Number Nine, Number Nine, Number Nine...

Okay, I don’t know if I can be funny about any of this, but here goes…

Johnny’s not working today (little tiny trauma #1). Since he has the day off, he’s going to go see his doctor because he had a tick on him the other day and the bite has that Lyme-disease look to it (medium-sized trauma #2).

The furnace guy is coming at 5:30 this evening (for me? big huge trauma #3, considering this new furnace guy is our fourth). He told us that he thinks Keyspan has low-income assistance programs for changing over to gas heat. I want to know what the deal is with this before he comes, but I haven’t been able to bring myself to make yet another call to Keyspan to get yet another clipped, two-second answer and hang up feeling like an idiot. I’ve known about this for three weeks and I can’t do it. I just can’t.

So I ask Johnny to do it.

But his dyslexia makes phone books and phone numbers and “press one for this” and “enter the last four digits of that” all really complicated, and when I’m about to begin the process of writing it all down for him I just say “fuck it” and pick up the phone.

After five minutes of “press one for this” and “enter the last four digits of that” – after ten more minutes of some twelve-year-old CSA reading to me exactly what I’m looking at on my computer screen, only backwards, and telling me I’m wrong – after being interrupted three times with wrong answers to the question I still haven’t managed to actually ask – (all of these insults # 4, 5, 6 and 7) – I have an answer.

Keyspan (insult #8) has no low-income assistance programs for changing over to gas heat.

Oh and, as of 6:00, no sign of our 5:30 furnace guy.