Week from Hell

This has just been a no good awful horrible bad week. I'd like a do-over on most of it.

After two weeks of holidays, and coming back to day shifts (hello, endless distraction! God, I miss shelves that stay stocked!)...it was kind of a given this week would suck. But I'd be spit-shellacked and welded to a whale's blowhole if I told you I ever thought it would suck quite this hard.
Monday was the teaser day, the day that went much better than it should have, leading me to think that perhaps I'd emerge on the other side of Saturday unscathed. My assistant had managed the department reasonably well while I was away, and the first day back was pretty light. Of course, I hadn't slept much, and of course I was half-dead at the end of it, but I came through it all right, all things considered.
Tuesday came along like some old battle-axe of a drill sargeant to try to whip me back into shape. My arms had held nothing heavier than a book for two weeks, and here I was slinging cases of juice around. By the end of that day I was ready to just keel over.
Then came Wednesday. (Yup, I know the days of the week! I can say them in order!)

Wednesday. Wodan's day. Wodan, the Anglo-Saxon psychopomp. From Wikipedia:

"Many religious belief systems have a particular spirit, deity, demon or angel whose responsibility is to escort newly-deceased souls to...Heaven or Hell. These creatures are called psychopomps."

I wasn't heaven-bound, let me tell you that.

It started almost as soon as I got in the door at work. The team had finished off most of Tuesday's large order, which was good. They left one very large skid...not so good. See, this large skid was leaning rather precariously, so much so that I was afraid to bring it out on the sales floor. We crept out, moving at about a tenth the speed of smell, and eventually made it to the front of the dairy aisle. Somehow, don't ask me how, I was able to get all ninety-plus cases to shelf without an avalanche of juice occurring. But my right arm was in serious pain. By the time that skid was done it was almost impossible to lift a 33-lb. case of juice. Even a single carton, a shade over four pounds, was a stretch. And it got worse: a few minutes later I found that turning a newspaper page hurt. That ain't right, I thought.
As pretty much everything in my department weighs more than a sheet of newsprint, I decided I'd better go home before my arm just fell off. I could imagine it all too clearly: little old Granny Peepers stopping her cart, bending over and retrieving my arm. "Young sir, you dropped this," she'd intone. "You really shouldn't litter."

After that the day got bad.

As I said, I've been on holidays for two weeks, and before that I'd been on nights for six or seven weeks. The practical upshot of this is that our dogs have not been home alone over an extended period for a very long time.
I knew it was going to be hard on them. Tux acts out on occasion and Georgia is just plain omnivorous (how many dogs do you know who would try to eat a bed?) It's an incentive to keep the house clean, put it that way. And if I do leave something within reach, it's not something I care overmuch about. So I'll come home to, say, a plastic glass sitting in the middle of the living room floor, chewed. No big deal, I'll think. Never liked that glass anyway.

I wasn't surprised to see something shredded to hell on the floor when I came through the door, cradling my poor arm. I was outright shocked when I realized what that something--what those somethings--were.
Eva's Nintendo DS games. Pretty much all of them were either in teensy-tiny pieces or just gone altogether. Georgia or Tux, or both of them, had found the Ziploc bag with the DS and all the little game-chips in it and made of it a meal. The DS system itself has a bunch of holes in it. And I know that was Georgia...she's the only one with teeth that strong.

What are you supposed to do? You can't punish the dogs...they'd have no idea what the matter is. I suppose I could blame myself for not taking all the chips and inserting them in their grossly oversized individual cases...but come on. Was I really supposed to predict my puppies would develop a taste for silicone? That Ziploc bag had sat in its place next to the TV stand for a long time without incident.
I wasn't sure what a good husband would do in this case. Should I call Eva and let her know the dogs had deprived her of a couple of dozen games and a perfectly good system to play them on, bearing in mind she was already having a terrible day at work? One more piece of bad news might make a cigarette magically appear in her hand. Ugh. Or should I wait until she got home to spring this on her, bearing in mind once again that her day was shitty crappy smelly, probably getting worse by the minute, and so she'd come through the door primed to go off like TNT?
Self-preservation won out. I called her. Can't say she was particularly impressed, but she managed not to smoke over it. (Have I mentioned how proud I am of my wife?)

But wait...there's more.

Our second-floor toilet was always running, ever so faintly. You couldn't see it or hear it in the bathroom: you'd have to go down to the basement and put your ear up to the drainage pipe. It had been going for quite a while. My first clue was an unusually high water bill. Eva's first clue was her unusually acute hearing.
No problem: obviously a flapper valve needed replacing, an easy fix.
Of course, our toilet (a lovely fawn green number) dates to 1969. Eva called me from Home Depot and asked me to describe exactly what that valve looked like. Picture me, one-armed with a flashlight, peering dejectedly down into the tank. Mostly I was seeing my own reflection in the water. Oh, and also a giant black floater bulb, inconveniently in my way. Let me just lift that thing up here, a little high--
--snap--
There, that's out of the way.
Umm, but now the toilet's effectively on perma-flush. This is a bit of an issue.
Plumbing's not my strong suit. In fact, plumbing's not any suit of mine. I'm entirely naked when it comes to plumbing. I had no idea I'd done something awful; I thought that ballcock would just attach right back where it had snapped off. I even tried to do it myself. Not surprisingly, I failed. I didn't know I had failed because two tiny screws had snapped off along with the ballcock assembly. I just figured, hey, dumb-ass, remember? You're plumb stupid. Leave it for Eva, she'll fix it in ten seconds flat, like she does with everything else you screw up...
...Geez, that water's gushing down the drainage pipe. Bet that water-meter's just a-whizzin'. Better fix that.
I didn't know you could turn off the water just to the toilet. I did know where to turn off the water to the house. I think that information's a good thing to know when you live with the likes of me in your home. So down I went, and blessed silence shortly prevailed.
Until Eva got home, that is. She came up the stairs with her flapper valve and soon found out I'd cost her another trip. Back she went to Home Depot, where they sold her a ballcock assembly with four screws and basically told her to hope for the best.
The assembly we actually needed had places for two screws, not four.
By this time it's well past dinner hour. Neither of us has eaten. Eva said later she could probably have fixed the damn thing, but (a) she would have been up until midnight (b) doing something she was unsure of and (c) being in a foul temper the whole time (d)esiring a cigarette. Or a carton of 'em.
Enter Tiger Plumbing.
Exit an astonishing amount of money for a half hour's job.

Let's just draw the curtain on that day, shall we?

Thursday was the typical hell day it always is at my work: with the new flyer now starting Fridays, everything and its nephew has to come in the day before, running me off my feet.

Friday brought a brief respite as we accompanied some friends to a dress rehearsal for Air Farce Live (formerly Royal Canadian Air Farce). That was a hoot and a half, marred only by rush hour traffic coming out of Toronto. It took us almost three hours to make a trip of about 100 miles.

Saturday...today...was my first Saturday at work in quite some time. It was freakin' busy. People were busting down the doors, and even with triple coverage at times, it was a struggle to keep up.

To put everything in perspective, we found out today that a close family friend has passed away, after a long illness. I guess our week wasn't so bad after all, you know?