How did I go from ‘things are settling down now summer is over, and I can finally get back to being creative’, to total silence again… ?

Let me see if I can put it in a nutshell:

Mom things to deal with, a death in the family, a ferry almost disaster, absent gas, an appliance put on this earth to test me, a thunderstorm, power outages, and a flat tyre.

And now for the nuts sans shell for those who want to read on…

October 28th one of my uncles died. He was the second youngest of my dad’s brothers. He was 82 and hadn’t been really well, but he wasn’t like, real sick either, so it was sudden and a shock. He’d been the Don Corlene of the Famelis family for so many years I guess we thought he was not just omnipotent, but immortal too…

On the up side, since October 28 is a public holiday, I got a 3 day weekend.

On the down side, it wasn’t a fun weekend.

Mom was due to leave on Saturday. When she told me about my uncle’s passing I picked up her tickets on the way over. Like… was she going to leave right after he died? Stupid. But then I also left home without my bag, my wallet and wearing my incredibly sexy pink crocs with striped socks.

Whatever.

That evening my brain kicked in and I called the travel agency to change mom’s ticket to open so she could travel on another day. All good.

Sunday, before the funeral, I went past and picked up the new tickets for Monday.

Monday morning mom called me at work from the port, distraught. The ticket was wrong and they wouldn’t let her on the ferry. Her sister was already on board. Mom was in a panic but the little Hitler at the port was hell bent on not letting her on.

The ticket had the correct time and ferry name but instead of ‘Paros to Pireaus’ the ticket said ‘Pireaus to Paros’. What? There are no ferries from PIR to PAS at that time, any day of the week.

Especially that particular ferry which was, at that very moment, loading cars, trucks and passengers the wharf on Paros.

I called the agent, the woman who changed the ticket, demanding she fix it. She said what could she do? she was alone in the office… the ferry was due to leave in 5 minutes! I suggested she lock the office and run to the port and sort it out. Mom is an old woman with a heart condition, and this was too much.

Back and forth calls – me trying to find a solution and mom telling me what I should tell say and do. Like I’m 10 years old…

The story? The tickets were originally for Saturday but when they printed out, the date and time was correct but origin and destination were wrong for some reason. Computers, right? You know what they say? “To err is human. But to really F#@K things up takes a computer”.

The little fuhrer could have just looked at the old ticket and said “Hmm.. the old ticket was correct and paid for. The new ticket has part of it right, but there is no ferry from PIR to PAS at this time, so why don’t you drive on in and totter up to the the purser to sort it out like a good little old lady?”

But no. His brain was so wrapped in ‘by the book’ that there was no room for out of the box thinking. Or common sense.

I had asked the lady at the agency to just issue new tickets and run them to the port. When she tried to issue new tickets for mom she couldn’t cause mom was apparently already booked in for that trip! (duh) So she issued them in my name.

Of course, the genius port officer refused to accept the new tickets those cause they were in another name!

In the end someone was able to argue mom onto the ferry. Last vehicle on.

Sheesh. And me at work, in a meeting, trying to sort this out.
 
Later that evening mom called. She didn’t have any gas. Everything in the new house is on natural gas… No gas to cook with, no hot water, nothing. Wonderful. And I’m meant to help how? Being millions of miles away and having no idea what to do?

After over an hour on various calls to the gas provider – who politely told me that their job was just to bill us, they had nothing to do with any issues we might have – i called mom and she said it was working again. One of her neighbours said she had to run water in the sink and it would then turn itself on. So it was working fine…

Thanks mom.
 
Next morning, another distress call from mom. The oven wasn’t working.

I bought this whiz bang oven at a great price from a place in the north of Greece, a display model top of the line Gorenje oven. It came with a manual in some unknown language. I was able to find and download one in English and when the oven was put in place around May/June this year, I tried to set the clock. It began flashing PLOC which I take means the oven is locked, and I never managed to unlock it, no matter what I tried.

At the time I called the Gorenje distributor in Greece. Nope, they couldn’t send anyone out as I was not reporting a fault and their service department only deals with faults. Besides, he said, they don’t support that particular model as they weren’t the distributor of Gorenje products at that time.

They gave me a number for an uncertified repair company, who said no, we can’t fix that, call the distributor. I called the same guy back and finally he told me the name of the old distributor.

He could have started with that.

Anyway, I called and booked in a demonstration and service/repair if needed. another load of calls yesterday. The repair man. Mom. The repair man. Mom. Mom. Mom. Telling me what to say. What to do.

This is not over yet… chapters 3, 4 and more are coming. The oven is either faulty or broken cause it wont unlock but we don’t know why. I’m speaking to the seller and they are no, apparently, going to try to send someone to fix it or diagnose the issue and will replace it if need be.

This weekend I’ve had two power outages. One for 12 hours and one for 24. Everyone in my area, in the same building – right next door and above me in fact! – had power after a few hours but I had to wait 24 hours and 2 visits from the electricity company to get it fixed.

I can’t explain it… but somehow I’m getting power from somewhere else, like, perhaps the moon, cause they came and checked the building and pronounced it ‘fixed’ when I still had no power.

Being at home in the dark without internet and a flat kindle sucks.

But its fixed now.

And this morning I get up to go to work and find I have a flat tyre.

Ain’t life grand?

Anyone want to trade a life on Paros, complete with a mom who cooks great greek food, for an isolated farm in Australia?

z