I have been planning to do some painting in our living room and actually found myself with a few minutes to work on it this week. Actually, it would be more accurate to say I’ve been planning to finish some painting in our living room, since this is a project that got started several months ago and got set to the side when I suffered a rotator cuff injury. Since then, it’s been sitting there in its unfinished state, mocking me – a daily reminder of one more unfinished item on my cosmic (and unending) to-do list.
In any case, with my found time, I jumped right in and got to work. In no time the wall in question (behind our fireplace) got a nice coat of semi-designer café au lait paint. Okay – who are we kidding here - it’s what my mom used to call dirty beige. I like it, its bright and clean but not too stark and harsh. If you happen to come over and see it – humour me when I tell you it is café au lait, okay!? I’m very sensitive about crap like that!
Anyways, when i was finished, I decided that we had too many cords and power supplies all twisted together in a monstrous, writhing abomination of electrical conduit – all making itself into a wierd little nest behind the satellite box. Perhaps it was time to do a bit of “cord organization” to finish things off, I thought to myself? I was so naïve…
I got right to work, and in no time at all, I was frustrated, lost and (I have to admit) a trifle frightened. You see, not only do I have a limited knowledge of what cord goes where and why, but I also have no idea (nor do I care) why you would ever need to connect the vcr to the dvd player to the satellite to the gaming system(s). Just looking at the whole mess makes me dizzy and a trifle ill. I have to face facts - I am hopelessly cord-challenged. There’s no other way to say it.
But I’m not a quitter, and so I started tracing wires from device to destination, carefully noting what started where and ended where-else. I began the dizzying process of carefully untangling each 12-15 foot long section of cord, and re-attached each connection with what I felt was a suitable amount of care and precision. When I was at last finished and had plugged the last cord in, I stepped back, picked up the remote and triumphantly turned on the television.
Nothing.
It was deader than a doornail, to quote my ‘o-so-quotable’ father! Obviously I’d done something wrong. Of course, by now, my careful system of keeping cords separate and “remembering” where everything went was totally useless. So I decided to just use logic. I spent another half hour trying to sort the whole mess out – all the while fighting an overwhelming urge to heave the whole bloody mess out the window, plugged in the last cord, stepped back and tentatively picked up the remote.
Nothing.
It was now that my 12-year-old son came home from school. After a short “de-briefing” session, in which I shouted… er, that is to say I explained what had happened and what the difficulty was, DS (Darling Son) sat down, moved three plugs, jumbled up a bunch of cords, almost pulled the new tv off the wall, fought with his sister, sent a message to his friend on his DSi and then plugged in the last cord, stepped back and casually picked up the remote.
Eureka! Everything worked seamlessly – harmony restored once more to our little electronic universe. I was thrilled - and more than a little relieved that DH (Darling Hubby) wouldn’t have to come home and repair all my hapless handiwork. Then I happened to look behind the unit that houses the satellite receiver, dvd player, etc. and saw… a monstrous, writhing abomination of electrical conduit – all making itself into a wierd little nest.
It was at this point that I made myself a coffee and sat myself down to watch Oprah. I’m not stupid - I know when I’m beat.
