Thursday, July 24, 2008

Trapped In My Garage

Warning....Rant soon to follow.

Ok, so before we moved in here the condo association decided that because a FEW shingles came loose on a COUPLE of buildings (there are more than a dozen in the whole complex, I think) during a recent storm, every building had to be totally re-roofed with these new heavy duty shingles. "Whatever" was my thought, because I'm not the owner of this place and will therefore not be responsible for paying the assessment of $2500 per condo unit. I knew the dog would be stressed out on the day they did our building, given his paralyzing fear of hammer sounds, but not much to be done about that.

I thought I was being proactive by confirming with the workmen which day they would be working on my building. Having done the building across the way on Monday and the building next to us on Wednesday, the workman's response of "We'll do yours on Friday" seemed totally logical. Most of the crew looked like college guys working a summer job, they descended like locusts to finish an entire building each day, and Uber-Hubby & I figured they were just working every other day since they were putting in such long hours under such hot, humid, and sweaty conditions.

{Side note to my sister (she's the only one who will get this)...To my knowledge, none of the roofers was named Kurt.}

I wasn't too concerned though, when they started pounding on my roof at 7:30 this morning, a full day earlier than what they had said. I hadn't had a chance to move our cars out of the garage yet, but I figured it wouldn't be a big deal because their semi-trailer sized trash dumpster was supposed to be parked in the middle driveway.

BUT THEN...{insert dramatic pause}

I took Rocky out for a nice, long walk this morning, doing my best to help him relax despite all the hammering that was clearly scaring the poor pooch half to death. Much to my dismay, I see that the massive trash dumpster is parked in MY driveway, blocking MY car from getting out of the garage, on the ONE DAY I need to actually drive it somewhere instead of taking my bike. This is the day that I have to drive to Faribault to get my SSHE food, and U-H is supposed to leave this afternoon for his fishing trip up north. I am literally TRAPPED in my garage. Never mind that EITHER of the other two driveways would have been perfect, because one neighbor is out of town and the other one is in his 80's, has a broken hip, and isn't driving anywhere anytime soon. Sigh...Of course there is no one in sight that is in any position to know anything or be able to DO anything to fix the problem.

At that point, I still thought things would be okay, because they had like 5 hours to figure something out and call the dumpster company to come and move the bin. I walked the dog, spoke to the workers again, went to the gym, came back and spoke to them again (it's 30 minutes before I need to leave at this point), only to find out that they've called the dumpster people 3 times with no real result. Attempting to take matters into my own hands, I called the number on the side of the roofing company's truck. Turns out it's the owner's cell phone, and he actually called right back and was pretty nice...though he still didn't have a good answer. The dumpster people only have one truck running, and he went off on another job after coming here this morning. He arrived here the same time as a delivery was going on, so he just slid the dumpster wherever he felt like (though he and everyone else KNEW it was supposed to go in the middle driveway, NOT mine) and escaped without anyone from the roofing company doing anything about it. I called the dumpster company myself, but of course nobody from there ever called back.

The worker bees helped me clean up the clear side of the driveway so I could at least try and get U-H's car out so I could go get my food and have it back in time for him to leave on his trip, but then I couldn't find his spare set of car keys. GRRRRR. Calls & text messages to his cell didn't help since he was in surgery, so I tried calling the office itself and letting them know that I REALLY needed to speak with him ASAP after he got done. I hadn't yet taken a shower, thinking that I might actually have to ride my bike to his job to get his keys, but then I found them. Not in the bowl marked DAD'S KEYS that his daughter made for him at the pottery studio, mind you, but instead I found them in his bathroom. Don't ask me why I thought to look there. So I quickly jumped in the shower, got dressed, and opened the garage door, only to discover that there was now a big air compressor hose stretched across the doorway. UGH...more issues, but at least this one was a quick fix.

So I finally made it to get my SSHE food for the rest of the week, but because of all the delays by the time I got back it was too late to make it back to the gym for my yoga class (which I paid extra $$ for), but oh well. They STILL hadn't managed to move the stupid dumpster though, which was now making U-H late getting on the road for his trip because he really needed the cargo capacity of the Escape, which was the car that was blocked in. Sorry, but a Chevy Cavalier doesn't haul enough stuff and people. Just after I left another voice mail (this one not so nice) for the dumpster company (at 5:30 even though they close at 4pm), the guy FINALLY showed up and moved it to a better place. I figured it was better to leave well enough alone and NOT say anything to the driver.

I need a drink.

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