Some
weeks it seems like we’d be better off just staying in bed or
maybe it’s time to take a vacation or something. It just seems
to me that there are periods in time in which the world gets
crazier than it normally is. Or perhaps it’s just me. In any
event…
The week started
off with the United States Post Office. Now, I mailed a letter out
certified….you know, one of those that you send to someone and
you want to make sure they received it, so you get a little green
card back showing who signed for the letter. Well, the one I sent
out came back marked …”postage due”. I had put the same
amount we always used, but it showed we were $1.50 short. Thinking
the rates may have gone up, I called them. This in and of itself
is enough to make you want to move to some remote Pacific island.
Anyway, I get
this nice fellow on the line and he tells me that the amount I
used was correct for sending a ‘certified’ letter, but not
enough for the return card. I didn’t even know you could send a
certified letter WITHOUT getting the return card. Isn’t that why
you send something certified in the first place? Why would you pay
to send something certified unless you wanted to know if it got
there? Well, he had no answer for me, says those are the
rules….Rack up crazy #1.
Then I hire the
landscape company to come out and extend my sprinkler system so I
can plant more trees…..They spend a couple of days working on
burying the lines…setting up the sprinkler heads…then they
leave…I call and ask when are they going to plant the trees and
they tell me…”we didn’t charge you for that and we don’t
plant trees.” Well, why dig holes, set up sprinklers and
everything else, if you aren’t going to actually put the trees
in the ground…? Why would I want the holes and the sprinkler
unless I wanted the trees planted? Isn’t that the purpose of the
whole exercise in the first place? Crazy #2.
Then to top off
the week…I buy a new chain saw. Used to be that when yours broke
you’d go get it fixed. Now it’s cheaper to buy a new one than
it is to take one to the shop and pay to get it repaired. Now, I
get this one home and am getting ready to cut some brush so I can
plant the trees (see crazy #2) that the guys I paid to dig the
holes said they weren’t going to do. The first thing you do is
to fill up the gas and the chain saw oil. Now, when you buy one of
these, obviously it’s in a box and you can’t actually try it
out to see how easy or hard it is to operate. The hole where you
put the chainsaw oil is covered by a part of the handle. In order
to actually get a funnel into the hole and get oil into the hole,
you have to cut and bend the funnel or you end up with oil all
over the driveway, which is what I did making me glad I bought the
power washer. Chainsaw is Crazy #3.
I carefully
unpack the power washer and spend the next couple of hours putting
it together as per the instructions. I want to be certain I
haven’t missed anything or left out any assembly steps. This one
came with a free hose reel, which was in about 40 different pieces
and could have been better assembled by a Martian with 8 hands. A
picture of this should go in the dictionary under the word
‘frustration’. After, I repeat after I get the thing
assembled, I read the last paragraph, which says….”You may
have parts left over.” (I do) AND ….”USE of the HOSE REEL is
not recommended”. Don’t real people engineer these things? Why
have ‘extra parts’ that you don’t need? Who needs this
aggravation in their lives? Secondly, why include a ‘free’
hose reel if you are told that they don’t recommend that you use
it? Crazy #4.
At this point I
decide that this was just one of those weeks where I need to get
out of the sun and go take a nap….which is what I did. Hard to
screw up one of those isn’t it? No need to follow the
instructions…..Comments go to www.pearyperry.com
