Oh, What a Day

Every Tuesday, I telecommute and I appreciate getting to work in pajamas and maybe get a load or two of laundry done in the meantime. Yesterday, however, telecommuting was a bit of a curse. Chris scheduled the refrigerator repairman for the afternoon, which was fine. He then scheduled the plumber for late morning. Unfortunately this coincided with a 2-hour conference call I had to participate in. Not tragic, but not ideal. As I literally was dialing into the meeting, I received an e-mail from our realtor who announced that surprise! Our appraisal was that very day! The company would call with the time. I. Freaked. Out. My house was a mess, I had two repairmen coming, I was supposed to be dealing with this conference call—who knew who or what would arrive during this time? It was a horrible morning. The plumbing company called THREE times—on the same phone line that I was already on for my meeting—before the plumber even showed up. The first call I lacked the foresight to use call waiting, hung up on my meeting, and then had to call back in. I lied to everyone, saying my phone had kicked me off the call. For the other two calls I switched between the meeting and calls, and then just left the phone on with the meeting chugging away while I went down the elevator to let the plumber in. Then, of course, we had to deal with our mythological leak. More time away from the meeting. I hope nobody did the “Ashley, what do you think?” while I was M.I.A. Finally, I got rid of the plumber but the meeting continued to drag on. I tried to catch up and figure out what I had missed, but my phone threatened to die. So I ran for the other phone, switched the headset, and settled back in. Then the secretary from the appraisal company called. The appraiser was just leaving Gaithersburg and would be here in 45 minutes. PANIC. Everything—I mean everything—in our condo needed to be cleaned. I wanted to delay the Deep Clean until the, um, appraisal. I assumed I’d get more than 45 minutes notice. Still, meeting continued past the 2-hour mark. I ran for the bathroom and squirted in toilet bowl cleaner while trying to listen to the call. At one point, I forgot that I had un-muted the phone and when the speaker searched for other reasons to keep the call going endlessly, I not-so-brilliantly muttered “Oh, come on!” right into the meeting. (But I don’t think they knew it was me.) FINALLY the call ended and I had 30 minutes to make the messy condo shiny. A TON was riding on this appraisal and I wanted everything to be perfect—but perfect was not an option. I ran around like mad, using Mr. Clean on every surface (including mirrors and wood—no time to switch cleaners!), throwing junk into cabinets and drawers, speedily swiffering the floors, scrubbing many meals’ worth of grime off the stove top (and cursing Chris for swearing he would clean it!), and de-cluttering the clutter. The guy arrived right on time—and lo and behold, I was pretty much ready for him. He came and went and I fell onto the couch, my nerves shot. Then I realized that I still had, well, my job to do. As I tackled the e-mails that had piled up and took care of some work-related calls, I felt much better. My home was clean and I was back into a good rhythm getting crap done. Then the refrigerator repairman showed up—an hour and a half later than scheduled, but I didn’t really care at that point. The fridge got fixed, and I ended the day pretty pleased—a LOT had gotten done! Today, then, I realized the unexpected craziness of yesterday was worth every ounce of temporary stress. This afternoon our realtor informed us that our appraisal clocked in at a beautifully appropriate amount. As a result, our buyer secured the necessary financing and signed the contingency releases, which means that he can’t back out before settlement. And, as though they knew we were finally in the clear, the construction company e-mailed us our very first architectural drawings of our new house-to-be.