To Be Frustrated

I could have chosen a different headline like  "When things go sideways" or "Better luck next time", but somehow it is my overall frustration which dominates these days.

Now, I hope you are curious enough to read on.

It all started with us having the worst summer in more than a decade. I really can't put it any other way. Every morning I have problems seeing the house of my neighbour - due to the thickest most dense fog I have ever seen. And when i let Dixie out, I recoil from millions of tiny water droplets hitting me in the face. The fog is so dense that it can't even hold all the water. Or, alternatively, we are having a real solid rain, letting our garden rain barrels run over in no time. And this has been going on through the entire month of June and there is no end in sight this month either. 

As a result of this, our tour business is suffering from a slow exitus. We are down to a fraction of what it was back in 2019. To make matters worse, the media has been falling over themselves with headlines about "Canada Burns" and the "Smoke from the Canadian Fires make people suffer". That may be as it is, but we haven't had any smoke problems here and the grey air out there is not smoke but FOG!

But of course our grass (we hesitate to call it lawn) is growing like a jungle, and just about as quick. So when I was riding our mower, a pebble flew out from underneath hitting a tinted side window  of our van shattering it into 2 million pieces. The effort of getting a new glass turned out to be a nightmarish odyssey. An auto glass firm managed to order a too small window but noticed it first after I had driven 80 miles to town and spent an hour waiting in their shop. 

They needed 2 more weeks to get another (aftermarket) window which has the wrong curvature and looks terrible, besides of that it is not water tight. Their excuses could fill a book! And it is still not fixed 6 weeks after that stone broke the window.

Next on the agenda of my frustration was my 2month old phone, a motorola G play. From one second to the next my data connection went haywire. A little funny star was winking at me from the top signaling the problem. Again I had to do the 80mile run along the border to see the office of US-Cellular. This time I denied them to replace the phone with the same model as we actually had done that just 2 months earlier. No Sireee, this time I wanted an upgrade to a different model. $100 later I had a new phone. And at this time, I seriously speculate whether old cell phones have any collectors value. I have a sizable (and growing) collection of them and maybe I should sell them in an antique market to the highest bidder. Just saying!

But we are not done yet. The other day I backed my 32 year old Mercedes out of the garage when I discovered that passenger side front tire was looking like a pancake under pressure. What in the......???

After checking the cause of the problem, my local mechanic called to inform me that the tire was sick with dry-rot, and that I better check the other three. 

Well, folks, 4 new tires have now been ordered. ($$$$)

Seriously, can somebody please get me some good news?

I have to go to the beach....