cranky Friday

11-6-09

It is only 6:30 and I already have a raging headache. This can’t be good. I took a handful of pills so we will see if that helps matters.

Adventures galore last night. I picked up the boys at normal time, so this was 3:30. At 5:30, Ken’s science fair was going on at Pacific in Manhattan Beach. So this meant we had a couple hours to kill. The problem was, I let the boys in on the schedule of events and their treat way too early.

They had been wanting to get in their Wizard of Oz costumes since we got them. I told them they could wear them to the fair, and that we would even stop by my parents house to let them get some candy. I was not thinking this through.

At 3:35 they started itching to get in the costumes. Fine. So I told them to strip down to their skivvies and told them that I would get them in the costumes. I figured I needed to try all this out anyway since for all I knew, it would not work since we had not tried them on, and I thought waiting a few moments before leaving the house with that kind of disaster was not worth it.

Bobby’s fit perfect. I even had him wear my giant heart from my Dax costume. It worked and he looked great. His back was a little open, but he refused to wear pants or a shirt, so his undies were peeking out a bit.

Dax’s costume was huge. It fit, but I did have to bunch it all up in the back. This was ok since it just kind of looked like part of his tail. The head piece was what worried me. It looked way too small. And it was. Luckily, I took a pair of scissors and was able to cut a slit in one part. Once I did that, it fir perfect. I have never seen a cuter lion.

The two of them looked fantastic. They took to running around the house, referring to one another as lion and tin man. The problem was, they kept trying to leave. I explained to them that we were not leaving yet. So then they felt the need to ask me for things. Everything you can think of, they probably asked me. Never you mind that I was still getting stuff together, which included needing to stop Luna from chewing the curtains, defrost bread for their sandwiches, make said sandwiches, get dressed, get spare clothes for them, etc. I asked them to be good for 5 minutes as I ran to brush my hair really quick. I came back to find the back screen punched out. Yeah, they couldn’t last 5 minutes without destroying something.

I yelled. A lot. More than I am proud of. Here I had spent the last 30 minutes getting them all kinds of treats, and this was how they repaid me? I know in hindsight they didn’t do it to piss me off. I was frustrated, though. They both were surprisingly somber and apologetic. I calmed down and all seemed ok at this point.

We went to my parent’s house. On the way, there was a Beatles block on the radio, which we all enjoyed. It seemed as though we were better.

We stopped for a bit, and they ran around, enjoying the attention (and of course M&M’s the got). We then headed out to the fair.

It was bigger than I expected. We checked in on Ken’s room and then we sat outside the classroom at a bench to have our sandwiches. Lucky for me, I remembered to bring them sweatshirts. With their backs exposed with those costumes, they got chilly quickly.

There was a bubble guy there. He had a show. We went to that and sat near the back. He eyed us right away and made a beeline to us. He of course promptly asked where Dorothy was, to which I quickly flashed him my shoes, which were of course my red sparkly shoes. He asked about Toto, to which I showed him Bolt which was peaking out of my bag. He was impressed. So much so that during the awesome bubble show, he got one to be by Bobby and had him pop it with his tin man hat. He also called Bobby up at the end to be able to be in a bubble. He was so excited. The bubble guy originally asked if the lion wanted to, and I pointed out that he was true to his name, which got a laugh.

The only problem with Bobby being on stage was that while he was there, the fire alarm sounded, to which the whole room practically ran out. I stayed put, making sure Bobby could see me at any given moment as the nice bubble guy helped him down the stage. Bobby thought I was going to leave him and promptly burst into tears. Poor kid. Damn fire alarm (which was a false alarm. Apparently the laser show set it off accidentally).

He recovered, thankfully, and we were able to then go to the bug show. Dax was bored out of his skull on this one. Good think Ken came by, and I had him take Dax back to the Lego room with him. Bobby and I stayed and watched. He was entertaining as well. We saw two of them giant cockroaches, named Zack and Cody, two millipedes named Miley and Hannah, and a tarantula named Hagrid. Bobby loved it. He was a little nervous about Hagrid, but, while sitting on my lap, he didn’t mind it being a few inches from his face. Pretty awesome seats on our part, being that it was a packed house. We left when they were having kids eat bugs. Yes, some kind of meal worms. Bobby was bored, I was grossed out, so we headed back to the Lego room.

As we walked the campus, I noted a group of maybe 4 or 5 boys, rough housing, who couldn’t be more than a few years older than Bobby. I found myself getting all super parental, not wanting my son to be at the bottom of a dog pile, worried he wouldn’t be able to handle it. I worried I would go to jail when I had to kick the shit out of a couple of 8 year olds for hitting my baby. Yeah, this is how my mind works. Not saying girls look any easier. I watched them, all in their little trampy outfits and whispering to each other. I did not envy their mothers. On the plus side, I watched all of the parents. All of them seemed great. Really nice, they all socialized with one another, and honestly, it was a cool community. Sure, the kids were, well, kids, but the parents let it happen. I wondered if it was just because they were now used to it, having already gotten the crazy mom out of their system while their kids were the same ages as Bobby and Dax. I also wondered if they ever were my kind of crazy, even though I knew the answer to that. Either way, despite the fear, I had a glimmer of hope that I will be ok.

Oh, as a side note to parents, if you want to get your kids to get special treatment at an event like this, totally dress them in costume. Man, they get gobs of attention. Bobby got to be the bubble because of the Tin Man costume. Dax got gobs of compliments, and I am telling you, had I milked it a bit, he could have had whatever he wanted there. I will have to keep this in mind for the future.

On the way home, the boys got stupid. They were hitting each other which resulted in me taking away the nightly show privileges. They fell deathly silent, which then was ended when Dax tentatively mentioned there were a lot of cars. They both were relieved when I began chatting back with them. It was cute.

At home, though, they dinked around a bit, which annoyed me. They complained a lot in general. Dax had a legit complaint. His chin, which he had scraped a few days earlier, had gotten all irritated and the scab came off from his lion headgear. I got him a bandaid and some ibuprofen, and he was fine.

Bobby tried to pull the same crap he had been doing. Yelling about everything from hungry, mouth hurt, the world was coming to and end. You know, normal kid worries. I finally told him I was done with this routine. I guess my tone made it very clear and he didn’t yell again and in fact slept great through the night. I need to make tonight a fun night. I think I was tyrant mommy last night, but then again, sometimes rules need to be reestablished.

I started watching the documentary of Obama’s election campaign. So far, it is interesting. It is very humanizing to see him like this. I know a guy who was part of the campaign team. He is even briefly in the documentary. Now, I am not close friends at this point, have not been since high school, but still, it is so cool to see this dude I knew well standing with the president.

Wow, talk about all of the sudden uber busy. My problem customer sent me a spreadsheet that may as well be in another language. Some people should not do accounting. LOL! So I guess I need to work on that.

Oh.My.God. That was a giant pain in my ass. Seriously, this customer is a total idiot. Lucky for him, I am brilliant. LOL! I managed to balance it all out and send him what I needed now. What is really funny and stupid on his part is he took all of these credits he had, and applied them to current invoices instead of the super duper old ones that I am looking for. I already told him he needed to have an answer today on them, so we will see. If he doesn’t I am seriously considering a final demand. I know it won’t get approved, but I do know no more orders will be released, plus, I will not let him keep anymore credit on account.

I love it when customers get all uppity with me on stuff that I can’t help them with. I just had one who tells me she left a message for parts this week to get a credit issued for this lost shipment. I point out to her that this really is a part department issue since they are the ones who issue the credit. She of course tries to turn it around on me. She basically tells me she isn’t paying it, as if this is going to get me to jump right on it. Dude, the invoice is barely due, only a couple hundred bucks. I think I can afford to leave it open with a note saying we are waiting on parts department to issue credit. Our parts team was hit the hardest in the layoff, leaving them barely a third of what they were before, with probably higher volume of calls now (no one needs equipment because they have no money, so instead they get parts to fix their current fleet.). This customer knows this, yet still expects us to call her back before anyone else. Yeah, um, not gonna happen. Especially after the pep talk we got at our company meeting in which they basically told us that customer are just gong to have to deal with our lack of personnel and they will not get the same quality of customer service anymore. Yes, that’s right boys and girls, they pretty much told us that if a customer tells us that we used to be able to help them, we can tell them used to is in the past. Awesome. So my customer acts all wounded that I tell her that still, I can’t help her and I drop her into the parts queue. Man, I be she is really going to be pissed when she is on hold for an hour.

I said my happy birthdays much to soon to Sesame Street. Turns out they are not 40 until the 10th. Google has just been celebrating all week long with new logos every day for them. So awesome!!

Attack of the major idiots today in customer land. I swear, they come in packs. Thank goodness the day is almost done. I swear, I am tired of the sob story. Oh, I was out sick for the last 3 weeks and I am the only one here and blah blah blah. Look, buddy, you had the last 3 months to get this cleared up. And in reality, the last 9 months since we did this same shit for you in Jan. Sigh. It really isn’t that bad, I just get annoyed very easily with this particular one.