The Best Laid Plans of Mice and Men…

Or, Catching Up… Again – Part 2

Once the excitement of Wednesday was over I went to bed, ready to see my Mommy on Thursday. When I got to work I hoped that I would have something interesting to do to make the time go quickly until I could leave and go pick her up from the airport. I must have pissed Karma off ‘cause I had nothing to do but read procedures all day! Needless to say the time dragged on. The client had just finished remodeling part of the front building into a cafeteria and auditorium. Between that and the end of the fiscal year they apparently had some money left over and provided a hot-dog lunch for the plant, so that was nice. Finally it got close enough to the end of the day that I headed out.


It took me about an hour to get to the airport and pick up my mom. It was SO good to see her! I can’t believe I went nine months since the last time I saw her! We decided to forgo finding dinner in the city and drove back to the hotel to change before finding something local. I had reserved a room for my mom for the night, since my room only had one bed. The plan was for us both to stay at the hotel Thursday night. And then, while we were out shopping Friday I’d acquire a bed-type item and stay at my apartment Friday night while my mom took my room at the hotel. Yeah, well the best laid plans of mice and men oft go awry. Anyway, we were both tired so we went to bed early.


Since the movers and the cable guy were both scheduled to show up at the apartment between 8 and 10am, I had to get up earlier than I wanted. Especially since I stayed up “late” playing stupid FB games and talking to friends back home. I met my mom downstairs in the breakfast room and looked glumly at the same breakfast I’d had every day for almost two weeks. After a bowl of cereal I went back up to my hotel room to pack up my stuff to take to my apartment. I got a bit later start than I intended, but still made it to my apartment shortly after 8. And then we sat there.


Despite all the careful planning I had tried to do, I still had basically nothing in my apartment. We didn’t have anything to sit on, nor did we have anything to drink out of (not that the tap water is really drinkable). Luckily the movers came fairly early, around 8:30 I think. They wanted me to check off box numbers as they took them off the truck AND tell them where they went in the apartment. Um, I can’t be in two places at once lady! So I told them to just stack the boxes in the living room for me to sort later. Especially since I didn’t pack any of it, and the boxes were so mixed none of them went in just one room.


Even though I had gone over the allowed weight (1,440 pounds total, $306 overage for the 440 over 1,000) it didn’t take long for them to unload. Apparently 1,000 pounds of household stuff isn’t much at all, when you take furniture into account. After they left, Mom walked down to the gas station next to the apartment complex and found us some second breakfast and bottled water. While we waited for the cable guy to show up, we started unpacking my stuff, and the quantity quickly appeared to increase exponentially. Funny how that works…


Around 10:45 my mom suggested I call the cable company and find out where the heck their dude was. The lady I talked to sounded really surprised that the technician hadn’t called or anything. The technician showed up around 11:15 or so with no comment about how late he was. First he asked to see my computer, then looked at the jack in the wall and said he had to go back to his truck for a minute. Probably 30 minutes later he poked his head back in and said there was a hornets’ nest so he was going to the store to get some Raid. We didn’t see him again for over an hour.


At this point I was pretty irritated ‘cause we had been planning to go shopping in the city after getting the internet hooked up, but now that it was well after noon there was no point in driving that far. Also I was already tired of unpacking. Over the next couple hours the technician came in and out, mumbled about stuff, generally looked confused, and finally called somebody else to come help. I think it was around 4pm when they finally got me hooked up, over six hours after they were supposed to have been there.


After the cable guys finally left we headed for the liquor store for a much needed drink, then Wal-mart for cleaning supplies and a bed for me. Oh and snacky things for dinner. I hung out at the hotel with my mom for a couple hours munching on crackers and chocolate before heading back to my apartment to spend the night. Just about when I got in the door I realized that the pump for the little air mattress I got was battery powered, and I didn’t have any batteries. I thought, well I can just sleep on my recliner, no biggy. I went to log into my computer so I could talk to my man and found that I was disconnected from the internet. I poked at it a bit and tried rebooting the router. It was doing something I’ve never seen before and I was much too tired to try to figure it out. I decided that I was tired enough to just go to sleep, but I was thirsty so I went to fill up my new filter pitcher, where I found it had apparently been dropped or something because the entire bottom was shattered. That was about the time I decided Karma was REALLY pissed at me for something, so I called my Mommy. Thus I ended up going back to the hotel for one more night.