Saturday Insanity

This day has been crazy . . really crazy, I tell you!

After getting up early and taking care of the chickens, taking Speck for a walk, taking Jazz for a walk, I came back inside and thought to myself . . I didn’t get enough sleep so I went back to bed and slept til 9:00!  I needed that sleep and it’s a good thing I got it because I’d probably be writing this from a jail cell otherwise.  Do they let you have a laptop in jail?  Probably . . jail seems kinda cushy these days.

After breakfast, we decided to go have a chat with the local tire dealer.  Actually I had planned to do it alone and Vince had mercy on the tire dealer and went along and decided he would do the talking.  This saga about Chad’s tires started May 27 and I blogged about it here.  Vince has had to make a dozen calls to the manufacturer to get the tires adjusted.  Thursday the dealer here called Vince at work and said “the manufacturer gave me 50% back on the front two tires so you owe 50% on the front 2 tires and 100% on the back 2 tires.”  I said NO WAY! I was fine paying 100% on the back tires, even though the date on them showed they had sold us old tires but the front 2 tires had less than 10,000 miles on them and I was not paying 50% of the cost on those.  Remember that I replaced the tires on my car after only 5,000 miles because the local dealer had put tires on it that had an “aggressive tread pattern” and they were so noisy I could hardly stand it.  I just chalked it up to dealing with an incompetent dealer, bought new tires from another dealer and never mentioned it to the old dealer but I was not paying 50% on Chad’s front tires!

Vince called the manufacturer back and they said they had given the dealer 91% back on those front tires.

When we got there today, Vince asked again how much the manufacturer had given him on Chad’s tires and he repeated that they had given him 50% back.  Vince told him that he talked to them and they said they gave him 91% back and maybe on Monday we should all have a conference call and find out wherein lies the discrepancy.  The dealer huffed and puffed and said “well, I have to get back the money for installation, balancing, etc.”  Then I couldn’t be quiet any more and I said “What if YOU bought a fridge from the local appliance store, it worked for 3 months.  How would you feel if the appliance store said ‘sorry, we don’t warranty new fridges’.  Then you had to call the manufacturer and do all the communicating about the warranty and then they were going to replace the fridge but told you that you had to pay another delivery charge for them to bring you the new fridge when  you’d already paid a delivery charge on the first fridge that only lasted 3 months?”  He said “I wouldn’t like it and marched off to his office and came back and said we owed $8 each for the front tires, $89 each for the back tires (which was full price but that’s fine) and he didn’t charge us any installation.

That’s the outcome I wanted but dealing with that from May til now; and what happened with my tires, I will not be doing business with them again.

Then we went up to the Amish store.  I just love going up there.  They weren’t busy today so I asked the man all kinds of questions about the Amish.  I’m so intrigued by them.  Then we went to his wife’s store and I got some more boots so I’d have a pair upstairs and a pair downstairs.  Vince got him some too.  She still has a decent price on 50 pound bags of sugar so we got some sugar.

Look at the size of these pumpkins at the Amish store.  The huge one is 90 pounds.  How many pies could you get from a 90 pound pumpkin?

Then we went by the apple orchard.  Then we came home and I’ve been standing in the kitchen for the past 8 hours.  I’ve put up:

• 25 quarts of tomatoes
• 14 pints of caramel apple jam
• 14 pints of spiced apple rings

I think I’m ready to put the canner away for the year!

And, my sweet little visitor went home today.  I thought he was a puppy but they told me he’s almost 2 years old.  Whew!  That dog has way too much energy for me but he was so cute and just the sweetest, happiest little guy.  He was happy to see his family but I think he kinda liked us too!