It’s Something, Anyway

Yesterday our modem decided that it needed a vacation day… or something… A call to the ISP netted nothing more helpful than "we are sorry ma'am, but your modem is dead, and out of warranty, if you want to have internet service through us, you will have to buy a new modem, or upgrade to a new, more expensive plan, at which point we will GIVE you a new modem." Umm, yeah, right, isn't that handy, if we agree to pay you at least 50% MORE than what we've been paying for the last 14 months, you will GIVE us a new modem… it's only going to cost us an additional $10 and change a month. THAT'S NOT A GIFT YOU TWERPS!!! Fortunately, this morning, after leaving the modem off for 24 hours, we were able to get it restarted, and working just fine. So, we are going to try to keep it somewhere with a little better air circulation so it doesn't get quite so hot and need another vacation day.
In the meantime, we managed to get the carpet pulled up in the front room. Utter NASTINESS, let me assure you. Based on the orangey color, and the patterned shag nap, I am gonna venture out and say it was installed sometime in the, ohhh, late 1960s or early 1970s. Since its installation, it had multiple animals, plus an old Mustang, I think, engine restored while sitting on it. The padding was rotten, and almost as orange as the carpet. HUGELY gross, stuck in many places to the linoleum. We scraped, swept, vacuumed, scrubbed, and mopped as much as we could up, and then commenced moving most of the furniture we planned to put into the room. Unfortunately, as the prodigal adult kid has returned, and requires a spot to bed down (and I'm now in his old room), a couple of pieces we planned on putting in there just won't fit. It's fine, those pieces are not really in the way where they have been for months.
Today we sorted through no less than 5 mail totes, a couple of laundry hampers, 4 milk crates, and a couple of cardboard boxes. Toys, clothes, linens, books, videos, video games for obsolete systems, video game boxes with no games in them. Yeah, in the end, I have 2 boxes of toys/misc household stuff, 2 big bags of clothes plus a few hanging pieces, and 2 big bags of linens that I'll take to Mission Arlington tomorrow afternoon after church. We won't even go into what all got trashed because it was clearly broken or otherwise ruined, rendering it useless. My room is still a pile o'stuff, but I can address that once the public areas are handled to the point that I'm not needed out there to be working on that stuff. I will have 5 days while everybody else is gone next week to get my room under control and get more fully settled.
I am also working on carving out a time in my day to sit and write regularly. Honestly, much of it may be rambling nonsense, more journaling than anything else, but I am hopeful that as the habit develops, my writing will develop and improve. I am going to look next week into perhaps some HR & business classes, maybe some creative writing courses or something at the local college. I'm not having much luck finding work, even at minimum wage, perhaps a course or two would add to my skill set, make me more marketable, and give me more of a creative outlet. For now, it's time to snuggle with the kitties and watch a little Northern Exposure.