The month of May is almost over. Yesterday I came back from the shops and the bird that had been nesting outside my window for the past few weeks was sitting on the fire escape downstairs. It was looking at me through the window with a quizzical expression (if a bird can look quizzical). It was one of those “Lassie what’s the matter girl?” moments. If you’re from down under it would be a “Skip what’s the matter girl?” coming from Sonny Hammond, the kid star of the series Skippy the Bush Kangaroo.
Oy vey, what’s a kangaroo to do with these dumb humans?
It got me to thinking were there ever any town kangaroos? Skippy the Bush Kangaroo seems redundant, where else would a kangaroo be found other than the bush? This has almost inspired me to create a new series “Skippy the Town Kangaroo” where urban development has gradually encroached into Skip’s beloved bush to the point where he has to conduct nightly raids on people who are building houses in the style of Mies van der Rohe on his native territory. But I digress.
There’s a chick under that bird, trust me.
Seeing the bird looking at me like that I thought, alright what’s going on here? I went upstairs to look out the window and there was a freshly hatched chick in the nest. The bird was sitting there as if to say, “look what I done did.” It was kind of weird but that’s exactly what happened.
Nothing much else is going on apart from a minor kerfuffle at Lowes hardware store. This is where Rick has started working last week. He said he loves it there, but I’m not a fan. I had bought an air conditioner just before the weekend and after installing it, it really hadn’t worked at all the way it should. I had put it on the coolest setting possible for hours and it was no better than a box fan. It was clearly a faulty product.
I decided to take it back today but when I got there the person at the returns desk told me that there was a 48 hour return window on air conditioners. Since when? I thought . It wasn’t printed on the receipt, so how was to know this? Oh, it’s right here she said, pointing to some very fine print that was on a wall of very fine text on the wall of the return cubicle where she was standing. I honestly couldn’t read it without bending down with a magnifying glass. It wasn’t even at eye level.
I asked for a supervisor which turned out to be the person with multi colored hair wearing a plethora of decorative hardware standing next to her. She was adamant, there was no way I could get a refund. Could I exchange it for another one? No. “You can go now”, she said. Oh really? Of course this is completely unacceptable, and probably illegal. I had this thing for a week and hadn’t even used it over the long weekend because I wasn’t there. It had never worked properly out of the box.
They became quite nasty about it actually, and so I left. I don’t know in what universe people are allowed to sell things that are broken in the first place and then deny the customer the right to return it and get their money back. Ok, you have a 48 hour return policy. The fact that you literally conceal that information from people doesn’t show an intent of goodwill towards the customer. Needless to say this won’t be the end of it. They have effectively stolen money from me and under false pretenses as far as I’m concerned.
This isn’t a way to run a business, and I sincerely hope they go out of business as soon as possible. Rick may have to get another job somewhere else in that case.
It’s Friday however, and I am reluctant to dwell on the negative. I try and write things down here that make me feel good about living in this hell that we all exist in, even if it’s to complain about the fuckery that constantly goes on. You may think that everything is fine and wonderful as I do most of the time but hell is only a tree falling in the forest away. You don’t know when things are going to go south, but inevitably they will.
On the plus side, a little bird just told me that there is a new bird in the world. It made me think that Nature is probably always speaking to us. We’re just too distracted to listen.
Happy Friday.
Skippy tries to warn clueless Sonny about a rogue submarine after surviving a fist fight with a Koala bear.