THIS is why I hate Christmas

Yeah, I'm a Scrooge.  Everyone knows it and dislikes this trait about me.  Every year I try to pin down exactly why I hate it so much.  So here's this years explanation.

Everything fucking breaks and you can't get it fixed!  Everything is just 10x harder the week of Christmas. Even just going to the store for some milk is a pain in the ass because everyone is in every store everywhere.
So this year, here's what my week has looked like:

The baby monitor broke a couple of weeks ago.  The video portion works but the sound doesn't.  Motorola is sending us a new one (thanks!) and it probably should have arrived by now.  But of course not because everything takes longer to deliver in December.  Yesterday I said fuck it, and bought a cheap sound monitor to keep next to the video monitor.  Why was this so important to me?

Because the girls have been sick and have possibly been exposed to RSV.  That means if breathing becomes labored, they would need to go to the ER.  We can hear them cry through their bedroom wall, but labored breathing isn't something that would be loud enough to wake us up without a monitor.

Then about a week ago, the laundry room started to stink.  I wondered if it was gas, but it didn't have that classic rotten egg smell and I moved the carbon monoxide monitor into that room that never went off.  So I thought ok, maybe it's not gas, maybe it's mold under the linoleum due to water leak issues we had a while back.  But we'll come back to this.

A few days ago, our dryer died.  It still appeared to function, but it generated no heat so nothing was getting dry so we can't really do laundry.  Just fucking perfect.  Ok, not a major disaster, I can deal with this.  We've been looking at washers and dryers for a while now because we knew the washing machine would die on us at some point.  This isn't a major shocking big purchase.  We turned off the gas valve thinking maybe the smell is indeed gas and maybe it's because the ignition thingy on the dryer doesn't work so the dryer is filling up with gas.

Yesterday, my parents came over to watch the girls for a couple of hours so I could get a break.  With everyone being sick, my ankle hurts, K can't take any days off right now because he works retail, I'm just a bit overwhelmed.  I needed to get diapers and on my way to the store, I realized that a Sears appliance store was right next door.  Okey dokey, let's just throw some money at my current problem and get on the list to see when we can get my new machines installed.  Tomorrow?  Before Christmas?  Really?  SOLD!

Today they come to deliver and install the machines.  OF COURSE it's not on their paperwork that I paid for haulaway service so that's all confused.  Then they come in and freak out because they can smell gas and they sure as hell aren't going to do any installations with gas in the air.  They tell me to call the power company emergency line and they'll leave the washer and dryer in my living room so that hopefully we can get a quicker installation tomorrow since the products will already be here.

Emergency power guy comes over.  Takes a while to find the leak, there's a hole in the line going from the furnace to the house.  So for god knows how long, we've been venting methane throughout our house, and since the primary vent is in the laundry room, that's where most of it has collected.  It's basically a wonder that my house hasn't become a fireball at any point in the last week.

But we now have the gas leak fixed and the house has been aired out (and chilled down obviously).  So I get on the phone to reschedule installation of the washer and dryer and OF COURSE they can't do it until after Christmas.  So now I have two washers and two dryers in my house that currently serve zero function and piles of laundry that can't be done until after Christmas.

So that's it.  Every year, the week of Christmas it's just fucking something.  Some big problem that Christmas prevents it from getting fixed.  Ok, so it's not always Christmas fault, I mean Christmas didn't kill my girls three years ago, but whatever.  The week of Christmas is always a major problem that I can't just handle like I would be able to handle it any other week of the year.

I tried this year.  I really did.  I got a Christmas tree, it's decorated, shit, I even made most of the ornaments on it!  We came up with a plan for Christmas day, K got the girls special Christmas Eve jammies to sleep in, I seriously tried to unScrooge this year.  And yet, it nearly killed us all.  I'm off to google what kind of damage breathing in methane for a week or so has done to us.

Humbug!