The cable guy / Knoll

He woke up earlier then he had expected. To his relief he hadn't forgot what had happened just a handful of hours before. There was enough to deal with in the day at hand. The last thing he needed was to wake up thinking it was just another Monday, forgetting that his wife and kids were killed in a car accident the day before, forgetting that he had spent most of the night at the hospital drenched in dread, forgetting the doctor's face as he did his whole 'we did everything we could do' spiel, forgetting the cab ride home after getting word that his family was dead. Nope, luckily he remembered all that. As inexplicably painful as it was, at least it didn't have to sink in all over again after a couple hours of restless sleep. He took a walk around the apartment and managed to get angry at the empty pizza box, his wife's stocking cap, and the high chair. They had a lot of nerve just sitting around waiting to be dealt with. That he'd handle on another day. First there were phone calls to make. So many fucking phone calls. But before that there was some TV to watch. Just ten minutes of something mindless along the lines of MTV Cribs or an infomercial on a gardening tool would do the trick. It would act like a crude tourniquet for his unraveling life. That's all he needed. He turned on the TV and the fuzz reminded him that the cable was out. That he had forgot. But now it came back to him. The cable guy was coming today. Fuck. He briefly considered calling to reschedule but he knew that the next available appointment wouldn't be for another week at least. There's no way he'd make it through the next week sitting alone in this apartment surrounded by family pictures, dirty laundry, and children's story books without the television.

He put on a pot of coffee, sat down, and waited for the cable guy. He'd be there sometime between noon and four.

zeroth life lesson: the machine will never stop for you so learn to stop for the machine.