Day +46: A HUGE Day!

What a huge day today turned out to be!

Jonathan and I decided that we needed to make a trip out to the shops today to get groceries, and since one of the things we were running low on was Nespresso coffee pods, we decided to head to Chatswood Chase for our shopping expedition.

We mapped out our shopping trip before leaving - Kmart to shop for a birthday present for Lachlan, Nespresso for coffee, Coles for groceries, and while we were doing all of this, the car would be washed at the car wash in the Chatswood Chase car park. All up, if we didn't dawdle, we should be in and out in no more than 3 hours.

We dropped the car off to be washed as soon as we arrived at the car park, and headed straight to Nespresso to buy our coffee pods. We always liked to try out any new coffee flavours that was part of their limited range, and we got to try the Naora. Yum!!! We picked out some of our regular flavours, as well as a couple of tubes of Naora, before heading to Kmart and straight to the toys section.

We wandered around for a while, trying to figure out what to get Lachlan. It wasn't as easy as I thought it would be, and after some careful consideration, we chose something we were sure he would like. Sean was most helpful by sleeping through a lot of the shopping trip, as we spent a bit longer in Kmart than we originally planned.

By the time we finished up in Kmart, we were both feeling a bit peckish and decided to stop for lunch. We were nearly finished when Sean woke from his nap, so we fed him before we headed to Coles to grab our groceries. We needed to restock our supplies, so it turned out to be a much bigger shopping trip than usual. We went aisle by aisle, and picked up what we needed, and filled our trolley to the brim. Sean had another short nap while we were in Coles - poor thing must have been so bored by our wandering around!

Last stop was the butchers to pick up some chicken breast fillets and thigh fillets. I had seen how much the butcher was selling their chicken for, and compared the prices in Coles, and since the butcher was $4 cheaper than Coles, we decided to get the chicken meat from the butcher.

We got back to our gleaming car and saw that it was parked extremely close to a pylon. Both Jonathan and I made a comment about the small (3cm) gap between the car and the pylon, so I decided to have a closer look at the car, in hope that they hadn't scratched it when they parked it after it was washed. To my horror, I saw there were some horrendous scratches on the front bumper bar.

In my head, my first conclusion was that the car wash people were responsible for this. However, upon closer inspection, those scratches seemed a bit older than a few hours, but I was still upset, and I made a mention of the scratches to one of the car wash people. The person we spoke to seemed like the manager, and at the mere mention of the scratches of the car, he immediately started shouting "No, that can't be us, it's impossible!" and started laughing hysterically.

I told him that nothing was impossible, and he kept screaming at us, saying they didn't scratch up our car, and it wasn't their fault that our car had scrapes on the front bumper bar. I tried to calm him down, to try and tell him that I didn't think it was his fault, and that I was just talking out loud to try and remember when we would have scraped the car, but he wouldn't have a bar of it. He kept protesting his innocence in the rudest, most obnoxious way, and carrying on like a complete pork chop. He started screaming something about how there were CCTV cameras throughout the car park and that we could check the footage to see if they made the scrapes, but if we wanted to see the footage, then it would cost loads of money because "my time is money and if you want footage it will cost you".

By this time, his entire staff, who had earlier been chatting loudly and animatedly amongst themselves, was slowly becoming aware of their manager behaving like a total nut bag. The manager kept flapping his arms about and yelling how he was not responsible for the scrapes and there was no way he or his staff could have caused the damage, and I was fed up with his carrying on. I yelled at him, telling him to stop being so rude, and to stop yelling at me and listen to what I had to say. The staff members were all quiet now, listening to our argument, so I kept talking. Using my most condescending tone, I told the manager to stop being so rude towards us, and that not once, ever, did I accuse him of causing the damage to our car, and that he needed to take a moment and stop and listen to the customer instead of carrying on like a nut job. The manager started again, but I shut him down and told him to be polite. I basically spoke to him like he was a petulant child and scolded him for behaving like an idiot. I didn't care that I was embarrassing the manager in front of his staff. I didn't care that I was making him lose face in front of his underlings. He completely deserved to be belittled.

I paid in a hurry and grabbed our car keys back from him, and Jonathan and I vowed to never go back there again. So, readers, you have been warned - Xtreme Car Wash in Chatswood Chase = extreme idiots. Considering they cost a bit more than Crystal Car Wash on Victoria Avenue, it would be worth your while to take your car to Crystal Car Wash and enjoy a free cup of tea or coffee while you waited for your car to be cleaned. I most certainly DO NOT recommend Xtreme Car Wash. Big black mark against their name.

We loaded our shopping into the car and headed home. It took a while to unpack and put away everything once we were home, but it was a job I found very therapeutic after the trauma of having to deal with that idiot car washer.

We received a call from the Evil Witch on our way home, to let us know that M had been unwell and had missed a couple of days of school as a result of her illness. She felt it wasn't wise to send M to our house, and we thought that was quite considerate of her to let us know. Jonathan will visit M tomorrow, and take her out for lunch and hang out for a couple of hours before returning her home. I worked out today that one of the reasons why I was feeling so anxious in recent days was due to M's impending visit. This visit was to be the first time I'd seen her in 8 weeks, and for some reason, I was feeling very nervous about the whole thing. And with tomorrow being Mother's Day, my stomach churned in knots just remembering Mother's Day last year, when Jonathan upset me by refusing to organise with the Evil Witch to return M home a couple of hours earlier, even though I had specifically told Jonathan that M's early return home was all I wanted for my first Mother's Day.

I know I sound unreasonable, and even though a lot of my anxiety and resentment towards M's mother is not M's fault, those feelings are very closely associated with M, and unfortunately, it made me not want to see M this weekend. That's right, I'm being mean and selfish, I honestly don't want to see M this weekend, just so I could have a Mother's Day where I looked after MY child only, and not someone else's as well. It suited me just fine to hear that M was sick and wouldn't be able to make it. In fact, I breathed a sigh of relief, and that heavy blanket I'd felt weighing me down earlier this week became feather light.

At around 6.30pm, we received an SOS message from Penny, saying that her new flatmate Cody's computer had crashed, taking with it a couple of 3,000 word essays that were due on Monday. Penny and Cody were hoping that Jonathan would be able to help, so Jonathan tried to find out from Cody what had happened, and offered what little assistance he could over the phone.

Penny had spent the better part of today moving house, so her day was even longer than ours. Cody was suppose to help Penny move her things in, but he had spent most of the day trying to recover his essays. Jonathan is encouraging me to go and help Penny move the last of her things into her new apartment, and take her some food as well, so I will head over to her new place as soon as she is back there. I wonder how Penny's legs are feeling after climbing up and down stairs all day long - there were 5 short flights of stairs at her old place, and one very steep set of stairs at her new place. I don't envy her one little bit!

I better go and select some food for Penny and get ready to head over to Lane Cove. Hopefully, she won't be too late. After all, it had been one heck of a huge day for us today!