Shake and Bake

Don't hate me. I've been offline for a reason, that reason being I couldn't figure out how to get online. We recently had our entire house painted, and of course that meant unplugging every electronic item and moving every inch of furniture to the depths of the basement (or the center of the room, whichever was easier). Well, let's just say that unplugging things without rhyme or reason is a heck of a lot easier than figuring out how to connect them all together again...and where is one's technologically savvy (aka geeky) husband when one needs him? After all, he was the brainchild that set up all of said wires, cords and plugs to begin with.

In any case, after two weeks of no internet service, I managed to wrangle the geographically distant husband into a productive phone call which consisted of him telling me, step-by-step, where I should check to determine the connection breakdown. After about fifteen minutes of dropped cell phone calls, hushed responses (on my part) because of a sleeping infant, and tiptoeing back and forth from telephone jack to modem and router, we finally determined that the problem lay in the jack. Just as techno-sav hubby decided that a professional would need to be called in, I countered with my own idea--let's open the damned thing up, risking electric shock to see what we could see. So, donning the screwdriver whilst stripping an already-badly-stripped screw, I managed to get the jack cover open, only to find that one of the wires (the red one, to be exact) had popped out of its companion screw. Oh, and it was corroded to boot, so not only did it not produce a connection when I tried to screw it back in, but it also broke. The inner electrician in me remembered how others before me--ghosts of electricity past--had used wire cutters to remove the plastic outer coating. Well, I didn't have wire cutters, but I DID have scissors...I couldn't remember if a telephone wire had enough electrical current to give my scissor-clad hands a nice buzz...so, I risked it.

My risk paid off. Not only was I able to get off the plastic, but I didn't break the wire and I was able to screw it into the back of the jack. Voila! Phone service again...and yes, (wireless) internet service, back from the dead. Needless to say, I spent the next ten minutes catching up on all that I'd missed out on for the last two weeks. Okay, maybe it was more like thirty minutes, and then the baby woke up.

Anyway, it was nice to feel like a productive adult after so many days of shaking rattles and crawling after a crawling 10-month old. Not that those aren't important activities, too, but fixing a technological problem boosted my self-esteem in a way that I really needed. Even the tech-savvy hubby was proud: "Wow, hon, you did that! That's great! Really great!" As you can see, I'm still savoring this minor victory.

It's Shake and Bake, and I helped!