NOPE

 What is it they say? "The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry." (translated from the original olde English.)

That is why you will see the word "NOPE" written across most of the days of my planning calendar for this week.

On Monday, wondering why I had not heard from Home Depot about my pending carpet installation, I called the store where we ordered it, and paid for it, the only contact I had. After what seemed like half a dozen transfers I finally talked to a woman who told me that the order had never been filled, that the carpet had never been shipped from the warehouse. There had been a mistake in the ordering process. Apparently no one had bothered to fix it. 

I informed her that I had spent weeks preparing for the installation that was supposed to happen this week and my house was all torn apart. She said she would get more information and call me back. She didn't. When I called her back just before 5:00 I was informed she had gone home half an hour ago. I chose not to leave a message but instead got her extension #. When I called again on Tuesday I got voice messaging and no call back, twice, so finally I said I didn't care if she had to answers yet, I needed to talk to somebody now!. She called me right back. I learned that the order had not been placed correctly and she had just now replaced the order. Now we wait all over again for shipment and then scheduling an installation date. 

Meanwhile my living room/dining room looks like this:

Fortunately our bedroom and office are still functioning. Taking them apart was what got 'NOPED" on my calendar for the first part of this week.

But our plans to travel to Friday Harbor got "NOPED" because of this:

Yep, we have Covid. Suspicious of the negative results we got on the home test Sunday evening, I picked up new test kits Tuesday morning. We were both sick, Tom hit harder than I. I studied symptoms of colds vs Covid and wasn't sure, but didn't know anyone we could have caught a cold from. So I got new test kits, we used them and then we knew what we were dealing with.

I spent most of the rest of Tuesday notifying people we had been in contact with since the middle of last week and then playing internet games to figure out how to save our already paid for and non refundable hotel reservations on Friday Harbor. I had booked through Expedia. Expedia does not offer a telephone number, believe me I looked everywhere, so contact had to be through a "remote agent". Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, and it is a slow, clumsy process, but finally I broke through, was able to change the date of our reservations without penalty, although a week later cost more, and then get our ferry boat reservations changed, although we will now have to leave before the crack of dawn to get an earlier sailing. 

Now this is only Wednesday morning but it feels like it has already been a full week since Sunday. We are slowly recovering. We are in isolation for at least five days and then we will have to mask up for five more days, but we are fine with that. We are well stocked with groceries for now. We still have cold like symptoms and not much energy. I need to get out and do some walking to get my strength back slowly while the sun is shining. That's next on my new list for today.

These are the flowers I had on my table for Mother's Day. On Sunday they were standing up tall and perky. I was coming down with what I thought was a cold, so I wasn't very perky, but I was still standing.

Now the tulips are doing what tulips do, sagging and slumping a bit. So are we, but I really like tulips this way. They remind me of old Dutch Masters paintings. There's beauty in aging. We just have to find a way to deal with the not fun stuff, and be prepared for the best laid plans going awry.