Death of a Receiver

I love Mondays….the predictability of knowing it’s a school, work, normal day.  We keep the weekends set aside for a plethora of activities.  Once we’ve done the deep, Saturday morning cleaning the rest of the day is up for grabs.  This weekend I filled orders and worked on a little desk for Hope’s new room.  Several of the kids mowed and we relaxed a little.  Then the bad thing happened….

I sat down in my recliner at about 2:30 on Saturday to scarf down half a sandwich and pre-watch a show I had taped for the kids.  But the receiver, the one that magically holds 100 hours of shows and would have blown my mind in the 70s when my grandparent’s pop up VCR was big news to the whole family, wouldn’t turn on.

It went downhill from there.  I spent an hour on the phone with service people, getting transferred from one technical adviser to another.  They kept transferring me because I kept asking to be transferred.  “I don’t care that you told me your name is Bob, your heavy accent makes it too hard to understand what you are saying.  Please transfer me to someone in America.”  Finally I got someone who’s first language is English and he eventually deduced that my receiver had bitten the proverbial dust.  We will be having a funeral as soon as arrangements can be made.  I’ll be wearing black in the meantime.

They will send me a replacement, but all of my recorded shows are gone.  My hard work and dedication to having something new and interesting for the kids to watch is lost.  I had at least 30 hours of previewed movies just waiting for their time to shine….now gone into that big TV receiver in the sky.

Since I won’t have reception for several more days, last night James and I sat in his office to watch “The Amazing Race” on his tiny TV.  Fortunately, even the smallest television set cannot dwarf the huge tears shed by Rachel when her day is not “fun and good.”  Or her extreme mood swing back to happy land when she wins a task.  That girl needs therapy.

It’s a good thing Monday is here and I won’t really miss my DVR again until the weekend.  By then I should have my new box and some freshly recorded shows.  I will be able to wear color again and it will be like it never happened.  That is, assuming I can figure out how to plug in the new one by myself.  That may cause me to go into some kind of anxiety attack.

I’m not going to think about that.  Happy thoughts….happy thoughts….

Have a great week!