I Storm Cloud

Several clouds of doubt have been floating overhead here in Burnaby.  This week we had to expect the unexpected.  I had to deal with an unanticipated hospital visit, an unplanned trip and unpredicted complications stemming from a well thought of present. Let’s just say it was the gift that keeps on giving—migraines.

My diligent spouse, P, ever concerned about being the best he can be, martyrs his sanity by taking night classes from time to time in order to keep his degrees current.  There is generally a lot of ado and grumbling before and after each class and on Monday, he had his final exam. Talk about pressure building up.

The entire weekend he floated around like a silent storm, crunching numbers and emitting varying exclamations of joy and defeat (it is something in accounting that I will never understand).  Lanes and I tried to humor him in between chapters, and when he was not having it, we just countered with our own cold front.

Like a race car team, we planned to assume our positions and have P fed and prepped and ready to take on the exam come Monday afternoon. I was planning on getting Lanes to hug and kiss him and wish him good luck and send him on his merry way. This did not come to pass, because on this fateful afternoon, Lanes had fallen terribly ill.

By late afternoon, she was hunched over saying her belly was aching. An hour later her eyes were wonky and she said she couldn't even walk or sit. Long story short, as soon as P got home from his temp job, he took us to the clinic but couldn’t stay because of his test. I was relieved for the ride because otherwise I would have had to lug a droopy four year old three blocks to take two buses to get to the clinic. 

A little more than two hours later (it was easy to keep time since Lanes got spasms of pain every ten minutes), we saw a doctor. Meanwhile, my lack of knowledge in the medical field combined with my over active imagination had me playing out all kinds of terrible diagnoses. I couldn't have felt more alone in that moment if I tried. I even wished I had my nutty sister by my side, even though had she been with me, she would have been telling the doctor what to prescribe.

Turns out Lanes had a urine infection and she needed antibiotics immediately. Luckily, there was a pharmacy a few doors down and my little pudding followed me like a trooper, slowly but surely in the cold rain to get her medicine. One cab ride later, we arrived to a dark and lonely apartment just past her bedtime. I was left to figure out how to get Lanes to take her most unappetizing looking drug.

You only have one shot to sell an idea to a kid. I firmly believe moms will always do well in marketing. Kids are a discerning audience. You have one chance to sell an idea, and if your pitch is not perfect, they are not buying, no matter what. 

I was exhausted and emotionally drained, not to mention soaked and frozen, so I had no idea how to convince Lanes that her antibiotic was delicious. The poor girl was in so much pain, she just downed the chalky syrup. Thank goodness for small mercies. Within seconds, the impish spark returned to her big eyes and all was well.

The next day we both stayed in and while she was right as, well, rain, it took me about two days to get over the exhaustion. Just in time for P to announce that we should indeed go to Seattle for Memorial Day weekend. My nutty sister and her family were delighted because they were on holiday as well, and apparently they think of us as an entertainment package.

Yeah I’m a regular barrel of laughs.  So we arrived there in the middle of the night on Thursday and my sister surprised me with an I-pod as a birthday/Christmas present. She had felt very sad for me after Lanes’ episode and she knew I was really bummed out when I found that I had lost my archaic i-pod type device.

I had a tiny 2 inch square generic unit, made in China, that I was rather attached to because it had all my music and some pictures of baby Lanes in it. It was sturdy and hardy and my faithful companion whenever I was doing the school run. Of course it fell out of the closet and I was reunited with it just this week. I think I told my sister that?

I was delighted, but seeing as I was tired, all that technology seemed daunting to me. Between my tech guru brother-in-law and my 11-year-old niece, I was sorted out, but the next day when I was rested enough to enjoy playing with it, I found that the front camera was not working. It was all black and some fuchsia pink lines were running across it.

Apparently, you have to make an appointment at a Genius Bar to get it fixed. We went to the Apple store at the mall without an appointment on Saturday but it was so full of folks that we couldn’t get in. 


I really don’t think it’s a good sign when so many people are there with a problem with a product. Doesn't take a genius to figure that out! As my ex-crush but might still be favorite Canadian rockstar sings 'that's when I knew it was a pretty good sign, something was wrong on cloud number nine'.

My sister and her brood were babysitting that night. P and I were finally going on a date so we thought we would make an appointment and go to another Apple store before dinner. So off we went in the literally blinding rain. Our appointment was at 8pm but we were lingering around for about half an hour before a cheery, I guess, Genius was able to see us.

Meanwhile, I could hear little word bubbles from customers around us. Lots of ‘Geniuses’ saying ‘I’m sorry we couldn’t help you today’ or ‘looks like you might have to come back’ 'or sorry you had to wait so long, here is what we can do'. I told P this is not boding well for us at all.  Ever skeptical, I was wondering why so many people needed help with their various devices. Shouldn’t they just work?

Why won’t someone just write an application that ensures the device runs without issues? If you can download programs that stop short of flossing for you, one would think this makes sense. No, we need a Genius Bar of all things to solve a problem. What do you do? Go up there and say ‘I’d like my Genius shaken not stirred?’. No. I’m reminded of my cousin’s stale joke. ‘A man walks into a bar. Ouch’.

And ouch is what I felt. Forty-five minutes of waiting, cutting into the first date we have had in two years, my little Genius, who was indeed, friendly and polite and sweet, and everything nice rolled into one, announced to me that they could not ‘swap out’ my faulty I-pod because there were none in stock.

Couldn’t they have told me that earlier? Shouldn’t the other folks who walk around in their blue t-shirts with their tablets clutched in their hands, greeting folks before the appointment have just asked me what was wrong and told me there were none in stock? Instead of looking forward and smiling with feet firmly planted on the ground, like the concierge of a froo froo hair salon, it would have been helpful if they sorted me out earlier.

So apparently I am supposed to store my stuff in the iCloud. This all sounds complicated to me, and I felt like my head was in the clouds. Storm clouds. It was all beyond me, but my Genius was so nice, he might have been a Care Bear, and that made up for the fact that again I was leaving the store with a lemon I thought was an Apple.

When we got to Burnaby I tried to ‘sync’ the miserable I-pod to the computer and I just had all my wires crossed. I tried to download this elusive Cloud, but it was all just smoke and air because when I signed in, it said I had an Apple ID but I had no access to this freaking Cloud. Insert thunder bolts here.

Now I have to waste my time on Tuesday, going to see the Geniuses in Burnaby and hoping that they will be able to fix my problem. Under comments I put down that I need a replacement and I’m hoping that I will be told ahead of time should they not be able to help me.

So far because of all these little issues, I’m not feeling the Apple. I guess every barrel has a rotten one. But judging from the amount of people that need help, there seem to be plenty of those going around.  I do appreciate the gift though. My sister is feeling horrible that it's faulty, but I think it's the thought that counts. 

I better sign off because I have to go ‘sync’ something and download a migraine.  I also have to respond to an e-mail I have requesting feedback from my first appointment at the Genius Bar. I'm going to have a deliciously devious time giving my two cents. More adventures from BC next week…