A Rollercoaster Day

July 25, 2011 7:43 pm

Okay, I've still got some old stuff to fill you in on, but I need to get today off my chest first.

On Saturday, Kyle and I were in Babies R Us, starting a registry. We saw that the travel system we wanted was on sale, but we didn't buy it. We weren't there to buy things. However, talking it over later, we decided that we should have (20% off is almost certainly the best deal we're going to get), so I planned to go back today and get it. First, though, I called the store this morning to make sure the sale was still happening (there had been no dates on the signs we saw). Unfortunately, I was told that the sale had ended on Saturday. Not awesome.

Well, Babies R Us is on the way to my biofeedback place, so I decided to swing by on the way to my appointment and check for myself. It was a whim, okay? Well, I walked in the store and the signs were still up, so I asked at customer service and verified that yes, the sale was still on. (Apparently there was another promotion that just ended...but the one I was thinking of was still going. Whatever.) Awesome.

So I buy the travel system, right? And the guy takes it out to my car and we proceed to try to get it in. Please note that I have a small two-door car ('99 Ford Escort, in case you care). Guy tells me to push the passenger seat all the way back and recline it all the way (in the process of doing which I manage to smack myself in the eye with the headrest, really hard--not awesome) and he finagles the huge box in. This is good, except that it's pressed up against my gear shift, making it impossible to actually drive the car. So he then tries to turn the box for a better fit, and I go around to the driver's side to help from there. When I do this, I see that he is exerting enough pressure on the box to crack my windshield where it is pressed up against it. So very not awesome! I get him to stop what he's doing and we just take everything out of the box and put the parts into my trunk.

At this point, I should have gone inside and gotten a manager, but I was quite upset and a bit flustered, and I had a biofeedback appointment to get to. (I also wasn't really mad—I know it was a complete accident, and it's not even like he dropped it or anything, just pushed too hard—so it's not like I wanted to storm in and get him in trouble and raise hell.) So I head off, crying all the way (I blame hormones!). I go to my appointment, explain what all had just happened (hey, she asked how my day was going!), and get a lot of sympathy and some good advice. Awesome. I also turn out to be a champion breather, as per the results of my biofeedback, which is especially impressive considering the emotional state I was in. More awesome.

On my way back home, I had to stop at the credit union to figure out what was going on with my card. (I'd tried to use it at their ATM on Saturday to withdraw some cash, but it said it couldn't read the card.) Nobody knew what could cause that, but it was eventually determined that there was something wrong with the magnetic strip. Of course, I went in last week to change the PIN on this card to something I could actually remember, and it was only after that that I started having problems. Logic would indicate that when she re-PINed my card, she screwed something up, but no matter. I had to order a replacement card, which will cost us $10. Not awesome.

So I finally get back home and tell Kyle (who was home for lunch) that although he didn't yet realize it, we were having a sucky day. Basically, Kyle is more annoyed about being charged for a new card than my broken windshield. I can't explain this.

Having been informed that a store like Babies R Us would almost certainly have insurance to cover exactly this sort of accident, I called the store and spoke to the store manager. He took my information and asked if I could come back to the store so I could sign a statement and he could take some pictures of the damage. I ate lunch and headed back out there, and although I never did get to see the manager (who was now trapped on a conference call), he had an employee bring me the paperwork and take pictures. I should hear back from him, though, and hopefully this will get resolved soon. Potentially awesome.

I came back home and got the stroller all put together and such. We don't have anywhere to put it and the carseat now, but still awesome.

So for those not keeping count, today's awesome:not awesome ratio is 5:4. Except that Kyle discovered when making dinner that the loaf of bread we just bought on Saturday (which should be good for another 3 days, and which he already used to make his lunch sandwich) has mold or something on it. It's just white, but it's speckled across both sides of every piece, rather as if their slicer was contaminated. [sigh] 5:5.

6 thoughts on “A Rollercoaster Day”

  1. Have you tried to get the carseat in the back of your car yet? We determined that carseats are only made for vans and SUVs. Not awesome.

  2. I took the seat and base out to my car this morning to see how they will fit. It's going to be extremely awkward in my car, not so much because the front seat has to be moved up a bit (I rarely drive anyone else around in my car), but because of the position I will have to try and reach the backseat from. The two-door design means I will be reaching back and grabbing it from the front, rather than the side. (Why wasn't I planning for this when I bought the car 11 years ago?) Should be interesting.

    Things should be easier to maneuver in Kyle's car, which is the one we use when both of us are going somewhere. I don't think the front seat will have to be moved too much, but if it does, I'll just have to sit in back with the baby!

  3. The card thing happened to me a few weeks ago. I tried to use it at an ATM and it wouldn't work. I finally called the bank and they said when they reset my pin, they didn't link it to my current account. (Okay, so what exactly did you do?) So he linked it and then it worked fine. Who knows.

  4. I think Kyle was more upset about the $10 because he figures the problem was caused by incompetence by a bank employee which should not cost you money. The broken windshield was someone trying to help you so that is more forgiveable. Anyway, that would be my guess. But men are pretty much unfathomable. Years ago there was a broken window pane in one of the bedroom windows. It stayed broken for years before Dad got around to fixing it. The very next day the adjoining pane got broken. (I think it was Evan throwing a pair of scissors -couldn't tell you why) I thought there were going to be all kinds of fireworks when Dad got home. Much to my surprise and bemusement he didn't care because it wasn't the one he replaced. Had it been that one, he would have been mad but since it was just the pane next to it, it was OK. Does that make sense to you? I would have thought "I just got the window fixed, and now it's broken again".

  5. Ah, the window pane is easy though. So, pane A is broken and gets fixed and gets re-broken the next day. If the fixing had been held off a day then it would only have been broken once. But since it was pane A that was repaired and pane B that was broken, pane B would have gotten broken regardless of pane A being fixed yesterday or tomorrow.

    As for the $10 charge to replace the card, it's a dumb charge. A new card doesn't truly cost $10 (it costs pennies and some small cost to update their system). I believe the high replacement price is just to encourage people to keep track of their cards because constantly misplacing your cards is likely to result in higher fraud when the cards are stolen and abused. Given that we had the card (and that it was much more likely that they broke the card when they re-PINed it than anything else), we have to pay the punishment price even though the purpose behind the punishment price doesn't apply. A new card should be free (or like $1) if you return an intact, non-functioning card.

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