Printer

I am so excited I could scream!!!! I just fixed my printer by myself.  It was very expensive, as printers go, but I really wanted it 'cuz it was so small, so it wouldn't look like a massive machine in my study. Soooo, when it stoped working, I freaked out.  It worked for a year, and then had a brain freeze when the ink level got low, and decided it wouldn't work anymore. So, I uninstalled the software, and when I went to reinstall it, it claimed (huh) that my operating system (Windows 7) wasn't supported. So the next thing I did was call technical support. Guess who I got???!!! Some guy in India, what a surprise. He did one of those spooky take over your computer things, where he could move my curser around my screen and mess with my computer all the way from India. He claimed I must have some malicious virus because I was using a free security system. Well that's just silly, nothing else is causing me any problems on my computer, and no way was I going to have him mess up my machine, so I (sort of) politely thanked him for his time and severed the connection. I waited a week to cool down, after a sucessful installation on my Windows XP older laptop, and decided to try again. I called back the HP number he had given me, only to find out that I would have to pay around a hundred dollars for their help. Well @#$%^ that!!!!!

So I thought - "Betsy (I'm on a first name basis), what would my niece Miriam do??? I KNOW!! She'd look for a patch on the INTERNET! So, I did, found it, downloaded it, installed it, and it WORKED!

I Never Learn

I maintain an internal dialogue, constantly telling myself what to do. I can find this interior voice very annoying, so I tend to ignore it. For example, I’ll think “Take the plates off the wall before you try to rehang the picture, or you might knock one off and break it.”  So what do I do??? I DON’T, leave them on the wall; knock one antique majolica leaf plate, newly arrived from England onto the floor, chipping it.  This is one of a matched set of four. I need it for the photo shoot of my cottage. I can’t get another; it’s an antique from England. I am an idiot. I am an idiot. I am an idiot.

Luckily, as an idiot, I have become quite accomplished at repairing a myriad of different things. I glued it back, mixed paint to the exact color of the glaze and repaired the darn thing to complete and total wonderfulness. If I had taken the two seconds necessary to remove the plate from the wall, I wouldn’t have had to:  Go to Home Depot for the glue; glue the piece back on; try to remove the paper towel I glued to my finger tips; mixed the paint; painted the crack; clean the brushes.

I wish I could say I learn from my mistakes, but since I keep repeating them all I can assume is I have a learning disability, newly acknowledged called AOAODL disorder: As One Ages, One Doesn’t Learn disorder. I believe in better living through chemicals, so I can’t wait for the pill to fix this problem. Until then, I’ll just stock up on crazy glue.