Tell Each Other Fairy Tales

In a cyclical fashion, I get sick of dealing with someone. Recently, it was Verizon. I currently hate Verizon with such fiery passion that I forgot I hate Cablevision. I currently love Cablevision. When I think of Cablevision little hearts float over my head; such is my hatred of Verizon. So Pete and I canceled a bunch of services and went with Cablevision's bundled cable/wifi/phone package, involving three of the four televisions in the house. I don't have to plug my laptop into a phone line. Joy! We saved a bunch of money. Joy! Our one compromise was the attic TV, which used to get satellite TV. I used to row loudly and watch soap operas and cooking shows at an unholy volume. Surely, everyone benefitted from the wisdom of Pepin, whom my neighbors could not help but hear. I imagined them picturing his mother's rustic corn pancakes. Anyway, now the attic TV is on one of those converter boxes everyone with a cable show urges you to get. I forget the absolutely-last-chance-no-more-freaking-chances deadline. It might be June 12th. If that's true, June 13th is going to be a hell of a day, because these converter boxes don't pick up much. We're up pretty high. We get three NBC channels, and the best is Telemundo. Fortunately, I like Telemundo.

The morning show on weekdays features very excitable women talking about who the hell knows what in a language I don't speak. In other words, it's exactly like watching The Today Show. The other morning, I was plugging away on the exercise cycle and I looked down at the meters for a long minute. When I looked up, a completely different group of women were hopping up and down glamorously. The one on the right was freelancing with the choreography. Suddenly, everything went to commercial. Cue an old-fashioned girl gang beat down.

In the afternoons and evenings, I don't know what I'm in for. One day, Caso Cerrado introduced the idea that a TV judge might sing her show's introduction. A dating game - 12 Corazones - matches women of different zodiac signs with men of startling machismo. I think. I don't speak Spanish but I know Miss Scorpio wanted to know about each Mexican wrestler's pinning technique. Meeeeow! All of this is to say my gooey teenage love of Cablevision and hatred of Verizon brings me a good reason to listen luxuriously to Spanish almost every day, and if I listen I hear words, and when I hear words my brain is embiggening. Good for me! I am not sure the same happiness will happen in homes where airwaves fail to deliver strong signals and a wide variety of channels. A large number of small-scale disasters may be just around the bend. It's hard to know if this will be important.