Sunday regurgitation: This is Anderson Cooper, reporting live from Andy’s Frigidaire

Today, Nate is taking Helena to go see Avatar in 3-D and I am staying home because

1. I don’t enjoy watching movies in 3-D as I currently wear glasses and have no desire to wear a second coating of them;
2. I am a paranoid freak of nature who frequently ducks and covers because I think things are coming at me from all directions for no apparent reason on a daily basis so why pay a small fortune to experience what is, essentially, a typical day in my life, minus the aliens? Although … how do we really know that aliens aren’t living among us here on Earth and reading over our shoulders this very instant? Maybe they’re yelling WAY TO REPRESENT, SISTER and high-fiving each other with their tentacles or flippers? Maybe we don’t see them because they’re invisible and maybe we don’t hear them because they sound like the whirring of a computer fan. Think about it. And finally …
3. I have now just succeeded in freaking myself out and need to stay home in a fetal position under my bed and listen to Josh Groban on my iPod.

I leave you with a post I wrote last January about Anderson Cooper wearing a tool belt. I think there might have been some issue with our ice dispenser as well.

Happy Sunday, everyone!

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Why can’t Anderson Cooper moonlight as my Frigidaire repairman?

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The refrigerator repair man just left. He was as nice as can be and appropriately dressed and never even bent over, thus there was no need on my part to worry about potential “coin slot” sightings. The gallon of eye bleach I had on hand turned out to be unnecessary.

And thanks to him, we can now get ice out of our ice dispenser without fear of losing an eye from a rogue ice cube that comes whipping out of the damn thing at the speed of light.

Our Frigidaire fridge is not even two years old yet and as of a week ago, it had behaved itself but because Nate and I knew all too well that, much like children on the brink of adolescence, it’s only a matter of time before an appliance gets a burr up it ass and shouts NO, I DON’T WANT TO. MAKE ME, we purchased an extended warranty on it. We did this with all of our appliances when we remodeled our kitchen, figuring that if we were going to pay an arm and leg for them, we might as well throw in a couple of toes to ensure that the appliances did what we paid for them to do.

So, when our refrigerator water dispenser lever broke off, Nate made a big production of collecting all of the warranty paperwork and spreading it neatly, at right angles and with terrific symmetry, on the counter right next to the phone, which is his passive aggressive way of telling me that it’s my duty to call the warranty company, since he exerted so much effort in making it as convenient as possible. And when I asked him why he couldn’t make the call himself because last I knew, he had fingers and a larynx, he told me that I was so much better at these things.

I looked down at my stomach and lo and behold, there was no umbilical cord attached to it. Then I realized that it wasn’t yesterday. After almost ten years of marriage, I was on to Nate immediately. When he tells me that I’m so much better at something than he, what he really means is that he’s going to Dinosaur Barbecue for lunch with some vendors and can’t be bothered with something as mundane as a broken whatever unless the broken whatever physically prevents him from going to Dinosaur Barbecue with vendors.

I want vendors. With big, fat expense accounts. You know what … I’ll just take the big, fat expense account and to hell with the middle man.

No one is treating me to Dinosaur Barbecue and let me tell you, slapping some Sensuous Slathering Sauce on my meat and beating it myself doesn’t even come close to the same thing.

And now I’ll just sit back and watch how many weirdos visit my site because it came up in a google search for PORN ‘R US.

I called the extended warranty company and informed them of our situation and the woman on the other end of the line informed me that the broken lever constituted physical damage and physical damage was not covered under our warranty so sure, they’d be happy to fix my lever to the tune of $200 and thank you very much.

And I replied that we paid for the extended service plan for this very reason and I want what we paid for and I had no intention of paying $200 to get the lever fixed unless Anderson Cooper came over to fix it in person and cooked me dinner afterwards.

And she put me on hold and came back and told me that she doesn’t know any Anderson Cooper and the broken lever constituted physical damage and physical damage was not covered under our warranty so sure, they’d be happy to fix my lever to the tune of $200 and thank you very much.

And I replied that who the hell doesn’t know Anderson Cooper and that the lever had been pushed a minimum of one trillion times in the past two years which undoubtedly resulted in it breaking off which, by definition, constituted wear and tear.

She wasn’t impressed.

Please. I can’t take anyone who doesn’t know Anderson Cooper seriously.

The bell rang and we came out of our corners and went a couple of rounds and I tried in vain to explain the difference between physical damage and wear and tear.

Wear and tear is bearing witness to my kids’ perpetual smackdown starting on January 1, complete with a running soundtrack of STOP IT, DON’T TOUCH ME, DON’T EVEN LOOK AT ME, YOU’RE A BRAT, STAY OUT OF MY ROOM, GET LOST in surround sound, causing my eyes to roll back into my head an average of thirteen times a day, which then jams my stressed-out brain against my skull at least once a week, causing the vein in my forehead to pulse grotesquely 24/7, culminating with my head exploding all over the couch on New Year’s Eve.

Physical damage is my kids using my ears as walkie talkies at 10:00 a.m., so that they can shriek STOP IT, DON’T TOUCH ME, DON’T EVEN LOOK AT ME, YOU’RE A BRAT, STAY OUT OF MY ROOM, GET LOST at each other at decibel level 322, resulting in a massive brain aneurysm and my head exploding all over the couch at 10:02 a.m.

See the difference?

She didn’t.

And either did her supervisor.

Luckily, his supervisor did. That may have had something to do with all the yelling and shouting and general FOR GOD’S SAKE, THIS IS WHAT I GAVE MY TOES FOR? IS YOUR MOTHER PROUD OF YOU? PUT HER ON THE PHONE, I WANT TO TELL HER WHAT KIND OF AN ASSHAT YOU TURNED OUT TO BE spewing out of my mouth.

Not really!

But kind of.

My kids were horrified that I yelled at someone other than themselves. Or maybe that was relief I saw plastered all over their bugged out eyes and slack jawed mouths? When they come to, I’ll ask them.

The repair company received a call from the warranty company and thereafter called me in awe, wanting to know how in the world I had managed to get the warranty company to pay for this particular repair when claims by many others had been rejected?

And I told them that all it takes is a little persuasion. Persuasion can come in all different forms, from a simple “please” to a “maybe I should speak to my lawyer” all the way up to a flowchart detailing the exact method by which someone could shit their lung through a second asshole, if one were to become immediately available.

Not that I threatened anything remotely like that.

1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th … 5th? That one looks nifty. I’ll take it. Thank you.

I’m not, by nature, a confrontational person. I try to avoid stuff that makes my intestines bunch up, things like conflict and tarantulas and Gorgonzola cheese.

God, I miss Gorgonzola cheese.

It’s just that I’m so sick to death of shoddy craftsmanship and dirt poor customer service.

If I wanted crap, I would have paid for crap. I have no problem paying for crap, provided #1) I know it’s crap up front; and #2) I’m strung out on meth.

Otherwise, money’s tight so if I’m going to hand it over to someone, I had better get something worthwhile in return and it better not have a smidgen of crap in it, on it or around it. Otherwise, I’m not bending over and grabbing my ankles for anyone because I’ll need both hands to call everyone and their mother, giving all of them a piece of my mind until I’m fresh out. Of my mind, that is.

Had Nate made this call, we’d be $200 poorer right now and I’d be pitching a hissy in our living room. And he knows it. Which is the real reason he lines up forms so symmetrically on the kitchen counter for me.

Well, that and Big Ass Pork Plates.

Do you embrace confrontation? Or do you run screaming in the opposite direction?

Do you think Anderson Cooper even has a tool belt?

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