Comedy of Errors

I'm not gonna go back and research how many posts I've titled that, but I know it's been more than once.

(And ironically: through a chain of searching for information for a current-favorite "sweet dance band of the 1930s" song called Sing for your Supper, I learned it came from the show "Two Men from Syracuse" which was itself based on Shakespeare's "A Comedy of Errors" and I found myself thinking, "Maybe I should read that next." Maybe I jinxed myself)

So. At lunchtime (before lunchtime, and that turned out to be a mistake) I decided to run to Lowe's to get the new wheelbarrow wheel. And I also needed toilet-bowl cleaner and wanted to look for a couple of small bins to hold the vials in lab.

I didn't eat lunch yet, figuring "I can get done and then go home."

That was a mistake. I forget - because it doesn't happen so often as it did when I was younger - but at times I can go shockingly fast from "I'm okay, I can go a while longer before I need food" to "I NEED FOOD NOW OR I AM GOING TO TEAR YOUR HEAD OFF AND DINE ON YOUR SPINAL CORD"

That point was passed while I was waiting in Lowe's.

I went and looked at the display. Found that none of the wheels had an integral axle like mine did - a big sticking point being that I could not figure out how to get the axle OUT.

(Had I been thinking more clearly, I might have been able to buy just a tire, and somehow muscle it on to the rim. That may have been what I did in the past though I kind of remember buying the whole assembly).

Summoned help. Explained the issue to the guy. "Nope, I don't think we carry those. Let me go talk to someone who might know more." He takes the wheel and disappears.

I think: I will give it ten minutes. Then I will leave, screw whether or not I ever see the wheel again.

And, you might ask: why not just buy a whole new wheelbarrow. Well:

1. Except for the wheel, the rest of the thing was still sound, and something in me balks at "buying a new one" when  "the old one only needs minor repair."

2. The old one was a gift from several colleagues (they went in on it) when I bought my house (17 years ago) and I get terribly sentimental about these sorts of things and darnit I didn't WANT a new wheelbarrow, I wanted THIS one.

Dude came back. "Yeah. We can't do anything. The axle isn't made to come out; they don't make that kind of wheel any more."

And I looked at him like, So what do I do?

(Fix a flat was not an option; the rubber was starting to break down on the tire so reinflation would not have worked, I am sure)

"We sell wheelbarrows; our cheapest is about $40"

And I looked at him, and at that point, remember: it was like 10 minutes of 1, I hadn't eaten since a bowl of oatmeal at about 6:30 and in between that time I had spent an hour cutting brush, spent a couple hours washing and putting away glassware, so I gave him, "I'll see you in Hades first" stare and said "I don't even want the wheel back" and walked away.

I did wind up buying toilet bowl cleaner. I looked for bins but couldn't find any.

I did glance at the wheelbarrows on the way out but they all had metal bodies, and I've found with metal wheelbarrows, you get one tiny scratch, you leave it outside for a while (because who has room in a garage, especially if you have a small older house, to put a wheelbarrow away?) and it rusts and you have the paint all bubbling off. And anyway, I felt like "I have four cheeks and Lowe's can pick which one to bite" at that point.

So then I decided: I had to eat SOMETHING SOMEWHERE, because I was about five minutes away from sitting down on the floor and crying.

The only nearby thing? Arbys. (Womp womp). Yes, I ate there. I know it wasn't good for me and it also wasn't GOOD, but at least it made me not want to scream at low-pay retail employees.

It took a while. I got in RIGHT behind a woman with two small children that were having a terrible time deciding what they wanted to eat, and of course only one register was open. I stood there and just silently cursed the randomness of the universe that happened to put me, there, then, and not five minutes before the woman and kids walked in, or five minutes after they'd concluded their order. I don't blame the woman or her kids. Little kids are notoriously bad at choices; that's why many parenting books say you offer them TWO choices and TWO choices only, not "Do you want frenchfriesorpotatocakesormozzarellasticksoronionrings?" Finally they finished up (and the cashier had to ask the woman twice to spell her name - Shana - for her. She didn't ask me and frankly at that point she could have called me Monster Witch and I wouldn't have cared, much.

I had one of their bog-standard beef sandwiches, and part of a container of onion rings. (I am spoiled forever for onion rings after having made my own at home: I slice the onions VERY thin and I only barely dip them in milk and then in seasoned flour, and then panfry them until the onions are soft. No, they are not crispy but I prefer soft gooey onion rings with well-cooked onion. The onion rings I had were hard and had a crumb-y outer coating and I could only eat one or two before my dislike of hard crunchy things kicked in). And I had part of an orange Fanta. I wanted lemonade but they only had "Lite" and God only knows what artificial sweetener was in it, and I didn't want to pay for it later with either a migraine (aspartame) or an upset stomach (splenda) or.....other GI symptoms (any of the "sugar alcohols).

Then I tried the Wal-Mart. Heck, it was close by. Nope, no wheels for wheelbarrows. They had TIRES and if I hadn't been an idiot and kept the wheel I MIGHT have been good, but...I wasn't going back to Lowe's. (I'm probably....never going back to the local Lowe's. Anyway, Lowe's NEVER has anything in anything like a logical place, so it's a pain to shop there)

They had $33 wheelbarrows, but they looked poorly made and were sized so that anyone approaching normal adult size (I am 5' 7", not unusually tall for a woman) would find them uncomfortably short - they were like child-sized.

So I said: forget that. I looked for plastic bins, found none the right size. Concluded this was a sign from Above that I was not meant to spend my own money on lab-storage and instead should scrounge (I may have seen something that might work) or wait until ordering opens back up (it's a fiscal-year thing) and ask for a couple.

It was about 20 minutes of 2 at that point, and I thought, "If I hurry maybe I can get to the local hardware, maybe they can help me" (they close at 2).

Driving down there, I passed the Orschelin and thought: wait, a farm store. They might have it. I was past the Orschelin, but I could easily get to Tractor Supply.

So I tried them. Walked in, asked the teenaged guy about the wheels, he showed me where they were.

Of course none had axles. I stood there in something rather like despair and an older (like, 30 ish) worker came over and asked if I needed help. I explained the situation to him, including a very simplified version of my not-really-a-tantrum where I left the old wheel behind.

"So," I concluded, "These wheels WOULD work, except I no longer have anything like an axle."

"Yeah, I see, " he said. "You could get yourself a piece of narrow pipe to use in place of it, but then you'd need some way to stabilize the wheel on it so it wouldn't wobble around....you'd need to drill a couple holes and put in cotter pins and that would be a pain."

I agreed, and said also I had no tools appropriate for that thing. I sighed, and said, "Could you let me see the wheelbarrows you had out front? (They had three models, all tethered up on a rack).

There was a big fancy one, with two wheels, for about $130. A smaller version of the same for about $100.

I....didn't fancy spending that much today.

They had one traditional (one-wheel) wheelbarrow left. Heavy plastic bin, which was what I wanted. Metal frame (I will admit the wood frame on mine was getting old and splintery. Marked $50.

I tried the smaller, cheaper version of the two-wheeled one, but, you know? Sometimes you need to be able to easily tip a full wheelbarrow sideways, and you can't do that with a two-wheeled one. So I sighed, and said, "Well, this one (the one marked $50) seems like it would work best for me"

The guy said, "It's the last one and it's been out here a while, I'll call back in and tell them to give you a 10% discount."

I wasn't expecting that and didn't ask for it but I appreciated it. So, okay, I thought, $45 for a wheelbarrow that's better than the crappy Wal-Mart ones or the Lowe's rust-prone ones that were almost as much...that's eminently fair.

(Also, this guy UNDERSTOOD. As we were walking out to look at them I said, "I just hate buying a new thing when it feels like there's still use in the old one, and I should be able to fix it" and he nodded and said, "Yeah, I know what you mean, I'm like that too")

I got up to the checkout and the guy said, "That'll be $23.59" (or whatever it was). I boggled for a moment, and said, "That's not right" and he said, "I took the $2.50 off, the 10% discount" and finally I said, "But this was marked $49.99, that's not enough."

Turns out, it was on sale for $25 but I didn't know that.

So I got a pretty good wheelbarrow - certainly a better one than what either Lowe's or Wal-Mart had on offer, and I got treated better than I did at Lowe's.

In the future, I'm going to Tractor Supply FIRST.

When I got home, I quickly dragged the old wheelbarrow to the curb so I didn't have time to get sentimental about it and do something silly like go, "I'll lean it up against the back side of the garage because maybe some day I will find a good replacement wheel for it." Hopefully one of the neighborhood junk-pickers can take it and use it, or that bulky waste happens soon.

But yeah. I want to know whom I ticked off - be it Fate, Fury, or Faerie - that has decided now to make every minor task of my life an Odyssean journey.


***

Edited to add: came home a bit before 4 pm. The old broken wheelbarrow was already gone. I know it's not bulky waste time (too late in the day and all my brush was still there) so I assume it was someone who had hopes of fixing it.

***

Edited about 9 pm:

Yes, this does make me feel a little better. I don't care how ridiculous it is.