Coke Spray

My day was a little stressful. I take that back, my morning was a little stressful. The cable guy called at 7:30 in the morning to tell me he was on his way to hook up the internet. I was still in a coma after staying up until 1am borrowing the neighbor’s internet. I really didn’t know what the person on the other line was saying. I somehow remembered that I had scheduled the appointment for early in the morning so I’d be without internet for the least amount of time.

Cable guy shows up at 7:45 and doesn’t leave until about 10:15. Two and half hours later and one more modem later I’ve got internet access. Somehow our perfectly fine modem that worked when he first plugged it in managed to break when he called headquarters to switch us from 5MB to 10MB. (Heather?) Genius just sat on the floor at my computer staring at the modem waiting for the light to quit blinking. My only option was to rent the modem from Charter. Hopefully when Du gets here he can fix things.

After Cable Guy left I was able to start getting ready for the rest of my day. I was in the bathroom staring in the mirror (waiting for a miracle to happen). Dad had come in to say something. Reagan and Ashlyn were already in there. Ashlyn, curious little kid that she is, had a coke can she pilfered from the pantry. Of course she had been walking around with it, jiggling it the whole time. She was standing directly in front of my dad and dropped the can as she tripped on the tile in the bathroom. The can burst and coke started spraying everywhere. We were all just frozen in our respective positions as the spray spewed all over my dad and Ashlyn. Something snapped in my mind, “you’ve got to stop that from spraying on the house that we’re renting and will have to pay a huge fee to get cleaned.” I grabbed the can and turned it over in the sink. Not much was left to drain into the sink. Ashlyn started crying, I think she was just surprised by the whole thing. I was laughing. What else could I have done. Legally. Dad had to change his clothes. We got the spill cleaned up. Had to use a ladder to clean the spray that reached almost to the ceiling. It looked like the splatter from a CSI crime scene.

The greatness doesn’t stop there. I had to get the UHaul turned in before 12:30 to “Uncle Bob’s”. I plugged in the address (into Jeeves, my navigational unit) given to me by UHaul and it lead me to a residential house. I called the number given to me by UHaul and no one answered. Par for the course. I called the only number I could find on the UHaul contract, road-side assistance. I told the woman who answered I’m not having a road-side emergency (yet), but need to get the regular number for UHaul. She proceded to tell me this is the emergency road-side number. Another Sherlock on my hands. So, I finally got in touch with Corporate UHaul. I told her that I need to find another drop off location. So, instead of looking that up herself (which I know she could do) she transferred me to “Regional”. No one answered the phone. (UHaul’s automated service leaves a lot to be desired. Let me just tell you, if you plan on renting from them don’t expect them to bend over backwards give a hoot about serving you. They won’t return calls. They won’t even answer the phone. They won’t call to confirm rentals. They won’t actually be an actual store where you can return rentals.) I called “Corporate” back and reached someone else. By this time my speech was a little bit shorter and more demanding of assistance. New guy directed me to another location to return the trailer. I called and confirm they are actually a real, live store before heading out.

This was only the first part of the day. I could only imagine what the second might hold. Fortunately it was all good. My brother and sister-in-law arrived. We hung out, ate dinner in lawn chairs around a folding table and played in our amazingly huge and awesomely flat backyard (I’m already getting excited about mowing it). A great ending to what started out to be a challenging day.