I was supposed to meet up with a friend, who I have had to cancel on at least two times already, but with no car that was not possible. I felt bad cancelling again. Another truck (this time straight across the street from my house) had a flat tire. I went to talk to the guards, who we pay to patrol the neighborhood and they said I needed to talk to the boss. This was the conversation:
Me: "Have you heard about the tires getting slashed?"
Him: "No No No No No"
Me: After he finishes with his barrage of No's "No you haven't heard? Or no you don't want to hear?"
Him: "If you park in front of someone's house the are going to get mad."
Me: "All of the cars it happened to were not parked in front of ANY house. They were parked next to the church on a Monday."
Him: "But the people get mad and I can't get in the middle of it. (Now waving his arms.) I can't do anything."
Me: "So who can I talk to about this? We pay for vigilancia, right? Yet I was outside last night when the fourth car got slashed and I never saw any guards around. And you won't even talk to me about it."
Him: "You need to talk to her. She might know."
Me: "Who is her?"
Him: "Her. Her who is there." (Very vague. I am pretty sure he knows who it is - as we all do. It is a her. But he doesn't dare to say it because she has been causing problems for years.)
Me: "Tell me who I should talk to and I will. But I don't know why we are paying you to patrol if you can't help at all with this."
Then suddenly the man who knows nothing says, "I saw your car was tipped sideways with flat tires, but you normally never park outside. Just don't park outside again. I can't get involved."
Fany says she will talk to them next time they come to collect their money.
Then I go to the doctor. The road is under construction, so it takes half an hour to drive what should be 2 minutes. The doctor has me wait because he doesn't have the materials necessary to do a test. The nurse has to go to the store to buy the materials he needs. She returns to say the store doesn't have what they need. She says I need to go to a lab. I drive to a lab, not really knowing where I am going. The lab is open until 6 pm. It's 4:30, but there is nobody there who can do the test. I have to come back tomorrow, do the test, go back next week, get the results, take them to the doctor and drop them off, go back later after the doctor can read the results. No thanks. I will find a new doctor or stick with my pediatrician!
I get home. It's now 5pm and I haven't eaten all day, but Fany needs a ride up the mountain to where I used to live. We get in the car and I am not driving in my usual speed racer style because the mechanic told me to go easy on the patched tires. However, Laura starts puking while we are still on the main highway, before we even get to the mountainous curves! She pukes all of the way up the mountain. Fany is sitting in the back seat next to her, trying to catch the puke in a plastic bag, but Laura doesn't want to puke into the bag. The car smells wonderful but we can't open the windows because of the neighborhoods we are passing through.
When we get to the house where we are supposed to drop things off there is no place to park. The house is right on the road. So I am worried we are all going to be smashed into by the crazy buses that careen down that mountain. We decide to all get out of the car for some fresh air. We ring the doorbell and Fany is pretty sure we are at the right house, but nobody answers. The person we are supposed to drop things off to is not home and doesn't answer the phone. So we wait on the side of the road.
Finally someone else pulls up and approaches us hesitantly. We have an awkward exchange, neither wanting to share too much information. After we have each called every number we have and rung the doorbell over and over, we begin to spill little pieces of information. We are waiting for the husband. He is waiting for the wife. He has to wait because the wife is taking care of his son, so he agrees to pass our things along to the person we are supposed to deliver them too. We leave and head back down the mountain telling Laura that people never vomit going down the mountain. So she chats away and I drive extra slowly in second gear, grateful no traffic is behind me. Then Fany gets a call that the man we were dropping things off to is no longer traveling to Guatemala, so we drove up there with a vomiting three year old all for nothing.
I decided after such a crappy day we deserve a good dinner. I was starving by that point and Laura seemed fine. She hadn't puked in almost an hour. We stopped to pick up sushi, but decided to eat there since it was 2x1 if you eat in. That was the highlight of my crappy day. Dinner was good. Laura was really good in the restaurant and we all ended our day on a positive note.
