Today was busy. I picked up my friend to help me with the phoneline. He opened the box & we plugged in a phone-- no dialtone. Went & got a second phone just in case. Dialtone-- so a new corded phone was apparently bad. Tethered new line to old line & tried to pull it through-- wouldn't budge. I climbed under the house (meeting many stickerbushes, sharp objects, spiders, etc along the way). Followed the line all the way back to the hole & found it shared a hole with an electrical line (that I couldn't pull out). The electrical line was inside PVC & the phoneline was next to it but was sealed in with what looked like tissues or cotton but it was so compacted it wouldn't come loose. We couldn't access it from the top bc it's under the bed so ended up deciding to just drill a new hole (bc the line wasn't long enough to wrap around the outside). I had to crawl in & out a few times bc of some issues. The old line actually broke off when I was pulling on it so we had to do a new line. My friend threaded the new line through the floor and I pulled on it and then tethered it to the old line when I realized I was too fat to fit through some of the spaces to get it all the way to the front-- there were waterlines, electrical, and defunct metal plumbing in the way. I did have to crawl around and move it over and around some things that it snagged on, but then I got my friend to go to the front & pull it-- unfortunately we didn't think to have him tie a knot in the end so the new line came out. I had to crawl out to tell him & then go back under and push the wire back up-- but the carpet was getting in the way. Eventually he managed to see the end and pulled it up. I decided to see if I could fit out from under the edge bc I was right next to the exterior wall-- instead of crawling back to my entry point. I had to lie on my back and drag myself. Fortunately, I'm at the age where if I'm on my back my "ballons" fall into my armpits so they were out of the way. My friend had opened the window and could hear me grunting and muttering about being too fat-- he looked out and shouted "PUSH! PUSH!" so I started laughing while trying to drag myself out. I grabbed the edge of the house to get some leverage and made it out-- flattening a bunch of weeds in the process. My friend also used the machete to annihilate some of the weeds in the front.
Then we tested the inside line-- no dial tone. Turns out the new jack I bought was defective-- or at least not assembled properly. My friend has better vision & saw that one of the internal wires was never connected properly to begin with. So he fixed it & then we ran the line to the surge protector but it seems it is fried & wouldn't work (or maybe one of the lines going to it was messed up-- not sure) but it had to be taken out of the connection so it's now wired to the phone instead. But it works. I'm going to have to get a new surge protector bc I'd rather have to replace a surge protector or jack than get a new phone again. That thing was expensive to replace.
My friend had already changed the wheels of a truck & removed a tree from someone's roof before he came out. He was exhausted & sore & out of $ for food so I bought him, his fiance, & his daughter a bunch of food from Popeyes.
I ended up getting a chocolate shake after dropping him back off in town (and popping in to the hardware store to see if they had the surge protectors-- which they didn't-- but their huge yellow dog was there so I petted him for awhile before heading to pick up my prescriptions at Walmart). I'm exhausted & sore but happy that we got the job done & can now make phonecalls.