Hm. Well, things haven't gone 100% gorgeously, either on the road for Jason or here at the house for the rest of us. It seems that the friendly gal at the Jasper National Park booth who charged him the $9 entrance fee gave him back a receipt and wad of pamphlets but not the debit card. Jason realized this unhappy fact far enough up the road that it would've been really inconvenient to go back. He got ahold of her by phone to make certain she indeed had the card. She did and was sorrey.
A grocery store allowed Jason to use my debit card number to buy food, so he has survived the day on that. Meanwhile, Mom and I have had a nice afternoon on the phone and computers trying to figure out how to get funds to Jason in another country by various means over a holiday weekend - wire, paypal, bank-to-bank transfers, etc. Whilst I was on the phone to John at our Alaska bank, I suddenly heard Peanut the Chihuahua start screaming upstairs. I ran up and saw that he was on Mom's lap at the computer, she finalizing a paypal transfer. Mom quickly explained to me, and I to John, who had just listened to the whole schpeel about my husband being stuck in Canada with no money, that we had a screeching Chihuahua whose toenail was stuck to my mother's watch wristband. "I'll have to call you back, John!"
I dashed about and found the toenail clippers, which I used to snap Mom's watch off. Lawdy. I tell you, Peanut's cries were like a fire alarm going off in your ear. During the dashing about, I saw that I'd left the stair door open and had an additional mid-crisis panic attack that maybe Zoralee had escaped our notice and fallen down the stairs. No; Mom had her eye on Z the whole time, and Z had her eye on Peanut, wondering what in the tar was going on. Poor guy; earlier in the day, the same Peanut had caught his leg on low hanging barbed wire!
I called John back and learned that no, the money couldn't be brought into our account early; the people who pushed that particular button wouldn't be doing so for several days. [side note: if you've seen Kevin James' "Sweat the Small Stuff" routine, this was exactly like when the phone company tells him they won't be pulling the switch to turn on his phone until Thursday. He asks them if he can come down there and pull the switch himself...] I had a splitting headache after everything. I took two advil and laid on the couch with a heating pad on my neck.
Things were just calming down and Zoralee was playing nicely when all the sudden she screamed. Mom saw a bee on the top of her head, so she swiped it off and smooshed it. We never could find a sting mark, but we watched for allergic reaction. She seems fine. She's also fine after being side-swiped by Gunther as he ran by to get to the door.
* * * *
10:15 p.m. Was just talking to Jason in Grande Prairie. He has gone 700 miles today. I found online that the Walmart there has a Western Union, so he dashed to it but arrived five minutes after closing. He has $5, with which he will buy as much crap from McDonalds as he can and keep driving.
Weeeeeee!
2 comments:
Geesh, sis. This is a lot of bad stuff happening. I had to just read the part about Peanut out loud to his parents, sitting here on my couch (parent, actually, as Heather is already in bed). He seemed bummed, but fully realized that it was cosmic pet karma because last night, Luke mistakenly locked Sumo on the balcony in the rain for about 9 hours. Pet Karma - she's hardcore.
I'm sad you're apart from Jason. That really sucks. I bet he's having a grand old time with his books and coffee...other than the whole no money thing.
Sorry, sis. Ugh.
Let it be known that Peanut and his leg and his toenail are just fine. I sacrificed my new watchband in his behalf. Actually I probably would have sacrificed my wrist if it had come to that, but fortunately it didn't. All is fine here in Montana. Don't know how Jason's doing now in Canada, but hopefully he survived the night too and got lots on the 99cent menu.
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