The Ongoing Saga of the Cherry Pits

Al finally returned to his dentist for the temporary crown on Wednesday, August 7. We thought it would only take about a half an hour, but, alas, he was in the dentist chair for two hours! Picking, drilling, trimming gums and packing them… Poor Al! His mouth was so sore! We got home just in time for him to have some soup for lunch. After eating it, he said, “I want to disconnect the modem, take it to Comcast and exchange it.”  I wasn’t sure if his mouth felt better or if he was still numbed from the Novocain. This is a big chore to do three hours after dental surgery! But he did it anyway (why am I not surprised?), and we got the new faster modem. Al reconnected it, started up the computer, and nothing happened! But we had anticipated problems! The clerk at Comcast had given us a phone number to call for problems activating a modem. Al called it, conversed with the robotic voice, punched in the right numbers, then asked for a representative. He was informed by the robotic voice that there was a seven minute wait time. So he put the cell phone on speaker so I can listen to their elevator music, too. 

      All of a sudden the back door was flung open and our daughter Dorothy came barreling through it, yelling, “I’VE GOT TO PEE REALLY BADLY!!! CLEAR A PATH TO THE BATHROOM!” I jumped out of her way; she used the bathroom and just when she was coming out, a real live person came on the line to Al’s cell phone. I quickly explained to Dorothy what was going on. Then Al comes out of his office, saying in a loud voice, “Hello? Can you hear me? Hello? Can you hear me?” Al could hear the technician but the technician could not hear him. So the technician hung up on him!!!

      Al was furious!! I thought he was going to spit the packing out of his mouth and start his gums bleeding again! He called the number back, talked to the robotic voice again, and finally got in touch with a real person who could hear him! This tech talked him through the activation process and got us online, but the modem wasn’t downloading as fast as it should. Then, suddenly without warning, the cell phone dropped the call!! By the way, he was using the cell phone because the land line would not work until the modem was activated. Since the modem was working well enough to allow Al to go online, he contacted a Comcast tech in an online chat room. Her name was Gisell. She kept instructing him to try different things and report back to her. By this time the Novocain had definitely worn off and Al, Al was in pain, and his dyslexia was interfering with his ability to type. He was confusing 9 and 6, and b and p. This often happens when dyslexics become fatigued. Dorothy, who is also dyslexic, saw what was happening and said, “Dad, let me do the typing for you.”  So they switched seats while Gisell did the trouble shooting for the modem.

      Two and a half hours later, the modem was faster but still not downloading as rapidly as it should. The tech noticed something in the instruction manual and typed that the problem was Al’s router. Al got angry again and started to complain that there was nothing wrong with his router and that it had worked just fine on Friday when the Comcast repairman was at our house!!!! Again, I thought he was going to spit out the packing around his tooth. Evidently this router was so new that the technicians hadn’t had time to learn about it. Gisell informed Al that this brand new modem had a built-in router!!!! So Al disconnected it and the download speed soared!!!! Its built-in router was ten times faster than the old one!!!  Too bad she hadn’t discovered that two hours ago!!

      We all gave thanks to God that Dorothy was in the right place at the right time. She had not planned to visit us; she just happened to be in our neighborhood that afternoon!!! But she was a Godsend because she is so computer literate, unlike me. She knew how to handle the situation with the computer – and with her dad! She and her husband remind me of a verse I read in the Bible today while I was reading in my garden. Psalm 144:12 – “May our sons in their youth be like plants full grown, our daughters like corner pillars, cut for the building of a palace.”

Pictures show colorful penta and blue salvia in my containers.