Sigh of relief, sigh of frustration

All day yesterday I was worried about the new hen’s safety in the coop with our new flock bullies, Curly and Kathy.  Although there is a decent amount of room under the coop and run for her to escape if need be, I was still afraid I would come home to her being in bad shape.  I was very relieved to step out the back door and see four chickens looking back at me.  I opened the coop and let them out to play.  The new hen was mostly side by side with the other chickens, hopefully we are past the most difficult acclimation time period.

I had to get changed and head directly back out in the Tacoma.  Earlier in the day I called the Naples Sam’s Club as instructed to see if they got any of the sheds delivered overnight.  They said they had four of them scheduled to be delivered but again they were unsure of when.  She said it looked like it might not be until next week.  It took me about 15 minutes of time on the phone to get this answer.

So just for the hell of it I called the next closest SC which is in Fort Myers.  They said they had six of the sheds in stock, cool.  I figured I would just grab it after work to not risk them running out of stock again.  I hopped in the Tacoma after chicken checking and headed north.  I was surprised that the GPS predicted I had roughly an hour drive ahead of me.  It turned out to be slightly more than that thanks to traffic.

So I walk in the store which appears to have a similar layout to the Naples location.  I walk over to the area where the display was in Naples but found no shed there.  Maybe this store didn’t have a display built.  I figured I would go to the customer service desk and ask them how to proceed since I had the item number in my phone.  The large 10 foot by 30 foot desk had exactly one woman behind it.  There were two other people in line with me.  The girl behind the counter was ignoring all three of us, I heard her yell over to another woman that she was in the middle of doing some sort of work that evidently did not involve helping the customers in front of her.  After more than 5 minutes of being ignored I mumbled “this is ridiculous” and walked away, looking for somebody else to ask.

Well I spotted the shed on the opposite side of the store.  I walked over and saw they had the tags you can simply take up to a register to pay for the item which I did. After paying for the shed the cashier said I could just wait by the exit door for them to bring it out.

So I stood guard at the door scanning for two large boxes coming my way.  Of course as I stood there I had ample time to observe the Sam’s Club patrons pushing their flatbeds and carts of crap out the door.  As I stood witness it did not give me much hope for the future of humanity.  It was pretty damn depressing.

So after standing by the door for at least 15 minutes the manger comes and tells me that it would be better if I drove my truck around the back to the vendor door.  He said the boxes for the shed were buried under some other things that had to be moved first.  I said fine, jumped in the Tacoma and drove around the back looking for a Vendor sign which there was none.  I did see a garage door and a regular door with a buzzer so it seemed like the logical spot to go.

For some reason I assumed someone would already be waiting for me out there which was evidently a poor assumption.  I waited for a bit for someone to pop their head out.  When that didn’t happen I went over to the door with a buzzer and rung it.  When nothing happened I pulled on the door and was surprised it was unlocked.  It led to a waiting room outside of what looked like a receiving office which had nobody in it.  I looked around for any signs of life but saw nothing, great.

After about 10 more minutes of waiting around I finally see a guy on a skid loader approach whom I wave down.  He said he had to unbury the boxes and it would take a couple minutes, the same thing I was told 20 minutes ago.  He said he would bring the shed out the garage door, great.  Finally, around 45 minutes after I paid,  the garage door was raised and the skid loader emerged with  two very long boxes on it.  I was glad the boxes were narrow enough to fit in between the wheel wells.

The guy carefully inched the loader forward until it was a couple inches from the cab.  The back end of the truck sagged under the 500 pounds plus of weight.  Even though the weight of the shed alone was probably enough to keep it from going anywhere, I used my ratchet strap to lock it in place.

By the time I navigated the long drive home it was after 8:30.  Getting the boxes out of the truck and into the garage was a bit challenging.  I pulled them down one at a time, each weighing at least 250 lbs.  Their long length and weight made moving them difficult, even with my hand truck.  Cindy and I managed to get them into a corner of the garage and leaned them upright against the wall.  They just cleared the 8 foot ceiling. After picking up a couple 2 x 10’s I will have everything I need to start construction.  Some of it may occur after work this week but more than likely things will really take shape over the weekend.

Tonight Cindy and I are hoping to take a mental breather from all of the upcoming project work we have on our plates by going to the county fair a mile down the road.  It’s one of the very few sources of entertainment available to us in close vicinity.   We both enjoy the sights, sounds, and smells of the fair.  Of course we love interacting with the animals and the people watching opportunities at the event are top notch.