Corner of Bourbon & Division

I got a fair bit of stuff done today.

I got up at a very reasonable 6:30am, showered, and took my car to Canadian Tire for (another) alignment. The whole process took less than an hour, so I just waited at a nearby Tim Horton's and had breakfast with a lemon poppy seed muffin which startled me by having some sort of cream cheese filling that I was not expecting. It tasted just fine, but it was weirdly jarring nonetheless. This just tells me that my capacity for dealing with unexpected change is now in the negative numbers. 

Once the car was organized, I drove to Cornwall (the nearest large town, although it might technically count as a city? Hang on, I will go look that up. *two minutes later* It's a city. Okay. Moving on.) to go to Home Depot and finally bite the bullet on getting a riding lawn mower. I did a bit of research into the various options, and even though they cost a bit more money, I settled on a John Deere. All the reviews of the more inexpensive models boiled down to the same thing: "It's not worth it, just get a John Deere and have done." Mostly all the other models seem to have poor warranties, lack servicing options, have parts that are hard or impossible to get, or just continuously break down. So I got a John Deere, and it will be delivered on Thursday.

I had a rather circular conversation with the nice young lady serving me at Home Depot. She was a tiny, wispy thing, probably of Indian origin based on her accent and the bracelets adorning her wrists (although I couldn't swear to it), and the poor thing spoke barely above a whisper and had the maddening habit of looking anywhere but at me when she spoke. This may have been cultural or just a personality quirk, but either way, it was not ideal. Long-time readers will remember that I am rather hard of hearing, and so people who speak quietly and/or face away from me when they speak are my kryptonite.

Conversely, she seemed to have a lot of trouble understanding me as well. I asked about financing options, to see if I could avoid having to shell out another $5k right on the spot (everything is so expensive, goddamn), and she agreed and brought me over to customer service.

Her: "You want to finance or use credit card?"

Me: "I'd like to see if I qualify for financing so I don't have to put it on my credit card, please."

Her: "So you use your own credit card?"

Me: "No, I'd like to get financing."

Her: "You want a credit card?"

Me: "Well, Home Depot gives you one with financing, right?"

Her: "Yes."

Me: "Great. Let's do that!"

Her: "Okay, so you go over to the cash and you pay with your credit card now."

Me: "So... you can't do the financing?"

Her: *blank look*

We were saved by another employee named Ariel (I don't know the name of the first woman because she didn't have a name tag), who was able to walk us through the process, thank goodness. It took a while, but now I can pay off the mower over the next 12 months instead of all in one go, with no interest unless I exceed those 12 months.

I had to pop back to Canadian Tire after that because they had neglected to give me the readout for the alignment, and luckily they still had it in their system (apparently the machine doesn't keep it beyond the one reading, but they hadn't had another client in for an alignment yet, or at least that's how I understood it). I sent the readout to Steve the Wonder Mechanic, and he is of the opinion that the dealership simply never did an alignment on my car back in the day. What they did with my car when they kept it for a full 36 hours and charged me $150 for the privilege is beyond me at this point. I am going to have to rally some spoons from somewhere in order to fight them on this and get reimbursed for the work and for the brand new winter tires that they wrecked due to their negligence.

Anyway, I finally made it home five-ish hours after I'd left, put in a load of laundry (everyone clap, please!) and set about continuing to unpack my bedroom. As of right now I am STILL not done (goddamn), but I am down to "only" my books and office supplies (I think, there might still be a surprise lurking in one of those boxes), so I am optimistic I can get that done in the next few days. Ideally I'd like to finish that tomorrow evening when I get home, because I have to go to Ottawa back to my old house.

This is because, in Oh-My-God-There-Is-Still-Moving-Drama news, my old landlords have informed me that, even though I still technically live in the old place, they are going to start showing it to prospective tenants right away. Since it's currently a goddamned disaster in there, I am going to head out tomorrow as early as possible to try to at least tidy up all the garbage and crap that got left behind after the move, and fill up the car with some of the stuff I still want to bring to the new house. That was part of the plan for these coming two weeks anyway, but I had kind of assumed that I'd have more time to get the house pulled together before my landlords swooped in to get prospective new tenants who will likely be paying a LOT more rent than me. I don't like having to work on their timeline, but here we are, I guess. Here's hoping that I can get the house pulled together enough that they aren't going to try to gouge extra money out of me just because they can.

*lies on the floor*

My drama is so very low stakes compared to what's going on in the world, but it's very stressful on a personal level, I promise you. :P

Speaking of stressful, the poor quail had what one might call a Heckin' Escapade yesterday. KK took the dogs out before I got home from my night shift for their usual morning romp. What we didn't know is that Freeloader, the rooster whose life continues to be spared while we get settled in, had taken advantage of the door to his hutch not being latched properly (that one's on me) and gone walkabout (flapabout?). Apparently he hadn't gone far and was just bopping happily around in the grass, foraging away. At least he was, until the Brittanies got hold of him.

Fun fact about Brittanies, they are hunting dogs, specifically a versatile breed, meaning they both point AND retrieve, and because they are retrievers, they have what's called a "soft mouth," meaning that they will hold game birds in their mouths without biting down on them (because hunters don't want to have their birds chewed up by their dogs). Pixie grabbed Freeloader first and took off with him. KK forced her to drop him, only to have Peggy snatch him up immediately afterward. Poor Freeloader got exchanged from dog to dog a couple of times until KK was finally able to confiscate him and put him back in his hutch, where he hunkered down, the picture of wet, slobbery misery, but completely uninjured because the dogs were very gentle with him, comparatively speaking.

Honestly I fully expected him to die of shock, but he has hung in there until tonight, although he is a deeply unhappy and traumatized camper. I haven't heard him crow once since I got home, and he's usually extremely vocal. He has been eating and drinking, though, so I think there's no permanent harm done. And, well, he is going to get the metaphorical axe at some point, once I get my shit together.

Oh, and in the midst of all of this, the weight management clinic called today, and I am scheduled for the Pre-Surgery 2 class next Tuesday, and an in-person appointment with the surgeon on the following Thursday. That means that they are very likely ready to schedule me for surgery ASAP, which of course is something of a problem given that KK is having surgery in just over two weeks' time. OOPS. I'm sure that if I explain the situation they will be sure to schedule me further out, but my goodness, what ridiculous timing. I also have to go get more bloodwork done (so. much. bloodwork.) at the hospital, which means getting up at the asscrack of dawn so that I don't have to spend the entire day waiting in the hospital, because if you get there after 6:30am you have a guaranteed wait of at least two hours, if not three or four, and I for one do not want to spend half the day just waiting in a hospital for a blood draw. Blech. I have a lot of stuff to get done, after all.

I am torn between going tomorrow morning super early since I have to go to the house afterward anyway, or going on Friday. I think I might go tomorrow because that way it will light a fire under my ass and force me to do things. The only "problem" with that is that tomorrow is KK's in-office day, which means the dogs will be home alone for most of the day. But if I go stupidly early and get a lot of cleaning done before, say, noon, I might be able to get home by 2pm, which would get me here in time to dose Rika with her epilepsy meds AND be on time for my therapy appointment at 2:30 (did I mention I have a lot going on lately?). But in order to go tomorrow morning I will need to leave here at 5:30am to get to the hospital at 6:30, and, just, ugh. But it's for the greater good, I guess. Blargh.

And now, it's time for bed, especially if I need to be up in time to leave at 5:30. Catch you on the flip side, friends!

So I picked up the phone today, and it was my mother on the other end, sounding breathless and agitated.

Mim: "Daphné, Daphné, help! S.O.S.!"

Me: "What's going on?" (I can tell by her tone that it's not life or death, luckily)

Mim: "My new stove is electronic and I can't make it work and it's SPEAKING to me in THREE LANGUAGES!"

Me: *dies laughing*

Mim: "It's not funny!"

Me: "Are you kidding me? That's hilarious! Didn't it come with a friendly manual?"

Mim: "Yes, but I can't understand it. Besides, they shipped the wrong parts so I can't even cook with it yet."

Me: "Ah. So what's the trouble? Apart from that?"

Mim: "The oven locks automatically and won't let me open it. It's telling me the temperature outside, and I DON'T CARE. I just want to know the time!"

Me: "You can't set the clock?"

Mim: "No. It gives me the choice between twelve hours and twenty-four hours, and I can't change it to twelve hours. It also keeps saying SABBATH at me in blinking lights. Sabbath-Sabbath-Sabbath."

Me: *dies some more* "Maybe your stove is possessed!"

Mim: "It's NOT funny! Daddy refuses to touch it, and you know how he is with electronics anyway."

Me: "God, yes. Don't let him near it! I'll come by this afternoon."

Mim: "THANK YOU. I bought these lovely tournedos yesterday, and now they're sitting forlornly in the frigidaire because I can't cook them."

Me: "All right. I'll be there in the afternoon."

This happened on Tuesday, but I forgot to mention it then.


Dentist: *showing me my x-rays* "This is what happens when particles of food get caught between your teeth, and aren't removed within a reasonable amount of time."

Me: "Mm-hmm."

Dentist: "It's 100% preventable, so long as you were to somehow get between your teeth in order to remove said particles."

Me: *giggle*

Dentist: "This is best accomplished by using, say, a long, filament-like object..."

Me: *laughing* "Okay, okay, I get it! I need to floss more!"

Dentist: "Attagirl!"

So very glad I won't be working graveyard more than this one week. It is seriously ruining my life. Turns out I'm only working four days this week, but in ten-hour shifts. Add a little over two hours' worth of commute to that, and that means more half my day is spent preparing for, going to, being at and coming home from work.

Also, the stores around here don't open until 9am. I haven't done my groceries yet this week, which means I'll have to cut short at least one "night" of sleep down to about six hours if I want to have food.

The first day of work is a bit of a mystery for me, concerning how it went. My first instinct is to call it a dog's breakfast, because a whole bunch of things went wrong. I got the wrong logon information for the system, so I was locked out all night and couldn't do anything. Eleven hours of boredom (I was instructed to come in an hour early my first day) is nothing to sneeze at.

The girl meant to be training me didn't appear to have received the memo about that. The sole other girl on shift that night made a token effort at training me, and I did learn at least one thing, though I didn't get much chance to put the learning to use. The main problem seems to me that neither of them really know how to train someone.

The other girl (the one who tried to train me a little bit) kept asking me if I had any questions, and no matter how I phrased it she couldn't seem to wrap her mind around the fact that, if I had no knowledge to begin with, I couldn't really ask the right questions. Much of the night went something like this.

Girl # 2: *works feverishly without talking to me for about an hour*

Me: *watches both girls work and tries to figure out what they're doing*

Girl #2: "So, do you have any questions so far?"

Me: "Well, no, not really. I mean if you described the standard procedures to me, tell me what's expected of me, and maybe show me a little bit of what I have to do, I might have questions."

Girl #2: "Okay." *continues to work feverishly*

Me: *tries to ask a few questions, and is completely bypassed, as two crises occur at the same time*

Girl #1 & Girl #2: *work feverishly for an hour to resolve crises*

Girl #2: "So, do you have any questions so far?"

Me: "Well, not since the last time you asked. I don't really know what's going on. Maybe you could tell me what you're doing right now?"

Girl #2: "Yeah. You don't really need to know that yet."

Me: *sighs* "Okay. Maybe you could tell me what the procedure is when calling the police?"

Girl #2: "Oh, you want the black book?" *hands me a binder with police phone numbers*

Me: "Not exactly..."

Girl #1 & Girl #2: *work feverishly for an hour*

Girl #2: "So, do you have any questions so far?"

Me: *grinds teeth*

Girl #2: "Hey, do you want to take some client calls?"

Me: *goggles* "If you tell me what to ask them and how to deal with it, sure!"

Girl #2: "Oh, well, I don't really have time to tell you that right now."

Me: *grinds teeth more*


Etc. It was singularly frustrating. I'm hoping tonight will go better. At least I'll have my new logon information, and at the very least I'll be able to poke around the system and learn how some of it works for myself.

If I make it in this job, I'm going to make it my personal mission in life to write a training manual for the company, and basically use that to make sure no one ever has to go through this again. It will also give me an edge if I'm literally the person who "wrote the book" on dispatching for my company. I might eventually be able to secure myself a better position by becoming the default "trainer-of-people" for them, and maybe get some sort of nominal promotion out of it. That would be nice.

Right now, though, I have to wade through this dog's breakfast of a training period and hope to come out of it intact. At least I'm a quick study, and it can't be worse than Dial-A-Husband. *crosses fingers*