was pretty sure I would find REAL rats.

On the one hand, I suppose I could have been flattered that he thought I was brave enough to do this by myself. But I decided to respond with, “Are you insane?!”, with a little dash of, “Have you met me?!” thrown in to “kick it up a notch.”

I am happy to say that it was not necessary for me to go down to the basement last night, and even happier to say that when the technician was here he did not say one single word about rodents. And now our Internet connection is working perfectly.

Now, if I could just figure out who to call about those imaginary snakes…

Let’s Get Physical

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So we had a little excitement here this morning, when my husband called me into the bathroom to show me how one of his eyes was bleeding.

As I believe I’ve mentioned before, normally in our marriage my husband is The Person In Charge Of Being Calm, and I am The Person Who Gets To Freak Out. But clearly that arrangement wasn’t going to work for us today. So I dug down deep inside myself, and was able to come up with a tiny reservoir of calm. In this way I followed the wonderful example of my mother who, I believe, developed her inner reservoir of calm as a result of Raising A Son.

My brother is a chemist, and one of the things that makes him such an excellent scientist is his curious, inquisitive mind. However, what that meant for him as a child was that he was totally unafraid to try anything. And who had to be there to deal with the results? My mom.

When my brother decided that it would be really cool to have a pet snake, who was in charge of feeding the snake and cleaning out its cage? My mom. When he decided to start lifting weights and built his own personal gym in our attic, who was his spotter? My mom. When he needed to be taken to the emergency room so many times that we joked that he had his own frequent visitor card, who was always there to play Florence Nightingale? My mom.

In retrospect, despite all of his various injuries my brother might actually have been an easier child to deal with than I was. All of his stuff was pretty straightforward-blood, bruises, and broken bones. I, however, was the child who, at age seven, asked my mother to explain to me how it was that a person could have a body that would die, but also have a soul that would live forever. I was also the child who came to her in tears at age twelve, caught up in an existential crisis triggered by the fact that I had just realized that I was powerless to stop the passage of time. So in comparison, dealing with a child who had a concussion after falling off a bike without a helmet on might actually have been a refreshing change.

But for me, having to deal with any kind of physical problem is always a challenge. I think it’s because I just forget about my body until something hurts really badly. Then I am always surprised to remember that I am, in fact, a physical being, and not just a giant disembodied mind, moving through the world and pondering The Meaning Of Life.

So that was my other problem today. In addition to just being really squeamish, I was also experiencing a burning arm agony so intense that all of my waking moments were spent fantasizing about hurling my body into something extremely sharp, like a jagged pane of glass or a harpoon, in a desperate attempt to relieve the pain.

Happily this did not prove necessary, and after visits to our respective doctors my husband and I are convalescing at home, waiting for the pizza guy to deliver our generation’s comfort food, and receiving the well-wishes of our three cats.

“I heard you were sick, so I threw up this hairball just for you.”

“In sympathy for your illness, I stole this place mat from the porch and chewed it into submission.”

“I’m so sorry you don’t feel well: Here’s my ass.”

Florence Nightingale’s got nothing on them.

Beauty or the Crone?

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I had an interesting experience the other day, and I can’t decide whether it makes me feel old or young.

Last week I had to go to the dentist for my 6-month cleaning and checkup. There are very few things that cause me greater discomfort than getting my teeth cleaned. (Pretty much all that’s coming to mind right now is anything involving snakes and creatures that sting.) You know that feeling you can get if someone scrapes their fingernails down a chalkboard? That is exactly how I feel when they are scraping my teeth. (Interestingly enough, I also get that feeling whenever I have to touch any kind of fabric with a nap-velvet, silk, suede, velour, etc. But I digress).

So as I was sitting in the chair, enduring, my dental hygienist said, “Today is my anniversary.” Always ready to celebrate longevity in marriage, and always ready to put off more teeth scraping, I was about to ask her how long she’d been married when she said, “Thirty-three years ago today I came to work here.”

Now, leaving aside for the moment the question of why anyone would want to choose a career that involved dealing with people’s insides, much less stay in that same career for thirty-three years, here was my quandary: next month I will be turning thirty-three years old, and so,  as I told her, “You came to work here the same year that I was born.” So, should this fact make me feel really old, or really young?

It certainly made her feel old, and while that wasn’t my intention, it was a nice role reversal from the conversations I usually have with my new tutoring clients.

Me: “So, what year were you born?”
Tutoring Client: “1990.” (and sometimes even later than that).
Me: “Hm. That’s the year I graduated from high school.”
Me: “Wow, I’m old.”
Tutoring Client: (silently, to themselves) Wow! You’re old!

And what I want to know is, just how did this happen?! I became an adult in the 1990’s, and the ’90’s were on the leading edge of everything. We were the ones with advanced technology. We were the ones with advanced degrees. We were the ones who elected the president who would take us into the 21st century. We were on the cusp of everything.

And now the cusp has passed me by, and it is time for my 15-year high school reunion.

So now as I sit in the suburbs, writing the check to pay the mortgage, listening to the music of the 80’s and 90’s being referred to as “oldies” or “classics”, watching shows like “Veronica Mars” satirize every single aspect of my high school experience, and seeing my tutoring students show up in their flip-flops, and their pants with the waistband down at their knees, and their backwards-turned tennis visors, and their attitude of complete self-assured coolness, I hold onto this hope: one day, someone will be laughing at them, too. Possibly even today, if I have anything to say about it.