Life can be an adventure, if you keep your eyes open.
This is just too good!
After taking a ride on some Conniption Train yesterday for most of my mind-boggling conscious day with some complicated issue over Google and Verizon Clouds, issues with Apple TV, too…and more….I decided I was up for another round, so-to-speak, late this afternoon.
I mean, it’s an absolutely beautiful (but windy) day here in the mid-sixties, and as I dealt with some laundry and got to thinking about some of my next goals, in addition to doing something outside today...I decided (just for the fun of it) to Google the number for my local Comcast-Xfinity customer service, which, according to Google was located in some store in York, PA.
Of course, after running through a series of robotic-voiced-barbed-wire-prompts, (intended to keep all customers from reaching some shore of intelligent, human life-forms for as long as robotically possible), similar to what one might have seen on Omaha beach…I just Googled…these were called Czech hedgehogs and the Germans used them in anticipation of an invasion by sea…which if you know any history, actually did eventually happen…
…just thought I’d give a quick summary, in case anyone reading has never had this happen to them, I ended up with the kind, pleasant voice of whom I came to know mid-way through this 69min 50sec convo (which I prepared and braced myself for…determining this time for a Take II so-to-speak…to be more calm, gracious and patient with some unfortunate human being who has somehow found himself taking calls from crazies in other countries (mainly I imagine, the US of A) in a job I can only imagine resembles some new layer of Dante’s inferno.
Hey. Guess what. I just Googled THAT…and, um…you can get a diagram for your cell phone case.
Um, that is…some ironically epic visual poetry. Ha.
You know, it’s been quite awhile since I read this one. Probably 9th or 10th grade, to be precise. Why would a 14 or 15-year-old read, yet understand, this poem.
I mean…the internet, cyberspace and cyber Clouds were yet to be invented. More than another epoch forty years would pass before I could experience the Verizon robot.
I should probably re-listen or re-read this sometime. Refresher course, now that I have more life experience to comprehend.
“Hell.” They keep using this word, but I’m not really sure they know what it means. Not until you have known…well….“the freshened up 2022 layer added which is the Verizon Cloud.”
OK, confession time here. I admit, I somewhat plagiarized the Dante’s inferno reference above.
I awoke this morning to one of my FB friends writing this on my post (rant) from yesterday:
“the Verizon cloud is layer 4 in the newly updated Dante’s Inferno. Freshened up for 2022. 
“
Seriously, at the end of my night last night I began to unwind by writing the first page of a dystopian comedic short story…who knows if I will ever finish it, but, at least in my own mind, it has a great plot! (it is another WIP…work-in-progress)
Now, the friend who made that comment…we went to college together and knew each other from Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship. She was an English major and seems to follow my writings pretty well and shares my quirky humor.
I love this banter with her, waking up to that comment kinda-sorta helped change the trajectory of today, in some small way.
At least, I was shaking my head laughing (you know SMH or LMAO, which I believe means, laughing my attitude off but IMHO I’m not so sure I have that right….).
“the Verizon cloud is layer 4 in the newly updated Dante’s Inferno. Freshened up for 2022. “
As they say…
WORD.
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So today…as some form of possible penance for my impatience yesterday…I dared dial another customer service number.
Dared myself.
HA!
I mean, yesterday I actually had the Verizon guy (2nd agent, around 3pm) laughing on the phone. He apologized, and said, “I’m not laughing at you, I’m laughing with you!”
Because by that time, as soon as I heard a human voice on the line, (oh, and this time we shared – almost – the same accent. Almost. No one has whatever accent I have…ha ha…) I was more prepared.
Anyways…as soon as I heard his voice, I kicked into frustrated stand-up comedy of sorts after first clearly pre-apologizing to him:
“I know this isn’t your fault but I’ve had a really terrible day. I’m really stressed. An hour ago I got disconnected from another Verizon agent who couldn’t properly explain your Cloud thing to me, after being on the phone 59 minutes. I really think she didn’t know. She couldn’t tell me whether my username for my Verizon.com was the same as my username for VerizonCloud.com – or – whatever – and she told me to just put in my phone number. Which worked, but I wanted to know why in my notes I had my username as my old (divorced) name, not my phone number. She couldn’t tell me that, nor, how I might change that. Because, every time I see that name, I feel triggered.”
So I went on with this man, yesterday, (of course I am paraphrasing this and just beefing it up about 7% more comedic quality that I actually rattled off at this guy, impromtu….I told him, “I think my blood pressure is now 1000/500, and I really need you to help me.”
After that intro he told me, “I will definitely help with all that.”
*giggling as I write this, ha ha*
After he helped me understand that I could NOT access the Verizon Cloud on my desktop without an app (I thought apps were for phones…“Oh FOMO”…I’ve been missing out?! FOMO is “fear of missing out” – I could put an APP on my desktop, too?! And wow, FOMO can now be found in Merriam-Webster’s dictionary. Oh the times…they are a changin’….)
Here. I will use it in a sentence:
“During the pandemic shutdowns, I had FOMO when I heard about everyone watching Tiger King in their pajamas. Or, even with no pajamas. I heard people were watching Tiger King without clothes and I was envious. FOMO I tell you. The only explanation. So I signed up for Netflix, ordered take-out food from others in essential services, along with some shots of tequilla.”
WORD.
__
Then…I like, um…Googled that APP and tried to download it onto my computer while on phone with this man unfortunate enough to answer my call to Verizon support…only to find that I could not run it on Windows 7. Oh, but I could easy-peasy change my operating system (for FREE) to Windows 10, so…like…I could run this Verizon app on my desktop to delete photos from a Cyberspace Cloud.
This was like, um…TOO MUCH.
So, like…um…I told this person I had Windows 10 on my laptop, but it was really really slow. More issues than my Desktop has, which on most days, pretty much behaves. Now that I, um….bought a lot of external terrabytes for the thing last June to unload my C Drive. (Oh, a Western Digital C Drive I’ve been told is prone to FAIL. Ha. Those noises sometimes…hmmmm….)
Anyways, I told this guy at Verizon, “I am really upset. You wouldn’t want to hear a woman cry would you?”
He said, “NO!”
Ha.
By then I was capitulating that the first agent may have been right about one thing…I needed to sign in to the Cloud thing on my phone. Which…she helped me do about 3 times (hey, but who is counting?), after she kept unlocking my locked account after my attempts to get into the Cloud via my desktop, using both my old user-divorced-name and/or my phone number.
Now, I cannot testify for certain, if it came to that, ha ha, that this was exactly what happened…but it is my best guess.
So, with the 2nd guy (I didn’t get his name, like Angelo with Comcast-Xfinity today, ha ha) yesterday, I was looking at the photos on my phone in Verizon Cloud. Like, the app. He was trying to help me navigate the symbols. To like, um…delete them…because, like…um…I’m a visual artist but apparently really dumb at symbol reading. Sometimes.
Just give me one word. Like, um…“click here to delete photo(s)” and I think I can figure that one out.
WORD.
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At one point this guy said “you can tell it to delete all photos at once, rather than one at a time.”
I paused, my wheels were spinning. What could possibly go wrong with this advice?
I said, “But…um…like screenshots…you know…like nasty messages people might send me once in a blue moon…they are like…um…images…too…right?”
He said, “yes.”
I said, “NO. I won’t take that risk. I want all those nasty messages and a few voicemails, too.”
I actually worded it slightly differently...he was laughing at me, by then.
I mean, with me.
He was laughing with me.
At that point, I wandered over to my office window…staring out…and said something like…“you wouldn’t want to hear a woman catch on fire, either, would you?” I could not think of the word. You know, what those Buddhist monks do sometimes. They…um…spontaneously combust?
Em-a-late…hmmm…hold on…
*Googles”
Immolate. That’s it.
I repeated to him, “I mean, I’m upset here today. My blood pressure is high, ha ha.”
Anyways…he was laughing; I got my answer.
It was a just a Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day.
And the irony of it all?
About 7 pm after re-starting my device (remember, we aren’t dealing with phones anymore…devices – and actually I recall him saying “things just aren’t as simple as the old rotary phone anymore,” I think this was an old guy, and I’m thinking in some back file of my brain…“Buddy you got THAT right!”) I noticed, voila! Suddenly, the one goal I was hoping for that day was accomplished.
I no longer saw the photos (those since October 2021) that I had transferred to my computer, deleted from my phone, and deleted from the Google Cloud, every single one going back three years (also emotional seeing some of these images and a bit triggering, which probably contributed to my very high, ha ha just joking, metaphorical blood pressure range yesterday!) and taking that Google Cloud thing down to zero. I mean…zero photos… and I was so upset to still see these photos on my phone….I mean…my device.
I just wanted…a fresh start. So I could keep organizing cyberspace and my files and continue pulling images, methodically, for my various promotional work I’m doing right now.
Anyway, this voila event last night reminded me of the ending scene to Burn After Reading, one of my favorite dark comedies. (I think this is pretty funny and a crazy plot…but…trigger warning on the YouTube link for language).
Like the crazy plot in that one, at the end of the day the FBI and CIA guys are discussing the status of the case…and one of them shakes their head, as they contemplate that they have no idea what they really did or accomplished in the whole fiasco…but…well…let’s just carry on…so-to-speak. Whatever it is they did, they decided the lesson was not to do it again!
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Now what I really wanted to storytell was my much better day today and wonderful experience with Angelo. Angelo, of Comcast-X-finity, whom I can only presume does not live in York, PA.
I think he enjoyed talking with me, by the end, truly…and it was mutual. Of course, I can only recount the essence of this dialogue in retrospect and paraphrase, for simplicity’s sake but will attempt that below, taking care to not compromise any essential elements of this conversation but capture the essence of it.
As I spoke with Angelo, I was able (unlike yesterday) to walk around outside doing things I love and even snapping photo images while on hold (ha…I have over 22,000 images in my Verizon Cloud which I now realize can just stay there…it was the Google Cloud yesterday that really was the issue, as one FB friend commented, the cache probably couldn’t catch up with how much I deleted around noon that day…) of various things I saw with my eyes. Artistically, singular visual images are important to me…I suppose almost like one musical chord to a musician, or, a single stanza to a poet. My artist’s eye gravitates to both the granular images and the big picture, too.
Because of the plethora of images I created while on hold on the call with X-finity-Angelo (and yes, I was very careful, in using my camera while on hold…I didn’t dare want to disconnect…and toward the end I was down to 5% charge and found myself somewhat running inside to plug in before it might suddenly cut the call off).
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So, without further ado, I will set the stage for why I called Comcast/X-finity, and then try to recreate the best parts of our dialogue.
The situation: I have some dear local friends who are in-between a housing situation and have stored a bunch of items here in my outbuilding. Such a blessing to be able to return this favor to someone else, since during my transition back north from Alabama (via a temporary living situation in Delaware from February until mid-August 2020, before moving to my permanent home/studio here in Pennsylvania), three friends graciously allowed me to avoid paying for costly storage units (which given I didn’t know the pandemic was coming and how it would slow down my move to PA from an estimated 2-3 months to over six months, that was huge for me…given all of my household/business contents I took to Alabama in 2012 needed storage and one 20ft Uhaul plus two 15footers…).
My friends here offered to pay me but I wouldn’t hear of it, but I did notice they had several TV’s in storage and asked if they might want to sell or trade one…they enthusiastically offered me one of them (I love the idea of the trade/barter sub-economy which I really found intriguing several years back in listening to Sacred Economics, dealing with the history of money/trade and the sometimes non-sensical-seeming-arbitrary assignment of value to goods/services…quite a thought-provoking read) and over the weekend set it up for me in my TV room, and moved my other TV down to what I plan to have partially to be a Guest House area…an informal AirB&B type thing, eventually…with a 70’s Retro-Hippie theme I’ve been working toward.
I am also terrible using/understanding TV remotes (which sort of led to the accidental activation of Apple TV one-week-trial this past Sunday which I found difficult to easily undo with Apple, also needing a phone agent, ha ha…yesterday, while I was on hold with the first Verizon agent I started trying to figure that out…)
So earlier today my son messaged me, having returned from a road trip of some sort, asking “how are you?”
Ha. This is slightly funny, too. Since I sometimes wonder if his friends may read my FB posts (he deactivated his account a year ago) and message him, “Hey…Zach… better check on your mom!”
Just slight curiosity but it was probably a coincidence he initiated a text out-of-the-blue. Because, like many grown men and especially his generation, they don’t want to bother too much with longer texts. The communications can truly be convoluted and funny, too….mom will ask series of logistical questions, son(s) respond with a single word: yes.
“Yes” what? Which question??!!
I’m thinking WAIT. I homeschooled you. You can form sentences, I hope. (Oh believe me, he can…)
Remember the “who, what, where, when and how thing?“
THAT. I’m thinking.
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True story. A woman friend around my age shares my pain. Ha. She said she will want to dialogue over something or some plan with her grown millennial.
Let’s just call them what they are?
Phones are now devices.
Grown children are now millennials.
Got it!
So, she will place a phone call. Because…like, um…our generation used to call people. And talk.
Millennial will text back: can’t talk, text me
Mom texts her several paragraphs since that is what the conversation warrants.
Millennial texts back: TLDR
I could be wrong, but I’m pretty sure the SAT test prep used to teach recognition of conceptual situations in readings.
You know, metaphors.
Like, um….“being between a rock and a hard place.”
Oh, yes. Here’s some humor about the degradation of the English language. I actually, um, say like and…um…a lot. And, I uptalk, as well.
Ha. Go figure.
I once heard that older people that adopt younger speech patterns tend to be more open-minded and agile/flexible in their thinking. That might make sense.
I would like to somehow lose my “like and um” habit but I find real-time verbal communications more challenging than writing. For some reason.
And, I think it is fun to incorporate written-visual inflection and bad-speak-habits into my writings, too.
Um…like…I was telling you about Comcast/X-finity Angelo. (Read with upward voice inflection on the name Angelo, for the uptalk version…which seems to be some technique for emphasis where one inflects a question at the end of a sentence that is actually…um…a statement.)
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Now, if you’ve read to this point, you are a real trooper, ha ha. I was intending to form some type of re-creation of my dialogue with Angelo…but let me just give a sort of summary.
My son had messaged me and we chit-chatted about stuff including this being the busiest time of year for him with his garden/tree work/business and for me, also, with my produce stand preparations. The preliminary time involved is more labor-intensive than later maintaining/harvesting. But I had asked if he might come here soon, help me a bit outside in trade for me helping him with some things, and especially, help set up the new TV and remote properly and the one downstairs. And maybe, like…um…watch a movie with me and spend the night, too.
With, his dog, of course.
Now, that’s a lot and a big request, maybe. Of course he was sorry he could not, and sorry I was overwhelmed, but said he’s “in the situation” which I think I deciphered as meaning that he is in the identical situation, with busy/planting/preparing. Not free til mid-March.
So….then…around 4pm-ish, while doing laundry, I start to look at that TV. Pretty sure I need a 2nd Comcast/X-Finity box to run it. I may be dumb, but I’m not stupid. Those cable things? On the wall. I was told when I moved here, each TV gets a box for these things. And, of course, a charge.
I start to think…hmmm…my son can’t come til mid-March. Maybe I can do what I call a “Hellen”…she’s my very dear former Alabama neighbor, now around 86-years-old…I’ve lost track…who’s counting?!
She is so funny. That feisty, wonderful, funny woman could sweet-talk any southern man who enters her home into helping her with some random thing, ha ha. Oh…the stories. I love that woman. Really, truly.
From 800 miles away I’ve heard how she talked two Lowe’s guys into hooking up her washer and some minor electrical repairs! She didn’t know they were just dropping it off. Even when I lived there….I recall she had some issue with her heater/ac or something and I had a plumber working on the well pump outside. She came over and talked with us and ended up taking him over to her house later to look at something (else) inside, something electrical, as I recall. He was so very kind to come back and work on it for her, after hours. I am probably getting details wrong, but it doesn’t matter. She and I are both survivors of sorts. Cut from the same cloth I suppose.
And I learned that in the south, I think people truly are kinder and more generous to older people…perhaps…people look out for one another more, in general…maybe?
The best Hellen story was when I helped her buy a medical lift chair off FB marketplace…that one, along with the conjoined tracker boat sale story is just too funny. It will be another post someday, hopefully. But the thing was, we had it in my van with no one to get it out into her house for her husband, before he passed. There were a couple of men spreading extra gravel at the end of her drive (I later learned they had come to the farm across the road trying to sell the remaining gravel leftover from a job and our neighbor bought it and told them to spread it on Hellen’s drive…ha ha…) and I walked down and asked them if they could help us get the thing in the house if I paid them $20. Ha ha…they were up for that, but it became a fiasco getting it around a tight corner. I was directing them (and one of them smelled a bit fragrant!)…they set the thing down in the hall and insisted it wouldn’t go into the back room, nor back outside, I think! I told them, yes, just take it partway into that room, pause, rotate it that-a-way…and then pull forward, rotate again and then into that room.
I mean. I’m an artist. I am spatial. They followed my guidance and I kept joking to them, “You know…it’s like birthin’ a baby, birthin’ a baby!” (Reference, Gone With the Wind…I recall a line about “I ain’t know nothin’ bout birthin’ no babies!”)
When the chair ended up in the back room, those guys looked at me and said, “Next time I move, I’m calling you!”
Ha.
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So….I’m thinking...I bet I could get a Comcast guy to set this TV up and even program my universal remote bought for the newer upstairs TV. Maybe, they would also attach the used DVD recorder/video player I bought at a church thrift shop several months ago. I think this new universal remote may work that, too? I’m just a bit overwhelmed to use my brain on this. Not that I couldn’t.
Now, I’m pretty sure Comcast might charge me to set up said “box.” But…well….here goes….
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On phone (after running through the barbed wires of the very similar Comcast/X-infity prompts…they do everything possible to keep you from talking to some human being, like…Angelo…his name was longer, I would have never remembered it…he just shortened when I asked his name…eventually…the “just call me ‘Angelo'” basically…ha ha…). At one point I pressed a prompt for “technician” – it just seemed like the best option to talk about getting another BOX.(?) (read with uptalk) And of course, some man to hook up that box! Ha.
But then, the robot wanted me to trouble shoot about my box with some signal. The robot told me they detected errors in my (current) TV box and could fix it if I would “let them run a test.”
Ha. I kept saying “no,”…”no…”…..then resorted to hitting “zero – O for operator, ha ha” over and over til that robot went away and connected me to…ahhhhh…..Angelo.
Yesterday, the Verizon robot would startle me upon connecting to the customer service number…for a moment, I heard a friendly woman’s voice saying, “Hi, Eileen!” and of course it was jarring. How did they (it) know my name? Ha. Of course. Robots know (and control?) everything in this world, now. It almost – I say almost – fooled me for a millisecond that I had miraculously bypassed the prompts.
Nope. I hadn’t. The Verizon robot yesterday was just there to talk me out of getting to a human being. Clever. At the same time she was greeting me, asking for my four-digit pin (which I quickly searched my long password document for)…I simultaneously got a text from Verizon suggesting I click a link to talk to the (other?) link/robot about my “problem/issue.“
Truth is stranger than fiction, they say. You just can’t make this stuff up. Still hoping to write my dystopian comedy short story someday…maybe I can refer back to this writing, for ideas. Ha.
Yesterday was rough, but I seem to be getting a lot of creative mileage from it, and I suppose that is good. (I have a mug that says…“Define Good.” Again, as they say, “WORD.”)
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So back to today. With Agent Angelo.
After discussing another box, being put on and off hold to clarify price of additional box (at first he said $15, then it was clarified, $8 for the 2nd box and the taxes bring it to around $15 more per month), I asked about set-up. He wanted to confirm my address to ship me the “box.“
Of course, it would be $70 for a human to come here and set it up for me, ha ha. I get it. But…I also said, “is there any way you could waive the fee this one time? I’m a good customer and I’m here alone, I don’t know how to do this.”
Ha. Yes. I’ve learned from Hellen. And, other things. You know, like on my web hosting service. If I can’t get help/understand my technical support agents (this actually happened regarding a hacking/other stuff in Alabama around 2017) I learned that if I call back and request the prompt for “account termination” that miraculously some guy named Matt, located somewhere in a building in Arizona, as I recall…answers!
Oh Matt really solved the issue for me…ha ha…very quickly. Great rapport, I talk a bit quickly especially when upset. He followed every word and wasn’t repeating back my question as a place-holder while he formed his technical response…trivia…this issue arose after Google started to require SSL certificates on sites and seemed that after an agent applied one to my site it messed up other stuff…had to do with cookies and broken url’s the “https:” created from my coding references that previously said “http:” …that also coincided with insecure PHP files (open-source coding used in WP, which my son used at that time, on my hosting plan) that occasionally got hacked with phishing malware and shut down my entire site…as well as…my email…since I don’t use gmail often).
Anyways, did you know you can do that? Somehow, even though after using that hosting service nearly 20 years with no intention of terminating, I requested that department.
Just to cut through all the frustration and get the matter resolved.
I get it. Everyone in this beautiful world needs work, and I mean nothing ill toward agents with accents (like…Angelo…today…). It’s a global economy. For better and/or worse. People need to work, eat, and more. It “is what it is”…as they say…but…it can be frustrating. Because I recall nearly twenty years ago always getting easy technical support from my hosting service, with agents located here in the US.
And I get it, that if I wanted that kind of service, I’d need to pay through my subscription, these helpers, a living US wage…which would like…um…probably run my yearly hosting service 10x higher in cost than it already is. Especially, they might flag my account as needing extra help…some TLC of sorts…right? Ha.
But, back to Angelo. I asked him about waiving the fee this once, all calmly since I was now walking outside, even feeding my chickens at the same time. It was so Zen, I suppose. Some analgesic to calm me down. Now about twenty minutes into this convo with Angelo…he was so very polite. Right away he acknowledge something along the lines that he knew I was a good (and loyal, that’s the word he used) customer and he would put me on hold to ask about sending someone there to help me, for free.
*I’m giggling as I write…so amusing in a sense*
Angelo comes back on and says they will do it, this one time. Of course, I’ve never asked for this before!
So then I’m on and off hold with him and eventually I’m sent a link by text to agree to the terms of this additional box and service…oh…and this is too good, too…I believe when I opened the link I was informed I might incur charges from my cell carrier…um…like…that would be…Verizon. (read with inflected…uptalk…pleeze….because I tell you, they have to have a disclaimer…but wouldn’t that be some turn of events….the Comcast text leads to a charge that I then need to contact Verizon about and spend an hour getting off my bill? Of course, this doesn’t happen with my plan, it is just a generic notice…but these people are really smart. They know if they did add $2 to your bill, or less…say…fifty cents…no person in their right mind, hopefully, would dare spend an hour on the phone with Verizon to get it removed. (Angelo did tell me he made notes, and if I get billed by Comcast for this…to call them about it. Now, I would do that! That’s actually how I learned his name. I asked the human…what is your name?)
Right?
Oh…this rant could now go more ways…with Etsy’s changeover several years ago to their new payment system. Previously, buyers could transact with PayPal, and I could have immediate access for business cash flow. Now, all purchases go through an Etsy payment system – buyer can use PayPal or other forms of payment, still – but sellers like me don’t have immediate access for cash flow and especially, materials expense, prior to order completion, as easily.
How much interest is Etsy able to draw on these funds while the artists have more lag time? I imagine it adds up, like a bank. Etsy is like a bank, of sorts. I get it. They need to make money, too, and their site is well-worth my time and inconvenience in connecting me with customers, too. But I must meet the threshold of $25 for a daily deposit transfer. So if I go four days selling only one thing for $24, I have no access to that. Then, when I reach the threshold, they send an email saying, for example, “27.56 is on its way for deposit into your bank account.” But what they mean is when I see that email on a Wednesday, on Thursday maybe mid-afternoon, or even Friday sometimes, it will then come into my business account. Some weeks (most weeks) I sell a good amount of smaller items that can add up to larger deposits, but, smaller things can also be more labor-intensive. (Etsy also takes listing and sales fee, too, but I believe it is well-worth it).
This piece seems to be some type of rant I will probably tag in multiple categories on my blog, here.
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So I asked Angelo, “when will this man come to do this?“ Again, I was put on hold on and off. Eventually, Angelo kept apologizing for putting me on hold, thanking me for my time…and I’d say that about 45 minutes into this convo said,
“Do you have chickens?”
Yes. He said that. Actually, before that I was walking all around, in and out of the building an such…and it was windy…he kept saying, “are you traveling?” I think he wondered if I was driving with my windows rolled down or something and that is why I cut in and out somewhat…
Oh I’m laughing…smiling….I was wondering if he heard them squawking while I was feeding them. I mean…I wasn’t sure when he’d be back on the call…my time counts, too. My chickens need me. Actually they tried to run out of the coop, ha ha, in broad daylight…because they were…haaanngry…as they say…I was so upset yesterday I was brief with them last night, just a lick-and-a-promise of some food, as the old saying goes…tossing a smaller quantity while I took three more eggs from them!
They don’t free-range…and they don’t normally try to escape in broad daylight. Ha ha. So yeah. I got in there quickly putting my foot in, first, to discourage them back from the door….while I dumped a bunch of food into the feeder. They were a little talkative, these hens, so I suppose Angelo had warmed up enough to me from somewhere on this beautiful planet to ask…“do you have chickens?!”
I should have said, “Doesn’t everyone have chickens?!”
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So, this led to a wonderful, personal conversation. I’ve had these on occasion with phone agents, I recall one such conversation with a Verizon (subcontracted of course) young man during the pandemic shutdown. He was in the Phillipines or Indonesia I recall…or maybe Guam…I forget…but we got to talking about curfews/shut-downs/and much more in his country, somehow. He said that people could shop on certain days, alphabetically by name, and that the police enforced that somehow. He was young (twenty-some) and said it was hard on him because usually his mom usually did his laundry and he missed her, and it was hard for him to keep on top of it! (but, teaching him…)
Anyway, back to Angelo. We got into this conversation…he asked if I lived on a farm. I told him, “well sort of…it’s more like a homestead…”
He wanted to know what other animals I had. I told him I had previously had some goats but they died, but I was thinking of possible getting more.
Among the conversation details I learned that he lives in a rural area, there are chickens (his parents have some) and “cowbarrows?” can be seen in the streets. I was having trouble understanding the term, I thought he said a cart pulled by a horse or animal – I did think it sounded like camel-something at first – but his description was unclear somewhat. I am certain from the context he meant something like the following images found online (and especially, more like the second image):
I had asked how old people are while continuing to garden and work land there…he told me most people learn to work land around age twenty-one and easily continue into old age (he said “sixty” which worried, me, ha ha….I’m fifty-eight….).
I had asked whether people farmed into their 70’s, 80’s and even 90’s. Basically yes. Rice plantings, and more. From both necessity and also, the pleasure of it.
I commented at one point how much I enjoyed gardens and that it was good for mental health. He agreed and talked about how stressful life in cities there is and that the rural people are happier, less stressed. I believe he even said they were “calmer.”
He told me that he enjoyed being in that more rural environment more, that it helped him de-stress from his job. I commented that I imagined his job was really stressful, and made small reference to my previous difficult day.
He told me that I was easy to talk to and sounded so calm.
This, is kinda-sorta funny, but, actually was true, at least today. I was in my happy place…just on some cellphone adventure to see if I could sweet-talk Comcast/X-infinity to send me some man here (in lieu of my millennial son…who is now…so very very busy….and as he should be, of course, in the prime of his beautiful life…that “cat in the cradle!”…)
Angelo and I went on to chat (between hold times…I actually think he was enjoying the convo…he kept telling me if I could be on hold just a little longer…and how pleasant our convo was…).
We talked about growing one’s own food and the pandemic, and he said that many people have money but that doesn’t help if there are supply chain issues. He was very intelligent, and this is such a deep truth so many don’t fully grasp – unintended consequences of so many things, on so many potential levels.
My son told me during 2020 that the US is just three-days lag time in the food supply chain. I’m sure one could research how close-to-the-mark this statement actually is, but I believe it is somewhat close, in all probability. Not just globally but also within the US itself. The idea of anything shutting down cross-state or even within areas of states, transport of essential goods (food), is potentially very significant.
We already have a food crisis in the US, whether we see it or not. And, an obesity epidemic especially among the poor. But, I digress.
We do know that some products have become unavailable or delayed, still. I found it interesting, by region, what was in shortage in grocery stores. While I am not fully invested in any catastrophic world situation, at the same time, this global economy and our dependence on others for basic food, both prepared and especially, fresh foods/vegetables/meats, has a tremendous potential for serious consequences, should certain factors ever align. Let’s hope not. I wrote I DON’T KNOW HOW TO EAT THIS APPLE during 2020.
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Toward the end of the convo, I asked Angelo how old he thought I was. Now, perhaps he was flattering me but he guessed me under thirty. I laughed. I told him I was fifty-eight. He said that I just sounded young and energetic, and the way I spoke to him, he thought I was younger.
Anyways. March 1. Between 2-4 pm, I’m getting a man here (ha…how presumptuous of me…just like in this piece ) to set up this TV. I hope to have a shelf built before then. I love to build things, to hold things. Custom-designed.
Stay tuned….ha ha….I’m going to have all my TV paraphernalia ready. At hand! DVD player, remote(s), all that…
Maybe I can offer him a cup of tea and cookies. Ha ha. I’m just kidding…I have quite an imagination and sense of humor…
Life is hard. It really is.
But…it is also a great adventure…and I thank God, for that.
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Oh yeah. True story. Last week I had another “God-wink” I didn’t get to write about, but wanted to. I believe I spent 13 hours on computer last Wednesday working on my new website for local business. I was watching a YouTube video in bed that night and leaned my phone vertically against my very favorite graven image of Jesus I keep on my nightstand. I put Him on the bed and propped my phone on this. Well, it got knocked off onto the floor. I was too tired to pick it up.
Next day, I found my graven image of Jesus.
True story!
He was upside-down on His holy head…caught in my bedframe. At first, I didn’t see Him. I only saw an empty glass frame on the floor. I was looking under my bed and dresser. Before I saw Him there…just…standing on His head, basically. Sacred heart intact and all…
I really do think it might have been…a personal God-wink to me…
Because I tell you…I paused at that one.
And…smiled…in amusement.
Maybe He’s like…um…“I see what’s going on here…oh my goodness…and…top it off…you are being supervised by a CAT. What am I going to do with you, child? Stop making me laugh. I’m standing on my head now…this is soooo….upside down. All of it. Ha.” (always put words of Jesus in RED)
I don’t know…would Jesus say that to someone?
Does Jesus laugh?
I’m not saying He said that, nor laughed with me…I’m just saying…God gave me an imagination…and I assure you, I did NOT make that photo end up in this position. It just…happened. I always seem to be in some strange sequence of events…but...perhaps I’m looking for that story. Or, the laugh?!
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Just as I finished this blog piece, I checked my texts. There was a message waiting…not from Angelo...but from…um…somebot I just have no time for!
Enjoy this slideshow I created…the learning curve continues to be a bit high on some new creative toys I’ve been exploring…but it was well worth it.
“Texting Chatbot”
“You’re mad, bonkers, completely off your head, but I’ll tell you a secret… all of the best people are.”
–Alice in Wonderland
Thank You For Reading
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