Absolutely nothing in this blog post has been exaggerated or embellished. Not. One. Thing.
This weekend gave new meaning to “It’s the little things.” Only not a good meaning. It was all little things. All weekend.
About a week ago I bought a “gaming chair” for my office. It was on sale at Wayfair. They sent me a slightly better one than I had ordered, so I felt really lucky.
Here’s the chair. Don’t ask me why there’s a random Nintendo controller on the floor of their promo picture. I have no clue.
Anyway, I should have known better. There’s no such thing as luck.
Next, the evaporator fan in our fridge died. It had been making noises for a week, just as it did back in July when we had to replace the fan the first time. Wayne had bought an off-brand replacement fan from Amazon back then and, after losing an entire fridge worth of food before the fan arrived, we figured we were good to go. Note to self husband: Stop trying to save two dollars by buying a generic appliance part. May the two dead fans rest in peace.
So, all this week I had been asking Wayne to purchase another, better fan ASAP so we would have it here before the fridge fan truly died. Because die it would. And I was not wrong. The fan died on Friday. The new fan arrived on Saturday. You do the math. In the interim day, the fridge was registering as 51 degrees. A bit balmy for a refrigerator containing dairy products and raw pork.
In related news (which will seem more related by the time I finish this story), I use a 43” 4K TV as my computer monitor. On Friday, the TV’s 3 HDMI ports all failed, probably due to a recent brownout/power outage. After I tried every permutation of different cables and ports, with only a small amount of cussing, I conceded that all the HDMI ports were toast.
Undaunted (because the weekend was still young), I unplugged it, set it on the floor, and switched it out for a computer monitor on my other desk so I could get church work done for the weekend. Lots of cables were flying everywhere as I made this exchange. It seemed like an easy task till I got partway into it and couldn’t go back.
Then I figured I’d just switch two similar TVs—the one in the guest room and this “monitor” TV in my office. I put the computer monitor back on my second desk. More cables were flying everywhere. By now I was sweating. Where were those 40-degree temps from last week when I needed them?
Somewhere in the middle of all this chaos, I dragged my old office chair, which had been taking up space in the foyer, up to the third floor for storage. I’m a little too short to be hoisting heavy office chairs over my head while climbing steep stairs. I woke up yesterday morning with a wrenched back. Because, of course.
In more related news (don’t worry—it’ll all come together as one big cloud of yuck soon), I now I have a Nespresso machine in the kitchen. So I thought I’d move my old coffeemaker up to my office for fun. I set everything up on a low bookshelf, with more cords and trying to establish some good office feng shui, only to discover that it would not turn on. At all. The brownout/power outage had probably killed it. And it was not a cheap coffeemaker. May it rest in peace.
Amid all this fun, my Walmart grocery delivery order was supposed to arrive at 7 p.m. Saturday. At 7:40 p.m. I got an apologetic text that the order was delayed and they’d contact me when it was on the way. At 9:15 p.m., with no food in sight, I called the store. They forwarded my call to some other department. I’ve never heard anyone talk as slowly and listlessly as this person. He was either high or sleeping, or both, and he said they couldn’t do anything about it now because they close at 10:00. (The store closes at 11, and besides, it was only 9:15.) The order had food I was going to use for dinner. Because, of course. So I had to improvise.
On Wayne’s one night off this week, we had canned soup and grilled cheese for dinner. At 9:45 p.m.
Wayne spent that one night off changing the fridge fan. He did it overnight while I was sleeping. Picture him as a really large elf in the shoemaker’s shop overnight. No, wait, don’t. It’s not a pretty picture. He’d look silly in the little curly-toed shoes and the lederhosen.
Anyway, it took him hours to get rid of the ice buildup. He wasn’t sure which came first: the ice or the seized-up fan. By this point, of course, it didn’t really matter.
He very cleverly used my hair dryer to melt some of the ice, but it still took hours. While he was blasting the ice with my hair dryer, it just stopped working. Kaput. He failed to mention this to me. He just left the dead hair dryer on the back staircase for me to find this morning.
This morning I almost tripped over a dead hair dryer on the back staircase when I came down for my Nespresso. Because I don’t have a coffeemaker in my office.
Once I was back upstairs, Wayne texted me from the living room that he’d need clean scrubs for work. There was a clean set of scrubs in the dryer, two floors below me, but I forgot to bring that load upstairs in my haste to deal with the missing grocery order. Let’s just say four flights of stairs is mighty good exercise when you’re in a hurry. So that was more sweating because those 40-degree temps are still gone.
In still somehow-related news… (don’t get your panties in a bunch)… Despite having cancelled (9 days ago) a hotel reservation for a conference I could not attend this weekend, I received an email today with a PDF of the hotel bill attached. I had cancelled the reservation over the phone (because there was no link on their site to cancel online), and I was told that the confirmation “number” I was to jot down for the cancellation was “Todd, the front desk manager.” Seems legit.
Then I noticed the credit card number listed on the bill (a bunch of X’s and then four last digits that I did not recognize). In a panic, I started checking all my online credit card accounts to see if any of them had been charged, since I couldn’t remember which card I’d used to make the reservation last winter.
I tried logging in to my Amtrak Rewards Bank of America Mastercard account and was met with this message: “There is no registered user with this ID. We cannot process your request. Please call 800-XXX-XXXX.” Which I did. They had a “high volume of calls” so I was on hold for about ten minutes.
A very nice man tried everything he could and then admitted this was above his pay grade, so he gave me the phone number for the credit card department.
I called the credit card department and was greeted with an automated voice… in Spanish. I took 5 years of German in school. Not a speck of Spanish. No amount of pressing “1” or “0” or yelling “English!” got me anywhere. I tried the phone number again, hoping I had just missed an earlier menu where I could opt for English. I had not missed anything. It was still in Spanish.
I called the main 800 number again, was met with the same “high volume of calls” again, and remained on hold until someone picked up. I explained the situation again, added on the bit about being given a phone number that answers completely in Spanish, and waited while this new person looked up my account. Once she discovered it was an Amtrak Mastercard (since Bank of America carries many different kinds of cards), she told me that as of TODAY the Amtrak Rewards card was now being serviced by First National Bank of Omaha. Which explains why I could log in on Thursday to make my monthly payment, but could not log in today.
I created an online account with the new Amtrak/FNBO card info, only to discover that there is no record of the large payment I made on Thursday at the Bank of America site. So, I sent an online email to Customer Service, explaining the transfer of accounts and asking whether they received my payment for this month.
The fun part is that my bank has already deducted that large payment from my account to pay that credit card bill.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, I tried emailing the hotel with my confirmation number and the dates—and my cancellation confirmation of “Todd, the front desk manager”—but ended up in an online-form loop that made me update my password, change my username, update my password again, and then did not give me the option to choose an appropriate category such as “Billing Question.” I had to make one up. I also had to fudge on the name of the hotel, since I had to choose from a drop-down menu and my hotel was not even listed there. So I chose the geographically closest one and then added in the comments box which hotel I really meant.
I will receive a response in “7 to 10 business days.” Let me tell you, a lot can happen in 7 to 10 business days. Around here, a lot can happen in 7 to 10 minutes.
Meanwhile, back at a different ranch, I called Walmart again and talked to the Pickup department. They found my order and said it was scheduled to arrive at 7 p.m. A full day late. Nobody had told me. I explained that my husband was leaving for work at 6 p.m. and that his dinner was in that order. So, they changed the delivery time to “ASAP.” Note to self: Call them back and explain what “ASAP” stands for.
By 8 p.m., a day later than scheduled, there was still no delivery order and no communication from the store or the app. Two hours earlier I had had to improvise for dinner again. In a fit of premonition and genius, I had put a pork loin in the Crock Pot so at least we’d have SOMETHING for dinner.
But in a fit of stupidity, I forgot to put the lid on the Crock Pot, so it cooked all day without the lid to seal in the juices. The pork loin tasted like eating a board that had been left in the desert for a week. But, you know, with bacon on top.
And I didn’t have eggs or milk for tomorrow morning, in addition to the missing grocery order, because Wayne had taken all the food out of the fridge for 3 or 4 hours last night while he fixed the fan. The eggs and milk were a little too sketchy for my liking at this point.
At 8:45 p.m. I called Walmart one more time, was transferred to the Pickup department (who put me on hold several times without talking to me), was transferred back to the main desk, who apologized, then was transferred to a manager, where I was again on hold with no one picking up, then was transferred back to the main desk, who apologized again, then was transferred back to Pickup. This time someone in Pickup picked up. (For a moment, I felt like I’d won the lottery.)
And she explained that my order HAD been marked as “ASAP” but that they now use third-party drivers and none of them picked up the delivery. I asked if I could just switch the order to Pickup. I then spent the next hour driving to Walmart and back to retrieve my “delivery” order. Note to self: Call them back again to explain what “delivery” means.
They’d told me that, since my order wasn’t listed as a regular Pickup order, when I arrived I should pull into one of the numbered spots, call the phone number on the sign, and then let them know I was there for the order. I sat in spot 7 and called their number. I got voicemail, only to be told that their mailbox was full and I should call back later.
I called 4 times before someone picked up.
I got home and discovered that I received the 3 Honeycrisp apples I ordered but was charged for 6. So it’ll likely be another phone call in the morning. I can’t wait.
As happens every week after I place an order, I just got an email from Walmart with a link to a “How Did We Do?” survey regarding my grocery order. Should I? You know, while I wait to hear back about the hotel bill, the credit card payment, and the two dollars I was overcharged for the apples?
Sure. Why not? What could go wrong?
