Cables, Phones, Thumbs, and Alarms...Oh, My!

Chaotic day, for sure. Started last night when I reached into my sock drawer to get a pair of socks for work. Excruciating pain shot through my thumb. I do have arthritis in both thumbs and tendonitis which flares occasionally. But this time it did not go away, not even overnight. So, I called off work...can't drive when the thumb won't work. Have you ever tried to do anything without your thumbs? I mean, how humiliating that my hubby had to dress me for bed! And try wiping your rear! Oh, this is my right thumb and I just happen to be right-handed. Sigh. I debated whether to go to Urgent Care or the doctor. Doctor won. They have an exray machine and the copay is less expensive. Yeah. First wrong decision of the day. Exray machines down in doctor's office. Diagnosis--keep thumb immobilized, rest, if it doesn't get better, take prescription for exray to hospital. Cha-ching. If I do that I will have to pay for the exray myself. Bought a thumb immobilizer brace at Walgreen's and I'm learning how to type slowly and use my left thumb only for the space key.

But...when we walked in the door the trouble light was sounding on our alarm system. Sigh. Now what. Called the alarm company. Went through the testing and the blaring of the alarm for a minute to see if they would receive a signal. My eardrums hurt as much as my thumb by then. My hubby was looking at me with his finger poised over the alarm pad and kept saying, "Can I shut it off now?" The cats were leaping in acrobatic stunts beyond description, and their eyes? Bulging and frightening! Finally, we were allowed to stop the noise. ADT says, no signal. She asked if we had a phone change recently. Bingo! We moved my office from the upstairs bedroom to the lower level last Saturday. I have an extra light blinking on the modem, although everything seems to be working all right. She says we need to check the phone to see if there is a problem. I say, "Well, if you can hear me, then it's working!" Sigh.

So, I call our cable company. Problem is the phone jack upstairs is where the cable company had wired the alarm system through. Now we have everything hooked up to the phone jack downstairs! Sigh.

The trouble alarm went off again. I silenced it, but it is going to sound off again. Hubby is on his way to the store to buy 50 foot phone cord. We'll drill a hole through the floor to drop the cord from that jack and attach it to the modem. If it works, I can cancel the scheduled appt with the cable company tomorrow afternoon. I sure hope it does. If not, I'll be up all night shutting of the blasted alarm. Sigh.

I have to laugh at the entire sad situation. If my thumb hadn't gone out, my hubby wouldn't have known what to do about the alarm and he would have called me at work where I would have been trapped in a senior management meeting all day. There is always a bright side to everything. **grin**