Yesterday was a monumental day in our household. We finally got our new carpet! As you may remember, the carpets in this place were absolutely hideously gross, and even after having them professionally steam-cleaned there were clear outlines of where the previous occupant’s furniture had been. The area between where his couch and coffee table had been was so disgusting – even after being cleaned – that we put our couch over it so we didn’t have to see it.
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Where his couch was.
Click any pic for a larger view. |
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| In case that last pic wasn’t detailed enough for you. |
We knew right away that we didn’t want to live with this, so the replacement process was started quickly. We went to the Home Teapot back at the end of September. We picked out the color and requested a measuring at that time. It’s taken us this long to get this clusterfuck off the ground and get our stupid carpet installed.
Meanwhile, we have spent the last six and a half weeks living out of boxes and with a minimal amount of furniture. There was no sense in moving all the stuff in just to move it back out for the carpet install. First it took a week to get the measurers out here, then it took another week for them to get the figures back to the Teapot. We placed the order (and paid for it) on October 10, just before we took off for our wedding/honeymoon. We were told it would take a week or two to come in, and that the installation company would contact us when it came in to schedule an install date.
In the meantime, we busied ourselves painting the walls in the carpeted areas. It was kind of cool not having to mask off the floor and just painting right over the carpet. My last house had new carpets when I moved in (which were phenomenally cheap and shitty), so all the remodeling was done over keepable flooring. Not giving a crap whether we spilled or oversprayed on the carpet was a really nice change. Of course the bright, clean new walls just made us want carpet that much more. But the call from the install company never came.
On October 28th, we were in the store and asked about our order. Nobody knew a goddamned thing. “Call back on Monday”. So we did. We called on October 31st (a full three weeks, thank you veryfuckingmuch) and finally got someone who was willing to call the carpet shipper and find out where our carpet had gone. Guess where it was? In the motherfucking Home Teapot store. Since October 13th.
Our carpet had been in their store for nearly three weeks and nobody noticed. It hadn’t been logged in, and the two rolls weren’t even stored next to each other. Profuse apologies were offered, none of which meant a whole lot, and the installer was contacted. When the installer called us, we were told we couldn’t get an appointment until November 10th. WTF?? We had already waited patiently for three weeks, why in the hell did we have to wait another (almost) two?
The person from the installation company wasn’t sympathetic. She wasn’t even polite. She said this was the first they’d heard of it, it wasn’t their fault, and they wouldn’t pull someone else out of queue to accomodate us. Period. If I didn’t like that, that was between me and Home Teapot, and I would need to contact them.
Which of course I did. They did the phone version of the big dumb grin and shrug – golly gosh darn gee, we screwed up, but we can’t make the installation company do anything, so golly gosh darn gee, it sucks to be you. Uh, no. Beau Hunk got a manager on the phone and very calmly explained that this wasn’t our fuck up, it was theirs, by their own admission. So why are we, the ones who are paying the bill, the only ones showing any accomodation here? The manager still didn’t offer any relief for the install date, but did offer some “consideration” for our next big project around the house. We still don’t have any definition of what that “consideration” will be, but at least we feel like we got kissed after we got screwed.
Shortly after we made the appointment for install on November 10th, we heard from Woo’s school that he would not have class that day – it was a “staff development day”. Bummer, because there’s no way Woo could be here for the install, and going to school would be the perfect three hour distraction. But you get what you get in life, so we figured out another plan.
What wasn’t in the plan was me waking up with a migraine. But thanks to meds, I was able to get up and have some sort of life. But talk about bad timing! Beau Hunk ended up moving the furniture all by himself, except the bed and mattress. I managed to help him with those, and my brain gave only feeble threat of exploding.
The installers were scheduled to arrive between 8 and Noon, but since they were coming from an hour and a half away, we knew they weren’t going to be here before 10. We were glad about that, because had they showed up at 8, they would have been pissed because we weren’t ready. As it was, they got lost because online maps always show that you make a left off a highway that doesn’t exist. The road exists, but you have to go to up one street, access a frontage road and make sort of a u-turn to get to the road, which is neatly hidden between the Ace Hardware and a used car lot. Somehow I managed to get the installers here – talk about the blonde leading the blind – I haven’t lived here long enough to know all the streets, and they were from a different town.
They showed up a little after 11am, and they were the nicest guys!! Even though there was the mix-up in directions, and I couldn’t efficiently guide them here, they all got out of the truck with big smiles, and made time to say hi to Woo. Anyone who takes time to say hi to Woo is tops in my book.
After a picnic lunch on the lawn with Daddy, Woo and I took off for the “castle park” – a local kid park with play structures that can only be described as kid heaven. It’s a huge park with massive wooden structures that have spires, hidden stairways, and every climbing / sliding / running surface you can imagine. It even has a water volcano and splash park in the summer. We had been there before, but on a day that wasn’t a school holiday. This day, it was packed.
Woo did ok with the crowd, but not really well. We ended up going to the bathroom three times in the first 20 minutes. And it wasn’t about going to the bathroom, but a form of perseveration – repetition of activity that is a classic autistic behavior. He said he had to poop, but since he had already done that, I knew he didn’t have to. I could also tell by how he answered the question “do you have to go poopy”, because he’d look around and change the subject. I know enough about this kid and his poopy behavior to know if he has to go or not. And he did not.
Near the end of this process, a woman came into the bathroom, peed, washed her hands and then exited without a word. Until she was outside the building and had walked 20 feet to where she was under the window, when she loudly and indignantly said “There’s some woman in there telling her kid to poopy. If he doesn’t have to poop, he doesn’t have to poop. Jesus woman, give the kid a break!!” She never saw either one of us, and she didn’t say anything while she was in the room. Instead she chose to hurl a cheap, faceless shot from outside the window.
So I figure on cheap, faceless shot deserves another:
Fuck you, you gutless piece of shit. Who the fuck do you think you are? Do you know me? Do you know Woo? Do you know that Woo is autistic? Do you have a single braincell in that empty fucking head of yours that understands what autism is and how it affects behavior? Of course not.
You probably don’t even know that Woo is almost five. Because of his massive speech delays, he sounds like he’s two, and you in all your infinite wisdom and with your extraordinary brain power, probably assumed that I was interacting with a two-year-old who didn’t know about his bodily functions or how to control them. But you didn’t take the time to find out any of that. You didn’t take the time to find out anything at all. Instead, you used an infinitesimal amount of data to judge me as a parent. And you didn’t even have the spine to do it in a way where I could explain to you that I have a special needs child, but instead had to hurl your judgement through an open window from the safety of the outside of the building.
So by your rules, I guess I could say that you sounded like trailer-grade trash, because I had as much information to leap to that conclusion as you did to question my actions and motives, having never laid eyes on each other. But that would lower me to your level, something to which I do not aspire.
I hope you feel really good about how you taught someone how to parent from outside that window. Because I know I’ve been put on the straight and narrow! I’ve cured my evil ways!! All because some spineless, judgemental sack of shit. Oh, and in case you didn’t catch it at the beginning of this rant, let me repeat myslef – fuck you.
For the record, I said nary a word when I heard her comments. I don’t know if Woo heard her, and even if he did, he didn’t need to hear me say anything, especially what I wanted to say. I did the best thing – I took the high road. As I walked out, I wondered if she was around to see us when we left, and I wondered what she thought of her comments then. But chances are, she thinks she’s right, and nothing would change her mind. And now that I have given her and her crap far too much of my time and energy, I will stop.
We hung out at the “castle park” for a couple hours before we headed back to the house. The installers were just finishing up the pad, which was bright red on the upper side. It was so bright, it made the walls look pink. Our house looks terrible with pink walls.
The three of us hung out in the driveway until the carpet was done. We had a hell of a time keeping Woo out of the house, off the “take away” pile, and out of the way of the installers. Somehow we managed. And again, the installers were really wonderful with him. They smiled and talked to him, and were incredibly patient. They did a nice job too. So far we’re really happy with how it turned out.
It was almost 5pm when the carpet was all done. And oh what a difference!! It looks so much nicer in here now, it has almost erased the memory of the Pig Palace. As a bonus, it smells like new carpet. Yay!!
