Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Boo

So first my Yahoo email address got hacked. Highly embarrassing, and many apologies to anyone who has had any email contact with me whatsoever.

Now in the midst of this past week of single parenting with H out of town, I come down with yet again The Cough That Won't Quit. I was checking out at a store this morning and could hardly get a breath for the coughing. The poor clerk was sympathetic, but I have visions of her sanitizing everything as soon as I walked out the door.

Sigh.

This week has been hard. I'm off to hug my pillow and fantasize about ghost cupcakes landing on my doorstep.

Monday, October 19, 2009

The Complaint Department

So we've been doing this potty-training thing, and it's going swimmingly during the daytime. We're still working on the whole dry at night thing, and so I popped a Pull-up on Daniel the other evening before getting his PJs on. He proceeded to get a rather odd look on his face, and start itching at first one leg and then the other. I finally peeked, only to see strips of what looked almost like packing tape on the leg elastics of the Pull-up.

Huh? And I've actually pulled two out of this package with the same problem. Where in the past, I might have simply thrown away defective product I am going to sit down and write a (nicely worded) complaint email to Huggies/Kimberly-Clark.

The Internet is a great tool for this. Where in the past, the complaint process could be laborious and time-consuming Internet communication greatly shortens the distance between company and consumer. I've had two instances over the past several years, both food-related, where I felt a complaint was in order. I bought a tub of margarine once, only after a knife-full or two I discovered a hollowed out air bubble in the center. Enough of the margarine was gone, that I felt I had not gotten what I paid for. In another case I bought some cookies-n-cream ice cream. Got it home, to find two tiny cookie bits in a sea of vanilla. Again, nothing wrong with the ice cream - but certainly not what I'd paid for. Both times, after inquiring emails to the companies, I received apologies and coupons for free product. Over and above that, I had the feeling of being heard and certainly a stronger inclination to give these companies' products another try.

I'm off to start writing.

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

From the too cute files...

Daniel gets into a lot of play-acting: superheroes of all kinds, firemen, policemen. A park near us put in loads of new play structures recently, one of which is shaped like a fire truck. The whole area is peppered with bells that the kids can ring by stomping on them. He spent a good portion of our afternoon there yesterday stomping and ringing and yelling "Fire!" and then racing for the fire truck.

After watching some cop shows with Daddy, Daniel started talking about how he's going to: "Put handcups on you!"

Handcups. It's too cute! I haven't the heart to correct it.