Bachelorette Party: Day 11
4:18 pm | 2 | Blog | Conversations, Girly
Despite the fact that I have tons of wonderful friends coming out of the woodwork with offers to take me out to dinner or distract me with Elvis Costello tickets, I’m still having a difficult time adjusting to life sans C, at least for the time being.
The other night, after spending several hours taking advantage of my friend Steven’s high-speed Internet access to redesign this site, I went home at midnight and decided to watch a movie.
I fixed myself some food, curled up on the couch and turned on the DVD player. Nothing.
I grabbed one of our four remotes (four!) and pressed the “DVD” button. Nothing.
Another remote, another “DVD” button. More nothing.
I spent about 45 minutes frantically trying to get the DVD player to work. I could hear the opening titles song, 30 seconds of it, on a loop, playing over and over and over again, as if to taunt me, but no picture. Only the repetitive sound of Brittanie going mad.
I got so frustrated that I wanted to find the heaviest remote and throw it at our ginormous flat-screen hellaciously expensive high-definition television. But instead, all I did was start sobbing.
These are the types of things that usually get me very, very worked up. It runs in the family. In fact, two Christmases ago I remember a very similar incident during which my non-technology savvy dad was trying to set up their brand new DVD player and, unable to figure it out, stormed out of the house in a disgruntled fury. The fact that my stepmom and I were cracking up laughing the whole time didn’t help matters.
Typically, however, C the zen master is able to take control and make everything better, giving me time to simmer down.
Now that he’s in Korea, though, I’m out of control.
A couple of mornings ago I decided I wanted to try to call him and wish him goodnight. So I dialed the number I had, but it didn’t go through. I tried a couple of different times, dialing 1 first, then dialing 0 first. No luck. So finally, frustrated as usual, I dialed the operator.
“Hi. I’m having difficulty trying to place an international phone call from Houston to South Korea.” Although I was extremely stressed out, I was actually holding it together here, and asked in my sweetest and most polite voice.
“What’s your long distance carrier?” the operator said in a tone even more exasperated than I felt.
“Umm, I don’t know.”
“Do you want me to connect you to I Don’t Know long distance?”
“I’m not sure.”
“I can connect you to I’m Not Sure long distance.”
“What? WHAT THE HELL IS THIS?”
“Ma’am, those are all names of long distance carriers.”
When the problem of “which remote do I use and when” arises simply take a deep breath, get the phone and call your closest (by distance) male friend. I am relatively sure that WE men make THOSE remotes complicated so we have an added purpose on this planet. Since someone has come up with cryogenically freezing sperm and a form of fertilization that was not around 100 years ago, and since it became legal for you ladies to ride with one leg on either side of the horse (I am still pissed off about that!), we are not quite as useful as we used to be. Just being able to take control (remote that is) and saying “let a man handle that” puts a smile on our faces.
Okay, AHNS, you’ll be the first one I call.