Diamond Jill Saves the Day

I'm back to screening phone calls.

I came *this* close to overcoming my dislike of the telephone but then I spent a good portion of the day yesterday on hold and waiting for promised return calls -- a well known (and laughable) pledge that went unfullfilled. 

I don't want to blame any particular entity for my dislike of the apparatus. 

I certainly would not want Linda, head of the Flooring Department at... oh, let's say... The Lone Alp Home Depot Store... to feel that she failed in any way, whatsoever.  Would I divulge that she placed a large order, charged to one of my many high-ceilinged credit cards, without informing me of the quote for the job?  Would I let on that Linda ordered the wrong product?  Would I let slip that she then claimed she didn't know how to order things "over that there internet"?  Did I mention that she was in charge of an entire department?

I now recognize the moment in our conversations when Linda grabbed onto her safety net.  In the middle of her confusing the square footage of our wing in the Manor with the price of tea in China, she paused and blurted out:  "D'ya want me to call Corporate?"

Apparently, "calling Corporate" is what Linda does best, and may well constitute 99% of what Linda actually accomplishes in the course of her workday.  It sloughes pesky responsibility off of her broad shoulders (I imagine them as broad.  Very broad.).  And she cannot be bothered to call you back unless and until she has received her own return call... from Corporate.

I made eight calls to The Lone Alp Home Depot.  Three resulted in an actual conversation;  None resulted in the resolution of anyone's problem, except perhaps in Linda's case, as she almost purrs when dialing Corporate.  I made an additional five calls to MeasureComp, three of which were spent interminably holding, finally ending in frustrated hangups.  These are not good customer service stats.

So this morning, I resolved to let all calls go unanswered, as usual.

Still, when I heard ringing a few moments ago, I didn't let a full minute elapse before checking voice mail.

And I am so glad!

Sure, it wasn't for me.  Or Fred.  Nor was it for one of the 144 Haddock Manor Domestic Staff (139 of those positions are familial inheritances -- a situation I aim to explain one of these days, color-coded ancestry charts in hand).

It wasn't even a purposefully misguided caller for La Bonne et Belle Bianca Castafiore, who will jot down Fred and my private numbers on a proffered pub matchbook when she is trying to avoid a liaison that looks to have little chance.   It doesn't happen very much anymore.

Less and less, in fact.

And that's not due to a lack of matchbooks, as they are a craze in Tête de Hergé.  It's not that anyone smokes -- the last smoker died in 1989 -- no, it's due to the artisan candle collecting craze.  What is amazing is that we haven't suffered a rash of manor, castle, or monastery fires, thanks mostly to our medieval stone foundations, slate roofing tile, and exceedingly well-maintained wattle and daub.  Sure, we generally have oak framing, but here is the secret:  It is *English* oak!

So... errr, yeah.  We collect matchbooks here. 

Moving right along to the voice mail!   
It was a wrong number.
But what a glorious wrong number!

It was the grande dame of local drag, Diamond Jill.  She is a transplant from the USAmerican South, and proves it with every languid syllable. 

I could almost see her flaming red locks as I listened to her breathy message:

"Dah-lin'!  It's Diamond Jill!" Her delight in announcing herself was infectious.  Why, I was delighted she'd called!

She speaks a dying language of Old-Fashioned Southern, with a vocabulary that waxes and wanes between the obscure and the grandiose, but that totally escapes the trap of outrageous whimsy.

She went on to express her interest in, of all things, a used car for sale.  I feel like rushing out and buying one so that I can call the lovely lady back and offer it at half price.

I know her story well, as do most Tête de Hergéens.  The boy was an accomplished dresser at age 5, thanks to a stylish older sister and a liberal-minded, slightly absent mother.  An early stint in the Marines only heightened the acuity of her couture, and probably authored the precision and work ethic that drives her singing career today.  It may also have something to do with her dedication to all things peaceloving...

Anyway, after all the time spent yesterday being barraged by Linda's halting misquotes and ineptitudes, it was a pleasure to hear Diamond Jill's verbal talents, so smooth that she's currently booked in every straight music club west of the Lone Alp.  I wonder if we could get her for next summer's Manor Fest?  The Cistercians would go wild...

"Ah'll be home all mohnin', dah-lin'.  Give us a call!"

Falls and Rearrangements

File this in the "Bless Her Heart" Department. 

I was lying back in bed, ensconced in three pillows, as well as a "husband" (the stuffed, corduroy-covered kind), struggling to focus my eyes, when the phone rang.

Because I am waiting for an out-of-state business call, I picked up.  Normally, I let everything go to voice mail, as telephones and what I often find on their other end repulse me.

It turned out to be a relative of whom I am very fond, my Dad's sister.

What a tale she had to tell -- and so perfectly foreshadowed by Fred having taken a loud, vicious fall in the shower last night.  Well... actually, Fred managed to fall OUT of the shower, which is hard to picture but he swears to it.

My Aunt was all dressed up for an evening Christmas party at a friend's home.  She had never been there before, and not living in Tête de Hergé (très décédé, d'ailleurs), the area turned out not to be well lit and to be inadequately and unevenly paved. 

That's right, she wiped out.  Right on the curb.  More importantly, right on her [very lovely] face.

Because this is not a phrase one normally hears from the mouth of the Best-Bred of the Upper Crust, I can only imagine her horror to find that "[her] nose was on the wrong side of [her] head."

She lay in the street bleeding for a bit, yelling for help that did not come, then struggled to her feet and made it to her friend's door where she politely rang the bell. 

The mystery is why the intelligent crowd gathered within chose to take her to an urgent care center instead of calling 911 or transporting her to an Emergency Room.  The erudite doctor there declared her nose broken and her face lacerated, then advised her to see an ENT "next week."

She would, of course, go on to have headaches and jaw pain -- and now knows that she was likely concussed.

She has spent weeks visiting plastic surgeons, only to find that none were willing to accept the allotted payment from Medicare for the fairly extensive surgery required to repair her nose, jaw, and skin.  Medicare thinks this work merits about $9,000.  Yes, I *can* wait for you to stop giggling.

Luckily, she lives in a university-rich area with several med schools and just this morning, one of the academic luminaries has deigned to operate for that paltry sum.

She has to wait four months, though, all the while in terrible pain and sporting the aforementioned now-misplaced schnoz and multicolored insulted tissues. 

So she calls to apologize for not having contacted me over Christmas... and I so want to reassure her that, compared with one whole brood of my relations, she is promptness, largesse, and good-humor personified.

I neglected her extensive chronic medical woes, of which she rarely speaks, and the financial hardships that I know of, but that she has never mentioned. 

She reserved her one moment of agitation for one of her sons, by chance an orthopedic surgeon, and his overstated contention that she fell because of her age.

Harrumph!

(Clearly, she fell precisely because she does not live here, in the well-maintained environs of Marlinspike Hall.  We are clearing out The Computer Turret in hopes that she will spend The Thaw with us, come Spring.  My boorish cousin is welcome, too, I suppose, provided he can keep his age-ist prejudices to himself.)

So, as I am fond of saying, but usually without such literal intent:  Bless her bones!

We wish Nancy a full and rapid recovery.

Fred is okay, by the way, although his tailbone is quite painful and he is walking funny.  Apparently, his acrobatics paid off and allowed him to land on his unsubstantial tush instead of on the base of his humongous skull, for which we give thanks.