Christmas Eve Surprises! in These Foolish Things

Regardless of my previous entry - the one where I accidentally gave away a $300 hat and felt like a turd - I felt incredibly festive going to work on Christmas Eve. I was working the 9:00am - 3:30pm shift and I wore black velvet and sequin leggings with a few sweater layers on top and a black wool and sequin scarf. I always wear leggings because it gets so freaking cold in that store. It’s a mall entrance so it opens right out into the blustery cold parking area and we’ve had INSANELY cold weather over the past few days. As in, dangerously cold. So we always bundle up to work inside the store!

Anyway, on Christmas Eve, all of the customers were either in an amazingly good mood or they were frantic to finish the Christmas shopping they hadn’t done earlier, so it was GREAT for business! I more than made up for my mistake by selling literally thousands of dollars worth of fashion items AND signed two people up for credit cards (which is the thing that the managers are always riding everyone’s asses about… “GET THOSE CARDS!!”

I finished my shift with excitement because I was going to go home, walk the dog and then head to Maria’s for her family’s special Christmas Eve party/dinner, which is practically an institution around here.

I got back to my apartment building, parked and ran up the stairs and to my door. But when I opened the door, I did not see an excited little dog. Instead I saw a traumatized and crying little dog! She was trying to figure out where to step as I walked in and quickly noticed that everything…and I mean every floor surface was sopping WET.

My apartment had flooded while I was gone!

Long story short, I was able to maneuver some things around that were emergency situation: the presents under the tree were SOAKED and saturated so I picked them up and piled them onto the dining room table and I pulled some other items off the floor. I tried to get the breakers to come back on, but there are some electrical issues so half the apartment did/does not have power, etc. You know, the things you do when your place floods.

Of course, no concierge service and no management staff on location because the holiday!! So I called the emergency on-call service. And then I sent a text to the maintenance guy who seems to have a weird crush on me. Why do maintenance people seem to have these weird crushes on tenants? I always had the creepy feeling that the maintenance guy at my downtown place was sniffing my underwear and I KNOW he was drinking my booze because my cognac (that I NEVER drink) bottle level would get lower and lower every time he’d fix something in my place.

I digress.

Then I sent a text to Maria telling her I wasn’t going to be able to make it.

And you have to know that she insisted. She called me and would NOT take no for an answer. I even told her that Martini was traumatized, so she told me to put her in her bag and bring her too!

So as I was getting ready to suck it up and take my mind off things at Maria’s for a while, the maintenance guy (let’s call him Manuel) showed up at my place, saying that he came to assess the damage and take photos so he’d know which contractors to bring in to clean up the place.

As he was taking photos, he noticed an open bottle of bubbly on my counter. He said something about it and because it was Christmas Eve and all, I offered him a drink. He said SURE and so I poured him a glass and he gulped it down, so I poured him a refill and he asked me if I was trying to get him drunk! And started acting all “cute”

Ughhhhhh. Why does every dude think that anything a woman does that is nice is an invitation into her panties??

Anyway, I asked him when the people were coming to dry the place out. He seemed to think they’d be around any minute, so I gave him permission to let the cleaning people come in if I was gone and shooed him out of my apartment so I could go to Maria’s.

I’d love to say that I settled down once I got to Maria’s, but it was exactly the opposite. They’d already had a few courses of dinner (Maria’s daughter’s dinners are essentially giant feasts of courses that just come and come and come) and the kids - there were maybe 20 kids there - were all excited and screaming and running around. They loooovvved seeing Martini in her bag and all of the adults thought it was hilarious. There I was, looking and feeling frazzled and I think everyone else was three sheets to the wind.

They’d invited one of the kids’ football coaches to the dinner and damn, he was smoking HOT, and Maria tried to make me think that they wanted to set me up with him, but he was at least 15 years younger than me, and that whole introduction was awkward because I looked like I’d just come from a flooded apartment…because I HAD.

Anyway, even though I don’t drink anymore, I did have two glasses of champagne on Christmas Eve because. Because.

I stayed at Maria’s maybe an hour and a half and that was enough.

Then back home to the disaster. And the maintenance guy who wouldn’t stop texting me, asking me if I wanted him to come over to “flip the breaker switch.”

WINK WINK

UGH. I kept asking him when the cleaners were coming and he kept giving me the run around so I told him that I was exhausted and needed sleep.

More texts.

More texts.

and finally, at around 12:30am, he says there’s a guy coming to clean up my flood.

I sent him a reply stating that I was already in bed and asleep and that I don’t feel comfortable with a stranger coming to my place in the middle of the night.

But still the guy showed up at 1AM!! I was freaked out and scared and the guy was asking questions and I just kind of lost it, telling him that it was the middle of the night and I can’t even think straight and that the WHOLE place was flooded and just do what you gotta do… (but there were a LOT of f-bombs coming out of my mouth for some reason).

And he said, “Well, I can come back tomorrow because this is going to be loud.”

I said that would be great because I would be gone and they could make noise all they wanted. But I needed him to make sure that they were done before dark because the lights weren’t working and hopefully they’d be able to fix that part too??

OK.

I need a Part 2 to tell you about Christmas! But I’m too tired right now.

More Surprises to Follow!
GS