Time to indulge in some old-school blog kvetching. Because it’s just been one of those weeks.
Last weekend, a big snowstorm was predicted for Sunday. Sunday is usually our grocery shopping day — kind of a holdover from our years of dating, before we moved in together, when we’d both go to the store in Aaron’s car and buy separate groceries at the same time. It just works out best that way now — he does grocery shopping while I stay home and do laundry while Connor naps (hopefully).
At any rate, with all that snow coming on Super Bowl Sunday, we decided to switch up our normal routine and do shopping early. We are creatures of habit in a big way (despite craving some difference in the routine sometimes, which is funny), so that really threw us off.
Then we got the predicted foot of snow, and my work was cancelled for Monday, and Aaron called off, too, after he had to snowblow the driveway twice on Sunday and one more time on Monday. Connor’s appointment with the Ear, Nose, and Throat doctor was cancelled due to the snow emergency, and his preschool was closed. I guess the upshot of the snow day was getting to revisit some old family favorite recipes, since we normally go out at least once for lunch or dinner.
Wednesdays are always a “Daddy Day,” where Connor doesn’t go to preschool and stays home with Aaron. On those days, Aaron sorely needs Connor to take a nap, since he needs one, too. He didn’t really get much of one, thanks to Connor’s near-nap-strike and resultant Very Late Nap, so add another tally mark to the Crappy Week list.
Also, our Amazon stuff didn’t get delivered on Wednesday because the UPS truck got stuck across the street about the time I got home from work, and I guess he decided to just call it a day once he got unstuck.
Aaron called me at work on Thursday afternoon, which he only does if something epic is happening. He had been in the kitchen and “heard a sound like the end of the world,” then looked out the window to see that the second-floor gutter had been ripped off the house by ice. Fantastic. We talked it out — he was a little freaked, and rightly so — and he started a claim with our homeowner’s insurance after we hung up.
I’m pretty sure the falling ice damaged my Japanese maple, but I won’t know for sure until the thaw.
But wait, there’s more!
He came home a little early from work and got an ice cream bar out of the freezer — and it was melted. Our side-by-side fridge/freezer was dead. Still running, but no longer cooling. He moved all the frozen food out into the chest freezer before he came up to bed, and told me Friday morning before I got ready for work that we were going to need to go refrigerator shopping. (Mad props to him for sounding so coherent after only a couple hours of sleep.)
I called off of work for the day, letting my boss know that someone else would have to finish the urgent request I had received the day before. I also rescheduled my chiropractor appointment to Monday, since they didn’t have anything available late enough in the afternoon to accommodate refrigerator shopping followed by lunch with the fam. That means I’m still waiting a) to get my monthly adjustment, and b) to learn the results of my neck MRI.
Then I moved all of our refrigeratables into a couple of boxes in the garage, which is currently steady at about 40 degrees, keeping our food from spoiling.
We dropped more coin than we would have liked on a new fridge, thanks partially to the narrow space in which our refrigerator lives, which severely limited our options. The upshot of that shopping trip, though, was that Connor got to eat free popcorn and wander around a large showroom.
After lunch, we got Connor down for Quiet Time and Aaron attempted to shut off the water to the ice maker. Since it had been kind of a DIY job by the previous homeowner, though, the water wouldn’t completely turn off, which frustrated Aaron to no end and made it impossible for him to get the afternoon nap he needed. He finally figured it out (zip strips to the rescue!), and we ordered pizza for dinner after Connor got up from Quiet Time.
Our fridge is being delivered today, between 2 and 5pm — right during Connor’s nap time, and possibly impinging on our Date Night time, which usually starts around 4:30pm, after Connor gets up from naps. While prepping for the refrigerator delivery guys to show up, Aaron screwed up his back by picking up a big ol’ thing of ice melt. It’s always something.
Things have to turn around soon. Tonight is date night, plus we get our new fridge. Monday, I’ll find out about my MRI and get my much-needed chiropractic adjustment. Next Thursday, the adjuster comes out to look at our screwed-up gutterless roof and let us know what to go do about it.
I don’t usually like to complain, but jeez.
Epilogue:
I apparently hit Publish on this entry too soon. While the upside of the fridge delivery was that Connor stayed asleep through most of it, the downside was that it was mostly a giant clusterfuck wherein the delivery guys from Appliance Center HIT OUR HOUSE with the delivery truck, flattening our gutter and scraping their truck. The “new driver” opted to ignore his supervisor’s suggestion to back down our long driveway, and instead pulled right in and attempted to turn around in the not-big-enough-for-a-delivery-truck turnaround area behind our garage. They didn’t ‘fess up right away on this one, either — we had to wonder why the hell they were hanging out behind our house so long, and talking on their cell phone, and we didn’t find out until Aaron went back there to press them on what was taking so long.
On top of that, they dropped the crisper drawers in our driveway and cracked them — then volunteered that they “noticed that the drawers were cracked” and would be getting new ones dropped off to our house in the next week or so. We know they did it because our refrigerator was the floor model, and it was just fine the day before when we saw it — not to mention that the front of one drawer was scuffed and the manuals inside were dirty and soggy with driveway slush.
So, I’ll be posting at length about the refrigerator fiasco once we get some closure from their insurance reps, but for now, suffice to say that we’re not planning to make any more purchases from Appliance Center in the foreseeable future.
At least our food isn’t going bad, and our roof isn’t leaking (yet), and we enjoyed our date night.