A phone company and a cable company walk into a bar...

And I bet you can guess who pays the tab! Yep. My mother. The phone company and the cable company are fighting over who gets to be my mother's telephone service provider. There can only be one winner here: The apartment building is wired for cable voice, not for phone company voice. We are trying to get her old number ported over to the new apartment. But the phone company is hanging onto her for dear life.

When two bullgods clash, humans are no better than ants scurrying for cover. The Titans toss lightning bolts while I sit with my mother's cigarette smoke-infused Trimline phone to my ear, tentatively dialing 0 to talk to a representative. Their messages fly through the ether, barely missing each other: While I'm on the phone with the phone company, the cable company is leaving me messages at on my home phone, telling me that this entire frustrating telecommunications hell is happening because the phone company won't let go. I picture some muscle-bound demi-god holding my scrawny twig of a mother over a fiery abyss (laughing loudly, of course, because you can do that when you are a demi-god). Luckily, Mom is oblivious. Her main concern these days is selling the condo. The fact that her phone never rings doesn't seem to bug her as much as it bugs me. Probably because she's not the one trying to get through to her on the phone.

Through a strange technological twist of fate, my mother can dial out on her cable-company phone line, but no one can dial in. The disembodied recorded voice says, “This number is not in service.” Not what you want to hear when you are trying to reach your 86-year-old mother. We are stuck halfway between the two companies. Meanwhile, Mom is paying her bills like a good soldier and wondering why I looked so stressed out.

Meanwhile, Bravadita has had a bad week. On Wednesday, she had a breast removed. Wait, that sounds so bloodless. Let me rephrase: Her left boob was trying to kill her so the doctors cut it off. With scalpels. She lost a lot of blood. Then they put some wadded up padding in its place and sewed her back up, with some drains left hanging to squirt out the leftover juices. What the hell!

Vertigo was bad yesterday. For the first time since this whole stupid vertigo thing began last May, I had objective vertigo in addition to subjective vertigo. That means not only did I feel like I was on a boat on the ocean, but the ocean and the boat were spinning around me like an invisible hurricane with me in the middle. For a few minutes I sat very still. As I squeezed my eyes closed, feeling my stomach begin to roil, I saw my life disintegrating into complete disarray. Wreckage of the future, here I come! Next stop, bus bench, shopping cart under bridge. Then I did the Epley Maneuver on my head, first one direction and then the other. The waves subsided. The hurricane stilled. I sat up, a little wobbly, and carried on with my editing job like nothing happened. Because, really, my life is good.

Meanwhile, as our planet groans with the insults we heap upon it daily, people are uprooted across the Middle East, fleeing for their lives from a disaster the United States helped to create: You broke it, you bought it seems to apply here. I pondered the state of the union and the state of the planet on this 14th anniversary of another bad day as I walked in 90°F heat 30 minutes to get to my meeting. I think I would be willing to open up my home to some refugees. Maybe a couple of teenage girls. We could talk about makeup and boys. I don't mind sleeping on the couch. Maybe I could eat some yummy Syrian food. Maybe they would be inspired to vacuum occasionally. I hope they like cats.

After the phone call to the phone company, I was wrung out. Because it was almost dark, Mom let me take her car. As I left, she slipped me an envelope full of cash (not enough to do more than buy some groceries and put gas in her car, but enough to prove she loves me). When I got home my smoke alarm was chirping loudly, and my cat was waiting by the door, glaring.