If you've been following along, this past week was spent without Matt as he was off in Wainwright doing manoeuvers, or as they call it in the Canadian Forces, "on exercise". They say "absence makes the heart grow fonder", but whoever 'they' are, they're full of crap. It just makes it lonely to wake up to, lonely to come home to, and lonely to fall asleep to. He did come home for the weekend, and spent a couple glorious days with me, but he's off again today to Wainwright for another ten day run.
While he was here on the weekend, we also hosted the Mad Padre and his wife, Mrs. Padre. They drove up from Medicine Hat to, in their words, "say 'we miss you!', and then turn around and drive home". While they were here though, we took them to our favourite pub and then to the antiques mall for some shopping. I made my famous tourtiere for supper, and we had a nice chat. But indeed, their visit was too short and they had to cut it even shorter on account of the terrible weather that moved into Southern Alberta yesterday afternoon. Hopefully they shall some day soon come back to visit and the weather will be kinder. Miss you guys already!
Since I was by myself last week, I had a few tasks that Matt left me to do; the most important of these being to take the car in to the dealership for some warranty maintenance work. He even booked me an appointment so I could schedule my physio around the time it would take. When I arrived at the scheduled appointment time, the service guy told me that not only was there not an appointment booked for me at that time, but that there wasn't one booked at all at any time. Also, since the warranty work would take "a couple of hours" and they hadn't bother to put our appointment into the computer, the mechanics were now so busy that my car wouldn't be finished until the next day. Fine. I give them my phone number, tell them Matt is out of town and to call me, and get a shuttle ride home.
Once noon rolled around the next day and I still hadn't received a call, I called them back to see if the car was finished. Yes it was, and yes, they had left a message with my husband. Who was actually in a field north of Wainwright supervising his tanks at the time and had no time to check his voicemail let alone call me and tell me the car was ready. I'm still not sure where they ended up putting my phone number. I get them to send the shuttle down to pick me up. I get the Cherry Bomb (our little red Fiesta) and stop at a gas station to fill her up before coming home. At which point the car starts screaming at me.
Have you ever had the engine light come on and been all, "pshaw, it'll go off in a bit"? What came on in our car was a little wrench-shaped light followed by the systematic shutdown of the radio and the Bluetooth. In big letters on the Auxiliary input screen it read "ENGINE MALFUNCTION. SERVICE IMMEDIATELY". In my defence, I only started freaking out once I realized that it wasn't going to go away. I called the dealership back, and they ask me to drive the car back to them. I'm almost home. So, crying and fearing I am going to explode the entire way there, I call my mum and get her to distract me over the speakerphone while I navigate back through the city. When I get there, the electricians are busy (of course). I sit in the waiting room, waiting for my car to detonate and send the whole garage up in flames, for an hour. Finally (and shamefacedly at least), the service manager comes over and hands me the keys. "We, uh, bumped a wire while we were fixing the heater. It's all good now."
All good now?! I wanted to scream, I have severe anxiety stemming from motor vehicles and it's just ALL GOOD NOW? But instead, I smiled, said thank you, and drove the poor Cherry Bomb home (I don't blame her at all. She was just a victim like me.) Those close to me congratulated me on successfully navigating my first crisis all on my own, and sure, I survived; I had no doubts that I would, barring a small car explosion. So I supposed we could chalk it up into the "win" column. But if I'm going to be honest, I could have done without it.
Then the pièce de résistance to end the week (they say bad luck comes in threes): our rental management company took our rent plus someone else's (much higher) rent out of our bank account, leaving us in severe overdraft with no overdraft protection. We literally have no money right now. I'm waiting on a call from their office as we speak to get this all sorted out, but you can be sure I can handle this crisis by myself - I proved it last week.
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