Yesterday... the day that could have been worse

Yesterday… the day that could have been worse…

Allow me to elucidate…

Bear Cub Q did not sleep well Sunday night.  At all.  He was running a fever, he couldn’t nurse well, he was coughing.

            But it could have been worse.  He could have been vomiting.

I wake up from a night where I spent half the night awake and call the doctor for an appointment as soon as possible.  We would be going in at 9:20, leaving me just enough time to have the doctor see Q and then rush to the dentist with the Assistant.

            The doctor could have been booked solid.

I take Q to the doctor with the girls in tow, as we need to go straight to the dentist after.  Q has no ear infections, but a cold and a bacterial infection in his throat.

            My baby isn’t dying, just sick!

We stop at home to let DH know I need him to pick up the prescription since I will be driving to the other side of town.  The Screamer opts to stay with Daddy, but Q has to come with me as someone is coming to clean our air vents of accumulated dust (which includes lead).

            We could be broke and have no money to get the ducts cleaned.

We stop at my mom’s house to leave Q.  DH calls and says, “Is Katie there?  She was supposed to be at the dentist at 10:30.”  It’s 10:33.  Oops.

            My mom could live 20 minutes from the dentist instead of 2.

The Assistant has her drilling done.  Remind your kids to floss.  My turn, on a tooth that was decaying from the inside out.  The first dose of Novocain doesn’t take, but the second does.

            My dentist could have started drilling before I was numb.  A previous dentist pulled an extra tooth without Novocain, so I’ve been there.

We go to pick up Q, who had just fallen asleep, so we stay at Mom’s.

            He could have been awake and screaming.

We return home, to find DH just returned home and the air duct people leaving.  DH says the dining room is dirty, and I think, “Oh, no.”

            He could have said they broke something.

Oh, wait, it was worse.  The entire house was coated in dust.  Nearly every vent had a pile of debris around it.  One vent, in the kitchen, had been removed, but not cleaned, and not put back.  I couldn’t get it back on either.  And everything – every curtain, bed, floor, flat surface, even the walls were dirty.  And the men from Givens Cleaning Contractors were gone with our money.

So I load up the kids and go to JoAnn’s and Sonic to get out of the house while DH calls the main office and tries to get some resolution.  Oh, yeah, and he starts cleaning.  Q falls asleep after JoAnn’s (no fabric purchased!).  When we arrive home, the Assistant, instructed to unbuckle Screamer, unbuckles Q, who thereby wakes up and is screaming when I come back to the car.

I could have bought fabric!  Okay, just kidding.  I could have no kids, and this all would have been a moot point.  I love my kids.  Our van could be broken like our truck, meaning the kids and I would have been stuck at home in the dust… lead-laden dust, even.

This book was left behind Sunday night after bedtime stories.

Oh, look!
Imagine the floors any everything else this pleasant shade of dirt!

The men are supposed to come back and look at the house.  When they arrive, the basic response is “Uh…”  Suffice it to say, they do pretty much nothing (30 minutes of vacuuming one room does not count as doing anything).  No refund, no offer to help clean or pay for it to be cleaned.  DH finds a maid service that won’t charge $300/hour to clean our house that night.  AND my sister-in-law calls and says, “Come over.”  I remind her Q is sick, and she says, “So what?  You’ve got to get out of that house.  Come over.”  I pack a bag for the night, just in case (we might need a hotel room), load up the kids again, tell DH he’s my hero, and head out.

Hannah could never have called at that moment.  Every maid service could have refused to come.  It could have been worse.

An example of the mess left around one vent.

I just cleaned the walls two weeks ago.
Here's what DH got off ONE wall.  I would have gotten that much off one whole room.

Let’s speed up the story, ‘cuz Tom and Hannah were saints to take us in.  DH thought he missed the maids, so we thought we were back to square one, but it turns out he didn’t.  They came.  Tom and DH told me over and over how amazing their cleaning was, and how reasonably priced.  Hannah fed us dinner, we bathed the kids, my house is immaculate.

            It could have been worse.

So, kudos to Wichita Maid Service, the only maid service I will ever do business with again (not that such a situation is likely to arise, but, hey, who knows?).

And, to Givens Cleaning Contractors, you should be ashamed of the mess you made in our house.  If you are not running a scam and it just happens that your employees are incompetent, you should fire them and refund us the money we spend on cleaning our house after you didn’t.

from the room of Zana’s Ninis, 

katie z.