Did I do that?

 

The four kids were busy entertaining their grandparents Friday evening, and even convinced Grandpa to play with the Legos. From there, the kids expanded on their “masterpieces” over the rest of the weekend, and now the Legos have invaded the whole house – again!

 

Did I do that?

By Allan Olson

It’s a good thing it’s been cold out, or I would feel guilty about not getting ambitious and doing some projects outside. But, since I was bored, I decided to tackle a project that’s been bothering me inside the house. That was my first mistake.

The previous owners of this house had coaxial (tv) cables running everywhere; they must have had satellite television in just about every room. When we moved in, we took the cables out of the kids’ bedrooms, but didn’t really get too carried away with a full removal, we just clipped a few to get them out of the way. Well, after a busy Sunday morning of cleaning the fridge, I was looking for something else to do. That was my second mistake.

I went downstairs and looked at the mess of cables and decided that I was tired of looking at them, so I started pulling them out. I don’t know why; they really weren’t hurting anything, but they annoyed me. Now the cables weren’t a problem; if I would’ve just messed with the cables, there wouldn’t have been an issue, since I didn’t need to cut anything. However . . . there was another line there that was bothering me, too, and I thought (another mistake – thinking) that I could cut it and remove it. I knew it was phone line, but I really thought it was an old phone line and not one that the cable provider had installed. So I was watching the phone as I cut the line, and nothing happened. Okay, then I should be able to remove the other half of it. Oops! In the words of one of the main characters in the 1990s television show Family Matters, “Did I do that?” 

As it turns out, the first line I cut was the one for our non-portable phone and the next one fed the portable lines. Like I said, “Oops!” I tried to fix it, but my fingers don’t work that well. I knew what had to be done, but I’m not a fixer-upper person – more of a messer-upper person. I asked Nikolai to relay to mom that I had cut the phone line, but he refused (he didn’t want to take brunt of her initial reaction), so I asked Abigail to tell her. She looked at me, perhaps a bit confused, but went dutifully onward to deliver the news. Shortly I heard my wife upstairs exclaiming, “WHAT?” I didn’t stick around to face the wrath. As any smart person would do, I took cover. I did come out of hiding though, and explained what I had done, and after about 30 minutes and several of what I would kindly describe as “looks of annoyance,” she had both phone lines spliced back together. I had learned my lesson. Thereafter I stayed away from cutting any other wires, although I did find one more coaxial cable to pull. (Looking on the bright side, it did give me some good fodder for my weekly column!)

On Friday evening my parents stopped in and stayed overnight on their way south to warmer climes for a few weeks. They are hoping to escape the cold, but the way this winter is going, they won’t be able to drive far enough south to totally escape the effects of the polar vortex, although where they’re headed it will not likely get to the -20s (and lower) like it has been around here.

They were on their way on Saturday morning, and we enjoyed the day lazing around. I spent parts of the day trying to get my Verizon Network Extender to work in different places around the house, but it refused to latch onto a GPS signal. After an hour working with their technical support, they decided that they were going to send me another one, thinking that I must have received a defective unit. I hope they are right, since this unit would allow me to make and receive calls from my cell phone at home.

Thankfully, we are finally done with the coldest month (January), and hopefully some relief will arrive in February. Our plans for this weekend have something to do with Nikolai, since it’s his birthday, and watching the Olympics, although our exact plans are still undetermined.

Please be safe while ice fishing this season, and remember to take a picture to preserve a lifetime of memories. Also please watch out for the buses that are transporting our children, and remember to drive safely this winter season. Thanks for reading, and have a great week! For more of my columns visit: http://allan-crazykids.blogspot.com