Gianni on the Spot

This past Saturday the 12th, Riley went to the Netflix House with Taaro, Kenny, and Nina. It's a place with Netflix themed virtual reality worlds, and activities like mini golf, and food and merch.

Smash and Grab

Meanwhile the air conditioner in her bedroom had died the day before, so I had ordered one via Amazon Prime that was supposed to come Saturday afternoon or evening. It ended up coming while I was in the shower, but Kevin saw the truck pull up on our security camera and he went down and carried the thing upstairs.

As always, the Amazon box was about 400% bigger than it needed to be: The air conditioner I ordered was a window unit the size of a small microwave, but the box Amazon delivered it in was big enough for a small refrigerator.

Kevin and I had plans to meet his parents and Kelly's family for dinner at Gianni's in Richboro to celebrate my birthday and Ron's though, so we stuck the box in Riley's room and figured we'd unpack and install the thing after we got home later on.

Then we went to Gianni's!

When we got back home and I opened the Amazon box, I saw that the air conditioner box itself had a huge dent in it with a chunk of the styrofoam padding missing.

Then I opened it and saw the air conditioner itself:

So now I'd have to spend my time initiating a return, packing the stupid thing back up, and trucking it off to a UPS store... all while ordering yet another air conditioner and hoping to have better luck with that one!

A Spooky Visitor

Later Saturday night though, Kevin came bursting into Riley's room where she and I were sitting on her bed and talking.

He was like, "Check this out: The camera thinks there's a ghost in the parking lot!"

If you didn't notice it, there does sort of appear to be a man with black pants and a white shirt standing in the middle of the parking lot:

But looking out the window in person, there was absolutely nobody there.

Then Kevin rushed in again about 10 minutes later:

Hold the Phone!

Last Sunday the 13th, I was out shopping at the Tullytown Wal-mart, which is like all the unpleasantness of an ordinary Wal-mart dialed up to 1,000%.

I was in the toiletries department doing some price comparisons against BJs and Amazon, and I set my phone down on one of the bottom shelves so I could climb up to reach something on the top shelf.

Then by the time I read the label on the item I had grabbed, gave it a test sniff to see if I liked the scent, and placed it in my cart, I temporarily forgot about my phone and went about my way toward the next item on my list.

A few minutes later I was all the way on the other side of the store, looking at the air conditioners since I had to replace the sad excuse that Amazon had sent me. But I went to pull my phone from my pocket to do some research, and—

I backtracked to the toiletries aisle where I remembered last using it. There was no sign of it anywhere.

But I had a cart full of stuff I wanted to buy, so I raced to the checkout, paid for everything, ran to my car, and sped to the nearest Metro store with plans to have them kill my phone before anyone could do anything nefarious with it.

But I missed the phone store's business hours by half an hour. So I did the next best thing and raced home, burst into the bedroom, and told Kevin I needed his phone ASAP.

I called Charles Schwab's customer service and told them what had happened, and I asked if there was any way to completely lock my account against any changes until further notice (since I have their app on my phone).

There was, and the gentleman I spoke with was extraordinarily helpful.

Then I told Kevin I wanted to go back to Wal-mart and check with customer service just on the off chance that someone had actually been honest enough to turn in a found phone instead of pocketing it. (I hadn't done this earlier because my plan had been to go straight to the Metro store, but that hadn't panned out).

So Kevin and I went back to Wal-mart, and I told the young man behind the counter that I was looking for a Samsung phone with an olive green case.

He promptly pulled it from a bin under the cash register and just asked me to unlock it to prove that it was mine, which I obviously was able to do without issue.

Apparently another employee had found it and brought it up to customer service!

So, then I got to come home and call Schwab up again to undo the lock I had just asked them to place on my account not even half an hour before 🙄

I spoke with a woman who was super helpful and sympathetic, and she made me go through the "which of these banks and old addresses have you been associated with" routine to prove that it was really me. Then she unlocked my account.

When she asked if there was anything else she could help me with, Kevin whispered that I should ask her how I could go about providing positive feedback for her and the man I'd spoken with before since they had been so helpful and personable.

She said she could try to connect me to her supervisor, who turned out to be a woman named Abi. And I proceeded to tell her how helpful both staff members had been, but I kind of broke down halfway through while I was explaining that the whole reason I had misplaced my phone at all was from all the stress I've been under between losing my mom, taking my sister to rehab, helping Taylor out of her abusive relationship with Ahlina, and so on.

But Abi was extraordinarily kind and very appreciative that I had taken the time to provide feedback about her associates 🙂

And at that point I was absolutely exhausted, so I told Kevin and Riley I didn't feel like cooking dinner, and we could just order Bambino's.

Hoodrat and Thumper

On Monday afternoon, Kevin and Riley got treated to half an hour of rhythmic thumping that, as Kevin determined several weeks ago, only happens every now and then when there's a black Kia SUV in the parking lot.

And... this SUV only shows up when Hoodrat's SUV is also present.

So, the thumping is Hoodrat and her little boytoy enjoying a nooner right on the other side of Riley's bedroom wall while she's in the middle of school 🤮

Kevin has since nicknamed the guy Studley Screw-right:

Fortunately for all of us, Stud seems to have a three week refractory period, and so he doesn't come around very often.

Later that evening Riley went over to Kassie's for a few hours, so Kevin and I decided to treat ourselves to Qdoba for dinner... except, when we got there, we discovered that Qdoba at some point decided to pull a Chick-fil-A (and a Stone Wok) and just say f*ck it, we're not opening on Mondays and Tuesdays.

We actually did end up at Chick-fil-A then even though I'm not really a fan. And then we stopped to visit Joe and Paula (basically right around the corner) for an hour or so before we headed home.

Trash Panda!

Wednesday night, Riley wanted to stop at McDonald's to buy herself dinner after kickboxing class, and we glimpsed a trash panda in the wild! 😁

Basket Case

Thursday morning, Kevin spotted Ruth taking out the trash. Or bringing in the trash? Doing whatever it is she does with trash. There are always bags and bags coming and going from her apartment.

He sent it to me and said she looks like a pumpkin whose kindergarten class is having a Halloween party and so she decided to go as a firefighter:

When I got home from work later that afternoon, there was a package in front of our door.

It was addressed to my maiden name, which almost always means it's for Kevin: When we started dating and I added him to my Amazon Prime, he would sometimes buy me stuff and have it shipped here to the apartment. Then when he moved in he just decided to have everything shipped in my name rather than tip the post office off to the fact that he lives here too now. But he's continued using my maiden name so we can tell our packages apart.

Anyway, the package was a substantial size and kind of weighty, like maybe a pair of men's boots. But Kevin insisted he wasn't expecting anything.

So I opened it:

We couldn't believe it!

It was a gift basket from the supervisor I had spoken with at Charles Schwab over the weekend!

The Migraine

Shortly before I left work on Friday, Kevin texted me to say, "Hey, I had been planning on cooking tacos or nachos or something; but I have a migraine on its way in and don't really feel like it now. Is there any chance you can just grab us Qdoba on the way home?"

Sure.

I got home maybe a little more than an hour later and asked how he was feeling.

Things Are Changing

Kevin recently mentioned that he's been seeing our neighbors Rob and Nicole loading a lot of kids' stuff into their vehicles here and there over the past week or so.

They have two boys a little older than Liv and Hannah, and they're in a two-bedroom like we are (which means the boys share a bedroom). So at first we figured the boys are just getting bigger and older and maybe Rob and Nicole were just purging some outgrown toys and upgrading to bigger dressers and stuff.

But then on Saturday we watched them load three mattresses into the back of Rob's pickup truck. One was a queen and the other two were twins.

I ran into Rob in the parking lot a little while later and he said they'd been planning to ring our doorbell and say goodbye and thank us for everything over the years.

Then he told me the landlord wanted to charge them $1,900 a month to renew their lease!

Naturally, Rob scoffed at this and said, "Yeah, no. $1,900 is a mortgage payment." So he and Nicole bought a house in Levittown :)

Then we went over to Catherine and Ron's that evening to celebrate Ron's birthday!

Catherine texted Kevin to say that we'd be ordering from Taormina's, but then five minutes later she said, "Actually, we'll be ordering from Gianni's."

When we got there we were treated to a show, since Catherine and Ron were having the giant oak tree in their front yard taken down:

And then it was time to celebrate!

Kevin happened to catch Liv's hand at the perfect angle and said it reminded him of the "Fire It Up!" scene from The Crow:

Taylor's Train to Trenton

Taylor decided to dip into her savings and buy herself a train ticket to come down to PA for the weekend, so after we left Catherine and Ron's, Kevin and I headed over to the Trenton train station to meet her:

And finally, I received a package I have been waiting for the last couple weeks: I asked a woman on Etsy to make me four identical necklaces (for me, my sister, Riley, and Taylor) for us to remember my mom by.

My mom's favorite flowers were daffodils, so the woman used mini daffodils that she grows herself, and also worked in some forget me nots:

Little did I know that she had also included a surprise bracelet for me, to express her condolences for the loss of my mom: