Not much of a weekend. We were told that the carpet guys would be by to change the carpet Saturday, but we weren't told what time they'd show. Friday night I put away and put away until I could do no more, and collapsed into bed. Saturday morning I awoke at 8:30 to the sound of the Mexican carpet guy screaming at my wife that we were wasting his time. He wouldn't touch anything that was "small" like books, computers whatever. So I jumped out of bed, put on a shirt backwards and started putting away stuff as fast as I could. He stood there and watched me with his arms folded, like he was somebody from the Medallin cartel waiting for me to hurry up and finish digging my own grave.
After 45 minutes of this nonsense, he flew the coop and said he'd be back in a couple of hours. He did return, and I'd gotten some things cleared out, but it was not to his satisfaction. I refused to get in a p*ssing contest with him, which is what he was working up to. He started talking to his carpet cohorts in Spanish, and my wife, who is fluent, later told me he was calling our stuff "f*cking sh*t". I was about ready to pop up and say "look, I don't like your mouth, and I'm asking now that you leave here. To hell with the carpet." Mrs. Lewis told me later she was glad that I restrained myself.
Afterward he didn't come back and he didn't give any condition to come back. My wife and I went out under the prestense of getting the broken bedroom TV fixed, which of course evolved into another dreaded shopping trip. Here I sorta lost my cool, but "gambatéd" (that's Japanese for "hang with it") and when I got home I was so tired and depressed that I conked out and slept most of the day away.
Today someone came by from the carpet company, who attempted to work things out with us. They were reallly surpised to hear about the carpet guy's filthy mouth and bad attitude. Turns out this guy was a "sub for a sub", someone who didn't really work for the carpet company, but agreed to stand in for the stand in that originally agreed to do the job, but bailed at the last second. Well, we don't want him back, okay?
I still am in the process of getting everything ready, and I have to take a day off work to finish - really hate that, as I need my time off for other things in the future. So this whole adventure is already costing me more than I bargained for. But these guys are used to working on totally empty apartments. Can you imagine having to empty out your apartment to the bare walls, leaving only the largest furniture and emptying out every shelving unit, shoving everything you own into a closet or lugging it out to the balcony?
No jokes today -- nothing's funny. But I hope to be in a better humor presenting my show tomorrow at 6 am ET om www.wcbn.org or, if you're in Ann Arbor, over 88.3FM.
Uncle Dave Lewis