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Good Grief!

We all have those days when we wonder why we ever crawled out of the covers. Yesterday was my turn. First thing in the morning, my husband went and put the dog out in her pen. To do this he had to go downstairs, across the basement to her crate, out the sliding glass doors and about thirty feet across the lawn to Bindi’s pen and then reverse it to get back up to the living room. Once there he said, “What’s that?”

I looked down at the carpet at a turd, which looked to be of cat origin. The unpleasant discovery did not end as we found that my husband had stepped in it and was now tracking it on the wool area-rug. In defense of my cat, I had just cleaned all of her cat boxes, she had not been in the house most of the day before and how could we have missed a cat gift in the middle of the living room?

Then the awful idea occurred that perhaps my husband had stepped on this thing outside and brought it all through the house and up the stairs! NO! If you know me, you know that my Howard Hughes type tendencies were popping at this point.

After much CSI investigation, we found no further evidence on the route he had used. Against all odds, we believe he stepped in it outside and because it was on the outside toe of his slipper, miraculously, it did not fall off until he reached the living room. (We know this, because when it was daylight, he found the point of initial contact out on the lawn.) Some of you will say, “At least your Roomba didn’t find it!” An excellent point and you are right, because things can always get worse.

After cleaning up the mess, we hoped our day would get better. My husband had called our internet provider the night before, because we were having terribly low speed and the lady he talked to said, “I remember you, you called about a month ago, we were having a network problem. We still haven’t fixed it.”

I suggested that he call them this morning and ask for a month credit. After being on hold for over half an hour, he finally talked to someone who told him, “We are having a network problem with one of the towers and we will be installing fiber optic cable. You will have problems until December 15.”

Imagine this company charging everyone their regular bill while knowing that their service was going to be substandard and NOT what they are paying for. They did give us a credit for one month, but really!?

Of course we both had a lot of work to do online. I did not get my blog completed yesterday and everything I had to do on the computer took twice as long or longer than it should have.

Finally, we are having our bathroom remodeled and thankfully we are blessed with some extra bathrooms, one of them in the basement. I used the toilet in the basement and flushed the toilet and the handle snapped off in my hand. Really?! The timing just seemed too convenient. I thought of Bruce Almighty–“Smite me! Almighty Smiter!”

I know, all of these problems are tiny. They are all first world problems and I know that means that I don’t have any real problems. I am blessed. But sometimes I forget that and just have to say, “Good grief!” a phrase my third grade teacher said often. I remember  Charlie Brown used it a lot too.

For those of you that are wondering about that phrase, “good grief” was originally a mild oath. It’s “a euphemism for ‘good God,’ ” according to The American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms (2d ed.), by Christine Ammer. https://www.grammarphobia.com/blog/2017/07/good-grief.html