Well. I’m a very disturbed person tonight. It’s 11:16 p.m. and I just spent an hour on a blog and save it to draft and disappeared it. Unbelievable ending to an unbelievable day. My biorhythms must be off.
But I digress.
This story needs to be told from the end rather than the beginning. So here goes…again.
Monday morning I drove over to the new house, which I will henceforth refer to as “the place.” As I pulled up a man approached me with a paper door hanger and he explained to me that the city was resurfacing our street on Friday and all vehicles must be off the street on Thursday night. Well, I explained to the man that we were moving in, a POD was being delivered tomorrow and picked up on Saturday. The man then explained to me how the cow ate the cabbage. OMG. So, I jumped on my phone, called the POD people, explained the situation and they agreed to squeeze us in and pick up the POD on Thursday. Well, that was dandy except that the movers were only available on Thursday p.m. OMG. So a call was made to the movers and luckily they had just had a cancellation for Wed. morning…phew. Just by the hair of our chinny, chin, chins.
So…as promised, let me retreat to the end of the story. It was 10:15 and I was waiting for the Rayman to return to Uncle Ralph’s house. He was at the place waiting for the garage door repairman to fix the garage door. What? Yes, folks. This is how it went down. After a full day of unloading boxes, rearranging boxes…we decided to order fish tacos to go and take them to Uncle Ralph’s house to eat. As we were backing out of the driveway, the Rayman hit the garage door remote and all hell broke loose. The door started weaving and heaving erratically. He stopped the door, we jumped out and after an inspection decided we were in big trouble. All our stuff was in boxes in the garage. And we couldn’t shut the door. The rollers had popped out…amongst other things. So, while I was googling “garage door repairs”…the Rayman came in and notified me that while attempting to fix the door, he needed a ladder but in order to open the ladder, he needed to move the golf cart…which he did. Then he put the door in manual mode and door fell on the golf cart. Here’s a picture.
Serious discussion ensued after I forcefully requested he keep away from the situation and go pick up the tacos. So, while he was gone I managed to reached Terri, the woman who answered the phone at the garage door repair number. After explaining the situation, she left the phone and I heard her call Billy. “Billy, I have a lady on the line with a serious safety problem and needs someone to fix the garage door tonight.” Then I heard her say, “Yeah, yeah. Okay then.” She came back to the phone and told me that Billy couldn’t make it as he had plans. The she said she would call John. In the middle of paging John, she exclaimed, “Oh, no.” Then she came back to me and said, “John can’t do it. He broke his foot yesterday.” About that time her other phone rang and Billy was on the line. Yes, he could do it but it wouldn’t be until 9-9:30 p.m. And that is how I arranged for the repairman who drove up at 8:45. He told us the door needed repair and he could do it right then and there. And that’s why the Rayman didn’t return to Uncle Ralph’s house until after 10 p.m.
Does snake bit having meaning to you? After first incurring a $2100 bill for our water heater debacle in the old house, and owning the new place for exactly 48 hours, we were now in the position to shell out an additional $800 for garage door repairs. OMG.
Oh, well. We figure it could have been worse.
The other thing of note is that I had arranged for Beau to visit his sister and when I was leaving the house I noticed something sticking in the back tire. So on my way to pick up the Beaumeister, I stopped by the tire store. Yes indeedy. The tire was leaking as a result of the thing that was sticking in it. Well, the tire store does not take appointments which meant I had to wait for the repair. So, I ducked around the corner to the Urgent Care storefront and asked if someone could remove my splinter in the palm of my hand (I had acquired it on Monday and I have no idea where our drugs are, the needles are.) Well, folks, this required the filling out of forms, my blood pressure was measured (110 over 70), my temperature was taken (98.1), my pulse was measured (67)…all for the removal of a splinter. Then a Doc came in who was perhaps 100 pounds overweight. I learned that internationally he has only traveled to Canada, his wife love the heat so they live in Paso and he grew up in Wyoming. By that time the splinter was gone and so was I. I picked up the car and drove over to fetch the dog…only the car started making a weird sound. So, I asked Jay, the dog sitter, to ride around the block with me so he could listen to the sound and advise me on what it could be and what I should do. He agreed and we drove around 3 blocks and the noise never presented itself. It felt like I had gone to the Dr. and the symptom then disappeared. Embarrassing comes to mind.
Now the reason that the dog was farmed out was because the movers arrived at 8:00 a.m. to unload the POD. And floor guy was arriving at 9:00 a.m. and the place was abuzz with activity. 5 people total…plus me and the Rayman. While we were essentially directing traffic, the floor guys were tearing up the parquet that was under the carpet pad. This activity resulted in loud noises and dust galore. Rayman had cleverly stuck the golf clubs out of the way in a cabinet in the garage that the movers saw fit to block with boxes and by the time the Rayman discovered his predicament, it was obvious that the boxes needed to be moved as we were planning to take Friday off and play golf. Never mind that I had suggested he put the clubs on the back of the cart.
But I digress. I am here to report that the floor guys had an eclectic taste in music as they played a radio all day. Bam, bam, bam…”Lay, lady, lay”, bam, bam, bam. “…lonely hearts club band”. And so it went. As I unpacked boxes and tried to organize the kitchen, the dust permeated everything. So, in not wanting to wait, I made more work for myself. We should have waited but who knew.
We have the guest bedroom set up but the dust and the smell of burning wood (? who knows what those floor guys are really doing) is so off-putting that we decided not to stay. And that’s how we ended up at Uncle Ralph’s house again.
So, it’s Thursday morning. Rayman is at the house. I’m getting ready to leave and wondering…what the heck is in store for us today. The bedroom dressers are outside by the slider of the master bedroom waiting for the floor to be done. The dining room furniture can’t be placed yet because the moulding has been removed for part of the area. We’re all sharing the master bath for our elimination needs because the other bathroom is full of flooring. The plywood that was ordered came in half sheets rather than full sheets so the floor guys are waiting for that problem to be rectified. The living room “area” has a huge pile of old parquet chips that must be removed…and the beat goes on.
View from the front yard
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