The guilty me blog.

Recently at work a co-worker had a baby, to say things were not prepared for her three-month leave is an understatement on par with saying that Wookies can get a little testy.  I’ve been shipped out to our furthest location in another town on Mondays, half a day on Wednesday and every other Friday morning.  This has been rather inconvenient to me and my normal work load.  Factor in the giant stack of new patient work I’m getting from anther clinic and I’m over whelmed most days.

 

Yesterday I finally snapped on the women who’s filling in at the other clinic for most of the week.  I realized as I was doing it that it was more my rope snapping than anything but I couldn’t stop myself from being more than a tad snippy with her.  She’s a genuinely nice person who’s over her head with the work but I just had found the place of no return when I took a call after painstakingly telling her how something worked several times over two weeks.  I feel guilty and I’ll probably leave her a boat load of Breakfast Cookies on Monday.

 

I haven’t been spending enough time with Kyle and I spent too much money.  I want to eat every unhealthy food that I can find and stop working out to become a giant lazy mass of nothing on my couch.  I want a maid.

 

In short, I have wife/mommy guilt.  We can never do enough, save enough, love enough or clean enough to make that feeling of short coming go away.  Right now Kyle’s watching Mickey Mouse Clubhouse eating breakfast while I type this out.  It’s a quiet moment in a day where I spend a good deal of time chasing a whirling dervish though my home.  I know that I should be in there with him, eating breakfast with the TV off.

 

I’d love it if I could close this random post off with a happy paragraph about how I’ve learned to cope and have become all touchy feely Wonder Mom and Super Wife but I doubt that person is out there.  And if she did the other mom’s will find her and force feed her sugar cookies and full sugared soda.

 

Total excitement melt down.

It’s been mentioned here before, but due to my inability to actually read I ordered an HD receiver not an HD/DVR receiver when I signed us up for DirecTV on accident.  I need to say this again though, you do not know how damn much you miss having a DVR until it’s gonna run you $200 to get a new one.

You see for reasons that are still cloudy to me, I have to pay a fee up front for equipment and a lease fee monthly.  I’m sure that there is an explanation for this if I bothered to ask but so far I’ve forgotten to do so during each of my phone calls to DirecTV.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m not sorry I told Time Warner to eat a giant bowl of dog doo, but I am very sad that AT&T U-Verse told us they couldn’t set us up.  In fact, I may call them again and tell them what happened with their contractor because I’ve talked to an installer who works for AT&T it’s self and he told me that without a doubt that installer was being lazy, he could have installed us.

But that’s not what this was supposed to be about, it’s about the new season on SyFy starts next week.  Warehouse 13 on Tuesday, then I roll into Friday with Eureka and I’m thinking of checking out Haven after, it looks interesting.  The rub is, I have a conflict on Tuesday between Warehouse 13 and Deadliest Catch.  Before it wasn’t an issue with a DVR but now that we don’t have one I have to revert and use something called a “VCR”.  I guess it uses a tape technology to record shows.  Problem is, I need Jason to actually set the one working VCR up in the bedroom so it can record.  Currently it’s in Kyle’s room.

We actually have three VCR’s in our place only works though.  The one in the master bedroom was broken when Jason tripped and shoved it from on top of the TV to the floor, the one in the living room died when Kyle shoved something into it, what we don’t know.  What we do know is that it’s blinking at us and nothing we do stops it.  And that the DVD player no longer works in it either.  I’m not sure why it’s still in the living room other than maybe we need a blinking light to make our entertainment center look all scary and stuff.

So, we need to buy a VHS tape and I need to keep reminding Jason that my life will end in tears and a panic attack if I’m forced to choose between The Time Bandit and Eddie Mac.

I remembered!

When I got home I remembered what I had wanted to rant about earlier today.   See, when I got home I saw Kyle and his smile turned that light bulb back on.  Why did he do that?   Because I’m tired of people asking me why he looks the way he does.

My wonderful husband is Korean, I am not.  From the time he was born people have seen us and asked the question, “why doesn’t he look more Asian?”  Well. hell if I know.  Why not ask an actual doctor that.  Or was that your veiled way of asking me if Kyle is Jason’s son.

I find it so insulting that people feel it’s ok to even ask me that but some people press on further, asking me if they switched babies or something .  Um, no, they did not.  If you’d actually take the time to look a bit harder you’d see that Kyle has his daddy’s eyes and his daddy’s nose.  He’s also got Jason’s sense of humor and bull headed stubbornness.

See people, genetics are funny things.  It’s why two parents who have dark hair have a blond baby, me in case you’re wondering.  I then have to go on to explain that because Jason was adopted we simply don’t know the scope of his heritage and Kyle could reflect any number of his daddy’s biological family members.

I shouldn’t have to offer explanations but dammit, when you mix genes you never know what you’re going to get.  I find it completely out of bounds that people should even feel ok asking these questions much less deal with the implied racism some  ask them with.  ”Why isn’t he more slanty eyed?  Why isn’t his skin more yellow.”

I get it, really I do.  In theory the Korean genes should be the dominate ones but Mother Nature can really toss a curve ball down the line sometimes.  How many times have we read a story about twins being born, one white and one black.  Recessive genes, Wiki it.

Kyle, like all babies and children, is a reflection of  his parents genetic make up.  From my temper to Jason’s toes and my dad’s hairline.  We all come from somewhere and we’ve all got surprises in the DNA soup that makes us who we are.  I bet if you sat and thought about it you could come up with a list of genetic things that can pop up out of, seemingly, no where.

So, no, it doesn’t bother me Kyle doesn’t ‘look’ like Jason, because he does.  He just doesn’t look as Korean as some people think he should.

This is what’s wrong with us

There was a horrific murder in Milwaukee recently.  A mother and her two sons, 3 and 4, were murdered then their apartment set on fire.  When the story first broke the roommate and a 6 week old baby were missing.  The newborn was found on church steps in his car seat.  The missing roommate?  Dead.

The roommate, as it turns out, master minded the murder of these three and with the help of two men slaughtered two innocent children.  Over what?  She was mad the women had had a baby, the 6 week old, with a man she still loved.  The guys helped for a paltry $800 they stole.  When her photo was being run on the news they got scared and killed her to try and cover their own asses.

The murders were violent and I’m not able to read the whole account much less retell it without crying uncontrollably.  She set up and helped murder two innocent children because she didn’t like their mother.  They knew her, trusted her and she participated in their murders.  She did not stand on the side lines while her scum helpers did the deed, no she actively murdered two babies.  She was beyond scum, beyond evil.  What she was I have no words for.  Her cohorts did the world a favor, though I wish they’d drawn her murder out so her last moments were as terror filled as the babies were.  She died too easily.

Her family ran a glowing obituary calling her “Betty Boop” and how she was the loving aunt and daughter.  This is what’s wrong with our society.  This thing, in my eyes she’s below human, murdered a women and two of her children over a guy.  As this happened in a not great part of town I’m going to go out on a limb here and state he was probably not a great catch anyway.  She was cruel and from what I’ve read, seemed to enjoy the terror she was inflicting on her victims.  And here her family is posting an obituary talking about her as if she was a random victim of an accident or an illness.

We have no shame any longer.  The mother of Dylan Klebold wrote an amazing book in which she talks about her grief and shame warring with each other.  She spoke of how she grieved for her son but would feel guilt over doing so given what he’d done.   This family shows no shame over their “loving” daughters actions.  No, they post a death notice that is glowing.

I don’t deny a family grieves, and I wouldn’t say they shouldn’t.  I’m sure that there were things about this women that they loved and will miss.  I’m sure they hurt, but where is their shame for the wreckage their loved one left behind?
Without shame we have no rules about what is right and what is wrong.  If we remove shame from everything there is no reason to avoid actions.  I’m not implying that we should shame single moms, people with mental illness or even people who have made mistakes.  But people who feel some sort of remorse for bad choices also feel shame over them.  Remorse and shame go hand in hand.  Shame is a natural negative consequence of an action and we need to stop acting as if all shame is bad shame and we shouldn’t feel it.  Maybe if we had two baby boys would still be alive.

I got hopeful for nothing…Then again, maybe not

I can’t add much more than the email response I got from DirecTV to my email to them after Rita contacted me.  So instead, I’ll just share them and let you decide.

Customer (Dana X ) – 02/24/2010 07:41 PM
Dear Rita S,
First, thank you so much for taking the time tonight to follow up on my
problems. Believe me when I say, I realize that one or two bad reps can
break the reputation of an otherwise great company.

I generally don’t take my displeasure with companies public, much
less actively make others aware of my issues. I was very sad it came to
having to do that, but in the past when I’ve attempted to resolve issues on
the phone, well my blog post pretty much sums up how they went.
As I stated in my blog, I did make a miscalculation when I placed the order
to be installed on a day we had plans for the evening,
I absolutely take responsibility for that. The back of my over all
complaint wasn’t that the installer was late, it was the way it was followed
up on over the course of three phone calls. We did, eventually, receive the
credit for our account though, so in the end the problem did get a
resolution.

The problem with the credit never being issued to my checking account,
though, is a different issue altogether. My bank has already taken the
money back through their dispute resolution department however; so DirecTV
issuing another one would actually result in me being refunded twice, so
please do not refund it again. They have also refunded me the $112 in over
draft fees as well, so again, another credit would be dishonest for me to
accept.

Again, as I stated in my blog, I mistakenly ordered the equipment. After
the first phone call I was ok with waiting for the authorization to fall off
of my account because I was the responsible party. The problem was that the
actual equipment was never canceled, at least according to the last rep I
spoke with, just the instillation. Because the equipment order was still
out there a credit was never processed.

As I stated in my two follow up phone calls, if I had been told at any time
the charge would actually processes and I needed to wait 3-5 days I would
have adjusted my spending to compensate, if I had been told after the second
call that the equipment hadn’t been canceled, my bank would not have had to
become involved. And if either one of the reps had properly canceled the
order this would not have become an issue to start with.

However; if DirecTV would consider switching my HD receiver for a DVR it
would be appreciated.

Again, thank you for your time, I truly do want to come away with a positive
customer service experience with DirecTV.
Best wishes,
Dana X.

Discussion Thread
—————————————————————
Response (Jason H ID W2773) – 02/26/2010 11:27 AM
Dear Mrs. X,

Thank you for writing back. Your email was forwarded to me in order to further assist you with your DIRECTV account.

As we had mentioned in our previous email, this matter was forwarded to DIRECTV Management on February 24th. After a thorough review, it was confirmed that when your equipment order was cancelled on the 24th, it automatically triggered a refund to your bank account on the 27th. However, your bank also issued a refund to your account and disputed the charge with us. This resulted in 2 credits to your bank account for $104.54, and it has been determined that you should contact your bank and ask them if and when the credit they applied due to the dispute will be reversed.

Thank you again for writing. I hope this information is helpful.

Sincerely,

Jay H.
W2773
DIRECTV Resolution Specialist

Really, that was their response.  A request for money back that I let them know I did not need any longer.  Not only that, a request for money back they haven’t actually issued.  On a credit on an order I canceled on the 7th that they finally got around to fixing on the 24th after I blogged about it.

Rita called while I was putting Kyle down.  Apparently the email is wrong and my bank shouldn’t issue the credit to me and everything is square.  So..fingers crossed.  BTW, Rita was great at trying to make sure that I walked away with a good experience.  So thanks Rita!

Clean up

There are far too many links in my bookmarks that I never use.  I always save websites or pages thinking I’ll use them one day. But one day never comes and I get to search though a list to find the few I want.

It’s not that is difficult to find the ones I want but I often forget the ones I have.  Like the links on this blog, some of the sites I just am not that into anymore yet I’m pimping them out to my three readers.  Sometimes I’ll see a gem and remember why I took the time to bookmark them and file them away, because it’s labor intensive to do so right?  But I’ll click on the link and enjoy the site or page a bit then forget it’s even there.

I have to confess, my computer and computer desk are a mess.  No matter what I do to try to keep them in order cat hair, office supplies, programs and games all end up congregating around them.  I keep thinking to myself “I will PURGE THEM ALL!” but then I take an hour after Kyle falls asleep to watch some Hero’s or NCIS or Mythbusters and by the time I drag myself here I’m tired, Marble cat is demanding my attention and Jason has left a plate and cup on the desk and I just don’t want to spend the time to clean up what will become a mess again.

I’ll be even more honest, clutter makes me crazy.  After looking at it for weeks I’ll get antsy and angry and irrational.  I’ll want to throw everything out yet keep it because it’s not all mine.  I want to remove games from the desktop and disk clean up but I just don’t.  It’s like clutter is not only taking over my mind but my actions.

See, like after I saw all the links and though “I gotta get rid of this crap so I can make room for cooler crap” I came here and posted a blog on crap.

Ok, instead of whining about it how about I run the disk clean?  Tonight, the computer, tomorrow the desk!

You gotta love family.

Jason and his mother are going out of town for a wedding on the 29th and coming home on the 3rd.  J’s mom is very excited to spend some time alone with her adult son.  Jason and I have been together a decade now and out of our parents home to what now adds up to the majority of our adult lives.  Because she was finishing school my sister in law lived at home longer and let’s face it, mom’s and daughters tend to be closer.  J’s also really looking forward to the trip, it’s been almost 6 years since we went anywhere fun and he really needs the break.

But with him being gone there is a small problem.  I work 8 to 4 every weekday and my mom watches Kyle.  Because of his schedule J takes Kyle to my mom’s at either 9am or noon and he also has Friday’s off.  Him being gone will mean my mom has to watch Kyle from 7:30 until 4:30ish and this is going to be hard on her.  So I asked one of my nieces, Nichole, to stay with me that week and watch Kyle in the morning then take him to grandma’s in the afternoon so she could hang out.  She’s all for it, I start planning in my head, I took the Friday J will be gone off so we’ll make home-made-from-scrach cinnomon rolls.  I’ll let her play in my cloest and even try on my wedding dress.

That was until I sent a txt message to my sister.  Her response was very much a meh.  She pointed out it was the day after the twins birthday, I have no earthly idea what that has to do with the price of tea in China but ok.  Nicky might want to stay home.  No, she wants to stay with me.  Most likely because we give her the freedom to be 15 while my sister is like a prison warden.  Hell she barley let’s the kids walk across the street to the school playground.

So my dad calls my sister to find out when they are swapping kids, mom and dad take one of the three on a rotating basis over the summer.  He also mentions the week Jason will be gone because if she won’t let one of the kids stay mom will have to work something out.  My sister blows a gasket.  She’s yelling at my dad that they are her kids  and she might want them to be home and Nichole has work to do.  Tell me, how much work can a girl who’s spent the better part of three weeks gone from home have to do?  What mess has she created at her home?

My dad is having none of it.  He tells her that they don’t need the kids and that she can keep ‘em all.  Of course my brother in law later called to talk about dropping off Lexi and picking up Nichole.

The most amusing part of all this to me is this.  If we offered to take all three of her kids she wouldn’t bat an eye.  You see it’s all about control with her.  We want the kids, she’s in control.  She’s asked to take Kyle over night on several occasions.  It’s a no go.  She doesn’t respect my no smoking around him rule, she had a Pit Bull.  Now, it’s not the breed I object too in this case.  It’s that Kon is very, very hyper.  Loving as all get out but cannot bowl people over.  He’ll she’s put my ass on the floor a time or two.  And because I feel like if I say sure she’ll twist it and figure she’s doing me some huge favor and I’ll ‘owe’ her.

I was only trying to help my mom because having Kyle that long over that many days will be very hard on her but I’ll figure something else out.  The only person my sister is hurting is her daughter in this.  But she’ll never, ever realize that.

The short work week.

What is it about a short work week that sucks all the life out of you? My Monday and Tuesday have sucked giant orbits of suck.

Work is not fun, home is hectic and my omelet just turned into scrambled eggs.  Oh, and my kid hates me.  He clings to daddy, takes grandma his toys and freaks when I try and pick him up.  I’m like a giant kicking post for him lately.

The cats are spitting up hair balls, I spilled coffee on my bathroom rug.  My blueberry muffins taste flat and I burned my hand with the chicken stock.  There is spilled milk on my bedsheets.  Tell me, is it ok to cry about it now?

I’ve had to say the phrases, “stop touching your penis it’s full of poop” “the cats tail is not food” and “for the love of God let me pick that booger PLEASE.”

I keep forgetting to get coffee, my hair color has gone flat and I’ve gotten one of the few periods you get when you have an IUD.

There is a pimple the size of another head just into my hair line.  Yay.  It’s covered up but if I brush my hair it hurts.

My head hurts again, my body is angry at me and my left eye itches.  The right twitches in sympathy.

The monitor has wavy lines.

Short weeks are teh suxzor.

The advertisment crunch

I visit a lot of websites.  Some daily others a few times a month.  Each is different with different people and topics and a different vibe.  Some I join for the lively debate or others the informational content.  One I go to through the day because I keep up with friends there who cheer each other through life.  The one thing they all have in common is the need for revenue.

There are those that charge a sub to pay the bills and keep ads off the site.  These are usually journaling type sites where you post to a journal and then can post to others.  Generally these are there for us to hang out, meet new people with common lives or goals.  We can lose weight together, get pregnant together, talk about our weddings and our daily lives.  Almost none of them are there to make money.

Then there are those that are attached to stores.  These boards are usually heavy on the content for the product being sold.  Like candle making on a candle making supply website.  Often the boards are just there to let people help each other out with their hobby/business.

But here are the ones that lose people but don’t care.  These boards are maintained by companies who use these boards to sell ads so that they can make money.  The money doesn’t come back to the posters who’s views are what generates the ad money and once they start with one small one then the blow up into bigger and more annoying ads.

Kaboose.com is about the worst I’ve seen yet.  They start off with a few banner ads.  Then they are all along the side and sometimes you get pop ups.  The ads are supposedly tailored to the link you are reading or the cookies on your computer but I’ve never really found that to be the case.  It’s almost always a mis mosh of things that people think you’ll like.  If I’m on a scrapbooking board I get ads for birthday party kits, mini vans and Disney vacations.  The reasoning is that all scrapbookers are SHAM’s who love mini vans, wear Mickey Mouse sweats and die over the chance to throw their 2.5 kids a blow out birthday bash.

Now the newest idea is to take a word, such as groceries, then link that word to an ad.  Isn’t that just lovely.  You’re making money off the fact I’m already visiting the site.  Now you get the added bonus of using my words to link to other ads so you can make even more money.  All the while all you’re doing is pissing me off to the point you make me want to leave your site.

The thing is that these companies don’t care.  There will always be someone else who’ll come along who won’t mind these things.  Who might not know that once the site didn’t have so many ads that your computer slowed down each time you opened a page.  The limits will continue to be pushed because the internet always has new people join.

Frankly I’d rather pay a fee to avoid being told I should buy Tide or Bounce and that I should have a Honda in my garage and how much happier my son would be with Grranimals clothes.  I don’t need to have almost all of my daily life be one large commercial and I’m starting to worry that I won’t be able to keep my son from these companies that scream to his mommy about how much easier life would be if she only bought Glade!

Oh, one last thing.  I notice once the ads start the moderation ramps up.  As if these brain dead troglodytes miss the whole point that they were able to get the price and the advertiser based on the amount of people who log in and view each day and that those people were coming for the train wreak threads.  No, they want to make everything happy and clean so that Huggies won’t be advertised along side a thread with a topic with boob or period or I hate *insert public person’s name*!  Well maybe not the period thing.  Then they could sell me Always.

Damn Darcy

This last summer J and I had a friend staying with us.  The short version of his sad tale is that his mother is insane.  I’m not sure it’s clinically insane but I do know the women is one crayon short in the box.

And so Darcy stayed with us a summer to try and think without her yelling at him in Mandarin at the top of her lungs while she gave the dog thing she has an ice cream cone.  Somehow the PO got the idea in their minds this meant Jason and I moved.  It took us a while to notice the problem because almost all of our mail continued to make it to us.  Our car bills, WE, Time Warner, and bank stuff.  You know the letters you run out to get.
Meanwhile stuff was being sent back.  And suddenly we figured out even that wasn’t consitant.  I have gotten cards that have two envlopes.  One that got to my mail box and the second with the yellow sticker stating we’ve moved and we have no forwarding address.  All the packages our most generous friends sent us for Kyle arrived.
The final shove is two fold.  Our insurance cards have not yet arrived even though I’ve called 5 times and we are now stalking the mail box for Kyle’s birth certificate and his social security card.  As it’s now 6 weeks we are getting nervous.

So I call our insurance company in a good pissed off mood and ream the rep out that yet again our cards are not at our doorstep.  A manager finally called me back today and she finally told me that our cards are being returned saying we don’t live where we live.  Well now I get even more pissed.  Mostly because it took 5 people to tell me something as simple as that.  I mean, really, how hard was it to do that?  Yes it took longer than saying “Well Ma’am, I’ll send them out again.”  Fucking lazy people.  Also I’ve fired reps on the spot who have spoken to me the way I was spoken too over the course of the last 5 months from those people.

So anyway, before I get off on a rant I can’t control, I called the Post Office and the lady there said that it wasn’t anything they’d done on their end.  Someone at the main branch here must have decided that, but she did agree with me that it’s more than weird some stuff is getting through.

So what does this mean?  Jason or I, most likely him, will have to go to the court house to get another birth certificate for Kyle then take that to the social security office to have them reissue his social security card because without these things we can’t get him insured.  Given that right know the kid has cost us almost $8k in medical bills if we had to pay them out of pocket, we are sort of in a bind to make sure it’s done.

So all this mess I lay at Darcy’s door.  In fact blaming Darcy for everything is somewhat of a sport for me and our friends.  I think this one might win the weekly “What was Darcy’s fault” pool.