Thursday, January 24, 2008

Oh my goodness. Thankfully none of my neighbours were recording this morning's spectacle.

I stayed up most of the night unintentionally, figgering out how I was going to get my kids to school in the morning.
Call a taxi?
Wake them up at 6 and tell them to walk?
Phone a car rental agency at 6 and rent a car. Then ask them to deliver it to me by 8?
Hire a locksmith to come out to the house and break into my Durango and make a set of keys for me during the night?

In the end, I decided to manouever Clint's truck out of it's spot and take a route to the school that wouldn't involve a left turn. In my restless sleep/dreams, it worked. So I got up extra early (I think I slept 3 hours last night) and rearranged all the crap in the garage so that I would be able to pull Clint's truck forward about 5 feet or so. Clint's truck was parked on the right side of the driveway, next to (almost on top of) the bark-mulched garden beside him. The front end of his truck was touching the garage door and my Durango was kissing his back bumper.

My plan was to wiggle forward and back, inching my way across the driveway, til I was far enough over on the left side to back all the way out. This of course was frightfully difficult because of the truck's inability to make sharp left turns. However, I had 20 minutes, and I would do it in baby steps. It all seemed so possible when I dreamt about it at 4 am.

I was going back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, inches at a time because I don't have a real good sense of exactly how long and how wide his truck is. Max came out to "help" and not being able to read my mind at all - started to direct me.
"Go back further, you've got lots of room."
"Swing hard this way, now move up. Still further. You've got 6 inches, keep going."
"OK. Good, go back..."

After a few minutes under his guidance (and remembering his in-apptitude for math and science - and I'm pretty sure this is a physics dilema) I got out of the truck to take a look at the situation from an angle not from the driver's seat, because, frankly? I was getting a bad feeling about this.

"What are you thinking?" I asked in my most patient voice.
"Fine. Just do it yourself." He says walking away.
"No, don't walk away. Just tell me what you were thinking. I thought I'd use all this cleared space in the garage to help me manouever... but you've got me angled in such a way that ... well ... I don't know."
"Whatever. We don't even have to go to school today. Just forget it."

I get back in the truck and just then the neighbours come out and ask Max what I'm doing.
"Oh, she's trying to get Clint's truck out. He took her keys to Africa."

"God? Please help me. I so don't want to be here right now."

Eventually Max gets back to his station and continues to let me know how many inches of wiggle room I've got to work with. Under his guidance, I end up (and try to picture this if you will) with the front end of Clint's truck on the garden to the extreme right of the garage - exactly opposite of where I wanted it to be. It took the full 20 minutes of back and forth, back and forth, with the front tires scrunching up the bark mulch before my back end cleared the front of the Durango allowing me to back out. By then, Clint's truck was almost completely across the driveway, parallel to the garage door.

Yes. Yes. It looked all kinds of stupid.

I got the kids to school. Don't ask how noisy that truck is, or what sound it makes when you open the passenger side door.

Eventually I get to work only to find that everyone (EVERYONE) had been expecting me to be back on Monday. Last Monday. The Monday we had 4 days ago. My inbox was filled with messages indicating that EVERYONE thought I'd be there to handle a whole bunch of time sensitive projects on Monday.

"We just assumed you'd be gone a week..."

It didn't register with anyone when I said I'd be gone from the 12th til the 24th that I'd actually be gone 8 whole working days.

And then?
Then?
Something happened.
Something bad happened to the computers at work and ACCCKKK. Mine was slow. Painfully slow. Scratch you eyeballs out slow. 45 minutes just to open a program.

And then?
I came home.
And something happened.
Something bad happened to my computer at home and ACCKKK. I couldn't get into my shaw account in outlook. So I called Shaw for some support. It took awhile for him to get it all figured out, but when I finally saw that e-mails were starting to pour in (whatever stopped the flow of them from arriving happened 8 days ago) - I said thanks and hung up.

Five minutes later I called back.
"HELP! There is an email flood in my inbox. I need for them to stop coming!"
He had no idea what I was talking about so we did something that allowed him to view my screen and he too was a little flabberghasted by the hundreds (in the end thousands) of spam messages that clogged up my poor little inbox.

It took and hour to clean that mess up. The whole procedure made slower because of this special thing we have happening on my desk top... My cordless mouse and keyboard flirt outrageously with my cordless phone and when the hormone levels get too hot, my mouse cuts out for a cool down.

While I ate my lunch today, I made a list of things that were gonna change around here. Oh yes I did. I'd just spent 11 days sharing a house with 4 other people and it was heavenly the way everything clicked. And how there was no mess. No piles of things to be dealt with. No crabbing about how it was someone else's turn. No papers all over the place. No spills on the floor. No couches taken apart in the family room. No extra mattresses on the floor in front of the TV.

Things were going to change. And the first thing I was going to do was convey this in an upbeat enthusiastic manner to two of my children.

Instead, I spent an hour and a half cleaning up a computer mess.

And I have a feeling I'll have to do the same thing with my laptop, because it too is giving me attitude.

Anyway, by the time I had a handle on my inbox situation, my sis and bro-in-law were here, dropping off dad's truck for me. Clint's truck is missing a head light and turn signal (not to mention that left turn thing), so they were bringing me dad's truck to use again. Again.
Sigh.
I've been driving that beast around since the beginning of November.

Jul looked around my kitchen/family room and said casually, "You know that Mark came in here and cleaned up, don't you?"
Me:
Jul: "Yeah, when he came to pick the kids up on Monday night, he saw the mess and did the dishes."
Me:
Jul: "I guess it was pretty bad in here. Worse than this. Zac had stayed for night. Might've been some other guys here too."
Me: "I stayed up all night Friday night cleaning..."

What's worse? Having your neighbours watch you back sideways out of your driveway or have your ex clean your kitchen?

I swear. I am in a constant state of embarassment.

Constant.

Three things I'm thankful for:
1. Cadbury Cream Eggs are available! Guess how many I've had today?
2. Clint is coming home tomorrow.
3. It'll be Friday in 90 minutes.

Shalom,

2 comments:

raych said...

This is brutal. But those are the kinds of things that make for the best stories, right? Horrible things? Make great writing material? And strengthen character? See? Look at everything you accomplished today.

ramblin'andie said...

Have you considered dropping the boys off at their dad's, listing the house and moving to a condo on the beach in PV??

Seriously, though, I need some Cream Eggs just from reading this. I hope today was a better day.