My heart bleeded, girl

So Verizon came to our house specifically today, not just running new cable down the street. They got here around 5, and I watched out the window as they studied the pole at the top of our driveway, then made phone calls, walked down the street to look at the other pole, then paced around some more. One guy finally headed for our door, and I knew it wasn't going to be good.

He said the poles were too unsafe for them to work on, and we were going to have to wait until the power company replaces the poles. Their boss's best guess was two weeks, but he was going to call the power company to coordinate. I wasn't rude, I didn't say anything unpleasant, but I wasn't happy, and I said things like "You're kidding me" and "Fine, whatever," and then I almost sort of slammed the door.

And then I felt like an ass, so I went outside and told the guy -Mark- that I was sorry if I was rude and huffy, I knew it wasn't his fault. I mean, I just didn't want to be that person, you know? I want to be the good part of someone's day, not the bad part.

So then his partner started talking about how awesome the tree was, and how sad it was, and how everywhere they'd been, our tree, and the resulting mess, were the worst they'd seen. And he whipped out his cell phone because he just had to take a picture.

And then we were all best buds, talking about how frustrating it was that we would be without TELEVISION, PHONE AND INTERNET for who knew how long, and I said, "Isn't there something temporary you could rig up? Please?"

And Mark's partner looked around and said, "Hey, why can't we use a tree?"

And Mark couldn't think of any reason why they couldn't, so partner guy whipped out his phone again and called his boss and said, "Hey, can we use a tree? Why not?" And then they talked about it, and now there is Verizon cable coming from the pole at the top of my neighbor's driveway, across the yard to a tree, then down across our yard to the box in our house.

And if ever Allegheny Power replaces our poles, we're supposed to call Verizon, and supposing that I can talk to a actual real person, they'll come fix it permanently.

So, life lesson. Larry was all "You should have told them your husband's the Burn Director blah blah blah needs a phone right away yada yada." He just couldn't stop himself from telling me that I should have said that. He never believes that being nice accomplishes anything.

But I didn't need to tell them that, or yell and threaten and complain. All I had to do was apologize for being cranky, and be friendly, and ask them nicely to think outside the box.

HELLO, I CAN WATCH TV AGAIN.