Listen to the Rain

Yesterday, while Laila and I were out on a walk, someone got out of the car and said hello to me, and it took me a moment to realize it was one of our downstairs neighbors. His wife also got out of the car, and they said hi to Laila--Laila immediately wanted to be held by the wife and wouldn't even give the time of day to the husband--and we walked back to the condo building and chatted. When we got to the top floor, Laila said "kitty!" so they invited her in to say hi to their cat and sashagee heard us talking and came down to see what the commotion was. Our neighbors made us tea and we talked while Laila ran the wife around asking to read books, look for the cat, and otherwise make the husband feel ignored. He got his high five in the end though, after we finished our tea! This is the kind of thing that makes my parents feel better about their granddaughter living in the big city.

Then today, I got a text message about the new kitchen appliances that I ordered and I read through the checklist and noticed the glaring:

"Verify there are less than (3) flights of stairs to get to the install location (not applicable if elevator is available)"

We live on the fourth floor, but our address has a three in it because the floors are addressed like a European building (Ground, 1, 2, 3). So the person who helped us make the order might have seen a 3 in the address and been like, oh, no problem, they'll be fine. Well, I called in to check and it was not fine. The person on the phone was very clear that it's third floor or lower, no exceptions, so I cancelled the order after writing down what all the models of everything we ordered were. A little weird they don't account for higher floors in the city, but there will surely be another place that does.