Monday, my washing machine broke down. Ok, it's been about long enough. If I don't see the washing repair man every other year- I start feeling scared. I mean, when all 4 boys were at home and playing ball- the dirt build up from baseball pants was enough to put the machine on the fritz every year. So every couple of years feels lucky about now. So, I requested to be the first appointment of the day. They told me absolutely no problem there. No repair man. No call. So I tried to call customer service to see what was going on. 14 calls later I got someone who spoke english. Seriously. For some reason, Sears outsourced their call center and for 14 calls, I couldn't get anyone who could pronounce my name right or speak well enough for me to understand them or them understand me. Now I could understand them not being able to pronounce my name if it were a complicated name- multiple syllables. But I have a single syllable name - along the lines of Smith- and they didn't just mispronounce it- they massacred it. It was horrible! On call 14, I finally got transfered to someone in Alabama. Thank you! At this point, I had been trying to find out what was going on for 3 hours. So then we get the rip-off man that Sears sent out. Who obviously thought I was stupid. He wanted (and I kid you not) $12 a MINUTE to fix my machine. It was a $40 part and he wanted $180 in labor for 15 minutes. But he's steadily trying to convince me to BUY a new machine from sears. So, for $200 - I told him just fix the darn thing. It was a rip-off but I needed my machine. Well, apparently I agreed to getting it fixed too easily because 3 minutes later he had found something else wrong and doubled the bill. Well, end of that. Good-bye to the repair man and I'm afraid I wasn't real nice to him as I shooed him out the door. Because the chances of me paying $500 to get a $300 machine fixed are zip, zero, none. Besides that, I'm not stupid. I know my machine was working other than the door latch that he wanted $12/minute to fix. Meanwhile, on his way out the door- he's still trying to convince me to buy another machine from sears. Now, does anyone want to guess what the chances of me spending another penny at sears are at this point? Right. So, off to Home Depot I went where I bought another machine, had Ice Cube and Little Man pick it up and it's on it's 4th load. And sears.....well, they just lost a 25 year customer.
What helped none of this was that I stayed up too late the night before and in my sleep deprived state..... and yes you can laugh..... knocked my blackberry off the counter and it fell into the TOILET. Yes, my friends, the toilet. Now, this woke me up quickly but not fast enough to save my poor little crackberry and I spent the first 15 minutes I was up on the phone to the insurance company getting my phone replaced. Lucky for me- I pay for the insurance so for a mere $50 deductible- my new phone should arrive today. Not bad considering that I cracked the screen on my old one last month and was too cheap to replace it. ;)
And the reason I had to request the Sears man come early- Little Man had to go to court yesterday. Yes, I had to take my 16 year old to court on a Minor in Possession charge. Now, you may ask what this is. This came about when instead of going straight into school one day when his brother dropped him off, he saw a group of his friends and went over to talk. A teacher driving by said he saw smoke coming out of his mouth. Well, it was 19 degrees out that morning. Smoke was coming out of everyones mouth. So, out of a group of 6 kids (at least 3 of which WERE actually smoking - his brother saw the whole thing) mine was the only one grabbed by the teacher. The kids actually smoking lit up again as soon as the teacher walked away. Anyhow, they wrote him a ticket on the spot for minor in "consumption" but when the subpoena came is said minor in "possession". Well, they searched him on the spot- he was in possession of absolutely NOTHING. So, we go to court and wait. They told us to be there at 1:30 so we were there early and of course, the judge was late. 45 minutes late to be exact. So, when the judge came in he said "is anyone here pleading not guilty" and Little Man raised his hand and out the door we went. After the judge came in, we were out the door in less than 5 minutes. UGH. Of course, now we get to go back again the first week of March but oh well. It isn't the first minor in possession ticket I've had to fight. They wrote Ice Cube one once because he had black specks in his teeth. Teacher said he was dipping. No dip - no dip cup- possession of nothing but black specks. What. A. Crock.
The final sit-com moment of my day (and this one really was sit-com funny) was me sitting on the floor behind the new washer trying to hook it up and I couldn't get the cut-offs to turn all the way off on the water hoses. Well, I turned the main cut-off to the house off and got the hot to stop dripping and just stuck the cold in the drain pipe. So, since the hot wouldn't drip if it was held straight up, I hung it on a hook from a hanger about where my washer and dryer go. So when we got the new washer and I hook up the cold water, water starts pouring out of the hot water hose which is hanging Above. My. Head. And it's not hot water coming out. It's cold. Cold water POURING down all over me. So, I'm frantically trying to get the water hooked up to the washer so it quits dumping on me and at this point I'm soaking wet and sitting in a puddle of water. The perfect ending to a perfect day! (But I did get it hooked up and got 3 loads done last night).
Off here to try to help my girlfriend order Cubs tickets. It's amazing that she tried last year for 5 hours to get in and I got in and got her tickets in 20 minutes ..... from Texas. Oh well, such is life.
