Way to go, Amazon!!!

Wow…I just went to Amazon.com to look up some Christmas gift ideas for the boys, to be greeted by the information that they have started an initiative to get manufacturers to decrease the packaging for things wherever possible, and make it much easier to open stuff when you get it.  I LOVE this idea, can you tell???!!!

Oops. But at least it’s warming up!

So, the oil tank wasn’t empty after all, it was the heater that had a broken part.  The tech just came out and replaced it.  Huzzah!!!!!!

brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. And did I mention it is COLD in here?

We woke up this morning, shivering, and with R huddled between us in our bed.  Why is it so cold in here?  Did the boys shut the vents again?  Nope.  We ran out of oil!!!!  For the first time in 6 years and 11 months, our oil tank was totally empty.  N called the oil company, and they were scheduled to come out here this morning anyway to deliver…but now, since the tank emptied, they have to come inside and prime it. Yippee kay yay.

 In the meantime, we sit here shivering.

 We have never before had a complaint about our oil company, but this is the second time in a few months that they have screwed up.  A few months back, they came to deliver our oil and hooked up to our neighbor’s house instead.  Our neighbor who no longer has oil heat.  That was pleasant. (NOT!)  And now they let us run out!  I don’t understand it…it isn’t even like it’s been all that cold around here so we haven’t been using more than usual or anything.  This is two strikes, oil company.  Don’t get a third.

Mourning the loss of Tube Time, aka Curse You Comcast!

A few months ago, I discovered the channel “Tube Time” on Comcast On-Demand.  Chock full of wonderful old sitcoms like Who’s the Boss, I Dream of Jeannie, Bewitched, and The Facts of Life.  By the time I got all caught up on The Facts of Life, they had added a new show to the lineup.  The Monkees.  One of my all-time favorite shows.  I used to watch it all the time when I was younger, and it hadn’t lost any of it’s goofy fun-ness.

 Then, a few weeks ago, I sat down, remote and snack in hand to catch up on the week’s new episode.  Clicked through, and waited for the show to start.  It didn’t start.  Instead, I got a lovely error message, telling me a subscription was required to view this show.

That day, a little disappointed, I thought nothing of it.  I’d gotten error messages before, and they usually cleared themselves up.  The next time I had the chance to sit down with it again, a week or so later, the message was still there.  I still couldn’t get to my show!!  “Self,” I thought, “you need to remember to get in touch with Comcast and get this fixed.”  It being the midst of the holiday season, that chance wouldn’t come for a while.  One night I finally sat down to call Comcast, only to be told by a machine that there were too many people ahead of me in the queue and I should call back at another time.  Click.  Yes, I had just been rejected by a machine.  Argh!

Not to be deterred, I logged onto Comcast’s website and found the option to chat with an analyst.  They gave me a chat room window with a little countdown of how many people were ahead of me in line.  Starting at 283.  Keeping myself busy with other online pursuits, the wait was relatively easy and before too terribly long, I was online with a Comcast analyst.  “there is an outage in your area” she typed to me, but if you’ll leave your box on for an hour, I will try to send a signal through”.  Not a problem.

A couple of days later, I once again had the time to snuggle down with some old friends, and again clicked through to Tube Time and The Monkees, only to be greeted with the same error message.  Shoulders slumped, I bypassed the phone call altogether and headed straight for the chat room.  Only 82 people in the queue this time.

This time the rep’s news was more dismal.  Apparently, Tube Time is only available to more advanced packages than our little starter package (Hey, we only got cable about a year ago, before that it was antennas, baby).  “But why,” I wailed (or typed), “was I able to get it until a couple of weeks ago?”  The rep couldn’t really answer that for me, but repeated that the channel was not included with our package and if I went to such and such spot on the website, I could look into upgrading.  “This is BULLSHIT” I thought. “Thanks so much for your time and have a good night,” I typed, ending the chat session.

But I sure miss watching those crazy boys & their antics.  

The registration fiasco

Yesterday I dropped the boys off at school, then went down to register R for kindergarten this fall.  When I walked out of the building, I called N and told him that if the woman who “helped” me was a product of our school system, that WE ARE MOVING.

 Okay Maeve.  Take a deep breath.  My blood pressure is going up just thinking about this woman.  Start at the beginning.

 I had gone online a couple of weeks ago, printed off the registration forms, filled them out, and gotten together everything I needed to bring to complete the process.  Yesterday I got to the office, signed in, and waited my turn.  It was amusing watching the folks ahead of me going through the process…especially the woman who was trying to use an ID that apparently expired more than 20 years ago.  My turn comes up, I go up to the counter and tell her that I was there to register my son for kindergarten.

 She turns around and says to a coworker…”are we taking registrations for kindergarten?”  Coworker says, yes, they are as there is no set date for the kindergarten registrations.  the rest of the conversation follows:

Her: Okay, we can take you.  Here are the forms you need to fill out (shoves a packet across the counter at me)

Me: Oh, I went online and printed off the forms.  Here they are, all filled out.

Her: Oh, okay.  (looks through my papers, then goes through the stack she has)  Well, you will still need this one, and this one.  And you didn’t fill out the form to transfer old school records.  You NEED that form. (snippy tone of voice).

Me: Do we need that?  He’s just starting Kindergarten, there are no other school records.

Her: (to coworker) She (jabs head in my direction) didn’t fill out the records transfer form.  Don’t we need that?

Coworker: Didn’t you say she’s registering for kindergarten?  If there are no records to transfer we don’t need the form.

Her: Oh.  Well, okay then. (starts looking through the other paperwork I had to bring – mortgage statement and utility bill for proof of residency, gov’t issued photo id, R’s birth certificate and immunization records)  Well, your name and your husband’s name are on the mortgage statement but only his is on the — what is this?

Me: It’s our utility bill, from the oil company

Her: well, only his name is on that bill so you will need to bring a copy of your marriage license.

Me: (thinking – what the fuck?) Oh-kaaayyy, I’ll have to come back with that.

In the meantime I’ve been looking over the other two forms she handed me and they need to be completed by a doctor and dentist.

Me: These medical forms, they need to be done before we can register him?

Her: Yes, we need those to do the registration.

Me: I wish it would have mentioned all this on your website.  I brought everything down that the site said was needed.  Now I need to go do all this and come back?  What is the deadline for registration?  His well-visit to the doctor is usually right around his birthday in June.  Our insurance only covers one well visit each year.  Can I just come back over the summer to do the registration?

Her: Well, we need those forms completed in order to do the registration.

Me: So, can I come back and do the registration over the summer, after his checkup?

Her: Let me check.  She goes, and talks to a coworker, who informs her that — get this –

1. the health forms are needed for the start of school, not for registration.

2. there is no reason for me to bring in our marriage license.  Both our names are on the mortgage statement and my husband’s name is on the utility bill.  No biggie.

3. I have provided everything needed for registration to be completed, and I am free to go.  Just make sure the health forms are completed and sent in before the beginning of the school year.

EVERYTHING she told me and gave me a hard time about was unnecessary.  All of it!!  It was totally ridiculous.  Sheesh!!!  And her attitude was just so bad.  She didn’t care about any of it, she didn’t apologize for screwing up, she was just SO clueless.  Hence, my phone call to N when I left.

Yes, I know this was a person not a school district…but it’s another nail in the coffin as far as I’m concerned.

How many more things can Maeve forget in one shopping trip?

N got home from work early today (he’s working full time now, that’s another post for when I sort out my feelings on it) and we headed out to run some errands.

We get to Target, because they have Leapster games on sale for $15. The boys still love and use their Leapsters so much that new games are definitely going under the tree. N, R & K wait in the car while I run in to grab a couple of games. I get to the aisle (and stopped to check out the Roboraptor that’s going on sale on Black Friday…that might be going under the tree too!) The games are all sold out except for Batman, Princesses, and Cars. Cars they already have, Princesses is a no. Batman is a K-2nd grade counting game so that might be cool. In some of the spots for the sold-out games they have raincheck pads but they don’t have them for the other game I’m most interested in picking up (Creature Creator or something like that) I snag one of the other raincheck tickets because I’m not sure it will make a difference and go up to the register. The Totally Awesome Cashier calls a manager over to check, and yes, it does matter, each raincheck pad is numbered to correspond to the actual game. She rings me up for Batman and I say I’ll go to customer service to get my raincheck. I go to pay for the Batman game and realize that I’ve left my purse in the car. Digging in my pockets turns up $15.75 — 15 cents less than I need to purchase the game. I apologize to the TAC and ask if she’ll hold the game and I’ll go to the car and get my wallet. I call N on the cell phone to let him know that I’ll be heading out to grab my wallet, and he says never mind because R needs to use the potty so he’s coming in anyway. I get my raincheck issue taken care of in the meantime, get back in line and buy the game. K is with me in line and the TAC is being even cooler by making sure he doesn’t spot the game. He informs her that his name is K-I-E-R-A-N, just like that, spells it out.

Hokay. Game is bought and secured in my oversized purse. We still have a BJ’s run to make so we decide to grab a quick dinner at Cafe Tarzhay. While we are there eating, TAC comes in on her break, and comes over to say “Hi, K-I-E-R-A-N!” I love this girl.

Heading out of the store and something triggers my swiss-cheese brain (TM Sam Beckett) We need more nighttime diapers for K! I sigh, send the boys back out to the car and run back in to get them. He’s SO CLOSE to being potty trained and I think he’ll be out of the overnights before we could go through a BJs sized batch. I keep hoping so, anyway.

Get the diapers, get back in the shortest line, and GUESS WHO? It’s TAC again!!! She was on her auto-spiel “And how are you today” when she saw me and laughed. Asked if the boys were back in the car, I said yeah, I just forgot to grab these, and we went on our merry ways.

Coming home after BJ’s I realized there is something else I forgot to buy…but now I forget what that was anyway. Sigh.

Good Customer Service!

Last year for Mother’s Day, N and the boys gave me a mother’s bracelet from www.cuddlebabies.com. It’s silver and crystal beaded with the boys’ names on it. I love it and wear it every day. A while ago, one of the beads broke, and I recently emailed Cuddlebabies to see about getting it repaired. I included this photo to clarify my confused explanation of the busted bead:

My email asked if they could replace the broken bead, and also swap out all the ones of that type with different beads, since I don’t really like those particular ones — the one broke, and the others look grungy compared to the other beads.

I received a quick reply saying, sure send it back, we’ll swap out the beads no problem. I have to send $7 to cover shipping/handling and all is good.

Hooray for GOOD customer service!!!!!

Boy clothing rant

Someone needs to tell boys’ clothing manufacturers (Specifically to this rant: The Children’s Place) that taking a perfectly nice shirt, and slapping a tacky sports decal or sports-number-like thing on it DOES NOT MAKE IT CUTE. Seriously! They have these gorgeously soft layered-look tees right now, that, if they were plain I would have totally stocked up on for the boys to wear this year. But no. They had to stick tacky numbers and slogans all over them. Ugh. The worst part is they are intentionally made to look old and faded out. Yuck. I despise that style.

Same with the thermal shirts. Nice thermal henley tops…with ugly number patches stuck onto them. The couple of plain thermal shirts are wonderfully squishy but cut so small that the 4T size would just barely fit my 3 year old now. Forget once it is washed because you know you have to allow for some shrinkage.

I want plain, cute, well-fitting boys clothes! Give me nice textures like thermals and soft long sleeve tees for fall, jeans that aren’t made to look dirty and worn out before my boys ever even wear them and have adjustable waistbands for my skinny 5 year old.

We did find a few long sleeve tee shirts and a pair of plain sweat pants for R. I still need to go through the rest of his old stuff and see what will still fit him. I know he has a couple of sweatshirts but I think he’s outgrown all of his sweaters now. K is totally set for fall/winter this year. He’s got all R’s old stuff plus a few things I bought big on purpose last year for him. K still needs new sneaks and both of them need some slightly dressier shoes.

What part of “no” don’t you understand???

This actually happened a couple of weeks ago, but I forgot to post it.

The annoying vacuum cleaner salesman…

Mom was over for lunch one day and we were playing a game of Scrabble. The doorbell rings, and I go answer it — it’s an Electrolux vacuum salesman. He starts his speil and I said, I’m sorry, I have company right now it is not a good time. He continues talking and I said Sorry, no. This is not a good time. I have company over and I also don’t have any carpeting (true, our house is all hardwood floors except for one small rug in the boys’ playroom.) So he starts to hand me this sticker to put on our current vacuum (??). I’ve got that look on my face now like he has 27 heads and I said we don’t own a vacuum cleaner. He says well then how do you clean your floors? I said “With a broom. This isn’t a good time haveanicedaygoodbye” as I closed the door in his face.

Sheesh. I don’t like to be rude but he just.wouldn’t.quit!!!!

The cranes

I took the boys last week to Old Navy to get R some new jeans. (His first pair of size 5T, eep!)

I wanted to try them on him so we went into the fitting room. The attendent in the fitting room was a very nice guy who made origami paper cranes for the boys. They stood there and watched him make them, firing off question after question and answering all his questions. (What color is this, what shape is it, what shape is it now?) I love how he was getting and holding their attention and how attentive he was to them in the process.

So they each have a crane, and the wings flap when you pull the head and tail. COOL! They also thanked FRG very nicely for the gifts.

And then, what is R’s next comment?

“Can you make a paper airplane”

FRG said he didn’t know how to make a paper airplane. R looks at me and says “Mommy — teach him how to make a paper airplane!!”

Red-faced, I admit that I do not know how to make a paper airplane either.

SO a couple of days later we go to Staples so I can get the stuff to make my new address book. It’s slow in there, and what does the cashier do? SHE MAKES PAPER AIRPLANES FOR THE BOYS!

Too stinking funny. At least they didn’t ask her for cranes…