So 10 months ago, I had my roof re-shingled and in doing so, they had to remove my DIRECTV dish. According to my roofers, DIRECTV put it in the wrong spot. Odd how the dish has worked nicely for the last 20 years in the wrong spot.

Anyway, apparently it became damaged when they removed it, so I contacted DIRECTV for a new one. After 20 years on their protection plan, I rarely needed them. I can think of many other things I’d rather have spent that $2400 on. But now that I’m off the plan, what do you bet next month the whole system crashes? Oh well…

Since DIRECTV couldn’t come out for a few days, I had no TV. So at night I read, caught up with work on my computer, did crossword puzzles, almost mastered Sudoku, and organized the numerous cat-related items stored in my office closet. (When one is in cat rescue, one is given a multitude of anything pertaining to cats).

When the nice DIRECTV man arrived, he installed the dish, gave me two new remotes, an equipment upgrade, and since I had so many wires coming off the side of the house from the previous hookup, he thoughtfully took down the unnecessary ones. He also removed some supposedly dead wires under my porch eaves leading into the upstairs bedroom where I had another DIRECTV hookup. So I figured…

Before leaving, Mr. DIRECTV tested both TVs. Everything was hunky-dory, so he left. And that, my friends, is precisely when everything stopped working. Well, maybe not everything, just everything upstairs pertaining to streaming (which I had yet to discover).

Now don’t get me wrong; I’m perfectly aware that most of you, if you’re regular readers, know that my mind checks out whenever I’m presented with technology: iPhone’s, computers, TVs, motion sensor cameras, you name it. So that night I settled into bed upstairs, turned on the TV to do some streaming, and that’s when it happened…nothing. Nothing happened. The Roku app was visible but the screen was frozen.

I couldn’t believe it. Could the wrong wires have been cut to cause this? Obviously, I had no idea. Still, I let it go for 10 months! No falling asleep upstairs while streaming Wicked, Ted Lasso, or true-crime documentaries that scare me awake while I consider placing a bat under my bed, or double bolting my doors (or perhaps both). Instead, I went back to Sudoku and crossword puzzles.

Why did I wait so long to contact DIRECTV? Can you say procrastination? I truly excel in that area. If I don’t want to deal with a particular something, I find another something to do. It’s my specialty. Trim the bougainvillea? Nah, I’d rather play tennis. The house needs vacuuming? It can wait until tomorrow. Besides, I have a TV downstairs I could still stream with.

But finally, I decided to get to the bottom of the issue and called DIRECTV again to see if they could figure it out. They had me go through some steps to see if there was a glitch on their end inhibiting me from streaming upstairs. Nope.

My next call was to Roku. My money was riding on the nice DIRECTV guy having cut one of the Roku wires. But I learned there were no Roku wires to cut. A Roku “stick” goes into the back of the TV, connecting with the unit downstairs — and both were connected.

About to give up, I tried one last thing — I changed the batteries in the Roku remote. And that, dear friends, is all it took. So yes, I truly am an ignoramus.