Ah....birthdays. For the past several years, "birthday" has meant "crying by 6 p.m. with no sign of stopping." It's officially 5:03 p.m. and I haven't started crying yet. Yay!
Last year, grandma had a heart attack on my birthday.
The year before, no one seemed to remember my birthday.
The year before that was three funerals and a wedding year.
Right now, I'm cracking my knuckles and battening down for what's probably going to be a very boring night, and I'm hella cool with that. I'd rather be bored senseless than spouting saline out of my eyeballs all night. There's some leftover Becherovka in the cupboard that I might down. I hate the taste of it, but hell, after a few shots, I'm guaranteed a good night's sleep.
This past weekend's moving excursion did not go well. After the previous weekend's disaster of us driving the three hours from Durham to Chowan County only to find out that there were no trucks available anywhere near our location, we made sure to make reservations in plenty enough time to have one for the next weekend.
That said, I made a reservation last Tuesday for use on Saturday, and it was confirmed. Again, we drive the three hours to grandma's house, and then another hour and a half to friggin' Moyock because that was the only place that had a truck. Guess what? We drove all the way there to find out that they didn't want to take a check.
So you think, "Duh, Tiffany, you idiot. Most people in Podunk won't take checks."
Well...no. They took checks but wouldn't take one from my grandma. Why? Because grandma wasn't the one driving the truck and that whole third-party dealy wasn't very savory to them. What kinda bullshit is that? Do they really think that gramma with two houses and a Lexus is going to bounce a piddly $180 check? Give me a bleepin' break. Hasn't anyone ever heard of an "exception"--you know, the kind of thing where, "YOU BITCH! We drove 5 hours to get here with no other money than what we spent to put gas in our car and you won't take this woman's check?" That's a real good business practice--alienating customers.
Anyhow, we called the U-Haul regional office to ask them what we could do to drive off with a truck that day and they told us to use a credit card. Um...if we had a credit card, we wouldn't have that problem now would we? We didn't even have an ATM card on any of the three of us.
Then, I happened to notice on my reservation printout that "U-Haul takes your personal checks over the phone!". That turned out to be a damn lie. The 1800 number people were confused at the very idea of such an innovation and the lady at the regional office claimed that she had never seen the said website and was confused. Oh well.
So, now we have to drive out there for a third weekend in a row. Shit. Even when I was single and living in the dorms did I not go home that much. I love my grandma to death, mind you, but geez Louise, and then to have to go again for Thanksgiving. One could cry with the very thought of it.
Posted by Tiffany at November 17, 2003 06:06 PM