I try not to complain. I really do. Before Archie, before my eyes were opened to this whole world I never knew existed in regular time, I complained constantly, without end. But now I try very hard not to complain. It can be worse, I know. It can always be worse.
However, with that said, it still sometimes feels as if the universe is conspiring against me. And life lately seems like a good example of one of those sometimes. So indulge me, okay? Just this one time. I promise.
First of all, I am going to Charleston this weekend to compete in the 31st Annual Cooper River Bridge Run. John, Archie, Kit, Jack and I are staying with my brother, his wife and their children, as well as my parents, who are renting a beach house on Isle of Palms. I acknowledge that this is wonderful and unworthy of complaint.
What I am complaining about, though, is how damn bad one of the toes on my left foot hurts. You may think this is trivial, but I challenge you to run six-ish miles with a bruised toe and a nail threatening to fall off eminently and see how well you do.
I know that I can cope with the pain. In fact, I know my pain tolerance level well enough that I’m sure I won’t even feel my feet after the first mile or so, but I’m still not happy about this small hurdle. I’ve been kicking some running butt lately (ten miles each time I’m out!) and I’d like Saturday’s effort to reflect my progress.
Since we’re going out of town this weekend, it occurred to me yesterday afternoon that I needed a place to board our dog. It also occurred to me that our dog needs a new rabies vaccination before she can be kenneled because her current vaccination is out-of-date this week. “No problem,” I reasoned as I picked up the phone to schedule an appointment with our veterinarian on Wednesday morning, my only morning free enough from errands and appointments to allow me to take time out for the dog.
But as soon as I made another call to schedule a drop-off time at our kennel, I discovered that the kennel requires a 48-hour time period between vaccinations and drop-offs. “No problem,” I tell the woman at the kennel. “Let me call our vet again and reschedule the vaccination appointment for tomorrow.”
“I can rearrange our schedule,” I muttered to myself. “I’ll make it work out.”
So I called the veterinarian’s office again. At first, I was placed on hold for a very long time, and then once my call was picked up a very snippy office assistant informed I that Tuesdays are surgery days and she just can’t accommodate my request to reschedule. Now I’ve been taking our pets to this practice for years and the office assistant with whom I usually speak is very willing to work with me. But this new voice and her tone were both unfamiliar to me.
I explained to the office assistant that I needed the vet to vaccinate the dog tomorrow so she can be kenneled, and we can leave town on schedule, and asked the assistant to please, please find a way to make it happen. She put me on hold again until she came back several minutes later. “We can do her as a drop off, between surgeries,” she explained, her words short and tight. “But you need to bring her in before eight o’clock in the morning if you want us to do it.”
So tomorrow morning I’m challenged with finding a way to drop our dog off on one side of town, drive across town to drop Archie off at the Meyer Center, and then drive back across town to drop Kit and Jack off at St. Mary Magdalene’s which incidentally is about a mile away from the veterinarian’s office. And no, I can’t drop the twins off before Archie because his class begins earlier than theirs does.
Also? Tomorrow is picture day at the twins’ school so I need to have them looking presentable, which will take a little extra time at best.
My call to the veterinarian’s office was followed by a call to our satellite television provider. Our television keeps telling me that it “cannot connect to satellite,” and thus there is no reception on our set. This began last night and continued this morning. I only got to see half of The Tudors, and haven’t caught any news program in over a day.
The kids are missing Calliou, and the Backyardigans, and Maggie and the Ferocious Beast, and while these shows annoy me greatly, it annoys me more when the kids whine and cry because they’re missing their regularly scheduled programs.
And, people, I missed Martha today. I am never happy when I miss Martha. I admit it; I adore her. Have I ever mentioned that we are so engrossed by Martha here that Archie, Kit and Jack know her on sight? Well, they do. We are like little Martha robots in this house. It’s a frailty of mine, I know.
Just the same, I am on the phone with the satellite television company, and I am on hold, and then they are instructing me to try this or that, which I do without success, so I am on hold again. The dog is barking and the kids are screaming when the voice on the other end of the line comes on and tells me that we should schedule a service call, but that she doesn’t have a technician who can come to our house until Wednesday afternoon. But she doesn’t say Wednesday afternoon, instead she says the-second-of-April and I ask her to repeat herself because I’m having a hard time hearing her over the din, and then I say, “Hey, I don’t have a calendar in front of me so what day is the-second-of-April?”
The voice on the other end of the line says that the-second-of-April is Wednesday and I ask, “Did you say Wednesday?” and she confirms that she did.
So I ask incredulously, “That’s the earliest you can come?” and she confirms that it is, so I ask her to please check her schedule again, can’t she please come earlier than Wednesday, but she says that is the earliest available appointment. I sense there is nothing left to do but resign myself, so I sigh loudly and tell the voice on the other end of the line to book it.
I hear her computer keys click-clacking and then she tells me that it’s going to cost $79.95 for a technician to come out and fix my satellite television. “Really?” I ask her and I’m sure she can hear in my voice how annoyed I am with her now.
“Yes,” she answers.
“I have to wait two days for a technician to fix my television reception and then you’re going to charge me eighty bucks for him to do it?” I am cringing now, my eyes clamped shut and my nose crinkled as I remember the last satellite technician who came to our house and how much he stunk like stale cigarette smoke.
“Yes,” she answers again. I am quiet so she adds, “I’m sure it’s very frustrating…”
“Sure you are,” I interrupt and this time it’s me who has the tone. “But please put me on the schedule so I can wait two days for you to fix a service you provide to me at cost, and then I’ll pay you eighty bucks for you to do your job.” And then I hung up.
As soon as I hung up the phone it rang again. This time it was John. His car broke down on Friday. At first it wouldn’t start, but after one of his co-workers jumped it for him it wouldn’t stop, so he took it to the service center at the dealership and it’s been there ever since. “What do you want?” I asked him curtly.
“The Jeep is going to cost $1,300 to fix,” he answered flatly.
“Of course it is,” I retorted wondering why John is surprised anymore when our luck falls flat. “Just tell them to fix it.” And then I hung up again.
Our Jeep is about ten years old. It’s a good car. We like it a lot. We intend to run it into the ground and thought that day was at least a few more years in the future, but maybe it isn’t as far away as we’ve dreamed.
And now we’re $1,300 poorer than we were yesterday.
That’s a lot of money.
But to be honest, the car breaking down was hardly the straw that broke this camel’s back Friday morning. Right before John called from his office to tell me that a coworker had to follow him to the service department at the Jeep dealership I had a run in with the man who is planning to write a contract on the house for sale next door to us.
I was raised by a mother who sounds a lot like Sylvia’s stepmother. Consequently, I’ve learned to approach life very much like my own mother. I admit I’m prone to shouting at screens in movie theaters, cheering and hooting loudly when a situation calls for enthusiasm, and sharing my mind even when it isn’t particularly appropriate to do so.
So on Friday morning the man interested in the house next door was in the neighboring backyard, walking the property with a sales agent and builder representative. I was in our backyard with Archie, Kit and Jack. Ostensibly I was pulling Archie out of the garden, kicking a ball for Jack, helping Kit put her shoes back on, but really I was listening to this potential buyer talk about his plans for building a fence.
Now, I found out a few weeks ago that this man wants to build a six-foot tall wooden wall around the backyard of his property. “A privacy fence,” he calls it.
And even though I don’t agree with the farmer in that poem when he repeatedly insists that good fences make good neighbors, I would not be bothered by this, the potential buyer’s desire to build a privacy fence, if it weren’t for the fact that we already have a wrought-iron fence surrounding our property that ties into brick piers constructed in each corner of our backyard.
When we built our fence we did so with the approval of our neighborhood’s homeowner association and with the understanding that no neighbor could ever build a fence smack up against our fence, along the property line. Rather any future fences would have to be tied into our current fence, and would preferably be built of the same material as our fence.
So this potential buyer is talking about his plans to build a fence, and I know he can’t if he complies with the homeowner association covenants, and the community sales agent knows this, too, as does the builder representative, but they’re saying nothing to the potential buyer and are allowing him to dream his impossible dreams.
I am getting angrier and angrier as I’m thinking of how much our fence cost to build, and how we respectfully followed the rules with proposals to the homeowner association, and paid surveyors, and hired licensed masons, and how this man will devalue our property if he comes in and builds a wooden wall right up smack against our wrought-iron fence, side-by-side and fence-to-fence, running right along our property line, until I just can’t take it anymore and my chest feels white-hot, and my arms are pulsating all the way down to my fingertips, and suddenly I hear the emotion in my voice as it shakes and I yell, charging my fence, “You can’t do that!”
He responds that my fence isn’t on the line, my brick piers are. I yell some more, wondering how he’d have me build a wall like ours then where the fencing runs down the center of the end posts, should I have placed my piers outside my property instead, and we are going back and forth.
He thinks he has his rights, I tell him he’s wrong. I actually hear myself threaten to sue him. The sales agent warns, “Let’s not get ugly here!” and I turn to her and accuse her of not protecting the current neighborhood homeowners, of falsifying information to make a sale. Once that statement is out of my mouth I recognize it as slander, and I realize, too, that I’m a crazy lady at this point. What I’m saying is true, all of it, but I’ve lost my temper and I’m carrying on and no one hears me anymore because all they can do at this point is watch and think, “Wow, she’s angry…”
So I walk away from the fence, stuffing my hands in my pockets so I won’t wave them frantically in the air anymore. Somehow the kids just know to follow me inside, so they do without argument and watch television as I park myself in front of our kitchen window and chew my nails. All the while I’m watching the man, and the sales agent, and the builder representative shrug their shoulders as they kick the ground, then mill around a bit until they disappear inside, too. But still here, safe inside my own kitchen, my heart continues to pump wildly inside my chest.
I don’t know what happened with that potential buyer, and I don’t know what happened with the sale, but I tell you now that I hope I killed it. I hope to hell I did.
But why I care so much about what happens to this house in this neighborhood I don’t know. It doesn’t feel as if we fit in no matter how much I try (and I really do want to fit in), and I discovered last week when a neighbor hosted this month’s Bunko night, that after the Bunko night I hosted and she attended, she went home and copied the paint colors in my house down to the exact shade, all five colors, in exactly the same rooms. I don’t know how she managed to do it, but she did. And if you know me at all you know just how much this annoys me.
So that’s my rant for today. Thanks for reading, if you’ve made it this far. I am sighing now, not really feeling any better, but feeling just a little bit lighter. And certainly that counts for something, I suppose.
Posted by: anne
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Morning with the Moores