Michael's

It’s a good thing that I’ve blogged so much this year, because the only photos I may have are those I’ve either downloaded or those that I’ve sent to others. Good times!

Spent the day with my mom. She needed a drive, so I took her across the bridge and drove past my dead colleague's house. I miss him. I knew she'd like the neighborhood. We drove way into the hills until my mom got scared of the road and wanted to go home. I took her back to memory care, and then she joked that (after spending 5 hours with her) I was "dumping" her off. I left anyway. Exhausted, I decided to do something for myself and check in with Michaels on the status of my framing order

They’d called me a week ago -- the same day as I put my order in -- saying that one of my frames was complete. This wasn’t surprising, as I’d only asked them to float the piece in the middle of an existing mat and frame. But I waited until more of the order was done.

I call them and they say that my three pieces were ready. I puzzled. That wasn’t the number, but whatever.

I get there and they tell me they made a mistake. There was only one, and she’d read the first three letters on another frame order last name and assumed it was mine.

So I take the piece and grumble to myself and put the piece and my cart back in the car. I was distracted. I’d taken my mom on a long drive and I’d been driving, by now, about three hours.

Get back to my house. Where’s my phone? I use Find My, and I see it’s still in the store. I go to the store, and no phone has been turned in. But the lady in framing says “Hey, but I found your other pieces,” and she starts pulling this piece of cardboard out of a plastic sleeve. I tell her that that’s my piece but it hasn’t been framed yet. WTH! Is this a volunteer outfit?

By now I’m losing it. I’ve already run into a friend in the parking lot while I'm looking for my phone, and I’m frantic. I go home again. I tell mrguy that I need his help. Look at Find My again, and realize that I had completely misunderstood. It wasn’t at the store. It was on the freeway onramp coming back from the store. Again, times are good!

We get there, we park, and mrguy saves the day by finding my phone. It is completely pulverized. Screen completely cracked and gross. It does make a “boop” when it’s plugged in, so there’s hope. But it’s warm. While I write to the neighborhood group to find a recommendation for iPhone repair, mrguy finds a safe place to put a hot phone: our grill in the back yard. That’s where I retrieved it this morning and brought it to a place behind a Brazilian food truck. Guy wasn’t there, and I chatted up one of the others waiting for the iPhone guy, and he  showed me his phone which had taken some hits and kept going. I felt hopeful.

And now I’m sitting in Baskin Robbins Plaza, waiting for a different guy to see if he can put my phone back together. I still have hope.

Update: the patient lives (although the camera died). We are now backing up to the cloud and hoping that that works so we can update to a new phone.

Update to the update: after backing up to the cloud overnight, it still says it has 16 hours to go.

Oh, and I opened the package with that one frame I took home. The work wasn't done. It was packed up exactly as they set it aside for the framer. Michael's is now on my shit list.