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Saturday, August 05, 2017

Ridiculous

Our truck was supposed to arrive today between 10 am and 2 pm, and when it didn't show Andrew called the company we booked with to see where, exactly, it was. They called their partner company in Utah to find out and then told Andrew that it would be another 2–3 hours before our truck would be delivered and that the company out here would call us to confirm delivery time.

Two soon passed and the third hour was quickly ticking by with no truck in sight. When Jacob and Shayla showed up to help I decided I should call the company to confirm, once again, that this truck was coming. Unfortunately, the number we have is based in the East Coast and they keep rather strict business hours so no one answered the phone.

Andrew looked up the number for the partner company based in Salt Lake and I called them at about 4:50 (shortly before closing) and confused the poor customer service representative on the phone so badly that she ran out to find her supervisor...who was in the parking lot getting into his car to go home. Because they also keep strict business hours.

He came back inside to help clear things up.

Turns out "our" truck was actually on its way, but after my call (and a quick review of our paperwork) they radioed out to the driver and told them to turn around because for some reason they thought we needed an empty truck delivered this afternoon. The actual truck we need—which is full of our stuff—is apparently parked in their lot, still waiting to be delivered.


Unfortunately, since it was the close of the business day it would be impossible for them to deliver the truck today. Instead they are going to have a driver bring it out first thing in the morning, which I am to understand they are bending over backwards to do because ordinarily their drivers get the weekends off.

I said that was fine...but that I wasn't happy about it.

Frankly, it throws off our entire weekend. We had to call and text and email the friends and family and ward to ask them not to come tonight but to (maybe) come tomorrow. And instead of spending tomorrow unpacking and putting together furniture we will now spend half the day unloading the truck...which is what we were supposed to be doing this evening...which means we won't get done half of what we wanted to get done tomorrow.

And I guess that's fine, except currently I can't lift anything. So while I can unbox things just fine and decide whether things need to be upstairs in our living quarters or down in the basement in storage, I can't really cart anything around. Andrew's going to do that part. But he works full time so...that's why we wanted to spend all day Saturday really getting things done.

So we're a little annoyed right now (as are a lot of the people who cleared their schedules to help us out, I'm sure) and are still camping out on air mattresses.

I guess it's kind of funny if you really think about it (and that's why you should really think about things before you get too upset). This afternoon the girls were helping me fold laundry and we came across a pair of hole-riddled underwear. Miriam wanted to know if I would fix them for her, but I told her that I wouldn't. They were old. Miriam had been wearing them for a couple of years. Rachel had worn them a couple of years before that. And, if I'm not mistaken, they were handed down from their twin cousins Olivia and Sabrina.

They had a good run. It was time to retire.

"You mean we can just throw them away?" Miriam asked.

"That is exactly what I mean," I said.

And a little tussle broke out between the girls—who should have the honour of throwing away this pair of bedraggled underwear?!

Side story:

Tonight when the girls were fighting over the last two carrots on the table (not in the house, mind you, just on the table) Aunt Katharine (who was already on the way to help with unloading our truck when she was alerted not to come, so didn't get the message until she'd arrived) remarked, "I love how your kids are fighting over vegetables!"

"Oh, they will fight over anything," I said.

And it's true. Because obviously Miriam should get to throw away the underwear; after all, it's hers. Oh, but it was Rachel's first so Rachel should get to throw away the underwear. But they currently belong to Miriam; Rachel relinquished ownership years ago. But...

Seriously.

I was like, "Ummm, you two need to work this out quickly and dispose of the underwear and get back to work because this is ridiculous."

So they compromised. Rachel would carry them down the stairs (never mind the fact that we have a perfectly good garbage can upstairs) and Miriam would get to toss them into grandma's magical kitchen garbage can (which opens automatically when you wave your hand over it so is obviously way more fun than that perfectly good garbage can upstairs that I mentioned).

Instead of walking down the stairs normally, however, Rachel took off at a dead run, laughing wickedly, and waving the underwear in front of her. Miriam, naturally, assumed that Rachel was going to throw the underwear away herself, so she streaked off after her, shrieking, "No! Don't throw them away! I want to throw them away!"

"I'm not going to!" Rachel reassured her, sending her on a bit of a wild goose chase around the house. When she got dangerously close to the garbage can with them, Miriam yelled, "LIAR!" and then Rachel went ballistic because Miriam had maligned her character.

I asked the girls to simmer down and come upstairs to talk to me. They stomped up, muttering excuses over one another the whole way.

"But she was going to throw them away!"

"I was not!"

"You were so!"

"Well, she called me a liar!"

"Oh, my goodness, girls. Stop," I said. "Sit down for a minute—Ah, ah, ah! Close your mouths!—and think about what this is all about. Just think about what you're fighting about and then tell me—with a straight face—if all this contention is really worth it."

Both girls sat down huffily but soon started giggling.

"What?" I asked.

"We're fighting about who gets to throw away a pair of holey underwear," they snickered, almost in unison.

"Yeah," I said. "Exactly. This is...ridiculous...and it's not something we need to get all bent out of shape over."

They started in with their but-but-buts again but I quashed them and reminded them that the entire affair from start to finish was silly and they'd both been goading each other for no good reason (unless a pair of holey underwear is a good reason to have a sororal falling out (hint: it's not)).

And so I should remind myself, while I'm sitting here feeling a little put out that we still don't have our things, that it's really just a tad funny that the trucking company had an empty truck on its way to our house when what we really wanted was the full truck sitting idle in their parking lot. It doesn't feel very funny until you sit down to think about it and then, well, it's just kind of ridiculous.

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