Sheesh, What Else Could Go Wrong? / Sketchy Repairman

This is the sign that my grandmaw used to have hanging up next to her front door:

Now I have it next to my own door.  And for good reason.  Everything goes horribly wrong all the time.  And there has been a major rash of things going wrong at my house lately.

I guess the worst of it started back at Christmastime when Lilly acted like a total ungrateful @$$ and complained that she hated all of her presents.  She basically completely ruined Christmas for me.  So I have made the executive decision to put a stop to Christmas as we know it at my house.  Next Christmas, I will simply take Lilly shopping with a certain budget, let her pick out exactly what she wants, and be done with it.  No more wrapping presents; no more presents under the tree (heck, I may not even put up the tree at all); I will notify Santa to skip our house indefinitely, and that will be it.  I told Lilly that this was the way it's going to be, and she wasn't happy about it at all, but I don't know what else to do.  I don't know what I ever did to deserve such a rotten kid, but I've certainly got one.  I'm paying for my raising a thousand-fold.

Then the tag office didn't mail me my car's license-plate tag renewal in time for the deadline of my birthday, so I had to go to the courthouse to take care of it in person, which sucked.  Ironically, the #%^&*#$ renewal letter finally came in the mail DAYS after my birthday had already passed.  Stupid crap.

Then we had to fix the leaky roof (see the January 9th post).

Then my smoothie blender blew up (see the January 11th post).

Then Lilly carelessly busted the screen of her laptop when she allegedly dropped it in her room one evening who knows how long ago.  More about that in a few minutes.  I got it fixed today, and it cost me $110.

Yesterday I burnt the toast I was making for breakfast (I mean, burnt to the point of being charcoal).

And now both mine and Jamie's toilets are mysteriously leaking blue stuff everywhere all over our bathroom floors, and I'll have to figure out how to fix that next:

(My toilet):

(Jamie's toilet):

WTH!  Papa Smurf, we aim to please.  You aim too, please!

On top of all that, our new dental insurance has turned out to be crappy, so Jamie's checkup/x-rays/teeth cleaning that he had done the other day is going to end up costing us around $100.

And this Saturday we're finally going to take Jamie to get an eye exam, and order him a pair of much-needed prescription eyeglasses, and there's no telling how much that's going to cost.  And I have the sneaking suspicion that the glasses will turn out wrong somehow.  It's just our luck.

Not to mention that I've been putting off getting a new valve-cover gasket put on my car, so for months I've been riding around in a stinky car that smells ironically like burnt toast covered in motor oil.

And I haven't slept well in days, so I'm exhausted.  And we have to take Lilly to her gymnastics class and her stupid Brownie meeting tonight.  I think I'll go back to bed after I tell you about the laptop repair:

Sketchy Repairman

I discovered that Lilly's laptop screen was busted yesterday.  Lilly had a couple of friends over for a sleepover this weekend, and when I suggested to Lilly that she let them play on her laptop, she didn't say anything and just shook her head no.  Well, I'm used to Lilly being weird and ornery, so I just ignored it and went on my way.  A few minutes later, Lilly finally managed to muster up the courage to come to me and let me know why she couldn't let her friends play on her laptop.

Allegedly, (according to Lilly's story -- which you never know if she's telling the full truth or not -- she's just like her daddy in that aspect) several days before, Lilly had been playing on her laptop on her bed in her room.  She claimed that she went to move the laptop from her bed to her dresser, and when she did, she tripped over its power cord, and dropped the laptop on the floor, which in turn busted its screen.  So what did she do?  She promptly hid the laptop behind a giant mountain of stuffed animals between a wall and her dresser.  Until she finally confessed to me, at which time she pulled it out from where she had stashed it, and I turned it on for myself and saw the damage done.

Luckily (I guess) for me, I remembered that several of my friends had used this certain 'Sketchy Repairman' to repair their various electronic devices.  So yesterday I texted Cat and got the guy's number.  I forced Jamie to call the Sketchy Repairman, because I hate to talk on the phone; plus, I'm scared of people.  (I know, I told you I'm a freak; I can't help it).  So they agreed that I would take the laptop in to be repaired the next day, and that it would cost $100 to $110 to fix.

So after I dropped Lilly off at school this morning, I swung by the ATM to get the cash.  Then I called the Sketchy Repairman, as I was instructed to do, to let him know that I was on my way with the laptop.  After I left the ATM, I promptly got amnesia and completely forgot how to get to the Sketchy Repairman's house, even though I'd been there several times before with my friends.  So I drove slowly and aimlessly up the road and continued to think 'where the hell is that guy's house, and how do I get there from here'?!?  Yeah.  I was born and raised in this small town; lived here for 36 years, and you'd think I'd know how to get around, but no, not this freak!  I can't even walk & chew gum at the same time, so it's no wonder that I got lost trying to find the Sketchy Repairman.  I briefly considered calling up one of my friends and admitting my plight to them and asking for directions, but I could just hear Tor or Cat saying to me "OH EM GEE" and laughing at me so hard I would have to pull the phone away from my ear in disgrace, and frowning, with my bottom lip pooched out.  So I decided to pull into the parking lot of the Stinky Fabric Store (yes, the fabric store really does stink like old Me-Maws and mothballs; just ask Tor, cuz we had to go in there one day to get a damn spool of ribbon for some idiotic party thing at work, and the instant that we walked in to the fabric store, Tor turned to me with her nose all snerled up and said "shewww", and I completely lost it, started choking and squalling-crying with laughter, and had to abandon poor Tor in the fabric store and go directly back out to the car to resume my hysterical laugh-crying fit in private.  The lady working in the fabric store obviously thought that I was retarded.  It took me forever to regain my composure).

So anyway, back to the story.  After I had turned into the parking lot of the Stinky Fabric Store, I finally remembered where the Sketchy Repairman was located.  So I pulled back out of the parking lot and headed that way.  I almost forgot to turn left at the funeral home.  But I remembered just in time.  Then I forgot that there was a giant speed bump on that road, and promptly ran over it way too fast and hard:

Then I wasn't sure which road I needed to turn on, so I passed by it, and had to turn around in the parking lot of the library (I don't know if it stinks inside or not; I haven't been in there since they remodeled it).  I went back up the road, this time turned right onto the proper road, and finally made it to the Sketchy Repairman's.  WHEW.

Since the last time I had been there with my friends (I had never stepped out of the car before), the Sketchy Repairman had a big fence and gate installed.  And I had never actually seen the Sketchy Repairman before with my own eyes.  But he came busting out of his gate, wearing his Ed Hardy jeans.  I thought he looked just like this dude that played on the Muppet movie:

He was really nice, but kind of soft-spoken and mumbly.  He took my laptop, and we went inside his sketchy workshop.  He wrote down my phone number and name so he could call me to come pick up the laptop after he fixed it.  As I was giving the Sketchy Repairman my info, the teeniest, tiniest, cyootest widdle itty-bitty chihuahua I've ever seen came running up to me and proceeded to raise up and vigorously dig at my pants leg with its front paws.  It kind of looked like this:

It must have been a teacup chihuahua.  So of course I gave it some pettings.

As I was raising back up from petting the chihuahua, I heard a little noise and saw that one of the Sketchy Repairman's three toddlers had entered the hallway of the room, and I gasped a little and instantly started laughing, because the little boy was buck naked; his li'l goobie just a-shinin' for all the world to see!  And oh, boy, was that poor Sketchy Repairman ashamed!  He sprang up from his chair, and sprinted over to his toddler and said gently "you're embarrassing me...you need to get back in the bath"!  I felt really sorry for the poor embarrassed Sketchy Repairman, so I said "don't worry, I'm a mommy...hence the broken laptop"!  And since we were done with the transaction at that point, and I could see that the Sketchy Repairman needed to go deal with his buck-naked toddler, I let myself out.

LOL!

I went back home, and maybe an hour later or less, the Sketchy Repairman called to let me know that he was all finished fixing my laptop screen.  I was like WOW THAT WAS FAST!  So I drove back to town to pick it up.  This time, I knew where to go, and didn't do anything stupid.  Except for when I actually arrived at the Sketchy Repairman's house, got out of my car, went up to his giant gate, and I spent what felt like an eternity trying to get it open.  It had a couple of those super double-secret, you-can-get-out-but-you-can't-get-back-in, fancy gate latches on it.  So then it was my turn to be embarrassed.  The Sketchy Repairman might have been alerted to my presence in his driveway due to my car's burnt-toast-and-motor-oil odor, because he soon came to my rescue and let me in the #%^&*#% gate.  I followed him in to his sketchy workshop, paid the bill of $110, and he turned on the laptop to show me that it worked.  We made a little small talk, and when he turned the laptop off, he noticed that the screen had some residue on it from a piece of tape (he had just taken a screen off of a 'parts' laptop that he had and replaced my busted one with it).  So he worked to remove the tape residue with some Goo Gone, and we continued to make a little small talk, while I petted the chihuahua.

A minute or two later (which felt like an eternity), Sketchy Repairman had all the tape residue off, and I was good to go.  And go I did, after I told him he was a lifesaver, thanked him, and told him to have a great day.  No unintentional baby-goober surprise that time, thank goodness!  :)

Maybe this will be the last of the mishaps for a good long while!  Sheesh!