I'm sure you all know that bugger from "A View From The Swallow's Nest", right?  Well I have to say thank you to that ass for confusing the hell out of me last night.  Damn I was mad at him, here I knew that the Olympics coming to Vancouver in 2010 was the Winter Olympics, I knew it dammit!  He told me I was wrong!  Can you believe that?  He told me I was wrong!

Now you have to understand, I will never be as smart as he is, and so, by and large and for the most part, when he say's I'm wrong about something, I tend to believe him.  NOT anymore!  NOT after last night.  He almost, almost but not quite, perhaps 90% had me believing that I was indeed wrong in remembering that it's the Winter Olympics.  He had this cock-and-bull story down to a "T" saying that it's the Summer Olympics in Vancouver in 2012 and the Winter Olympics are in 2010 in Calgary.  Yes I can be dumb, yes perhaps I should have been a blonde.  Yes I was born blonde, but my hair naturally got darker as I got older.  No I don't die my hair to say I'm not blonde, hell I'm proud of the fact that it is now salt-'n'-pepper in color!  YES I am gullible when it comes to listening to that "Swallow's Nest" nutcake, and he took advantage of that last night...lol.

Now you're asking "Ok, he made a fool of you last night, so why do you need to say "thank you"?"

Well, I'll tell you why.  It's because I had to play chauffeur to my Grandmother today.  Had I known why she needed me to drive her around, I would have said NO.  She had bought herself a new cordless phone in December because her old one wouldn't take a charge anymore.  I hadn't seen this new phone yet, so when we were driving to the store to see about replacing it and getting a call display phone, I thought nothing of it.  Little did I know that the phone she wanted replaced is identical in every aspect, right down to the call display feature, of her last phone.  Had I known this, I would have just taken her old phone and shown her exactly what was the same, which is EVERYTHING.  But no, I didn't know this, so I took her to the store and found out while talking to the sales clerk.  Thankfully the man is pretty cool, and he took it all in stride.   

He showed Grandma how to use the phone, plus he showed her that her little book telling her how to use the phone is not only written in French, but if you flip it over, it's English on the other end.  She had been flipping through the French side not bothering to look through the whole thing!  Man, I was getting embarrassed for her, but hey, what can ya do, right!?!

Anyway, when everything was done over at the store, Grandma had me drive her home, hook up the phone, and explain everything to her again.  So I took out the old phone from where she hid it in the cupboard, took the new phone, and showed her that everything was the same.  I showed her how to collect her missed calls list, which is something she had me explain, must have been around 100 times.  She tried to gt her missed calls list, couldn't get it, she tried again, with me showing her, didn't get it.  I had her do it on the old phone, no problem, got it first try, so I told her do the same with this phone.  Didn't get it.  I knew what she needed to do, I had shown her how to do it, she could do it no problem on the old phone, I was beginning to think I was wrong and that something was different with the new phone.  I was starting to get confused.  So I tried it again on both the old phone and the new, same buttons to press, nothing different.  I was more confused.  Why couldn't Grandma get this?  Finally she figured out that the phones were the same, oh thank god, sweet jesus, and mother mary, it was about time!  That was sorted out.  I thought I was home free in teaching her how to use a phone identical to the one she had been using for the last 5 years with never a problem.  Boy was I wrong!

She decided some test calls were in order, ok, fine by me.  She calls her cousin, this is a phone number she knows off by heart, so she dials the last 4 digits of the phone number, and is totally confused as to why she can't hear the phone ring.  She handed me the phone so I could see what she had done, and so I explained to her that she needs to dial the first 3 digits, that phone number's are 7 digits long.  She say's "I know that!  Don't patronize me, it's been that way for 20 years already!"  So I show her that she had only dialed the last 4 numbers, ok, she realised her mistake, and redialed.  It was the wrong number.  The guy who answered the phone just laughed and explained that the number she quoted him had 2 numbers just opposite of what she had dialed.  No problem.  She started to dial again.  Didn't work.  She had forgotten to press off after the last call.  Then, with everything sorted out, call made, phone now understood, she asked me another question about the phone.

"Skye," she say's, "can you explain to me why whenever I make a call, or answer the phone, when I'm done talking the phone starts to beep after a few minutes, and it says 'your call can not be completed as dialed, please hang up and try your call again'?".  Oh my god, I tried so hard not to laugh and cry at the same time.  I think I managed to succeed in that, at least she didn't let on that by this time I found her to be truly nuts.  So I said "Yep Grandma, that would be because you need to hang up the phone when you're done talking!"

You see, I just have to say thank you, because he had me practise getting confused without getting too frustrated and angry. By doing that, he had pointed out to me that it doesn't matter how right a person can be, anyone can get confused under the right circumstances. I managed to keep that in mind dealing with Grandma this morning, and I didn't get frustrated with her, nor did I get angry, which are two things I tend to do far too easily.

So, thank you, ya bloody ass, I do so love you!