He Said, She Said

Last week, we had our generator installed.  This week, we had our generator installed.  The three day process had to be split up between two weeks, because why should they limit the pain to only one week when they could screw up two?

So anyway, last week went something like this...

Monday morning.

He said: Ma'am, if it's okay, we need to turn your power off for an hour, no  more than an hour and a half, so we can work on the electric box.

He meant:  SUCKER!  If you believe that, I have some swampland in Florida I'd like to sell you.  Oh, and I hope you want to sit in the dark all day, and eat whatever you can forage from your cabinet, because you are not going to see power any time soon.

I said:  Um, okay, but we'll have power by this afternoon, right?  Because our tree is being delivered and they need to plug in their saw.

I meant:  Do I have a choice?  Isn't that why I am sitting here all day instead of having an actual life?  Oh, and if you really are only an hour and a half, I'll run outside and look for those flying pigs.

He said:  Is it okay to park in your driveway?

He meant:  We've already parked four large trucks in your driveway and are going to leave them there all day.  By the way, the other three guys are going to leave, taking the keys with them, so that even when we're done in the house, you are still trapped like a prisoner under house arrest.  Don't even think of trying to leave.  Mwahahaha.

I said:  Um, okay.

I meant:  Um, okay.

I later thought (when I realized my predicament) Really??? In what alternate universe did this seem like a good idea?  Exactly how far is your head up your butt?  Grrr.

Monday afternoon (3 hours later) the tree guys arrive.  Still no power.

Tree guys said:  Uh, is there a switch you have to flip for this outlet to work?

They meant:  Uh, is there a switch you have to flip for this outlet to work?

I said:  Let me talk to the guys working on the generator and see if they can turn the power back on.

I meant:  They will turn the power back on, or they will be picking pieces of Christmas tree out of their...uh...teeth.  Yeah, teeth.

He said:  Oh, we can run a line for you to use.

He meant:  Yeah.  Across the yard from where they are and then sit back and watch them drag a ten foot tree back and forth.  Hehehe

Tree guys said:  Thanks

They meant:  For NOTHING.  Oh, and next year, the day you want the tree delivered, we're busy.

This week went something like this:

Monday morning, the doorbell rang at 9am.  There stood a guy in front of a huge truck with a forklift on the back.

He said:  I'm delivering this for today.  Can I park it in front, partly on your lawn?

He meant:  I am totally wasting your time right now because no matter what you say, I'm going to put it where I want and there is nothing you can do about it.  Nanny, nanny, na na.

I said:  No, you can't park it on my lawn even a little bit.  How about parking it over there, on the gravel only?

I meant:  Would you want a forklift parked on your lawn?  What do we look like here, the Beverly Hillbillies?  Yeah.  Sure.  Park it between the rusted-out pick-up that we have up on blocks and the C-ment pond.  I'll have Jethro clear a space for you.  Duh.

Later Monday morning, the doorbell rang again.  There stood a guy in front of said forklift while his buddy ran it through my flowerbed and dug a trench into the lawn that you could lose a small child in.

He said:  Do you think your neighbor would mind if we took the forklift into his yard?  We can't get the unit onto the pad from this angle.

He meant:  I am trying to win an award for stupidest man on the face of the earth.  Based on the question I just asked you, how am I doing?

I said:  YES, HE WOULD MIND!  I'm not happy about what you did to my yard, and I'm the one getting the generator.

I meant:  Seriously?  Did your mother have any children that lived?  My yard looks like the marines were using it to practice war games and you're asking me if you can do the same thing to my neighbor's yard?  Oh, and if my rosebushes and cherry tree are in your way, just plow right over them.  Ooops.  Wait.  Too late.  You already did.  Grrrrrrr.

I Am A Mushroom

After this last year of Snowmaggedon, earthquakes and hurricanes, we decided to bite the bullet and get a generator.

Oh.  Wait.  Tim decided to get the generator and I have to bite the bullet.  Yeah.  That's how it went.

So, two weeks ago, I got a call from someone named Sally who said she was from company ABC (one of the companies Tim had contacted for an estimate).  Expectant Pause.

"Okay.  And...?"  Was I supposed to burst into a round of applause complete with whistles, cheers and stomps, or would she prefer an award of some kind?

"What can I do for you?"  Sally asked brightly, obviously hoping to provoke some kind of reaction other than confused silence.

"I give up.  What can you do for me?"  Um.  Hello.  You called me!

Second pause.  Clearly, this conversation was not going according to Sally's plan.  Whatever that was.

"Uh,"  some of the perkiness left Sally voice.  "I'm calling for Sean...?"

Oh. You're calling for Sean?  Well why didn't you say so in the first place.  Now I understand everything.  Just a couple of quick questions though:  Who is Sean, and exactly how lazy and/or incompetent is he that you have to make the call for him?

"Sean is the one who sold you the generator...?"  Sally volunteered another piece of the puzzle while I was still struggling to voice my last question in a less snarky way than the version that was running through my head.

"I didn't know I had bought a generator, but now I know what the problem is,"  the light bulb finally went on, and I knew who to blame for the confusing morass Sally and I were currently mired in.  "You see, my husband must have been dealing with Sean and he thinks I am a mushroom."

"A mushroom?"  Sally echoed, sounding more than a little afraid of the answer.  I'm pretty sure that at this point, she was plotting ways to get even with Sean...ex-lax in the coffee perhaps?...for putting her through this torture.

"Yes," I answered, similarly plotting my own form of vengeance on Tim, but he would not get off as lightly as ex-lax.  "A mushroom.  He keeps me in the dark and feeds me sh--, er, I mean he obviously didn't tell me what he did."  I finished lamely.

Sally meanwhile was more than a little giddy with relief that she was not speaking with someone she would later have to tell the police interviewer "seemed a little off, but I never imagined she'd take out all those poor, poor people with her.".

"Okay, well, I think I'm supposed to set up a time to come out and install the generator," she said.

And you couldn't have led with that and saved us both this ridiculously painful conversation?  I mean, c'mon, Sally.  Work with me on this.  And what do you mean, you think?  Don't you know what you were supposed to do?  Really?  Are you a mushroom too?

Sally offered me installation as early as the following week.  Wow! I thought.  So soon!  That never happens when dealing with people in the service industry, or at least not without divine intervention or a really big payoff.   Sally, you rock!  And then she dropped the bomb.  Installation would take three days.

Three days?!?  I have to sit at home for three days?  Are you installing a generator or building a wing onto the house for this thing?  Maybe you are assembling it on site from scratch.  Perhaps the installer is legally blind and the installation instructions are written in Sanskrit.  I know, it's being put into place by a team of highly trained snails who will then turn it on, hop in, douse themselves with garlic and wine and become escargot.  Three days?  At home?

"Well, officer, she seemed fairly normal when we arrived on Monday.  We never saw the homicidal rage coming on Wednesday afternoon until it was too late."

Tim was sooo going to hear about this.  I was emailing him even as I was resignedly circling the days on a calendar like a prisoner about to enter solitary confinement.  And I don't care what anyone says, they weren't getting my shoelaces and belt.  I had to have something to keep my busy for three days.

Within an hour or so, I heard back from Tim, who had the gall, the nerve, the utter temerity to chastise me for scheduling the installation on days we would be out of town.

We will?

Yes, we're leaving on Tuesday and won't be back till Friday.

Oh?  And when were you planning on sharing that little gem?  Monday night?  Why don't you just get Sally to call me up about an hour before we take off on Tuesday and have her tell me what's going on?

"Honest officer, I never saw it coming.  I mean, sure, she muttered under her breath and maybe her eyes did circle in opposite directions, but I just thought she was a bit eccentric.  I never suspected anything like this.  Have you even found a piece of Mr. Sinclair?  No?  Not even a lock or hair or a fingernail?"

I am.  A mushroom.

Blinded By The Light

When I was young, my Aunt Margie would spend every Christmas with us, and make decorating the tree about as much fun as a root canal.

"No, no!  You can't hang Rudolph near Mickey."

Why?  Are they mortal enemies?  Can we put Dumbo next to Mickey, or do you think that'll start a stampede?

"Stop!  The blue bells go at the top, they're breakable."

Okay.  I'm fifteen, not five, and they are from K-Mart, not Swarovski.  If I promise not to ride my tricycle in the house, can we hang at least one bell under the six-foot mark?  Pleeeease, can we, huh?

"Wait.  String the lights from top to bottom, not side to side.  And start inside and work out.  You want to give the tree depth."

Um.  You are aware the tree is plastic right?  With metal "limbs"?  And since our lights are from, like, 1935, I'm pretty sure just having them in the same room constitutes a fire hazard, let alone  putting them inside the tree.  Besides, don't you think the tree kind of glows in the dark as it is?

With this scene played out Christmas after Christmas, it's no wonder I am scared for life.

So when Tim and I had our first Christmas, I convinced him to get a pre-lit tree, and then I hung glass bulbs on all the lowest branches.  Hehehe (and then I ran with scissors and went swimming 58 minutes after eating--what can I say, I was young and crazy!)

But last year, Tim talked me into getting a real tree.  He promised faithfully that he would do all the lights by himself.  I would not have to re-live my childhood nightmare.

After about two hours, our tree boasted several hundred lights, woven in, out, up, down and side to side.  It twinkled like a float in Disney's Electric Parade.  Proudly, Tim showed off his handiwork.

"You can't even see the wires, and I used ten boxes of lights," he bragged.

"Okay, you're hired,"  I told him.  "You get to do the lights every year from now on."

And then this year, disaster struck. 

After thirty-two years of dealing with a bad knee, Tim needs a replacement.  That means surgery, weeks of rehab, and lots of pain, both before and after the surgery.

But enough about Tim.  Let's talk real pain, my pain.  This year, I had to put up the lights.

I decided to do it while he was at work, so the fool wouldn't try to climb a ladder with a bad knee.  He called as I was plugging in the first strand, and in a moment of weakness (or insanity), I told him what I was about.

"I'll do it," he roared at me.  "You'll do it wrong.  Leave it till I get home tonight."

Gee, thanks Aunt Margie.  I've got to get off the phone now because I'm having a flashback and I can't hear you over the voices in my head.

So with that vote of confidence, and wishing I could start drinking at 9am on a Wednesday, I began to string the lights.

In and out, up and down, round and round I wrapped, unwrapped and rewrapped those stupid lights.  Morning turned to afternoon as I added strand after strand.  Up the ladder, down the ladder.  Stop and back up to make sure I didn't miss any spots.  My lights just had to live up to last year's display, or I would never hear the end of it.

Somewhere around 3:00, I was about halfway done and wondering how Tim was able to finish in two hours when it was taking me six, when another disaster struck.  I ran out of lights.

Dumbfounded, I stared at the tree.  How could I have used all the lights and not be done?  And what should I do now, spend another day unwinding and rewinding the lights?

Nope.  No way.  Not gonna happen.

I took a picture of the unfinished tree and sent it to Tim, then hopped in the car, drove to Target and bought the last nine boxes of lights they had.

In the meantime, Tim called, howling with laughter.  "I'm married to Clark Griswald from Christmas Vacation!"

"Do you think it's too bright?" I asked.

"Too bright?  When we fire that bad boy up, we're going to take down the whole Eastern seaboard.  Good thing we're having a generator put in.  We'll need it just to light the tree.  I think you can see it from space.  But on the bright side, Santa won't need Rudolph to find our house.  He might need sunglasses and SPF 60, but he sure can't miss it!  Hey, I'll bet your parents can see it from Florida.  Tell them to step outside and look north."

Great.  I married Shecky Sinclair.

The abuse continued when he came home, but the worst part was, the extra nine boxes were still not enough, and I had to spend most of Thursday tracking down the same kind of lights, which apparently no one but Target sells. (But I will save that for another blog)

I've made up my mind though.  Next year, we're going to a beach somewhere and decorate a palm tree.  How many lights could that take?