I'm Rooting For The Texas Rangers Tonight

My husband is from St. Louis. He's a Cardinals fan and still has his Rams season tickets in the obscure hope that they'll someday go to the Super Bowl again and he'll have a chance at tickets. Let's just say that this playoff season has been making him happy.

Me, not so much. Why?

On Tuesday, my husband called me from work. "Soooo just as an FYI, I bought tickets to Game 7 of the World Series. Do you want to go with me?"

Question 1: Wait, back up. Before I answer your question, exactly how much did you pay for your World Series tickets," I asked, knowing that friends of mine had paid over $1,000 per ticket to see a World Series game a few years ago.

"Oh. Well, just the $225 face value (ummm really, "just" $225? I don't pay "just" $225 for just about anything, do you?) because I entered the ticket lottery back before the playoffs started and won rights to World Series tickets. I promise, I just paid face value."

Oh. Because that makes it all better, never mind the fact that he neglected to mention this little detail to me until 48 hours - ok, to be fair, 49 hours - before the game.

"Well, when is the game?" I asked - the first logical question I have before answering whether I want to drive five hours to and from St. Louis. Gah, road trips.

"The game is this Thursday," he responded, as if that were obvious and no big deal.

Ummm, I can't go. It's a school night. And we have two children. In school. Well, one child in school and one child who has no school on Friday, which is worse. And we have Little Miss's conference after school on Thursday. And Mister Man has a Cub Scout meeting Thursday night. And my parents have a board meeting for their neighborhood and I already have to pick Little Miss up from gymnastics at the same time Mister Man needs to be on his way to Cub Scouts. And my husband has classes to teach on Thursday and Friday.


"How exactly are you thinking of going?" I asked, very calmly I might add, just figuring that maybe he forgot these little tidbits of detail.

"Well, flights right now to St. Louis are only $350 per person-" he started before I interrupted and asked if he was joking about paying another $700 to go, knowing that flights are only going to increase by the next night when he'd know if there was even going to be a Game 7.

His next strategy, after realizing that I wasn't going once I listed all the commitments that would prevent - in my mind - both of us from going, was for him to fly down one way himself then take the Mega Bus back. The only "issue" with that was that he'd somehow have to pick up his car at 6:10am from the airport, and the Mega Bus depot is not exactly in the best neighborhood to start. Then he decided he'd drive down - missing the end of the school day but getting other teachers to cover his classes - and then drive back Friday, taking a personal day. Except that since he has no personal days left this school year, it would be an unpaid personal day. Ummm, no. His last plan involved him driving to the game and then turning around after the game and driving home overnight and teaching Friday. As a parent, I would not be happy having my child taught by a teacher that exhausted and not with it, forget the danger of driving overnight on little to no sleep.

Figuring that my husband was a mature and responsible man, I left the choice up to him. And before you start chastising me for not getting it, let me stress that I am a sports fan. I love my baseball (Twins) and football (NU Wildcats and Minnesota Vikings) and hockey (Chicago Blackhawks) and that my loyalties don't waver. I've gone to the Northwestern bowl games - because I was able to plan it out in advance. I'd love to go to a Vikings Super Bowl one day. I'd love to go to a Twins World Series game (don't ask about 1987 or 1991 when I lived in Minnesota and my dad had the opportunity to get tickets but chose not to do so). I chose not to attend a Blackhawks Stanley Cup playoff because the tickets were insanely expensive. At some point, you look at your commitments and your priorities and say "Wow, that would be really cool to do, but unfortunately, I just can't do it this time around and that's a real bummer." Or at least that's what I do.

My husband was going to the game. I was now going to Little Miss's conference by myself - after we'd moved it from the official conference dates because my husband had his own conferences to attend and couldn't make it - before picking up Mister Man to have him do his homework in the car while we headed to Little Miss's gymnastics where I'd pick her up and eat dinner in the car as I took her to his Cub Scout meeting - hoping this wasn't totally against Cub Scout etiquette - and keeping both of them up way past bedtime instead of just him, knowing that we'd be late to his Cub Scout meeting because there's no way to get from one activity to the other in enough time.

Whee.

I held my tongue, however, after suggesting that he put those tickets on StubHub and reap the benefits while watching the game from home (his tickets are selling for well over $1,000). It wasn't taken.

But someone, somewhere likes me. Last night's Game Six was rained out in St. Louis, so it was moved to tonight (the Thursday in the above story) with Game Seven, if necessary, scheduled for Friday.

And yes, my husband is still planning to go. Forget that he has a football game he's supposed to work on Friday night. Forget Mister Man's Tae Kwon Do that coincides with Little Miss's church Faith In. Forget her Daisy meeting that follows immediately that he'll now need to attend, which is always a joy, as I've had to do it last year when he was coaching.

So to be honest? Tonight, I'm rooting for the Rangers. I'm pretty sure that makes me a bad person, but I'm ok with that.

Come enter a very very fast giveaway ending Sunday night for a Freschetta coupon and two sets of earbuds

Please Remove Your Head From Your Nether Regions

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There are times when I am sometimes truly amazed by how inwardly focused are sometimes. That's not to say that there aren't days when I am selfish and unaware of things that are going on around me, but I sure hope that I don't fall into these categories.

Dear Mom At Gymnastics,

I know there aren't great places to view what's going on inside the gym, especially for small children. The row of small windows they provide isn't the easiest to see.

But having your child sit or stand on the very narrow ledge that they built to cover the coat hooks so that no one injures themselves accidentally bumping into them - well, really is that the smartest thing to do?

We won't get into the fact that your child standing there then blocks the view for everyone else in the area.

Or the fact that the gym has requested multiple times that you not place your children on the ledge for safety reasons. Or the fact that the gym now has a notes pasted every (literally) two feet on the windows asking you to keep your children off the ledge.

Please, make sure that your child - who was previously racing up and down the hallway with a lollipop in his mouth - can see his sister on the balance beam while no one else can see. At least you have the justification of not being able to read the sign requesting that your child stay off the ledge because he's blocking it while sitting on the ledge. Oh, wait. There's another one by your left elbow.

sigh

kthnxbai,




Dear Dad In the Carpool Line,

Generally, I feel badly when I'm dropping off the carpool. After all, there is only a ten minute window of six cars at a time dropping off children, and I have four children who have to pile out of my car. They don't always do it as quickly as I'd like, and I feel badly that we're holding up the line.

I don't feel so badly anymore.

Yesterday, I was dropping off the carpool, and after everyone piled out of the car, I noticed that your passenger door was still open. I felt for you - I always worry that the carpool kids will get out of the car and leave me with my door hanging open. It isn't easy to fix. I waited for your to reach over to close it.

And I waited. And waited. And waited.

Finally, I saw movement. It was a girl climbing out of the car to go to school. Uhhhh, you held up the line for four minutes waiting for her to get out of the car? You do realize that with the narrow dropoff lane, no one can get past you until you leave, right?

At least she finally got out of the car - and closed the door behind her!

Or so I thought until I saw you waving at her, while remaining in park. She slowly walked toward the school, and you continued waving. I apologize for the lights flashing at you, but c'mon!

I'm grateful that you started moving forward at least. For the first three feet before you stopped to continue watching her progress toward the school. Again, my apologies for the slight horn honk. Really. But move already! Anyone who wasn't in our group of six now has kids who are late for school because of you.

By the time you left the line and allowed the rest of us to get along with our day, it was six minutes after the start of school. If your daughter needs that much assistance getting into school, might I suggest that you park and walk her in next time?

kthxbai,

Why We Don't Wear Shoes...

I grew up in a house where we always took off our shoes when we first entered the house. I never thought anything of it. It was just something we did, and most of my friends did the same, so it was never an issue. Oh, sure, there were always a few people we had to remind, and a few houses where people told me I didn't have to, but ... it was kinda normal.

Even now, most of my friends take off their shoes inside. (Then again, we have a next door neighbor who wears no shoes at all throughout the neighborhood whenever the thermometer hits 50 degrees, but that's extreme in the other direction!)

Then we have my in-laws. When they visit - and they rarely do - they don't take off their shoes in my house. We ask them to each time. We've bought them slippers to wear in our house. And they still have to be asked each and every time. And then they ignore us and wear their shoes inside anyway.

But that's not the point today.

In their house, they also wear their shoes inside. When we visited in October, they had that thick industrial plastic laid across their living room in a "t" pattern (if only I'd taken a picture of it). They told us their carpet was getting too dirty, and they wanted to protect it.

Be proud of me. I bit my tongue and didn't say a word. I think it's still bruised.

We were there for Thanksgiving, and I realized again what a difference it makes when you wear shoes inside. (Ok, granted, some of this may be due to my mother-in-law's imperfect housekeeping, which explains why my feet sorta stick to the floors when I walk sometimes.

These are my socks after I've worn them in my house all day long:



This photo doesn't do it justice unfortunately (it's worse than it looks), but these are my socks after spending three hours in my in-law's house.



Ewww.

How To Be A Good Guest

I debated writing this. I really did. But it's Thursday now, and I'm still irritated so I'll just get it out of my system now.

Last weekend, we hosted people in my house. It started with my husband inviting up his best friend. Every year, his friend comes up to stay with us for a long weekend and they go to the Cubs/Cards series in August and usually pick up a Sox game, too. That's all well and good, other than me being trapped with the wee ones with no relief when I need a break at the end of the week, but it's just one weekend.

Then my husband realized he could get four tickets to Friday's game. So instead of asking if I wanted to go with a friend of mine, he invited up his brother and his brother's girlfriend for the weekend, too. Ok, fine. His brother is pretty independent, and he'd have a car to go to the casino or whatever he wants to do rather than hanging out with me and the wee ones all day long.

A month or so ago, my in-laws called and said they decided they were coming up, too. They didn't ask if it was ok, just announced they were coming. Nothing against my in-laws, but my husband will be doing three baseball games in three days (with Saturday off), and I'm not really up for entertaining you for two full days since your idea of entertainment is sitting on your rears watching tv and eating. I need to do things. And so do the wee ones.

I resolved to find things for them to do like go to the racetrack one day and maybe visit the children's museum. But my husband decided to get baseball tickets to them to Friday's Cub game which would remove them from my responsibility for the majority of that day and only necessitate entertaining after the wee ones were in bed (while my husband and friend and BIL and gf went to the second game of the day).

They all showed up on Thursday while I was still working (from home). And at 4:30, the questions about when they could go to dinner started. Seriously people, I'm working. The more you bug me about when you can go out to eat, the longer it's going to take me to finish what I need to do. Just go without me, and I'll meet up with you later. I'm totally good with that. Nope, had to wait for me.

Then I saw my FIL with his shoes on. In my house, we don't wear shoes. It keeps the floors and the carpeting much cleaner, and there are a lot of things we all step in that I just don't want in my house. My in-laws, on the other hand, wear their shoes everywhere.

When we visit their house, our feet and/or socks are literally black within a half hour of arriving. And our feet stick to the kitchen floor. We've asked my FIL multiple times on previous visits to please take off his shoes in our house. We even bought him a pair of nice slippers to wear if he didn't want just his socks.

Nope. He won't do it. And my husband wouldn't ask him yet again to take off his shoes. In exchange, my husband promised to steam clean all our carpets after his parents left. It has yet to be done. Ten bucks says he doesn't do it before I call out a carpet cleaning company. But really. Have respect for the way people live their lives in their home when you're a visitor.

On Friday night after they got home from the baseball game, just as I was putting the wee ones to bed mind you, they had to turn the tv on. Except our flipper is a bit complex. You have to hit tv in the upper left then power that doesn't actually say power, then input twice, then the cable button and then you can change channels. Me, I see a flipper with 50 (I did just count btw) buttons, I'll wait for my host to turn it on for me.

Not the FIL. He pressed buttons until it was a screen I'd never seen before. When I came down from putting the wee ones to bed, he was still standing there pushing buttons. I gently took it from him and tried to figure out what he'd done. He commenced in providing me with suggestions of what to do. Thanks, I can handle it. I fixed the tv (yay me!) and handed him back the remote while I went upstairs to tend to a wee one asking for water.

And the tv blasted on. And I do mean blasted. As I was giving Mister Man his drink of water, he told me unsolicited that it was too loud for him to sleep. I trooped down the stairs and asked if they could possible turn the tv down a little bit (we have the same issue when we stay in their house with paper thin walls and their tv blasts 24 hours a day and the wee ones can't sleep). He told me that if he turned it down he wouldn't be able to hear anything, so they huffed off into the basement. I then turned it down from 23 down to my normal listening pleasure of 4 so that I wouldn't forget when I turned the tv on the next time.

I also spent the entire weekend walking around the house putting down toilet lids. I never realized how often people go to the bathroom until this weekend. We put the toilet lids down for two reasons. Ok, three. First, we have small children, and I don't want them to have access to potty water. Second, we have cats, and I've seen them access potty water when the lids are left up. Third, I grew up with them down and to me it just looks nicer.

We've also asked people to put them down. I get that it's hard sometimes to remember and change a habit, but don't you eventually notice that the lids are always down when you come into a bathroom? Really, we even got the self closing lids on our toilets so they won't slam when you close them, I swear.

We also recycle in our house. I eventually got tired of picking through the garbage after people and gave up. Apparently southern Illinois doesn't recycle. We both repeatedly asked our guests to just put recycling items on the island and we'd take care of it later, but no such luck. That's just more educational to me than really annoying because I just can't conceive of not recycling, but it makes sense when I think about how hard it is even now for my husband to remember to put things in the recycling bin.

Oh, and if you really want to tick me off, when you visit, be sure to bring lots of your own pop and snacks because we don't have enough in our house. Granted, we don't generally eat or drink those things and so never have them in our house, but I buy them when I know you're coming. You don't have to insult my hostessing buy bringing your own goodies.

But you can really send me over the top if you open up my fridge to put your 38 (I counted when they were gone on Friday) cans of pop in my fridge and promptly announce that I need to buy a second fridge for when I have so many people visiting. I'm sorry, what? I need to spend how much money on an appliance that will never be used except the one or maybe two times a year you retired people deign to visit us? And you really have to put all your pop in the fridge at one time? Can't you put more in as you drink some of it?

Really, I'm happy to make room in my fridge for your stuff. Just ask me. But don't announce (and mean it) that I need to buy a new fridge. And for the record, it took me three minutes to rearrange and then get all their cans into the "full" fridge. Ha!

The best part was Friday afternoon when my husband called me to let me know that my SIL had decided to drive up on Saturday with our neice, too. Wait, what? Because having five people visiting at once in my house wasn't enough? Now you want to add two more uninvited (but still family) guests? Who need places to sleep and food to eat? Okie-dokie! At least that SIL and neice interact with the wee ones and have fun with them, although Little Miss is the shameless favorite, which is sort of hard on Mister Man who can recognize it now.

Fortunately, we had two birthday parties to go to on Saturday, so I had to leave the house at 10am and didn't get home until almost 3:30 with the wee ones. My in-laws declined Arlington because "we've been to the race track once before." Good to know we can't repeat tourist attractions! Instead, they all trooped to Costco and oohed and ahhed over the items in the store and ate them out of samples. And bought the blueberry pomegranate jelly I have that they apparently really liked.

The good news though is that this is the first visit where my FIL hasn't plopped himself down in front of my computer within five minutes of arriving. He's convinced that it needs fixing, and he adds programs and "cleans things up" without asking every time. And every time after he leaves, I have to reinstall Excel because something he does deletes it. This time, my husband must have said something because he showed up with two CDs of programs but so far as I know never turned on the computer!

I felt bad because by 9:45am on Sunday, they were on the road. I did and said nothing to encourage this. But my FIL is someone who hates to get home late. He wants to be on the road and where he's going, so it wasn't me. This, by the way, is why we didn't plan Little Miss's birthday party for last weekend. My in-laws have literally left to go back home a half hour into her birthday party before. As in walking up to me and hugging me good-bye as I'm trying to entertain 30 two year olds. When they had planned to leave the next morning.

I'm going to get up from my couch now. My therapy session is over, and I feel much better. I almost don't even want to post this, but I put so much effort into it, I may as well, right? And I'll be good until the family reunion somewhere down near St Louis on October 6.

Magneto's Daughter

Quick reminder that tomorrow (Wednesday) is your last chance to enter my pay it forward contest for a fabulous mystery prize. Check out the prize I won, too! I've been rather enjoying my noodle soup lunches the past several days!

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I have some sort of special force field around me. I swear I do.

Watches never last more than a year or so before they conk out. I've given up on the nice expensive fancy ones. They last no longer than the $12.99 cheap-o's at Target.

I have the same problem with laptops.

I'm nice to my laptops, I swear. I don't drop them. I don't spill things into them. I don't expose them to excessively high or low temperatures. I don't let the wee ones touch them. I don't download programs or do any other funky things that we're admonished not to do to keep our computers safe. In fact, I'm even responsible enough to use the laptop cable when at work (picture a bicycle lock but for a computer).

But they just flat out don't like me back.

When I was a management consultant, I went through over 13 computers in the course of just over three years. Granted, travel can be a little hard on laptops, but I protected mine adequately, and I more than outpaced anyone else in the need for laptop replacements.

My first day at work for consulting, I picked up my laptop and flew out to the orientation. When I had a chance to turn on the laptop that evening, it was dead. It never worked, and laptop number two was shipped to me.

I don't remember all the other reasons I lost my laptop, but a few stick out in my mind. One laptop would get stuck opening a Microsoft Office program and couldn't be turned off without removing the battery. The tech guys never could figure out that one.

My all time favorite though was when my laptop started making a high pitched whine all of a sudden. I picked up the phone and called the tech guy and put the phone on speaker. I was told to RUN, not walk down to the tech area with my laptop. Apparently, that's the sound when a hard drive is about to go.

Working at the company I work at now, I've managed to slow down the laptop merry go round. But it hasn't stopped entirely.

The control key at the bottom left of my keyboard is missing, and I still don't know where it went.

And a few months ago -- while working at home, mind you -- my power cord simply stopped working. Lucky for me, I'd recently gotten a new work at home kit that includes a power cord. I swapped it out, and the problem was somewhat fixed. Oh, and yes, my laptop was less than a year old at the time.

When I went into the office next, I called in a ticket to our tech support (don't get me started on my longing for the days when I could just call up my guys and have them fix the problem). They swapped out my broken power cord for a new one.

Shortly after that, I realized that my battery had stopped charging. I tried three different power cords, but none of them worked to charge my battery. I realized this, of course, when the battery was so low that jiggling the power cord shut down my computer. You don't want to know how many times I accidentally jiggled it.

The next time I was in the office, I called in a ticket for the new problem. Some nice tech person came up and agreed that my battery was not charging. And told me to order a new one. My lovely admin did this for me (as I can't figure out our ordering system to save my life), but such things can only be shipped to the office and not home. I had to wait for the next time I was in the office to pick up my battery.

When I put in the new battery, I called our tech folks on an entirely different issue. I'd started getting an error message that my power cord was not a recognized power source etc etc whenever I started up my computer. Oh and when trying to turn my computer on, it started shouting at me and wouldn't go past the first screen.

The nice tech lady came up to help, but my problem couldn't be duplicated, of course -- the screaming part at least. She also tried to fix my power cord error message, but someone who configured my computer used a non-standard admin password, so she couldn't get in. Whee! She also confirmed that my first battery was dead as a doornail and took it away to recycle.

By the end of the day, I realized the new battery was not charging, and that I had a larger issue. I called again for a new ticket and explained that I had a problem and was going to be leaving in two hours and not back for another week.

No one called me back. I got an email the next day saying my ticket had been resolved. Interesting, since no one had called or talked to me. When I called the 800 number to find out why my ticket was closed, I was told that they had closed it because I would be out of the office for a week and they can't keep tickets open for more than 24 hours or they get dinged. Uh-huh.

When I was in the office next, I called in my ticket at 7:15am. Someone called me back at 4:20 when I was not near my phone. When I called them back, they didn't answer, and no one called me back before I left that day.

Surprise surprise, when I talked to them on Monday, they gave me the same 24 hour runaround and told me to call him when I got in that Thursday as he'd print out my ticket and have it waiting on his desk. Thursday rolled around, I called at 7:10am and no return call.

I realized there was no return call around 3:30 when I had a chance to take a breath. I called in a new ticket. No one responded that day. Let's just say that I started to get a little frustrated.

When I called again on Monday, we agreed that it was probably a bad system board. However, they had to verify it when I was next in the office and wouldn't order a new system board without doing so.

Yep, I called again that Thursday (this would be last week) and got no response. At 3:30, I called a different person in the tech group I know to see if she could help me and got no response from her either. I opened a new ticket, but it was too late in the day to get a response from anyone before I left.

At this point, you can imagine that my hackles are up. Unfortunately our tech group does not report into our division but is instead its own business unit and therefore the responsibilities don't always align with our interests.

I decided to go into the office on Monday, knowing that even if someone were to address my problem, I'd still have to wait for the new system board to be ordered and shipped so the real fix isn't same day.

And yes, I've been very careful with that power cord! One jiggle, and I've again lost whatever I'm doing.

My day at the office yesterday:
7:02am I called in a ticket and stressed that this needed to be addressed and has been going on for weeks and that I'll be out of the office again after that day.
7:08am (Gotta love those hold times!) I called and left a message for the first tech guy with the new ticket number, stressing that I am in the office solely for this purpose and need to talk to someone that day.
10:00am Confirmed with my boss that he'll contact higher ups if he can find any if I don't hear from anyone by 11.
11:00am Sent an email to my boss detailing the issue, including all ticket numbers
11:30am Called the 800 number again to check on the status of my ticket and reaffirm the need to have this addressed in the next couple hours. I also found out that my ticket had been looked at and by which tech guy.
11:32am Called new tech guy who apparently is working on my ticket and leave him a voicemail.
1:28pm Leave message with new tech guy explaining that I'm headed into meetings for essentially the rest of the day and need to have him call me ASAP.
3:11pm Voicemail is left for me by original tech guy (not the one assigned per the 800 number people) telling me he was working on my ticket.
4:23pm Step out of meetings, pick up voicemail and call tech guy. Leave message for tech guy and ensure I do not move more than three feet from the phone.
4:38pm See the tech guy's name popping up on my phone and do a little dance.

In my four minute conversation with said tech guy, I review the history of my issues. He confirms that they've changed out the power cord and the battery. His diagnosis? A bad system board. He's going to order me a new one, and it'll take a few days for it to arrive.

You'd all be very proud of me. I did not blow a gasket after trying to deal with this for four weeks and having people tell me (including this guy) that they need to work on my computer first, that I have to be in the office for them to resolve it, etc., and then have them tell me that I was right in the first place and that they don't need to see my computer. And that I therefore have wasted four weeks and came into the office for absolutely no reason that day. Meaning being awakened at 5:30am after having caffeine issues that night and getting little sleep instead of waking up at 7:15am.

Instead, I politely asked if the board would be at the office by Thursday. He wasn't sure, and I very politely and very firmly explained the necessity of it being in by Thursday, as I wouldn't be in the office again until the following Thursday. He's going to do his best. I have little faith.

And in the meantime, I'm using superglue to ensure my power cord remains in my laptop. Think they'll have a problem with that?

And anyone who's considered going back to work because there are fewer irritations and you have more control over things... think twice! Or just make sure you keep your electronic devices away from me. You don't want to know the stupid iPod issues I'm having lately. Suffice it to say that I can restart my iPod from a frozen state without looking while running 6mph on a treadmill. That isn't exactly a skill I was hoping to hone.