Never ending chaos

Friday night Kurt decided to clean the oven. Yep, that’s the exciting life of thirty-somethings with a seven-week-old baby. He’s had the instruction manual for using the self-cleaning mode out for about a week. And for a couple months, I’ve intended to clean the oven along with getting some of my cast iron pots degunked in the same million-degree process, but I just never got around to it. The self-cleaning mode takes about four hours and I wanted to pick a time when I wouldn’t be in the house. Well, Kurt turned it on and my cast iron never made it in. Damn it! And with in minutes the whole middle floor of our house was filled with smoke. *grumble* So we open the windows on the middle floor and watched movies while locked upstairs in the master bedroom. Four hours later the oven beeped to let us know it was done. It remained locked for the cool down period, which I think was another hour. Once the cool down period was over the oven beeped again, but remained locked and was displaying an error code. We hit the off button to stop the obnoxious beeping and referred to the manual for the error code. Call the service center. FUCK! And the beeping stated again. Hit the off button. Three minutes later more beeping. Damn it already! Unplug the stove and plug it back in again. Still locked, still has the error code and – beep beep beep. GODDAMNITALLTOHELL!

We kept the stove unplugged for the night and called the service number in the morning. They’re only open on weekdays. Bastards! After a weekend of cooked meals that required us to plug the stove in and hit the off button every three minutes to control the incessant senseless beeping and eating out with an infant (she’s actually really good if the timing is right) I called the service number on Monday. I went through the press one for Spanish phone maze down to press three for repairs I was directed to a live person who then asked me not what the problem was but what is my name, address, zip code, and phone number. Damn data collection crap. Now I’m probably going to get calls about winning a point one percent discount on a plasma tv after answering a “short” survey that winds up eating into an hour and a half of my life. The woman finally asks me what the problem is. I give her the error code that the stove is giving me and so she asks for the model and serial number. I had the manual with me so I told her the model is one of the these two – and rattled them both off to her. To make a long story somewhat shorter, a general, “it’s one of these two” just wasn’t good enough. I found myself on my hands and knees on a kitchen floor that hasn’t been cleaned in an amount of time I don’t want to discuss and reading numbers from inside the drawer under the oven. The only light side I can see about the whole situation is, at least I wasn’t nine months pregnant.

After all that the woman at the service place asks for the error code again. “hhmm, did you try unplugging it?”
“Yep”
“Well I guess we’ll have to send someone out there. The soonest I can do is next Wednesday.”
“NEXT WEEK? How much will it cost?”
“$55″
“And that’s just to have the technician come out?”
“Yes”
“I’m going to have to think about that” CLICK

Since my cast iron pots weren’t trapped inside I didn’t have to think about Jack Shit! Waiting until the day before Thanksgiving for a technician to come out just to look at it is wholly unacceptable. “Just use your microwave” you might say. I don’t own one. Anything that can turn the outside of something into molten lava yet still be completely frozen in the middle is evil. As a side note I also don’t usually eat things that come in packages with “microwavable” on the label. Cause if something needs a package and can’t be identified without a picture and or map – It ain’t food.

Monday afternoon I got home from my “Living with baby” group and Kurt and I went shopping for a new stove. We figured it might be a good selling point for when we put out house on the market. We also bought a new dishwasher to replace the twnty-year-old suds producing hot water consuming semi sanitizing dish-holding unit. I should be getting the stove today. YAY! The dishwasher we have to wait on because we are going to have them install it for us. I’m sure it would be easy enough for us to install ourselves, but when the sales person asked if we wanted it installed Kurt pondered, “hhmm do I want to deal with the hassle of installing it?” “No” I corrected him “Do I want to deal with the hassle of you installing it?” Ask me sometime about the bathroom that we couldn’t use for two years. He finally finished it July of this year and it’s gorgeous, but TWO YEARS under construction!

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