A Little Christmas Magic

There was a time in my life when Christmas was about the magic. There was Santa, and modest presents, the kind where when you went to Sunday School and they handed out little brown sacks with an orange inside, possibly a bit of candy, a pencil, or a tiny toy, then topped off with peanuts, it was a magic event. Somebody gave me something! Wow! Mom raised us on her post-depression budget, all our lives for that matter, and a tiny gift counted!

Christmas magic was about the stories, the magic star, the angels, all the lights, and hiking home over snow so cold up in northern Minnesota that it went crisp! crisp! crisp! for every step. If we were lucky enough, there would be a few snowfalls with higher temperatures so it would stick together for snowmen, snowballs, forts, and still let us go sledding without courting frostbite. Now that right there was some magic! Of course, we didn't know yet that snow pants and puffy mittens and three extra layers and face scarves weren't fashionable. All of it simply allowed us to continue through winters.

As I grew older, the magic of Christmas was about the music. Being a Methodist meant that when in church, we SANG! Not wimpy mumbles chasing a tune, but we actually made music. And I was always in the choir, one blessed in my teenage years with a great director, Jewell Shannon, our minister's wife,  who challenged us and taught us with music we didn't always realize was supposed to be difficult. There were always concerts in church and school, back then making no pretense of being anything other than Christian, and so many carols over so many years meant that I knew multiple verses instead of the one most people can barely remember the words to, and could even sing descants to some with what passed for a soprano voice. That church choir director took a tenor part and raised it an octave for us sopranos. She even gave me a solo one year, something called a "Mexican Christmas Carol", which I've only heard once since, and lost the words to decades ago. The music is just fine. thank you, still there just by thinking of it. There is a repeated line of "then rejoice and sing, all ye children tonight." Every time I look for it, something else claims to be it but isn't. Even Google, with it's 30,000,000 answers to everything, can't find it, neither by title or those few lyrics.

The children's magic of Christmas switched from mine to being for my kids, as long as they would let me try to make it for them. Even that faded, much too quickly for me. My most magical memory of that time was when Steph was either two or three. I had found a good kids' book on the Nutcracker story, and followed that up with taking her to the ballet in Minneapolis. It could have ended there, but we always went down to the farm in Fairmont to spend time with my husband's family. There happened to be a thunderstorm that afternoon, leaving everything coated in ice. After dark, the farm's yard lights turned everything they reached into a fairyland straight from the design sets of The Nutcracker. Well, better, but who could duplicate this?  Leaving her baby brother with the family, we two bundled up and went out to enjoy the magic of it. By then we had the addition of a heavy fog, muting sounds and making all unreal. Their driveway out to the highway sloped just enough for a fun toboggan ride for a little kid, and I pulled her most of the rest of the way out to the highway. A car passed every two or three minutes, adding a whole new layer of otherness to the night. I hope the memory stayed with her, but it stays with me still, just as magical as then. I still try to catch some airing of The Nutcracker nearly every year, hoping some of that magic can be savored again. As for Steph, a second in-house performance a few years later when I took her along with both her brothers, Paul just over a month old, was more than enough, and she begged off from being "dragged along" any more. It occurs to me to wonder sometimes if the performances just can't live up to some winter magic.

 I no longer believed in the Christmas story as anything other than a much embellished fable, used by The Church to recruit members by appropriating everybody else's rituals into the mix to make it seem like changing their old ways wasn't actually a big loss because they still....fill in the blanks. It became about power and greed and so many other things they mixed in that The Church lost its credibility with me. It has accumulated a long history of having so many things needing forgiveness, and I'm not the one to give it to them.

The magic went away.

Decades of life happened, and after a while the music went away. When it came back, it was other people's music to create and perform, mine to listen to. I didn't really sing for so long I recently decided I couldn't anymore. Carry a tune? Uh-uh. Sour notes, wavering, croaking, and the note I was reaching for would evaporate before its end in a puff of air. So I quit trying. I couldn't stand to hear what I was making.

KBAQ (pronounced K Bach) is playing carols on the air these last couple weeks. Lots of them. Steve asked me to drive him to the grocery store late last night, late to avoid others, and me driving because I still have decent night vision. I waited in the car and listened to the music. It was cold so the car was running intermittently to keep me warm. It was almost like singing in the shower, private and lots of white noise to disguise whatever I was doing. So I joined in, halting at first, but I still know the carols, many through several verses.

I was surprised at how easy it was to sing along. Yes, there were a few breaks and sour notes, but then something changed. My voice was back, so long as I didn't try to pass judgment on its quality, just join in. I sometimes switched octaves since my range is shot, but that's easy with music heard every year of one's life. At least, when one was used to singing them most of those years. Eventually I popped up into the high ranges and started hitting every note. I haven't hit some of them for decades. I wasn't pushing it, just blending in, amazed at the ability so easily (?) returned after so many years. Eventually I let it go, knowing those muscles would be complaining soundly for days if I didn't ease off. It was about the same time that particular segment of carols quit. The announcer came on and informed me I'd just been singing along with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir!

Maybe the real magic of Christmas is in the music. Maybe that's all the magic the world needs, any time, any reason. Maybe all the world will get.

Disappointments

Last night wasn't a great time. First, the conjunction was a bit overrated. I drove to a spot where I could look southwest over a large spot of land with no development and thus no lights. I'd spotted the "Christmas Star" immediately, of course, even from my own driveway, but was hoping to get a better viewing with a darker sky. As I left the house, it was the only thing in the sky visible aside from planes, so that had to be IT.

Once parked, out came the camera. It was the first time I shot in the "night"setting, and had no idea what to expect. Fully zoomed out, what was initially one or two stars to the naked eye, alternating for no discernible reason other than having old eyes, the camera couldn't quite decide either, also alternating between one and two  objects on the view screen. At first, there were two, but focusing made it one. Another shot, and same. Third try somehow made it into two points of light. I haven't uploaded it to my computer yet, but I doubt that it will match my impression from the screen of a white object on the left and yellow darker one on the right and above. Yeah, I saw it/them, but the combination wasn't any more spectacular than Venus at close approach. But hey, just a camera after all. TV news later that night showed both planets plus several moons, shot through a telescope.

The next disappointment was in the stress of our switch-over to Dish from Direct. As usual, we got a better offer after our contract with Direct had expired. Repeated mailings tried to get us to switch, repeating their same offer of a cash bonus and a better price with a 2 year guarantee. Direct had given us only1 year of better price, then zoom! Nearly double! We were finally persuaded, after some careful reading of the details.

The installation itself went smoothly... at first. Everything was explained exactly as expected, the good price would last both years of the contract, plus we're to get a hefty bonus in the form of a pre-paid Master card. Spend within 6 months or bye-bye. Not a problem! That would cover about a month's worth of food. Or something else.

Just at the end of his installation, when we were setting timers to make sure we could navigate the process, we were informed that we had only two tuners in this Hopper, aka DVR. This translates into we can record/watch - in any combination - just two programs at a time. Immediate quandary. Most weekdays we are recording three programs at least once a day, and we can't go back and watch an old one while even two are recording if the tuner has only two tuners. Nobody had said there was going to be that limitation.

Hey, there's a solution! According to our installer, we can upgrade to either a Hopper with 3 tuners, or one with 16 along with other unspecified bells and whistles. For free, as far as the new hopper itself is concerned, but some kind of monthly price increase. We should wait for an hour or so, so our account information has a chance to get entered into the system, but we should call and express our displeasure and they would work with us to keep us happy. Well, past experience with Dish has shown us that the work-with-us part is true. And the installer would be happy to bring the upgraded box back tomorrow, even leaving the box this one came in so it would be there for the return.

So we spent some time working on the timers we'd need for the next 20-some hours, getting somewhat familiar with the controls, ran errands, ate, and ran another errand. I finally had time to call Dish and complain about our inadequate Hopper. And guess what? Surprise of all surprises, our installer was fibbing just a little. Yes, they were willing to work with us, but no, the upgraded Hopper would not be free, and no, he would not be out again tomorrow (now today.) The first opening was Christmas Eve afternoon, any upgraded hopper would raise the monthly bill by $5, the three-tuner one would cost $5 to install because it was such a little upgrade, and the 16-tuner one would be $150. Ulp! I agreed to the $5 monthly, and they came down to half the cost of the big tuner. 

The good news is there's very little to miss out on this week, with holiday specials replacing regular programming all over the place. And yes, we'll be home on the 24th. With this pandemic, there's no place else to go anyway.

After returning from my excursion to shoot the conjunction, it was time to watch our first recorded show, the 6 PM CBS news. A graphic of the show was right there in the list of recorded programs, so we clicked on it and ... grey screen. No sound. We exited and went back to it... except now there was no "it" there. And now the TV was telling us we were tuned to #110. 

#110 what? 

We got out of that and tried something else, and now we were on Test 129. What the.......?

Time for the second call in one day to Dish. Their automated machine kicked in and tried to insist  I was calling about our appointment on the 24th, needing to change it.  I'm thinking somebody programmed it it recognize swearing, because it prompted a brief apology message before giving a more open ended question to discover what I really wanted. It was a pretty short wait for the next customer service guy, unlike my first call.

We're hooked up to the internet via the TV with this system, so he asked permission to access it that way from where he was, in order to see what was going on with our system, and I agreed. I tried to explain that we were recording two shows at the time that we didn't want to mess with, and had only two tuners. He finally got that point the third time I reiterated it, after his final solution was to have us shut down and reboot or reinstall or whatever they wanted to do. I could see what he was seeing and where he was moving around to on our screen. The missing program showed up there, but he couldn't find it to give it back to us. (Several years ago Dish had a spot on their menu for doing that if you accidentally fumbled your way into an unwanted deletion. Came in handy fairly often.) We finally agreed to call them back when we were not recording anything to mess up, for the shutdown/whatever.

Eventually we were able to access shows either while they were recording or after, so not sure what's happening, or whether we'll follow through with that shut-down. Gonna spend some quality time winding down first, though. Even the dog was avoiding me for a while.

There was one more incident, but it happened last week. I'm just finding out how much happened now as I work during the day's nicer temperatures to repair it. We had the yard crew out to trim dead stuff from the pine tree so it would only try to support what's left alive, hoping the rest of the tree would survive with more TLC, aka water. While they were out, there was the usual "blowing of the yard" with one of those backpack blowers to finish off the job, including hauling away a pile of branches and other dead stuff I'd been pruning and accumulating. Most times it's all we hire them for. Tree trimming is rare. Previously they've done a fantastic job.

I decided not to complain while they did what I though was over-pruning on the pine. I'd been hoping much less needed to go. In fact I'd asked that only the completely dead stuff be trimmed out.

A lot of green landed on the ground, much of it right on top of my newly planted baby agaves along the fence line. A couple of the chicken wire cages were crunched, one completely removed from protecting the plant. Of course, rabbits had a treat that night. I'm hoping new leaves will come up from the center. The fact it rained nearly an inch that night should help. The two crunched cages were pulled straighter and repositioned, one staked down. Since those agaves were planted because nobody else wanted them, and that was the last likely spot to do so in, I wasn't too annoyed.

But our crew leader brought her brother along to be "useful." His idea of useful was not in blowing the pine straw off the yard, but to rake it. Thing is, the straw, along with shed leaves and miscellaneous detritus, needed to get out of decorative rock beds along the borders of the yard. His use of the rake was so enthusiastic that I've been raking rocks from the middle of the yard back into their beds. Worse, the levels are way lower than before, as many were taken out along with the straw. I can handle working through an area about 10' by 15' in a day, and ibuprofin is definitely needed by bedtime. I've done two day's worth and am still seeing a depressing amount of bare ground in my former rock beds, even after the rocks are returned.

At least there is enough open earth in the center - a good thing, from the doggy perspective - that Heather Too is again willing to get outside and do what needs to be done outside. It's been a struggle. The raking has also loosened the ground enough that doves and quail are coming in to get bits of sand for their crops. 

You're welcome, guys. Well, except for the pigeons.

A Little Argument

Rich and I were at WalMart this afternoon. He was helping me swap out our empty propane tank for a full one. The menu for Christmas is steaks. Of course the parking lot was jammed full so I had to park way out from the store while he ran into the store, paid for the swap, ran back to the car for the empty, and then called me to come pick him and the tank up once the attendant outside had done the exchange.

To pick him up, I came through the parking lot up to the lane in front of the store, where the plan was to turn left and proceed to where Rich was. That lane was jammed too, with all kinds of pedestrians crossing between me and Rich, backing cars up. This included those ahead of me trying to get out of the lane I was in and accessing the main lane. So I had plenty of time to observe while I waited.

While I was approaching my turn, an elderly gentleman (benefit of the doubt) who'd nearly fully crossed in front of me, then spotting some other elderly gentleman he appeared to know, crossed back again to hold a conversation with him, just enough out of my half of the lane so I could approach my turn safely for all of us. It was about 75 out, so windows were down. The men were loud enough to catch some of the conversation.

I could tell it was a disagreement about the Presidency and who really won the election, though I wasn't close enough for long enough, and able to pull part of my attention from traffic long enough to figure out who was on which side. But I clearly heard what one considered the clinching of the argument. "Well, so why then is he sending out all those printed" (emphasis his) "invitations to the inauguration?"

I'm not sure who was taking which side, but an internet search couldn't pull up anything about tRump sending out printed invitations to a faux inauguration so I'm thinking the questioner was working to convince the other  that yes, Biden did indeed win.

Yeah, it's still necessary.

Gotta wonder for how long? And how future generations are going to judge?

Ah, The Christmas Letter....

It starts out as follows: 

"Hello All,

Ah, the infamous Christmas letter, that tradition where you brag about all the wonderful things you and your entire family have accomplished, the wonderful places you’ve visited, and how proud and grateful you are about all of it.

Wait! You remember that this is 2020, right? Adjusting……"

If you're on our X-mas card list, you'll have the rest of it to read for yourself. I won't put you through that twice. It's wrapped around this year's card, another "Heather Special". And like the letter, it has a unique 2020 theme to it. All my cards are unique in having my pictures on them, often themes unrelated to the holiday, but this one goes above and beyond a bit. Covid, eh? Yet hopefully, festive as well.

As long as you haven't moved since last year without letting us know the new address, yours is on its way. It was an accomplishment, and not just because there were 55 going out this year. Oddly, the part which is usually the hardest, getting the photo card right, was the easiest this year. I've gone to Walgreens, Target, and WalMart in previous years, each time fighting with their machines every step of the way. Always a store employee was required to step in. The photos wouldn't go into the right space. They wouldn't get cropped right or positioned correctly within their frame. The messaging wouldn't go right, no font size changing, the switch between capital and lower case a carefully guarded proprietary secret, and lest you learned any of those secrets and managed to remember then from the previous year, the software changed in the last 12 months. Add many years where the scooter wouldn't approach the machine, or the stool etched holes in your hip bones while you squirmed in frustration, making patience even less possible.

Add in covid avoidance, and this year the cards were ordered online. Piece of cake! Found the one collage card with the right number of picture slots in the right shapes for the pictures - mostly horizontal, not vertical - as well as a greeting that said exactly what I wanted, still leaving three lines for personalization, the ability to change font type, size, and location within its space. I had picked those exact pictures with that exact message in mind, and finally got a way to do it simply and quickly. I must admit it was the third company I tried, but WalMart had it.

They must have heard my complaints from previous years, right?

OK, finish the order, go to pay, and find out they will be delivered the ... 17th? That late? But it was done, and turned out they arrived Monday the 14th. By then the accompanying letter was written, - with only 1 typo: can you find it? - so it was time to hit the printer. But hey, you remember that the library was full of everything we had to clear out of the kitchen while it was getting a little refurbishing? It was carefully stacked up on the floor in there, in drawers or totes, precisely in the way between the printer, quite low on paper at the moment, and the shelf holding more paper. 

Good thing I had shelves built in, securely attached, for me to hold on to while leaning way-y-y-y-y-y over to the shelf so I didn't actually fall onto I-don't-want-to-know-exactly-what-but-it-wouldn't-have-felt-good!

The printed letters got folded in thirds, the card inserted, and stuffed into the enve.... Oops. Nope. Too wide. Those envelopes which come with the 4"x8" cards do not accommodate 8 1/2" wide paper. The scissors, of course, are in one of those drawers in the library, so similar gymnastics are in order. Glad nobody was there to grade me on grace and style. I haven't been accused of either of those for, well, decades. Finally, once half the margins were trimmed off on both sides, envelopes were stuffed, addressed, stamped, and checked off the list. (There I go, lists again! Goes a long ways towards making up for aging brain.)

There were way too many to fit the clip at the door where we put the occasional outgoing letter, and it was in time to make the evening pick-up from the big boxes at the post office, so... Road Trip! OK, so not that far, really, but that's about as close to a road trip as it gets these days. I arrived at top rush hour at the post office, which turned out to be much more complicated than expected. Let's see if I can describe it.

Fortunately there is a stoplight at the corner of Bell Road and 98th Ave. Turn left off Bell and... stop. Sit. There is a line ahead of you, just one line serving two locations. The first one is left into the parking lot for those going into the post office. The lot is full. Its drive is a loop, and you can't return into the loop if you've managed to go around without finding a spot. You can exit back onto Bell from the loop, right turn only, once traffic clears enough for those three cars ahead of you to go first. Or you can exit onto 98th. A right turn gets you to Bell at the light, also usually a wait. So exiting traffic backs up. It's even worse when the car exiting onto 98th wishes to make a left because they have to fight through the jammed up line of people waiting to get into the post office. It becomes a vicious feedback loop. They can't give a space because you're the car blocking the exit to make more space so they can move so you can leave....

Then there are the people like me who are in line to go a little further for the left turn into the short curved drive past three humongous boxes for dropping off letters, one box for metered, two for stamped. We are stuck in the first line until we can get past their turn because nobody wants to block all the other neighborhood traffic. You have one wide lane each direction on 98th, half of it for through (or wannabe) traffic, the other half of the lane for those navigating the post office. Once in the curve, there is a wait for those in front of you to dump their mail by the handfuls into the proper slots from their drivers' windows. Luckily for me, the boxes hadn't filed up yet, so my three handfuls went in and disappeared. 

Now I could go fight my way back to the light. Not everyone was polite enough to leave a full space to eke through, or have no earthly idea just how far out their back ends hang over the curb and into the lane while they wait for an opening they knew was going to open right up just when they got there... and didn't. Luckily for me, KBAQ 89.5 FM plays great classical music through the process, and they are thoughtful enough to have just finished their fundraising pleas so all we get is music.

Should all go well from here, your letters/cards should arrive. Sometime. Maybe still this year. But honest, they are in the mail. It's not like the check I just sent up to Minnesota for deposit in my credit union, mailed on the third, arriving the 15th, so with no check there should be nothing to slow them down. Right?

The Holiday Gifts Process

Start thinking and planning ahead of time. This means anything from 8 months to one day.

Since most of what gets sent out is made rather than bought, acquire materials and skills. This means anything from years to a week. The few items which are bought instead of made are seasonal and sell out in the store within a week of arriving, so timing is luck, especially when you are working to avoid stores as much as possible. Plan to be lucky.

Once the concepts are decided on, begin collecting materials, tools, wrapping paper, tags, pens (yes, plural!) addresses, mailing supplies (other than what is only in the post office) in one central location. Otherwise known as the house. Or narrowed down, mostly the living room. Mostly. There is that one thing which is being stored in the bedroom, up and out of the reach of dog hair.

Begin construction. Correct mistakes, restart. Make sure to empty wastebaskets regularly.

Once you believe you have finished, compare items to gift list, and construct more items to fill in the gaps. Repeat as necessary.

Wrap and tag items. Note both must be done for each item before going on to the next. Seriously, failure to do so can result in the waste of wrapping paper, tape and tags when you discover one person's gift is both in your hand and already wrapped and on the table at the same time, requiring the unwrapping of the second and rewrapping with the correct gift tag once the correct recipient has been determined. This entire process must be concluded the night before the annual trip to the post office, since during a pandemic a single trip is the ideal number.

Review wrapped items, adding extra tape where needed, particularly where those sticky tags bought 4 years ago (hey, sale, folks)  have diminished in their capacity to cling to the appropriate packages.

Purge gift tags, throwing out those which no longer accept the ink of any pen in the house. I bet you thought I was going to say those which no longer stick, but we just solved that one, didn't we?

Arrange to send as many packages as possible to central locations, picking the one person in a locale who is the central social hub for most of the others and who will connect with them within a reasonable time to distribute the gifts. 

Make sure that a suitable box is available for the above plan. It helps to make most of your shipped gifts small.

Check addresses to see who has moved since last year. If they  don't respond, and there is no third party who can verify their address, decide whether you really want to send their package this year. Make allowances for possible Covid victims who may take an extra two months to get back to you - if they can. You may decide that they are just rude, in which case, reevaluate your desire to send a package at all.

For items which are combined in a box, and where your plan is to get said box(es) at the post office, bring along good packing tape, scissors, addresses for each box, pen, and extra packing materials to fill in the empty spaces. Ordinarily this means asking the person in the household who knows where the totes of bubblewrap are currently stored, but if he is sleeping, your generous supply of crumpled plastic grocery bags from all those shopping trips where you forgot to bring your own sturdy bags from home will be a good substitute, and can still be recycled after the box is opened at its destination.

Where more than one P.O. box is to be packed with several gifts, sort ahead of time into bags for each destination. Don't forget to check what box sizes they have available first so you know what is feasible as well as how much packing material to bring. Each of those bags of sorted gifts can go into a large Hefty Bag, along with another bag of padded envelopes to be sent to individual recipients, plus a bag of packing tape, scotch tape if some of your wrapping exceeds your optimism in its ability to pop apart in all the handling, scissors, address information on sheet of paper (you did remember those pens?) which can be slipped in the box after writing on the outside before final taping. Make sure to bring your credit cards along with your list of needed stamps, including those two international stamps you'll need this year.

Uh, you did make and bring a list, didn't you? For everything? Further, you have actually reviewed it, right? Honest?

All these items can be placed into a large Hefty bag. Several advantages are provided by this. All of it is together with only one hand needed to move it into/out of car, into post office, up on counter that you are going to hog all to your self while you are preparing your boxes, and everything can go back inside to be securely dragged behind you across the floor while you proceed slowly through the line, rather than having to wear out your arms carrying everything. You don't risk dropping anything or leaving it behind, it holds whatever supplies you wish to take back home, and should it be raining (RAIN! In Arizona! Today!!!! Yahoo!) all is protected. Plus it arrives home intact, ready for the next load of garbage going out.

Time allotted for the post office should be about an hour. This includes boxing, and sliding your haul through the well-marked six-foot-intervals line, actually the quicker of the two tasks. Yes, it takes a while, but much care is taken in arranging items in those boxes. Understand that the plan to arrive early while it is still raining briskly does not in fact deter all those others with similar errands on their minds, leaving you with fewer competitors for virus-free air. Nice thought, but....

Trust the masks, Heather, trust the masks.

Upon arriving home, sit down and email all the package/padded envelope recipients a quick heads-up with their tracking numbers included. This is both a courtesy and a warning to keep an eye out the day it is expected.

The not-quite-empty Hefty bag can be dumped in the first spot convenient until whenever it is needed, or its contents are, or you are possessed with a sudden attack of neat-freak-ism. Just warn everybody it is not ready to go out to the garbage yet. That good packing tape is expensive!

Then just relax. You're done until the cards you ordered online, in order to avoid another hour in a store, arrive from Portland and you have to start addressing them. You're good to sit until the dog needs to go out again. It's raining. She'll wait - she's an Arizona dog and rain is scary.

Dear BBB....

Dear Better Business Bureau,

First, your website where I wished to give a (bad) performance review of a company is one of the worst websites I've had to contend with in ages. You'd think you really don't welcome reviews, and you didn't even know it was going to be bad before you forced me to come to a screeching halt in your totally FUBAR site.

But I have a BLOG! So here it is.

The company I wish to complain about is called Barlow Co, in Tolleson, AZ. Home Depot hires/ subcontracts with them for installation projects. They deliver appliances. They also are supposed to remove the old one, install the new one, and haul the old one away. Well, they delivered the new one.  That part went well, until you consider that a  major part was incorrect, or so I was told, which I had to pay the actual installer $25.00 for its replacement, and another part was missing. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

As soon as the new dishwasher was set next to the stove in the kitchen, the employee started giving us excuses as to why it was impossible to install it in our kitchen.  They were coming so rapid-fire that I suspected he was anxious to join his buddies in the bar or something. First, the hose was supposedly too short. According to him, the hose came out of the front of the machine, had to travel to its back, then along the wall over a foot! Gasp! into the sink area where it was to be hooked up. This was a complete lie, as the person who finally did the installation, days and many many phone calls later, informed us. The standard length would have been perfect, a straight run from the sink to the back of the machine. It would have even been long enough had it connected in the front! However, by this time it had been returned to Best buy, supposedly in exchange for their 2nd contractor to arrive to  do the install with one of the "correct" length. Home Depot doesn't carry them. Nor did the installer, because the standard ones are included with the dishwasher, but he rummaged in his truck and found a much longer one... for $25.

Then the original contractor claimed that our counter was too low and this new machine absolutely wouldn't fit. Another lie. We had asked before ordering whether dishwashers were all the same standard size or did we have to measure at home to be sure? The answer from the store was they were standard. With the new machine sitting up on sturdy styrofoam blocks, with more inside along the top, we could see the whole package was taller than the space under the counters, but surely the machine itself was small enough? Upon installation, it fit perfectly.

Then there was the "problem" of a trim strip across the front of the old machine at floor level, put in when laminate flooring was installed, which was immediately solved with a light tug and a handy seam right where it needed to be for removal during, say, putting a new dishwasher in. If it had been damaged, well, there's more wood trim in the house that matches. Big deal.

Then there was the idiocy about not even taking the old one out, as contracted for. If we had to get a later install, at least we could get the old one out, right? This is where his lies really got creative. The old machine would have been fastened to the counter above it (lie) and when the crew came in to remove the counter, it was their job to remove the old dishwasher (lie and highly improbable: not in their skill set.) Further, the new one couldn't be put in until after the new counter was in place, or those guys would damage the dishwasher and the warranty on the dishwasher would be voided. (Lie and total hogwash.)

There was another part which needed - actually needed this time - to be replaced, as it never arrived with the dishwasher, something to hook up the electrical supply properly. Lucky for us, our new installer had a spare, donated because a recent customer had gotten two with his order and handed the extra over to this installer, who simply passed it along to us.

Need I say we were disappointed, confused, pissed off, and given the totally unnecessary burden of trying to coordinate with Home Depot to get the job done, try to figure out whether it would fit, try to locate a new longer hose never needed for extra cost, and working to get a usable path around the new machine in our little galley  kitchen?  We were even angrier when the real installer from a second company informed us not only how bogus all those claims were, but informed us that most of his business comes from this company regularly reneging on its installation comitments, though this was somewhat tempered by the speed and competence with which he fulfilled the removal and installation of the new dishwasher. Perhaps we lucked out in getting the competent installer, but that should have been the first option.

I'm not sure why Home Depot continues to subcontract with Barlow Co., but they will be hearing from me as well. This is no way to do business. 

For the record, the second company, the one we praise highly, was XPO. I'd put in a good word for them on your site, but....

In The House Right Now...

Things are a bit weird right now, or perhaps a bit more "normal" - for us. Depends on your point of view, I suppose.  What we currently have here is one new phone and two dishwashers which can't be used. For that matter, most of the kitchen can't either.

Phone first. After establishing that the cell tower had been fixed so signal strength was back to the usual number of bars, and the new SIM card updating the innards of my old flip phone, and still finding communication nearly impossible either incoming or outgoing, I finally resigned myself to getting a new phone. 

The old one was a champion, and it's still here, in the box the new one came in. It's minus its SIM card, now transferred into the new phone and down to it's alternate size, aka minuscule. The new one - I know this will be a shock to all of you - is another flip phone. When I called ahead to verify the store had them in stock, the employee sighed as if carrying them was a great burden upon his shoulders. But they had them, stored out of sight in the back room lest anybody spy them and realize they could get a new phone for hundreds less than anything else on display.

The "fun" part is learning a new phone system. Everything is different on this phone except the green and red buttons, and I'm still navigating my way around, fighting the instruction manual all the way. Still haven't found the camera yet, though it's only a 2 megapixel one so no big loss if I don't get there for a few months. I'm happily spoiled by my little digital camera anyway, 16 mp and 22x zoom... or do I have that backwards? 

Anyway, the initial part of transferring my contacts to the new one was already different from when I put the new SIM card into the old phone. With the SIM card replacement, I was on the (different) phone with tech support, she asked did I want them transferred, and then tapped a key or seven, told me to shut the phone off for a few seconds, and when I turned it on again there they were! This time, each contact came in as a separate text to accept or no, so the guy who sold me the phone dealt individually with around 200 contacts. It was actually fewer because once I got home and fought my way into the list, many were missing - like all the Brundys for some weird reason. Others were too. Fortunately, I had months ago typed all my contacts onto my computer in a list, just like I keep a running list of everybody's addresses for, say, X-mas (Oh-oh, memo to self....) or a complete file of club minutes. His process took so long I availed myself of one of the two chairs in the store during the wait, from which vantage point I had time to be amazed at how many customers actually showed up in person to pay their phone bills with cash. On my way out, finally, I gave him an enthusiastic thank-you for all his time and trouble.

On to the dishwasher situation. We'd gotten the advance notice of when it was to be delivered yesterday, so the kitchen had been cleared out of nearly everything. And cleaned! All is stored in the library in totes, aka inaccessible. Theoretically it all can be found, and the microwave and toaster are even plugged in. However the chaos must be overcome to locate anything, so one must first decide whether it's worth the effort or not. When I put a cup of water in the microwave for morning coffee, nothing happened. So what I drank was faucet-hot this morning. With peanut butter raisin bread. Adequate.

The dishwasher did get delivered. Period. We paid for them to remove the old one, install the new one, and haul the old one away. The new one sits on the kitchen floor inside it's styrofoam carton. The old one hasn't been touched. The delivery crew left with a bucket of excuses. Why?

It started with the length of the hose to drain the machine. After discussion in the store, their employee decided that the standard 6-foot hose would be adequate. There was no suggestion we could upgrade to a longer hose, just whether the standard hose would work. Nope, the  crew said we needed an 8 foot one. To start with, it hooks up to the front of the machine, not the back near the plumbing. OK, we can go back to the store and swap. Possibly for more cost, of course. We'll see, since that's not the only issue. 

They refused upon request to even remove the old machine before the counters got replaced. At the store it was set up to have the dishwasher in - limiting any possible counter damage to the old counter rather than the new one - before putting in the new counter tops. Nope, not their job, this guy claimed. The counter crew would have to remove the counters before the machine could go in (but not the old one out??? even if we didn't care about that counter?) and get everything fastened in place after they removed the machine. Then the dishwasher crew would return (we'd get a phone number so we could call and make an new appointment for them to come back - which number they neglected to offer) to put the new machine in.

Except....

They cautioned us to have the counter crew to raise the height of the new counter because the new machine was taller than the old one!!!!!! Say what? Before buying the new machine we were assured that the things came in standard sizes. Where one comes out, another fits in. So WTF? And how much higher? How much more work/cost? And how can they even tell, with the new machine all bundled up and inaccessible to measure? They said something about the counter people wrecking the new machine in installing the new countertop, so the dishwasher warranty would be invalidated.

Again, WTF? Whose fault is all this? The store, giving bad information? The crew refusing to work? The counter measuring guy? Us for not realizing somewhere there was going to be a problem?

Of course, I called the store as soon as the crew left. The call-back was prompt, and the guy I reached took down all my issues and promised to get back to me in ten minutes with some answers. Just before the call ended, he paused a second, presumably checking the order, and cautiously verified that we lived in Sun City. You know, like on the order. I confirmed we did, adding we were in the first addition, built in 1961. Another pause, then he suggested that back then things were a little... different? Unique? As in, possibly, some kind on not-completely-standard sized dishwasher had been put in. Well, somebody cut the counter to do the install, so it was some time post construction, thus not the original crew, but who had that information? And how could we tell what was what, and what do we do now?

That was yesterday around 3:30. I figured 10 minutes was optimistic, but I'm still waiting, not even receiving a call informing me there were issues still to be resolved but here's the progress report.... So the kitchen waits, clean but mostly unusable, emptied out and ready. Waiting. Still waiting. If the dishwasher sits around much longer it'll likely become just another surface on which to start stacking things needing a place to be put, and then we'll have to dig to find the hose to be swapped, and....

Steve is thinking McDonalds for lunch. I'm thinking, depending on what we hear and how soon, the microwave can get hauled right back into the kitchen for use until we have to have the counters cleared for real. Toaster too. I still have my clean spoon by my chair, so I don't have to figure out where in the library the silverware is.

Steve had family news last night. His oldest son Lance, with his wife Lisa, two of her kids, one with spouse and baby, plus Lisa's parents, all got together for Thanksgiving. All now test positive for Covid. It seems one member of the family - nevermind who, but not the baby - went out to a bar just before the holiday for a lonnnnng night out, an unfortunately regular habit. There was a surprise brought to the Thanksgiving table for sharing. We're hoping for the best, but there are some health and age issues in those 4 generations. 

Keeps our dishwasher/counter/phone issues in perspective. I keep thinking there ought to be a better way to do that.