what’s with this week, this week

I’m not sure which retrograde planet is messing with me right now but can it like… stop already? Thanks, I’ve had enough.

On Saturday I really wanted to take a quick trip out to Ikea, just to buy a shelf and a light. I didn’t want to ask Taylor to book a zipcar (it would have cost more for the car than the stuff I wanted to buy!) and it had been so sunny all the previous week so I thought it would be fine to take the kids on the train. Unfortunately it was raining, but we decided to go anyway. We made it onto the train without incident but after a couple stops it started waiting longer and longer at each station and finally there was an announcement about a technical problem. We were told to “transfer” but like… there is only one route on that line and it was stopped in both directions so transfer to where??? Nicky started getting REALLY fussy (he doesn’t like sitting still in his stroller) so we ended up giving up on Ikea and leaving the train. We were stuck on the south side of the city, and the lineup for the bus back downtown was at least 100 people long and stretched all the way around the corner. Rather than try to take some circuitous route home we walked up to the nearest mall and waited out the train problems but like… what a waste of time!

On Saturday night I got sick with a terrible cruddy cold that Taylor had had the previous week and I’ve been miserable ever since. I spend all day coughing and sniffling, but the evenings are the worst; I’m so tired from work and that combined with the cold makes me just fall apart and I can’t do anything but lie on the couch. I also have terrible trouble sleeping at night, making me more exhausted and run down every day. (More on this later!)

On Monday I tripped over the retractable gate between the foyer and playroom and snapped one of the support hooks in half. Luckily I was able to find an extra one in a box of hardware to replace it, but it wasn’t an ideal situation. On Tuesday I tripped over the retractable gate between the kitchen and the hallway and pulled one of the support hooks completely out of the wall, drywall anchors and everything! Luckily I already had a second set of hooks installed in the middle of the hallway and was able to move the whole gate since I can’t put the hook back up this time and will just have to take the other three hooks down, fill all the screw holes and repaint (this is the part of the hallway I JUST painted btw).

On Tuesday I finished work feeling truly awful, like I was considering calling off of work the next day which I almost never do unless one of us is UNBELIEVEABLY sick. I’d been outside with the kids in the afternoon and after the last daycare kid was picked up I brought Gwen and Nicky inside to watch cartoons while I made dinner. I left my big four-seat stroller parked at the top of the stairs by my door like I usually do after work; it’s so big and heavy and awkward to maneuver down and fold up and put away that I usually wait until after the kids are in bed and there is less going on before Taylor or myself drags it down. This night though I was so sick and tired and still had so much to do around the house that I just plumb forgot about it. And guess what? It was stolen.

On Wednesday morning Taylor went out to take the dogs for a walk and immediately came back inside asking “where’s your big stroller???” Sometime overnight (one neighbor told me he heard a ruckus between 3 and 4am and another said his dog was freaking out barking at 4am so probably then) someone crept into the backyard and snatched it, and now I’m fucked. I can’t afford to buy a new big stroller to replace it; I couldn’t even afford to buy that one myself when I did, I actually used GoFundMe to raise the money through donations when my old double stroller (which I’ve since gotten rid of, leaving me with just Nicky’s single stroller) started breaking down beyond my ability to repair it.


Nicky cheesin’ in the big blue stroller on Tuesday afternoon, twelve-ish hours before it was stolen

I’m just… so mad and frustrated about the whole thing. Mad at myself for not bringing the stroller down from the yard and mad at the person who took it. There’s no way it was taken by someone with more need for it than me; it’s not like it was a parent with four children to push around. Right now it’s most likely being used to haul empties to the bottle return depot (which is the fate of most stolen strollers in the city) or possibly abandoned after one use and soon to be on its way to the dump. I’ve posted it on craigslist lost & found and in a lot of local facebook groups, I’ve put up and handed out flyers (not a lot though as I am working all week and I can’t go far from the house with the kids because SOMEONE STOLE MY STROLLER). I’ve asked everyone I know to keep an eye out for it in the parts of the city it’s most likely to end up but honestly… I’m not optimistic about ever getting it back. This actually isn’t even the first stroller that’s been stolen from me; someone took Sym’s jogging stroller her dad bought when she was a baby and we never saw it again. Back then we were able to get a new one at cost because the owner of the store where he bought it was a friend of his who gave us a deal, but somehow I don’t think I’m going to get the same consideration from Bed, Bath & Beyond where I bought Big Blue.

Since I now only have a single stroller, yesterday I picked out the cheapest double stroller with one-day delivery on Amazon I could find and Taylor ordered it; hopefully it will arrive in time today for me to be able to assemble it before I have to get Gwen from school. Yesterday I only had one daycare kid but today I have two, and with just a single stroller pick-up is going to be harder than it usually is. There’s only two months of pick-ups and drop-offs left this school year, but now that the weather is getting nice I had SO many fun plans for the summer. Having the big stroller with enough seats for all the kids to ride meant the city was wide open; I could have taken them anywhere to play. Now I’m constrained by the walking radius of a two-year-old which means no trips to the beach, or the seawall, or further-flung (ie better equipped) parks and playgrounds. Our whole summer just shrunk down to just this neighborhood.

A few people have reached out to me and said they’d be happy to donate to a fundraiser to get me a new big stroller but like… I JUST did that. I just raised funds what, three months ago? And I can’t do it again, I can’t ask people to give more than they already have. I’m just going to do my best and muddle through, and hope that none of my other strollers get snatched anytime soon. It’s just… it’s going to be really hard and I honestly burst into tears whenever I think about it.

OH AND THEN! On Wednesday night, after a truly miserable and upsetting day, Taylor and I had tickets he purchased last week to take Sym to see Avengers: Infinity War. He’d sprung for the DBOX seats that shake around but guess what? THEY WERE BROKEN. Our expensive seats were just… seats. REGULAR SEATS. We got courtesy passes afterwards for future use, but it was just a disappointing end to a rotten day, you know? Adding insult to injury! Can just one thing not go wrong me right now??? So Universe, please don’t throw any more problems at me this week, because I don’t think I can take it.

2 Replies to “what’s with this week, this week”

  1. I literally woke up this morning and said, “what planet is in retrograde ONLY FOR ME?” I guess misery loves company because this week I have been trapped in the same f*cked up orbit as you.

    Tomorrow I’m going on a trip with a few girlfriends which we’ve been planning and looking forward to for ages. Last Sunday I was going out to visit my parents in the ‘burbs so I offered one of my girlfriends to drive out to her parents house and grab a suitcase that she wanted to borrow for the trip; totally out of my way but I was going to be on that side of the city anyways and I was trying to do a nice thing for her. When I got home that evening I took everything out of my car as I always do, because I have to street park on Main & 2nd, and it can be a bit sketch. However I MADE THE DECISION to leave the empty suitcase in my car, knowing that I was going to deliver it to my friend first thing the next morning. I was parked in a very well-lit high-traffic area on a Sunday night and I left the suitcase open to show that it was empty and I thought it would be ok for one f*cking night but I THOUGHT WRONG. I came down the next morning to find my car window smashed, glass absolutely everywhere, and the suitcase gone. So not only did I get to spend my entire day dealing with getting the glass replaced (in the pissing rain) but I also felt absolutely terrible being responsible for losing someone else’s property and leaving my friend with less than 4 days to find another suitcase to use before our trip. Cool.

    I’ve been living in this building for 3 years and this is the 3rd break-in. There are very rarely secured parking spaces available for rent and when there are, they cost $150 per month which is INSANE for Main & 2nd, and I just refuse to pay it. But once you pay ICBC a $300 auto glass deductible 3 TIMES then $150 a month all of a sudden doesn’t seem so expensive anymore. So I bit the bullet and started paying the exorbitant parking rent as of April 30th. BUT… I don’t have a garage key fob so even though I’m paying the rent, I can’t actually access the parking space and I’m STILL PARKING ON THE STREET worrying every day that there will be another incident (a few weeks ago some nice local decided to rip all of my windshield wipers off, front & back. Super cool!). I spent 2 whole days getting the absolute runaround by the morons that run my building management company (I won’t even get into that, I’ll be writing for days) and when I finally got the fob after having to drive back & forth from Burnaby 3 times, IT ONLY ALLOWS ME ACCESS TO THE VISITOR PARKING AREA which has only 4 spaces which are always taken and I’m not even allowed to park there. So I still can’t get into my parking space, because they programmed my fob wrong, and I leave on my trip early in the morning tomorrow, and I have no time to get it fixed during their ridiculously limited office hours, and I can’t leave my car on the street for 10 days because it will get towed or smashed or both.

    Then last night I went for a mani-pedi with the girls I’m going on the trip with and the manicure lady accidentally CUT MY FINGER with a cuticle cutter pretty deep and it would not stop bleeding and they tried every trick under the sun but my finger was just gushing blood so much that they couldn’t even paint that one nail so I currently have a shellac manicure on only 9 out of 10 fingers and the one finger they cut looks like a blood encrusted f*ckin zombie finger, I am not kidding you, I can send pictures, it’s so gross. Now I’m all concerned I might get an infection from some gross manicure tool and my current two options are, I can leave for LA tomorrow morning with one unpainted index fingernail or I can go back to the hacks that did this and get a one-finger manicure to match the other 9 nails and pray for no infection. Fun!

    When I got home from my botched mani is when I discovered the garage fob that I spent 2 days getting didn’t even work. And I leave tomorrow morning at 7am. And I work til 6pm today and then I have to get my one-finger mani and then I have to pack, sleep, and leave.

    Those are just the top 3 out of 10+ stupid horrible dumb things that have happened to me this week, and I realize these are all totally first world problems but like seriously, what more could possibly go wrong this week. I feel you Tanie. This week just sucks.

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