Mirabile Dictu!

This may appear to you to be nothing much - but to me it is a miracle. It is an actual flower thingy appearing on my nearly 40 year old climbing hydrangea. This plant has NEVER EVER BLOOMED BEFORE! In theory it is happy in shade, or partial shade, or sun, or whatever - but in practice for years it has been in mostly shade and has never seen fit to push out a flower. A few years ago the tree that shaded it most died and I thought "Oh good, maybe it'll flower now" but no. And then suddenly this year, right now, this is happening. The greenery, I must say, has always been extremely enthusiastic...

Meanwhile I just spent quite some time in a "live chat" with a person who works in customer service for our phone company. Our phone company is the only choice we have for an actual landline phone - which we need because we live behind a ridge that prevents us from having any cell phone coverage at the house. So we have the absolutely abysmal phone company - and also the DSL line it also provides. Plus I have a satellite internet service because - again - the phone company service is abysmal. Our phone and DSL were zapped during an electric storm on Sunday and have been dead ever since. It happens at least once a year. Today a technician was supposed to appear but didn't. Turns out because we don't have a "callback" number we can give them (a cell phone number, say) that means the technician didn't come because he couldn't reach us to determine that we were home and tell us he was coming. I'm afraid I got a bit SHOUTY during the chat at this point because as - I explained to the idiot - we cannot be reached by phone owing to the fact that our landline is DEAD and we HAVE NO CELL SERVICE. EVER!. I also explained that if we did have cell service here at our house we would not be their customers anymore. In theory someone is now scheduled to come tomorrow. Between 8:00 AM and 5:00 PM - as if we had nothing better to do than wait here all day (well, to be fair, we don't - except our morning walk). And also in theory he will not require that he be able to reach us by phone to announce his arrival. AAARGH!!!!!!!!!!