The appliances in my house are giving electrical goods a bad name...

Some of you may know me and things that are technological have a complicated relationship.

I have a whole section dedicated to my previous washing machine.

This year has already seen me bemoan things that should but don't or can't or won't when you add the ingredient of me.

And while you already know music doesn't come easily to me in my car - you may not yet understand just how fully this miasma is penetrating my life.

---

From a different tangent, I may have made mention that I have 2 daughters.

Salina

and Paris


Beautiful are they not?

Amongst the unwritten posts that rattle my brain occasionally, 'Salina and her iPod adventures feature.

And I may have mentioned that, while a thing of delight and beauty, the latest addition to our household has a wee bit of an issue with daylight hours and the desparation of sleep deprivation (which, quite frankly, is a far less chronic version than the one of the off-the-rack babies that have not yet got the whole "sleep through the night thing" that our special order has... I am not swapping)

---

Add to the above thought strands the concept that I live in a house that is reputed to have been originally owned by an electrician. He obviously hated his work. With a vengance. You can tell this by the way that he installed only 1 power point in the whole of the living room.

That one power point has to provide power to the television (works), the set-top box (works to a degree - there is an unwritten post or two regarding that issue), the video recorder(works)/dvd player (weather-dependent - on sunny days), the fan (a necessity during Summer here) and the stereo...

If I vacuum - or we decide to blow up the spare mattress - or have to charge other equipment, generally the stereo is the one to be unplugged due to the complicatedness of the whole TV set up and the neccessitativeness (I know, I know, but it is late and it conveys what I think I mean) of the fan.

And while it may have been mentioned that I do not greatly covet the title of Housekeeper of the Year I do know my way around the 25 year old (all modern ones die too soon) vacuum cleaner - and apply such knowledge on occasion - and sometimes I am just too darned lazy to plug the stereo back in.

---

It has come to pass that one lovely blogging friend, Debby at Life's Funny Like That took great pains to track down a special CD for Paris and I to enjoy the benefits of. Aren't some online friends amazing?

I am a pretty crap IRL friend (and relative, I know) who keeps meaning to email The Circle and ask them what is the statute of limitations on thank you notes, because I am that girl.

I mean, not only have I yet to do the birth presents for Paris, but also the wedding and right back through all of 'Salina's (and my own) birthdays - I really, really mean to (and have lists from virtually all these occasions) but I am caught in a horrible dilemna... (and yes, I KNOW I spelt it wrong, but I now deliberately pronounce it that way)

I cannot write a note. I want to put everything in. And therefore I build myself a huge task with what should really be a bread-and-butter note. And then I add in all the other things I should be thanking for. And then life trips me up and before you know it 10 years have passed.

Anyway, during the ladies visit a few weeks ago, I received the CD that Debby sent, and I thought "beauty, I should let her know it is received and test that out".

And then...

And then...

(Enter the image of me hanging my head in shame)

And then I did neither. Instead, I filed the CD in the box that is currently my to-do pile and got all caught up in what happens when you mean to be DOING...

I am so sorry Debby!

So when I finally tripped over that box that is currently my to-do pile because I it was getting to be a bigger mess than the room it is hidden in and found the CD today, I thought "beauty, I should let her know it is received and test that out".

Well, I took that CD and I marched - nay, skipped to where the stereo resides. Within 3 feet of me was the delightful Paris, the ideal test subject for our international experiment.

However, the stereo was not yet plugged.

I plugged and selected the buttons for the CD...

And this is where I encountered yet another example of me + technology = FAIL because it seems that the stereo has reduced itself from a "stereo with 1 working speaker, static FM reception and a dodgy tape deck" to a "stereo with 1 working speaker, static FM reception, dodgy tape deck AND weather-dependent CD capabilities".