update city...

First and foremost, thank you to everyone who was concerned about Tom.  He left Sunday to drive to his moms.  He did NOT leave empty handed.  It seems that he took Little Man's back pack, all Little Man's school supplies, most of B's socks, Little Man's camera, one of our flashlights and a cell phone.  I. Am. Not. Happy.  I have given him 1 week to return the missing items or have a theft report filed.  Little Man is not happy with me over it but I can honestly say that he can get glad again in the same pants he got mad in on this issue.  I don't care.  Now, Tom's excuse for most of this was: he "forgot" that he had these things in his truck.  Which would all be well and dandy if Little Man and I hadn't called and texted him trying to get ahold of him repeatedly to retrieve our property for more than 24 hours before he left.   I am also not happy with Little Man over this because he knew Tom was leaving so why oh why did he leave his school stuff in the truck?   He will have fun working to replace what he lost.  And have fun re-doing his homework that was already done.  Dang kid.  

Plans for moving are coming right along.  I went today and picked up a few more boxes.  I mostly packed B's room over the weekend.  I have a few more things to pack but it's mostly stuff that he uses every day.  I need to start putting all my snow globes and pictures in boxes.  Won't that be a fun thing to do.  

My daughter had said she was pregnant remember?  When asked how the last Dr's appointment went, she said she "lost" the baby.  I wish I really believed that she had been pregnant in the first place.  She was emotionless about it when I spoke with her and this was supposedly hours after it happened.  I was a wreck when I lost my baby.  Now, we're much different she and I.  So, maybe it wouldn't effect her like it did me.  I don't know.  I do know that when I told Vix; her response was: "I was waiting on her to say that".  When I told my mom; her response was:  "I doubt she was ever pregnant".  Now, don't believe I was so crass to say anything to her.  I would never.  I told her that I was very sorry for her loss.  And if she was pregnant - I really am.  But I have heard the "I'm pregnant" story about 16 times so far.  And she's never had a baby yet.  I know, call me a witch.  But facts are facts.  

B is still home sick.  And whatever it is he's had- he's giving to me.  I'm starting to feel miserable.  Serves me right for taking a drink of his Sonic slush the other day.  

The promised gift card from Sears did arrive.  Surprise!  It was not a hoax.  I am surprised!  I will say that I do appreciate the effort that Brian took to try and make things right with me.  I was really happy with him.  However, so long as Sears wants to charge a $60 trip charge as well as charge me $12/minute to work on my appliances - I'm still done with their repair service.  They charge you the $60 trip charge as well as an hours worth of time even if they're only here for 5 min.  I'm sorry- there are too many other companies that charge by the 1/2 hour or 1/4 hour to waste money paying someone for an hours worth of their time plus the trip charge.  It's double billing.  I will still buy other things from sears- but as far as appliances or anything that might have to be serviced....  Nope!  They lost my business.  What Brian did was to keep my business buying clothes or other items.  He stopped me from never walking into another Sears again.  And he made it right for the money that it cost me to have the rip-off man come out here.  Too bad the repair guy they sent out here wasn't as good a guy as Brian.  They might still be getting all my money instead of losing the better part of it.  

Opening day of baseball season is today.  This takes precedence over anything else that I watch on TV.  I know, Kou- how could I say anything so sacrilegious?  Luckily, both games I want to see today are on during the day.  Within the hour.  So....  Off here to finish doing things like getting dinner pre-made and pretending to be a mom and clean house before the games come on.  Have a good week all!

random musings

What a day!  Today was B's physical therapy day as well as an appointment with his orthopedic.  I'm whipped!  We've had a set-back with his shoulder.  He apparently tried to do too much too soon and irritated the scar tissue.  He has to back off for a few weeks, give it a chance to rest and then he can go back to his throwing program.  We went to watch a few of his old team-mates play in a tournament last weekend.  He told everyone that he doesn't miss playing at all.  I don't know if that's true of if he's just afraid that he'll never play again so he's trying to convince himself.  He might even be afraid of the pain that he went thru.  That needle they stuck in his neck for surgery was huge!  It would be a big loss for him to not be able to play anymore.  He has more knowledge of the game stuck inside his 14 year old brain that most men I know - including ones that coach.  (I still can't believe that my baby is 14!)  As we were sitting there watching his friends, he was calling the pitches that the opposing teams pitcher was throwing as they came out of the pitchers hand.  Yes, he's that good.  And we weren't sitting behind the batter- we were sitting on the side.  I will be very sad if he never plays again.  Watching him mow down batters as a pitcher or throw them out when he was catching was beautiful in my mommy eyes.  And watching him steal home and lead the team in steals knowing that he was the slowest runner on the team was a laugh for me.  That's baseball sense there.  

So, I had an interesting phone call today.  I'm not sure if it's a hoax or not but I'll give you a few details.  I wrote a post last month about Sears Customer service.  My opinions that I gave in that post have not changed.  The guy tried to rip me off.  However, apparently Sears has a whole department of people who check the web looking for the Sears name.  And one of them emailed me on my blog about the post I left.  He requested that I give him a call.  Now, I was at the new place when I got the initial email and honestly- I thought it was someone's idea of a joke.  So, I emailed him back asking they wanted.  Another email arrived with an 800 number to sears.  I finally called it today and spoke to a very nice man named Brian (yes, his real name).  He said that he was the manager of the department and he was very sorry that I had had such a bad experience with the company.  We spoke for a while and he seemed to listen and then he offered me a $75 gift card to Sears for my trouble.  I, of course, accepted.  So, as it stands, he says I should receive my gift card in 12 business days or less.  If it's not a hoax and someone's not pulling my leg and I actually receive the gift card- I'll let y'all know.  Will this be enough for me to call Sears repair again?  Well, I doubt that.  But, it might get me back into Sears to spend money on other things again.  I used to buy all the boys pants there because they had the kids warrantee program that if the kids ripped out their pants before they outgrew them, then Sears would replace them.  Same size, same brand pants - but if the kids ripped them out- you got a new pair.  And my boys were hell on pants!  One time, I got Hurricane a new pair of levi's and he promptly slid down the porch rail the first time he wore them and ripped a 6 inch hole in them.  Sears replaced them.  No questions asked.  I don't know if they still have that program or not but it was great when they did.  I bought all the boys clothes from sears for probably 10 years.  

Well, Good luck to Danny and Michael tonight in American Idol.  I know my idol addict friends and I will be glued to the tv tonight (well, as soon as I get home from taking B to watch another one of his friends play).  Next on my hit list is XBOX company who sent my son's xbox back to us still broken.  Yes, my friends, I sent his 5 month old xbox in for repairs and the company sent it back to us still not working.  They'll be the next people I have fun dealing with.  NOT

Sears Customer Service and the Sit-Com day....

One of my friends told me that my life reminds her of a Sit-Com.  I always thought it was more of a soap opera but I'll buy Sit-Com.  I wish I was as funny as some of the parents in those 1/2 hour episodes.  Of course, when you look back on it- then some of the stuff is funny but at the time.....  Well, lets just say I'm not always a laughing.   Yesterday being one such day.

Monday, my washing machine broke down.  Ok, it's been about long enough.  If I don't see the washing repair man every other year- I start feeling scared.  I mean, when all 4 boys were at home and playing ball- the dirt build up from baseball pants was enough to put the machine on the fritz every year.  So every couple of years feels lucky about now.  So, I requested to be the first appointment of the day.  They told me absolutely no problem there.  No repair man.  No call.  So I tried to call customer service to see what was going on.  14 calls later I got someone who spoke english.  Seriously.  For some reason, Sears outsourced their call center and for 14 calls, I couldn't get anyone who could pronounce my name right or speak well enough for me to understand them or them understand me.  Now I could understand them not being able to pronounce my name if it were a complicated name- multiple syllables.  But I have a single syllable name - along the lines of Smith- and they didn't just mispronounce it- they massacred it.  It was horrible!  On call 14, I finally got transfered to someone in Alabama.  Thank you!  At this point, I had been trying to find out what was going on for 3 hours.  So then we get the rip-off man that Sears sent out.  Who obviously thought I was stupid.  He wanted (and I kid you not) $12 a MINUTE to fix my machine.  It was a $40 part and he wanted $180 in labor for 15 minutes.  But he's steadily trying to convince me to BUY a new machine from sears.  So, for $200 - I told him just fix the darn thing.  It was a rip-off but I needed my machine.  Well, apparently I agreed to getting it fixed too easily because 3 minutes later he had found something else wrong and doubled the bill.  Well, end of that.  Good-bye to the repair man and I'm afraid I wasn't real nice to him as I shooed him out the door.  Because the chances of me paying $500 to get a $300 machine fixed are zip, zero, none.  Besides that, I'm not stupid.  I know my machine was working other than the door latch that he wanted $12/minute to fix.  Meanwhile, on his way out the door- he's still trying to convince me to buy another machine from sears.  Now, does anyone want to guess what the chances of me spending another penny at sears are at this point?  Right.  So, off to Home Depot I went  where I bought another machine, had Ice Cube and Little Man pick it up and it's on it's 4th load.  And sears.....well, they just lost a 25 year customer.  

What helped none of this was that I stayed up too late the night before and in my sleep deprived state.....  and yes you can laugh.....  knocked my blackberry off the counter and it fell into the TOILET.  Yes, my friends, the toilet.  Now, this woke me up quickly but not fast enough to save my poor little crackberry  and I spent the first 15 minutes I was up on the phone to the insurance company getting my phone replaced.   Lucky for me- I pay for the insurance so for a mere $50 deductible- my new phone should arrive today.  Not bad considering that I cracked the screen on my old one last month and was too cheap to replace it.  ;)

And the reason I had to request the Sears man come early- Little Man had to go to court yesterday.  Yes, I had to take my 16 year old to court on a Minor in Possession charge.  Now, you may ask what this is.  This came about when instead of going straight into school one day when his brother dropped him off, he saw a group of his friends and went over to talk.  A teacher driving by said he saw smoke coming out of his mouth.  Well, it was 19 degrees out that morning.  Smoke was coming out of everyones mouth.  So, out of a group of 6 kids (at least 3 of which WERE actually smoking - his brother saw the whole thing) mine was the only one grabbed by the teacher.  The kids actually smoking lit up again as soon as the teacher walked away.  Anyhow, they wrote him a ticket on the spot for minor in "consumption" but when the subpoena came is said minor in "possession".  Well, they searched him on the spot- he was in possession of absolutely NOTHING.  So, we go to court and wait.  They told us to be there at 1:30 so we were there early and of course, the judge was late.  45 minutes late to be exact.  So, when the judge came in he said "is anyone here pleading not guilty" and Little Man raised his hand and out the door we went.  After the judge came in, we were out the door in less than 5 minutes.  UGH.  Of course, now we get to go back again the first week of March but oh well.  It isn't the first minor in possession ticket I've had to fight.  They wrote Ice Cube one once because he had black specks in his teeth.  Teacher said he was dipping.  No dip - no dip cup- possession of nothing but black specks.  What. A. Crock.  

The final sit-com moment of my day (and this one really was sit-com funny) was me sitting on the floor behind the new washer trying to hook it up and I couldn't get the cut-offs to turn all the way off on the water hoses.  Well,  I turned the main cut-off to the house off and got the hot to stop dripping and just stuck the cold in the drain pipe.  So, since the hot wouldn't drip if it was held straight up, I hung it on a hook from a hanger about where my washer and dryer go.  So when we got the new washer and I hook up the cold water, water starts pouring out of the hot water hose which is hanging Above. My. Head.  And it's not hot water coming out.  It's cold.  Cold water POURING down all over me.  So, I'm frantically trying to get the water hooked up to the washer so it quits dumping on me and at this point I'm soaking wet and sitting in a puddle of water.  The perfect ending to a perfect day!  (But I did get it hooked up and got 3 loads done last night).  

Off here to try to help my girlfriend order Cubs tickets.  It's amazing that she tried last year for 5 hours to get in and I got in and got her tickets in 20 minutes ..... from Texas.  Oh well, such is life.