Us old folks are still up and we have just watched the ball come down in Times Square... It is hard to believe ‘America’s Oldest Teenager’ turned 80 on November 30th, but Dick Clark still looks great~!!!
Whew~!!! I’ve had an unbelievable 24 hours or more… Started on Tuesday when my cell phone would dial but come back with the message of ‘No Response’… I had gone a distance to pick up meds for one of my fosters and another and needed to call someone to make sure they were home to drop them off… Couldn’t call, tried calling Desiree and still got that same message…
I stopped at Walmart’s for something we needed and asked for change to use the outside payphone to call --- to be told they didn’t have any… I’m trying to convert various bits of change into quarters and even their inside McDonald’s wasn’t a lot of help~!!! Eventually I was able to convert a various collection of nickels and dimes into the four quarters I needed just to make the two phone calls – one to Des to have her call Paul and tell him what was going on with my cell phone!
That sorta/kinda started it all… Several ‘mole-hole’ instances kept coming up – just enough to let you know you’d stepped in one and stubbed your toe, but today just became incredible with things that could go wrong --- AND DID~!!!... LOL…
I needed to take one of the other fosters into the vets for a thyroid test this morning, stop by the AT&T store and pick up my meds at Costco’s today – three things… Simple, right?... LOL…
I got several phone calls as I’m headed out the door, and then the last one went much longer than I expected… I’m hustling to get to the vets for the appointment and pulling into their parking lot, there isn’t one space available… It is also a SMALL and badly designed parking lot with a blind entrance so I’m doing at least 15 “K-turns” just to get ‘The Beast’ around in such a small, tight area…
Finally I got this done, drove out of the parking lot and decided to do a U-turn and park across the street… Halfway across the street on median strip, Bandit decides to do his new trick – the belly-crawl… I had started across the second half of the busy street and he decides to show me his newest… OMG
Inside my vet’s office, there are 11 dogs and their owners – the lobby is not that big… I was told I’d just be dropping him off for a vet tech appointment, so had planned on doing that, then heading off to Costco’s and planned on doubling back (hopefully) to pick him up, thinking that would be enough time… Instead they asked me to stay and wait because they had so many dogs and cats there… OK, I’ll push the stop at Costco’s back after I’ve gone home and dropped Bandit off…
They bring him out and then tell me they couldn’t get the fecal sample from him – could I drop one off later?... Oh brother… OK, I can adjust… LOL…
On the way home I stop at the AT&T store to find out what’s wrong with my cell phone… I walked in, apologized to the guy for being ignorant of this all ahead of time and handed him the phone… He looked at it, tried to fix it, pulled out the SIM card - basically it just died… No real answer why, despite I’m the one who takes SUPER care of mine… Des has dropped hers I don’t know how many times, she’s chewed on the antennae; she’s even thrown hers in anger… Mine is the one that dies without warning and for no reason!
Now we’ve opened a Pandora’s box as I’m trying to figure out the right decision to make simply to replace mine… We have three on a family plan, and none are Blue-toothed, so for me the only reason to have a cell phone is when I need it to call while on the road… In CA you can no longer be on a cell phone unless it is hands free while driving… And our phones were not blue-tooth compatible…
Desiree has been after me for months about our phones because she’s a heavy text-messenger… Were it my choice, I’d have a Jitterbug phone – I don’t need all that extra stuff… I don’t want all that stuff… But if I got one of those ‘free phones’ and tried to get it Blue-toothed ready, it ended up being too expensive and not smart financially…
BTW, I have Bandit with me on a leash all this time… I couldn’t leave him in the truck and he’s just enjoying each and every person that comes into the AT&T store!... And ‘belly-crawling’ on their rug~!!! I’m also still battling this cold, so my nose is running and I’m trying not to cough on anyone either…
An hour later, I finally have my new cell phone and gotten Desiree’s new one squared away for her to pick up later and have her information transferred over once she gets off work… I head home, call Paul to see if he was going to have a short day, thinking he’d stop and get my meds on the way home… He’s not having a better day than me, so as we’re discussing this, I see Bandit ‘depositing’ out back and run out with the fecal sample bottle…
I’m telling myself I’m still adaptable – it’ll be just one more stop… The vet’s again and Costco’s… Then I learn that I have a few extra stops with Paul not getting off early as planned… I head back to the vets, no parking spots again, this time I’m not going through all of this, so I park at the entrance, take the fecal sample in and as I’m going through the 15 ‘K-turns’ again, one of the staff members rushes back into the parking lot to tell me the lab has a 11AM cutoff time because of the holiday…
It is 11:05AM… Figures… So it’ll have to be done again on Friday… Just the way my day has been going… LOL…
Pulled into Costcos and the parking lot is a zoo… Everyone and their mother plus assorted other extended family members must be in there shopping…
I usually pass through their furniture section as a matter of habit… I’ve talked about this before… I’ve been wanting a specific couch they have and twice they’ve gotten it in and by the time we reached a decision or had the money to buy it, I’ve gone back and they’ve been sold out… It has to be this one specific couch because I need both ends to recline, it has to be a certain size and I won’t buy fabric furniture again – it just doesn’t last at our house for some reason… I’ve been watching this couch for almost a year now and on sale, it’s between $999 and $1299… Because it is replacing two separate recliners and another chair in the family room, this is the one we have to get… period…
I’m walking through like I usually do and see the couch on sale for $699… There is one on display and two in boxes… I call Desiree (not easy to do with a new phone I’ve never used before) and she tells me I can’t not get it… As I’m hanging up, this Asian couple asks me if it is a good price, and stupid me, I say yes… At least $500 cheaper than it normally is…
I headed up to the registers to find out how to buy it and they tell me to go outside and get a flatbed doily, in the meantime they’ll send someone back to get it loaded… The 5-10 minutes it took me to do this was enough for me to arrive there and see both couches in boxes loaded up and being bought by this Asian couple… SERIOUSLY~!!!
They must have seen the look on my face, because they immediately start telling me there are 2 more in stock… They’re doing this nervous laugh and I’m not exactly feeling very funny right about now… Eventually I find someone to help me and he tells me he doesn’t think they do have two more in stock and in boxes… The nervous laugh of theirs becomes more pronounced – that’s the only way I can accurately describe their response, but they take the two and leave…
Now I’m stuck… I call Desiree and I’m disappointed… I really didn’t want to buy the one on display, figuring by the time I got it home and moved without a box, the leather would be torn somehow… I attempted to call Paul to get his input, but I couldn’t hear him well and he couldn’t hear me either… The guy eventually comes back, says he’ll go search the inventory and there I stand, flatbed doily and all… Finally I sit down on it, waiting for him to come back…
Then a few more people come by, look at the display couch, and when the third person stopped, sat down on it and then wrote down the SKU number, I decided I’d had enough… I took the sign down and sat in the middle of the couch, determined that this one was NOT going to be sold out from underneath me too… LOL…
Ever seen the craziness at the warehouse basement bargain sales in New York when the women go crazy trying to buy those cheap wedding dresses?... That’s about the mindset and attitude I’d started developing! After about 30 minutes, the guy comes back and the only one left in the store is the one I am sitting on~!!!
It’s decided that they will take it to the back and shrink wrap it for me… I’m to head up to the cash registers and pay for it… On the way I stop at the pharmacy for my meds (the original reason for my stop at Costcos)… Of course – the way my day was going – my two meds were not filled but if I can wait 15 minutes, they can be… OK (still adapting here), I went to the check-outs with the book I was buying in hand and the sign for the couch… Two items… I’m standing at least 6 to 7 people back in line and EVERYONE has full shopping carts loaded to the gills~!!!
Once I get to the cash register, there’s some confusion because there are three of these couches waiting on the other side, but all three are in boxes… Initially I thought they found the other one, but after a lot of back and forth, none of the three were mine… Eventually we get this all resolved and then I double-back to the pharmacy… Then back to the checkouts to attempt to find someone who can get it from there, out the door and into the back of The Beast…
The line to go out of Costcos is at least 15-20 shopping carts long… A staff person is pushing the couch on the doily but there’s no way I can get that couch up into the truck with just his help and he can’t locate any other staff people either… Eventually we get through the line and door, but inside my head I’m telling myself unless I make it through the door, something else will occur and I would still have not gotten this couch… I was at the point where I was asking myself if it was my destiny to never ever get this couch and the family room finally finished, let alone the last step of the house renovation started October 2005… Seriously!
I’ll spare you the rest of the details, but it went just about the same – cars were blocking my truck and there wasn’t enough room to put the tail gate down, let alone manipulate the couch to lift it in – not enough staff, too many people who wouldn’t inch their cars in any fashion for fear they’d lose the parking spot they were determined to get… What a mess~!!
Eventually I got the couch into the back of the truck and out of the Costco parking lot… I called Paul and told him ahead of time he could not come home and tell me what a bad day he’d been having again because mine was beating his worse ones!... I had two more stops to make (one to find fresh refrigerated sauerkraut for tomorrow’s dinner) and the grocery store was as much chaos as Costcos had been… I’m standing in line to check out and I have this horrible thought I am going to come out of the grocery store and find the couch has been stolen off the back of my truck… Relieved when I saw the couch still in my truck, some lady went to grab my grocery cart too fast, bumping my arm and one of the bags ripped I had been lifting out at the same time… I had visions of those two glass jars of sauerkraut breaking right there on the parking lot… That’s the kind of day I’ve had! I kept telling myself it couldn’t get worse and it just kept doing it anyway~!!!...
On the short drive home, I couldn’t get there faster… I just wanted to be off of the roads and back in my home before some other major ‘mole-hole’ incident occurred to me~!!… Desiree got off work, headed over to the AT&T store and got in about 10 minutes after me… One look at my face (which apparently showed what kind of a day I’d been having) and even she felt sorry for me, despite having been punched in the stomach by one of her kids!
What is it? A full moon or something?... LOL…
Unbelievable, Paul wanted to get the couch into the house once we got home (which meant we had to move furniture out of the family room and onto the patio)… The three of us managed to get this done (don’t ask me how because all three of us had had a really rough day!) and although it is not quite right and I’ll have to do some rearranging tomorrow, the couch is in the family room~!!!... Without being torn or damaged~!!!
After the way the day has been going, Paul and I both asked Desiree to have Serge come and pick her up and then drive her car instead of his to their event tonight… Desiree doesn’t see as well at night, his car is not as reliable as hers and with all the drunks on the road tonight, the idea of anything else was more than either one of us could stand… Thankfully he agreed and I’m sitting up now, waiting for her to come home… Then my day can finally end and 2008 can be finally put to bed… LOL…
What a day to end this year with… Next year has GOT to be better~!!!... LOL… I won’t say it’s been a bad year for our family, but it sure has been a long one and a tough one… Especially (physically) for me…
As always, I hope the incoming year is better for everyone… And all stay (and travel safe) over this holiday… HAPPY 2009 TO ALL!
As Always,
The Lady
P.S. Paul and I ‘christened’ the new couch as we both fell asleep in it on our respective sides of the recliners about 10:30PM, trying to wait up for the ball to come down… So much for us old folks, huh? Thankfully we woke up and stayed awake to see the ball drop~!!!... But boy, is that couch comfortable!
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