Oh it is so on right now. Your plucky heroine is in full battle rattle* today (St. John’s knit sheath, 4″ snakeskin stilettos, graduated pearl necklace, eat it*). I have a long-overdue throw-down with a local self-styled tough** and I’ve been waiting a mighty long time. Yankette Smash!
*Yes, I know that’s a dated and lame phrase.
**Hey, Glass House, don’t you judge how I pump myself up. At least it’s not Cheetos and Tang.
***I am fully aware this is one of those moments that Me In Twenty Years will look back on, and with a knowing chuckle, mutter, “God, I was so dramatic when I was a kid.” Shut up, MITY. No one cares.
Gosh, it’s just swell to be back in the office. Can you guess my favorite part of being back from a long vacation? Digging out my inbox. It’s the greatest ever. I came back to an inexplicably large three-figure number of emails. It took more than an hour to sort, and then another hour to figure out what actually mattered and what didn’t. I had to create an Outlook folder called, “New messages to deal with.” I’m really not an important person at all – no one has to keep me in any loop of any kind – and yet, so many people did. It mentioned my dismay to my Dad. “Go go gadget tragic computer failure that erases your inbox,” he replied. Genius idea.
July 22nd. Blessed day that the Lord hath made. A day that will live in infamy. (“Get to the point.” Oh. Right. Sorry.) Today is my last day in the office before I go on vacation. I’m sure you’re all beside yourselves with happiness – not because you’re nice people, which you probably are, but because you’re thinking, “God almighty, when will she shut up about vacation already?” Well, the time is now, Tune-Up fans. The time. Is. Now.
BUT.
There is another reason today should be marked in your daily planner. Today is the anniversary of the birth the greatest sporter of Dockers, boat shoes, and t-shirts that say “WORDS on a SHIRT” (Snacks on a Plane jokes, anyone?) there ever was. My esteemed father. E.F. is currently swanning around abroad, sending risible emails filled with observations about the oddities of Renaissance Italian art and how beer significantly improves one’s experience at the opera. So please, raise your glasses in salute of world traveler extraordinare, the Frenchman in shorts, and greatest father of all time – my Dad. Go, Daddy-O!
I am sitting here watching Señor Boyfriend trying to pack his suitcase for our upcoming vacation. His meticulousness reminded me of how the little blocks fit into each other in Tetris. (He is now telling me that it reminded him of Tetris and that I laughed. Yeah, yeah, okay, fine, true.) So we just had to hear the Tetris theme song. But why listen to the original 8-bit version when you can listed to a ska version? I mean, what? No conversation necessary.
Holy wowza, that was a tough week and Lord knows it’s not over yet. Your plucky heroine is spending the weekend working*. But that’s okay, dogs. The tides are turning. So I’m putting on a strong pot of coffee and turning on some Twin Shadow to keep me company today. I hope you’ll join me.
*In her cool apartment. #winning #hashtag #Isawthegreatestmindsofmygenerationdestroyedbyhashtags
I’m not entirely unconvinced that I haven’t spent this week in some sort of strange sonic pressure cooker. Actually, I’m not entirely unconvinced that all of us poor humans haven’t spent the week in a strange sonic pressure cooker. It certainly feels like it.
SO.
Do you know what we do when things get hard? Like really, really, in-your-bones, buy-a-plane-ticket-to-anywhere, screw-this-and-all-y’all hard?
You know what we do.
We DANCE.
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One other thing: THIS IS MY 200TH BLOG POST! Cue balloon-drop! Thank you to everyone around the world for making this blog so successful and so much fun to write. It’s hard to write a post every single day but it’s such a blast to see new pings from all kinds of countries. I am going to try and create a comment box to make this more interactive but for now – thank you, one and all.
I am not yet calling this a victory. My wounds are still too raw. BUT. I can confirm that, as of right now, I have a working air conditioner in my living room window. If you’re just joining us on the Tune-Up and have no idea why this is such a big deal, I refer you to a post from a few weeks back.
Hello, little air conditioner.
But let me fill you in on what’s happened since. If you remember, the solution that Sears presented was that UPS would come and pick up the box from my apartment and deliver it back to Sears. Did this happen? Yes and no. “Wait, what the hell,” I hear you cry, “isn’t that a binary event? It either did or did not happen.” Indeed you are correct! So let me break it down for you.
UPS issued a tracking number for the pick-up. The tracking number’s pick-up location was the same wrong address to which they delivered the bad AC. I called them back. They said to call Sears. I called Sears. They fixed it. (Sort of. It is Sears.) I got a new tracking number with the right pick-up address but no information on when they would pick it up. They tried on a Thursday but the box wasn’t there because I didn’t know they were coming. I got notified they were going to try again so I raced home, put it in a box, dragged it to the elevator, then dragged it to the lobby, where I gave it to the front desk clerk. There it sat. I checked the UPS website the next day. A second attempt had not been made. I checked the website again the following day. A second attempt had still not been made. I called UPS and said, “hey, dudes, the package is ready.” “Oh!” said UPS. “Okay cool, thanks, I’ll send the driver over by 5pm.” I called the front desk and said, “hey, thanks for holding my stupidly large 80lb box. UPS is coming over in a few hours to get it.”
Now this is where it gets squirrelly.
Front desk woman said that UPS had already picked up the box. UPS had no record of picking up the box. I called them and they swore up and down that they had absolutely not gotten the box and even got a little defensive that I would suggest they would have misplaced it. “Maybe someone just took it,” UPS Facility Man suggested. “You mean stole it?” “Yeah – maybe someone stole it.” I thought this was one of the dumber things I’d heard in a long time, since my building is access-controlled with a front desk that is manned around the clock with a very small number of people of good character who wouldn’t just let some random person walk off with a big box. Not to mention one can’t really walk off with an 80lb box.
UPS maintained they were innocent. They said to call the shipping company and complain. “Sorry…I don’t mean to be dense but, aren’t you the shipping company?” UPS Facility Man said that he meant the company that I bought the thing from. I remarked I wasn’t quite sure what this would accomplish, seeing as how Sears doesn’t have any control over anything once it leaves their warehouse. “Yeah, but see, Sears will have a lot more information on this than we will have,” Facility Man swore. “Again,” I said, “I still don’t see how that makes sense, but okay.”
So I called Sears customer solutions. Customer solutions transferred me to online customer solutions. I told them the whole story. I allowed myself to sound hysterical because, well, I was, and by this point, it would have been more productive and less time-consuming to have gotten $350 out of the bank, bought a lighter, and set the money on fire. So anyway. I told Sears Online Customer Solutions man the whole thing and he said he would issue a trace on the box. Now, how one traces a box with no label on it (oh yeah I forgot to mention that part – UPS was going to create the label and affix it to the box for me. Foolproof plan.), I have no idea. But that was the plan. I am to wait until mid next week to get an email with what they’ve found. If I don’t hear anything, I’m to call them. …Okey dokey.
So that was yesterday and today is today, and today I got a working AC put in my window. It seems to be chugging along just fine. After it was put in, I got a call from the front desk to say that one of the people working the desk had remembered that UPS had come on Tuesday at 11am to pick up the box and not only that but it was “the new guy” who picked it up. “The new guy” is “a little weird.” So I called Sears back to tell them about all of this and Sears called UPS and left me on hold for 20 minutes and now, as I type this, I am waiting for a call from UPS to tell me what they found in their “investigation.”
A friend of mine suggested I put all of this into a short story and sell it to the New Yorker. I’m considering it.
These days it’s just about all I can do to keep pace. Everything is moving just a little bit too fast. But I’m still tap-dancing as best as I know how. No one else mastered the art of this better than Fred Astaire.
Sorry this is late, Tune-Up fans – I’ve been on the water all day doing the most pirate-y thing ever: kayaking. I am a yuppie pirate (AAARH!). But we did see snapping turtles on logs (AHOY!), and paddle boaters (LANDLUBBERS!) and a Pirate Cruise (…WHAT THE HELL IS THAT! AAARH!). And then we drank beer and ate barbecue. So, basically: Pirate Day.
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