Mwa ha ha! You’ll recall I thought it was a lovely day this morning? Even vacation-like? Well, when you think about it, nano- means very, very, excessively extremely small. That does describe the extent of today’s minivacation.
Before long I get around to loading the sheets in the washer. Check one item off the list.
Next quickie project is to water the potted plants outside, which fortunately are fairly close to the side door to the garage, where the washer & dryer reside. I reach over to turn off the spigot and hear this husky “drip-drip-drip” and by golly it’s coming from inside the garage.
The garage sink, into which the washer drains, is COMPLETELY PLOGGED UP and water is now pouring onto the floor.
Shut off the spin cycle. Get the plunger. Plunge and plunge and plunge and plunge and plunge and plunge to no avail.
Call the plumber. He’ll come over sometime this afternoon.
Try to mop the water up off the floor. Lost cause. Open the garage door, move the car outside, get the wide broom, sweep puddles of water out onto the driveway.
The washer is now full of soapy sheets and white underwear. Pour cold water into the bathtub. Haul out the undies, wring as much soapy water out as my ancient hands will permit. Rinse them out in the tubful of water, wring, hang on plastic hangers to dry. Decide I’d just as soon not leave the sheets sitting the the washer all day. Remember how my mother and I used to have to rinse all the clothes and linens, including my father’s enormously heavy khakis, in the big utility sink in the service porch, then drag them out to the backyard and hang them up on the clotheslines. If a shamal (a sandstorm) came rolling in from the desert or a rain squall washed ashore from the Persian Gulf, we would have to run to grab the clothes off the line before the flying dirt or water hit.
Those were the good old days. Not.
Funny. The plumbing never seemed to back up in those halcyon times.
Haul the sheets into the bathroom, rinse them in the tub, wring them as best as I can, drop them back in the bucket, haul them to the backyard and hang them on the makeshift clotheslines out there.
Hm. Walking through the kitchen, I notice that the kitchen sink is backed up, too. Call the plumber to report this, so he’ll know what he’s contending with. He says that means the kitchen line we thought we’d unplugged a few days didn’t really get unplugged. He’s armed with all his machinery.
It’ll be a while. The really BIG thing I needed to do today was to file The Copyeditor’s Desk’s annual report with the Corporation Commission. I’m late, and probably accruing late fees as the days pass. But it’s easy: get online, enter the corporation’s registration number, update a form, fork over about a hundred bucks, and click “done.”
Sounds easy, anyway.
But….
I get up to retrieve my wallet, wherein resides the corporate credit card.
It’s not in my purse.
It’s not in my class junk bag.
It’s not in the car.
IT. IS. FUCKIN’. GONE!!!!!!!
I can’t find my wallet anywhere. Nowhere. Anyplace. Noplace!!!!!!!
Maybe I left it at the window & door guy’s shop when I took out a credit card to pay him. Of course, they’re “family oriented” and close over the weekend. No one there.
Okay. So…can I find the credit card number and just enter the damn thing at the Corporation Commission’s site? It means taking a chance that someone is madly charging up truck tires and boom boxes on that card, but hey. All I have to do is say I didn’t realize it was gone when I was submitting forms online.
Well. No. I can’t find the credit card number. My file folder full of statements is over at the accountant’s. Fortunately she lives across the street. She comes over with the statements, and with advice:
CALL. AMERICAN. EXPRESS. NOW. NOT. LATER!
And while you’re at it, call the Mastercard vendor, too. Do not even THINK of waiting until Monday when you can get the window dude on the phone!
Oshitodamnohell…
BUSINESS OWNER: Okay, but how’s about I post the annual report first?
ACCOUNTANT: You could probably get away with that.
Welp, we find the full account number in a piece of correspondence AMEX sent at the time I opened the account (otherwise, they show only the last four digits on their statements).
So I sit down to do the annual report and…that’s when I realize I don’t know when the card expires.
Rifle through all the papers and receipts in the files: no clue.
Damn.
So, get on the phone to AMEX and Mastercard to report missing-or-stolen card. They cancel the accounts and say they will reissue new cards. While chatting with the AMEX CSR, realize that holy god! My flicking Medicare card was in that wallet, and Medicare kindly stamps your goddam SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBER on the card and then demands that you carry it everywhere with you! Have a near melt-down on the phone.
Moving on… Transfer the amount of down payment for the windows from savings over to checking and use that to pay the balance on the Mastercard, with which I paid the window guy.
After all these tergiversations, I remember—a day late and a dollar short—that at one point along the line I photocopied the contents of that wallet. Dig this out, and yes, it shows the Medicare card, a Mastercard, two AMEX cards, a driver’s license… Hmmm….Apparently I also had a J.Jill card in there.
Can’t get a human being at J.Jill, only the MOST infuriating robo-answerer in creation. Only option there is to cancel the card altogether. Good. Less opportunity to charge stuff up.
Now I am without a charge card. And I charge everything. I do not carry cash. I buy gas at Costco, and you have to use your AMEX card to buy gas there, unless you go inside and buy a cash card (which I’ll have to do tomorrow, with a check, since I have to drive from proverbial pillar to annoying post next week).
The plumber shows up. “This looks bad,” says he.
He breaks out his rotorooter tool and climbs on the roof. As I write this, it is 109 degrees in the shade of the back porch. You don’t even want to think about what the temperature is like in the full glare of the sun atop a dark roof.
In the presence of another human being, my hysteria abates from its high pitch. A vague memory arises: didn’t I read some PF blogger’s advice somewhere that a person should take her Medicare card out of her wallet and stash it someplace in the house? And didn’t I…did I?…act on that?
Dredge through a file drawer to find the hanging folder for Medicare, and therein find a file labeled À la carte. And hot dang! There’s the damnfool Medicare card!
Somewhere along the line, for one brief shining moment, I experienced a flicker of common sense. A miracle!!!! Whoever has my wallet does not have my Social Security number.
What. a. freaking. nightmare.
…..oh, but it gets better….
[PLUMBER walks into kitchen and runs water in the sink]
HOMEOWNER: Hm. Looks like it’s running.
PLUMBER: Actually not. It’s plugged up solid.
HOMEOWNER: Get the jackhammer.
PLUMBER: That’s what I’m doin’!
I think he’s joking. I hope.
PLUMBER goes back on the roof, having asked me to stand next to the sink and watch what happens. Spends another ten minutes laboring with the drain snake.
He comes down and opines that the drain is now clear.
I remark that I can’t recall blocked pipes when I was a little kid.
“Well, people didn’t rely on the plumbing as much then. We didn’t have dishwashers, and a lot of people didn’t even have washers in their homes.”
Right. And when water came out of a faucet, enough came out to matter…
Moving on, he notices a gallon of vinegar sitting on the garage table—I use it in the dishwasher. He says, “If we could pour a gallon of that down the drain, it would be good.”
I say, “How about ammonia?”
Says he, “That would be even better.”
I haul out a half-gallon bottle of ammonia. “Pour it all down the kitchen sink,” he says. “And use some of it to clean the sink!”
I put on a pair of rubber gloves and proceed as directed. We let the ammonia sit there for ten or twenty minutes. Then fill the sinks—what with the hateful low-flow kitchen faucet, it takes another ten or twenty minutes to fill the kitchen sinks. I ask if it would be possible to get one of those plastic faucets, like the one on the utility sink, that actually works and put it on the kitchen sink. He thinks (erroneously) that I’m kidding.
It’s 3:03 p.m. I have not done the annual report (nor will I, now, until Tuesday or Wednesday), I have not picked up the piles of paper off my desk, I have not read the rest of the client’s MS, I have not read any part of the ARC awaiting attention, I have not printed out the stuff about the windows and filed them, I have not gone to Costco (nor can I, until new credit cards come in), I have not graded student papers, I have not cleaned the floors or dusted, I have not washed the windows. I have not scanned and deposited the most recent check from Google Adsense. My hands are burning from scrubbing sinks and sink grids with Barkeeper’s Friend. It is hotter than Hell in here. I am going to bed, perhaps never to arise.
With any luck.
