Who decided bad things MUST come in threes?!

I am finally venturing out of bed after a truly wretched day yesterday.  Luckily I can still laugh.

The day started off reasonably well; I got the boy off to school, and then I attacked the mountain of dishes from the "Great Beef Stew Experiment" of the night before.  It is an odd quirk of logic in my son that anything "new" that I make in the kitchen is poisonous inedible, UNLESS he helps make it.  So, we made a huge pot of beef stew together.  He peeled and chopped all of the veggies while I dredged and browned the beef. It was a lovely dinner.  

It rapidly became apparent that my garbage disposal had not properly disposed of the veggie peelings the night before, because as I started to run water for dishes, nasty brackish water started to back up into the sink.  Great.  I ran to the store for a plunger, because I have no idea where mine went in the move.  I madly plunged, but no luck.  I ran back to the store for drain cleaner.  No luck with that either, except to ruin a complete set of clothes.  About this time, I got a call from a lady that was going to come and see the beading supplies that I have for sale.  Rather than set up a scheduled time, she said, "I'm 5 minutes away!"   CRAP!  I quick changed my clothes, locked the cats in the bedroom, placed a cookie sheet over the disgusting sink, and shoved all of the dirty dishes into the oven, making a mental note to remove them later.

The lady came, purchased, and left.  Then I got a call to go out to lunch, and with one thing and another, I didn't make it back to the house until about 4pm.   About 5 minutes later there was a knock on my door.  It was a very nice gentleman telling me that he was there to repossess my car.  WHAT?!  Now, I have been unemployed since being medically retired from the Army in September.  I have gone to great lengths to make payment arrangements for all of my various bills, including my car.  Ford was kind enough to give me 2 months off, and then adjusted payments for the past several months, which I've made online, and I always print out the nice little thing that says, "Please keep a copy of this confirmation screen as record of your payment".  Apparently when Ford made the arrangements with me, they didn't give the info to the bank that underwrites Ford Credit, so according to them, I was about $1200 in arrears.  YIKES!  Luckily, I also kept the payment arrangement letter that Ford sent me.  So, there I was, on the phone with my stack of receipts and letters, calling Ford Motor Company, and they told me that they didn't have any payments.  Meanwhile the nice gentleman was on the phone with his company trying to figure out what he should do.  They're only answer was, "Take the car, and she can come get it when it is figured out." (And pay them a ridiculous sum of money.)  WRONG ANSWER.  After about an hour of calls, egregious hold music, and being passed from person to person, someone "found" the payments that I'd made, and also "found" the notes about the payment arrangements that had been made back in October.  Then I had that person call the nice gentleman's boss and explain that it was all a mistake on Ford's part, and they should NOT take my car.  After about another half hour, the nice gentleman left, leaving my car in its' parking spot.

At that point, I was completely done in, and the boy was "starving".  Of course, he is a teenager and is always starving.  I walked into the kitchen, turned on the oven to 450 degrees to preheat it for a frozen pizza, and went into the bedroom to read blogs, because I was in serious need of a bit of humor by that point.  About half an hour later, I opened my bedroom door to a wall of billowing smoke (why the alarm hadn't gone off, I don't know; it normally goes off with very little provocation.)  I yelled for the boy to start opening windows, and I raced into the kitchen and opened the oven door, which released a billowing cloud of choking, black, acrid smoke.  I turned off the oven, grabbed some towels, pulled out the entire oven rack, which had the charred and melted remains of plastic utensils, the stew pot, dishes, and everything else I'd shoved in there.  I tossed it all outside in the snow, and set my son to fanning the smoke alarm, while I ran to neighbors' apartments, pounding on the doors and asking for fans.  It took a good 2 hours to clear all of the smoke from the apartment.   I hopped in the car, drove through McDonalds for the boy, and then crawled into my bed to hide, lest the day try to hurl anything else at my frayed nerves.

The racks will need to be replaced.  I am dreading trying to clean out the melted, solidified plastic from the oven.   My sink is still blocked.  The boy did find a wonderful Dali-esque souvenir out in the snow today.  He has it sitting in pride of place in his room with a little sign that says, "Epic Mom Fail".   Sigh.