Al Fresco

This was one of those evenings that looks delightful on paper. Steaks on the grill, beautiful weather, everyone out on the picnic table, even flowers my son picked out for me for no occasion. It should have been the perfect outdoor dinner, right? Do you think I'll look back at this picture in a couple of years and remember it that way?

Because right now, all I am thinking is how James refused to put my steak on later than his and I didn't like how it was cooked but couldn't define why and how I set the bread on fire under the broiler and how I hid the strawberries so that Sammy would eat some real food but then James un-hid them so that Sammy spent the entire meal refusing to eat food and whining for strawberries and nobody liked my roasted corn and black bean salad but me and Zack refused to smile for the first eight pictures and... you get the idea.

Maybe we should try again. After we've built up our energies, maybe.

Fifth Time's A Charm?

Things I love about my new range: I can bake in the summer without heating up the whole house. The surface is level (old one wasn't) and the power burners are speedy. The fancy features are quite handy. And so on.

Things I do not love about my new range:

• Gas leaks
• Incorrect parts
• Damaged parts
• FIVE SERVICE CALLS FROM SEARS.
  FIVE.

About a month after I got my very nice new range, we smelled a tiny gas smell, but then couldn't detect it again. A couple days later, a bit more, which again went away. A couple days later, more and it was not going away. UGH. I called Sears about getting it fixed. They told me to hang up, get out of the house and dial the gas company and hung up on me. Uh, hello? I had turned the gas off to the stove itself. I'm not an idiot. I had to call back and explain quickly before they could hang up that I was not in immediate danger but I needed my stove repaired. They couldn't get anyone out for a week! Do these people think I have a spare range sitting around?

The technician arrived and couldn't find a gas smell. He did what seemed a rather cursory check, "tightened all the valves", and pronounced it fixed. I pressed him to find something, since we had to wait a week for the service, but he pretty much said that was as good as he could do. Later I reflected that I don't think he actually ran gas through the burners and stove so after having the gas off, the lines probably had nothing left in them to leak. Sheesh.

I called to set up a second service call and was determined to be a squeaky enough wheel to get someone out here right away. Despite my best efforts asking for a manager six times, registering my official dissatisfaction, etc. they insisted it would be another week. But oh, they would send a senior technician. Super.

The senior technician did find the leak, but of course they don't carry that part on the truck. So, he ordered it and, you guessed it, they'd be back in another week.

The original technician (thrilled to see that guy; he used one of my good kitchen knives to cut open his cardboard box!) showed back up to install the new part, but it was missing the brackets. He installed it so that I could get rid of the leak, but now the right edge of the front panel and the two right knobs are loose. He ordered another part.

Another week later, a new technician showed up to install the new part. No brackets and it arrived damaged. He was confident that he has ordered the correct part this time. Every one of these visits involves at least four calls to and from Sears, some of which have an automated voice threatening to cancel my appointment if I don't call them back and confirm the parts arrived.

Another week later, and they are scheduled for this afternoon.

Do you think the fifth time is the charm??

(And on a cheerier note, don't forget to enter to win the set of four handmade cards!)

p.s. Yep, that fifth service call is now complete. The wrong parts arrived (and they were damaged). The parts don't match the pictures in the parts computer, etc. etc. They now officially have "no idea" what to do. They're going to "put it in research". That takes two weeks.

Scatterbrained

The other day C. Beth relayed a scatterbrained moment, after reading a similar tale from a friend of hers. I laughed out loud at the story, and it reminded me of one of mine:

One Sunday morning, when I was pregnant with Zachary and my parents were visiting, my husband and I took separate cars to church. He had to be there early (um, now that I consider it, I think it was because I'd forgotten to recruit anyone to fill the communion trays and he was fixing the problem by doing it himself), so my parents and I came in my car a little later. We parked, went in, attended class, attended worship service, visited a while (we're always the last one out of the building), and finally headed back out to the car. I was digging in my purse for the keys as we walked, slowing and finally stopping in the center of the lot as I continued to look for the keys. I looked up to say, "Mom, I really can't find my keys," to see my mom and dad standing at the car, incredulous, with the doors open.

"What?" I asked, puzzled.

"It was open," my dad replied, laughing and shaking his head. Well, I guess it was, since the keys were in the ignition and the car was running.

My first thought was, "Do we have to recount this episode to James? He'll just freak out," but James arrived just that moment as I was still standing in the middle of the parking lot. He said, "Deanna, do you always do this?" My mom could barely get the words out through her laughter: "Yes, she always leaves the keys in the ignition, the car running and the doors unlocked, in downtown parking lots, unattended, for hours!"

Summer Shake-down

The week has flown by, and it's gotten me thinking of our Memorial Day activities - it was a day full of summer fun! We went to a great park (Old Settler's Park - this is the best link I could find and it's not great) in Round Rock, Tx near my hubby's parents and they set up a fun grill-out picnic for us and another family. Zack's uncle showed him his whole tackle box and several of us fished - one even caught something (but we threw it back).

It was a fun day, but full of little start of summer work-out-the-kinks moments. Zack stepped in the lake up to his calf with one foot. We said, well, change into your Crocs. He brought one Croc and left the other other on the stairs at home. Guess we're just lucky it was the correct foot, as he was seen playing on the nearby playscape like this!

Sammy kept acting like he might walk, though he didn't yet. He sure did like the grass between his toes, though.

(The chair tipped over immediately after this picture!)

We brought all our stuff to go to the attached aquatic center, an extra cool city pool with water slides and other great water play, but time got away from us and Sammy was much too tired. James' parents offered to take him to their house to nap while we swam, so we made all the arrangements for that and headed off to the waterpark. When we arrived, there was a line snaking around the parking lot of those waiting to get in. The pool was at capacity, so they would only let one person in when one person left. As we were discovering that the area in which we were most interested was closed for construction and deciding what to do, they had a "contamination incident" and shut down everything for "at least" half an hour. Yikes. We went to the grandparens' house to pick up Sammy, who wasn't asleep yet, and headed home.

It was a very fun day, despite the setbacks. But we did forget to put sunscreen on the tops of our feet! Isn't that just how it goes when you're trying to get your summer groove back?

The Gym

For the record, I did not even want to go to the gym today. I needed to go to the grocery store today.

But on Monday's visit Zack was taken in by the giant indoor playscape and begged to go back and play. He's his mother's son and really likes to have a bunch of other people to play with, so I could relate to his desire to go. Plus, he gets to play on a tunnels-slides-nets style playscape and I get to work out instead of sitting at McDonalds? That's a win for everyone.

I would have preferred a class but I checked out the class schedule and there were none that suited me. Oh, well, I thought, I can always swim laps. I got busy getting ready to go, so that we could get it done before Sammy's nap time. I got into my suit and threw on a plain pink sweatshirt over it in addition to my gym shorts. Because we really did HAVE to go to the grocery, I decided to get together my stuff to shower and dress at the gym, enabling us to go straight to the grocery afterwards. I had to do a bit of running around to get together some travel size products and I didn't have some of the things I needed so I finally just grabbed my way too big travel roll of EVERYTHING and threw it all in. After all, it was getting later by the minute. I had too much stuff, but at 9:15, I was loaded up and ready to load the children in their carseats.

On Monday I had discovered my gym card wasn't in its usual spot and had had to use my drivers license for them to look me up. I figured I do a quick search and find my card for today. Fifteen minutes and all the obvious locations later, I still had no gym card. I gave up and went to get out my drivers license, but it wasn't there. Arg! I had sent it with James the night before so that he could renew my library card. I ran upstairs to his nightstand thinking to find it, but couldn't. I called his cell. I called his work phone. I texted him. Finally he called back to say "Oops, it's still in my wallet..." So another fifteen minutes had passed and I had no gym card and no drivers license. ARGH! It seemed ridiculous to drive all the way over there, so I went back to searching for my gym card. This time I would do a hard target search of every console, seatback pocket, glove box and gym bag!

Fifteen more minutes and I gave up on my hard target search.

But after the kids had waited in the car all this time, and I had gone to all the trouble to pack up a weekend's worth of travel gear just to take a shower at the gym, I was not to be deterred. I proceeded to drive all the way to James' office and back to retrieve my drivers licence. When I arrived at the gym, I realized I had no towel. "Well," I thought, "I have this sweatshirt. I'll just use it for a towel."

My entire gym experience was just off. There was a section of the pool area under construction so that it janky looking. One of the lanelines in the lap pool was missing. There were no kickboards (there used to be a zillion of them!). I rubbed a big section of my ankle raw doing drills wearing swim fins. When I went to shower, I vividly recalled why I don't usually bother to try to shower and dress at the gym: there is nowhere in the shower to hang anything and the shower walls themselve are about seven feet high. My huge weekend kit turned out to be better than something little since I was able to brace it and stand on my tiptoes and get it barely hung up on the mystifyingly tall shower wall. It got soaking wet in the needle spray of the shower and later fell onto the nasty floor. My body wash was old and stinky (ewww!) and I went back over my shower with shampoo trying to get off the remaining old stinky scent. I dried off on my sweatshirt and managed to dry off my weekend kit only to have someone fire up the shower next to me and somehow soak everything in my separate stall anew. I had forgotten they don't have a hairdryer, so I pointed the handdryer at my head as best I could and got the bulk of the water not soaked up by my sweatshirt out of my hair so I could drag my kids through the grocery store. By the time I left, my faithful sweatshirt was dripping wet.

But, I think the crowning moment came as we were entering the gym to start with. I was just thinking I was glad to have something I could use as a towel when:

Me, with a sigh: Man. This is just sillly.

Zack: It is silly, Mommy. Do you know what is the silly part, Mommy?

Me, thinking it was the hour and a half in the car trying to get to the gym: No, tell me. What's the silly part?

Zack, shaking his head sadly: The silly part is that your shirt is really too jammie-y to wear.

Again I say, Sheesh!

*Sigh*

I had a doctor's appointment at 10:00am. I left the doctor's office at 1:39pm.

Now, before I launch into this, let me say that I am fully aware that none of this is in the same category as real Health Problems. This is more in the category of Annoying Crap. I am very thankful that I'm generally in good health, at least with respect to anything serious. I guess it is this generally good health that has led be to the (clearly ridiculous) assumption that if you go to the doctor with a specific combination of symptoms, an onset timeline and whatever details are relevant, they should be able to say what's wrong with you and tell you whether to wait and heal or give you some kind of treatment. Right??

Nope.

Why is it always some puzzling mystery? Why is it "Wow, I've never heard of that" or "Hm, I couldn't really guess what's happening with that". Sheesh. They can completely replace a person's hip but they can't tell my why my ear hurts??

My almost four hour appointment today (accompanied by two children) netted me a very annoyingly painful "office procedure" (unrelated to the ear pain), a recommendation for surgery (unrelated to the ear pain), and a diagnosis of "take three Advil three times a day and call me in six to eight weeks" for the ear pain. Whaaa?

So here's what I'm thinking:

A) Why did I bother going at all?
B) Why, oh why did I leave the house without coffee?
C) How could I have gone out without snacks for the children?
D) How could I have gone out with only a single coloring book for Zack?
E) How do they blithely keep a woman with a four-year-old and a nine-month-old in the waiting room for HOURS?
F) How do I get sucked into these "minor procedures" that turn out to be ordeals?
G) Is a simple diagnosis so much to ask?

*Sigh*

------------------------------
Update: The annoying "office procedure":
a) Was billed as "surgery"
b) Was ridiculously expensive
c) DID FIX THE EAR PAIN AFTER ALL!

I guess I'll take a fix over a diagnosis.

Voice of the People

Or rather, just me.

Or rather, NOT me.

Because I don't have one. Not having a voice (yes, literally) is very strange. I am a walking game of charades, and people didn't even know they were playing. Yes, I can whisper, but it hurts. The doctor advised me to do so as little as possible and instead write everything down. That works super for my eight month and four year old. Wait, if I can write everything in three letter words with short vowel sounds, and only two words at a time, maybe the four year old will communicate on my behalf to the eight month old?

People speaking to me either whisper or begin pantomiming things back to me. The grocery store clerk mouthed silently, "IS PLASTIC OK?", eyebrows raised, mouth wide, pointing to the bags in a motion that involved his whole arm and upper torso. Did he think I was deaf? I was making great use of my Sign Language for Babies knowledge to talk to Zack while waiting in line. But, that still doesn't make sense because if I can read lips, surely his response was the equivalent of shouting English to a Spanish speaker.

I was briefly watching four young children in a hotel lobby yesterday while feeding my younger son his solid food. A recipe for disaster, you say? I whispered instructions to them and a complete round of whispered crawl-tag-hide-and-seek ensued. It was the quietest play I've ever seen. They are usually pretty well behaved, but there would have been no way I could have instructed them to whisper the whole time and thought they would be able to stick to it.

The phone is the biggest challenge. I need it. I want it. I apparently cause fiascoes without it.

Today I was supposed to pick up a Pack and Play for use during my sister and nephew's visit from a handy spot at our church. The owner of the item was going to be across the street anyway, so he left it there for me. I told my husband this morning that I would go and get it when I picked up Zack from school. When I arrived there was no Pack and Play. I found the janitor to ask (with great whispering and gesturing) him if he had moved it, but he hadn't. I went back to the car to call the owner (maybe he left it elsewhere?) and discovered I had forgotten my phone. ARGH. I had put in on the charger without setting the charger on my purse (my usual failsafe) because I wasn't all that convinced it was going to be any use to me today anyway. So I lugged the baby across the street and up two flights of stairs to find my friend, who came back with me to look for it. We looked everywhere we could think of. NO Pack and Play. We ended up in the church office asking the bookkeeper if she had seen it and we all sadly concluded that it had been stolen. From a church! Sheesh! At this point I was very late to get Zack from school. I really only had time to run in, nab the item, and head to school, so after the hard target search, I'm late, panicked, guilt-ridden and sweating. I made a hasty and apologetic goodbye and jumped in the car, plotting how I am going to get a Pack and Play for my nephew to sleep in by tonight, and how I'm going to replace the stolen one for my friends. I pull up at school a full fifteen minutes late. They charge by the minute, so that's a $15 late fine. Plus, I'm picturing his teachers standing with the one abandoned preschooler, calling me and not getting me, trying to reassure a crying Zack that his mommy would come soon. I tear into the parking lot, leap out of the car, start to jerk the baby out of his carseat, when what do I see? Zack is standing, holding hands with his grandmother, under a shady tree. I'm a little paralyzed by confusion. Did they call her, failing to reach me? Now my poor mothering has pulled in extended family to compensate! And wait, how did she get here so fast?

I begin to explain how I was at church and got embroiled in a search for a Pack and Play but that it had been stolen when she stops me, confessing she "had tried to help but had messed everything up". SHE had the Pack and Play! The phone log tells the true story.

I had six missed calls, three voicemails and three text messages. She had called me, realized I couldn't talk, and called my husband to see if she could help us by bringing the Pack and Play to our house or to Zack's school. He said Yes, please (uh... what was the point of my telling him this morning not to worry about the Pack and Play, that I would pick it up when I picked up Zack?) and left me a voicemail and a text for me to this effect. She went to the school and when I didn't show up by two o'clock, went in and picked up Zack. She tried to call again but then had a friend of mine text me that she was there and had gotten Zack. After I arrived, I had her call the church and my friend to say that the Pack and Play had not been stolen after all. All the best intentions, and of course my husband DID tell her yes, so certainly not her fault. Whether it's James' fault, well... I COULD make a case, but I won't. Really. Especially since I am the one always harassing James to keep his phone with him.

Stupid lost voice, and stupid me for leaving my phone at home. At least I don't have to buy two Pack and Plays.