Highlights

I'm the kind of girl that likes a theme when writing. You know...introduction, exposition and a conclusion. It makes writing about the daily stuff, the journaling that I said I wanted to do, a little bit harder. Here's some of that daily stuff...

The Chimney Sweep

We had the house inspection that the selling of our house is contingent upon. There were three items of discontent listed on an addendum from our buyers. One was having our chimney cleaned and inspected and doing any repairs necessary to make it safe. I looked around the phone book but knowing nothing about any of the different companies, simply started dialing numbers and leaving messages. It is a rare thing to catch a company on the first try, I realized. I ended up choosing the first company to call me back whose name was S- Chimney and Repair. Remember that. It'll come up again.

Said chimney sweep comes to the house and rings the doorbell. I notice right away that he's not at all comfortable with the customer service chit chat. He avoids eye contact and moseys his way over to my fireplace. After shining a light inside for all of five seconds, he tells me that the entire back panel needs replaced. Of course it does. I ask him how much that generally costs and he doesn't answer. He walks by me, head down, and proceeds to bring in his equipment to clean it out.

Meanwhile, I am on the phone with my sister when the doorbell rings again. The chimney sweep is done, cleaned and loaded up and presents me with the bill for cleaning. Once again, I ask him about the repairs and he literally hems and haws (I thought it was just an expression but those are, indeed, the sounds made during actual hemming and hawing) and walks away. What a painfully awkward man. While my heart goes out to him for whatever phobia he had to face in coming to my house, he might want to change the name of his company.

P.S. I have another company coming Tuesday for the back panel. When I called them they started asking me all sorts of questions about what kind of materials my fireplace is made out of and I just about screamed. Why would I know?!!! My answer of "brick" didn't do it for them. Apparently, it's more complicated than that as I'm sure I'll discover on Tuesday.

A Shout Out

Several months ago, I reamed Sears for their poor customer service. My sister-in-law Bekki told me that bad customer service gets mentioned ten times more often than good customer service. Here's me messing with the math...

Andrea and I decided we needed to do something fun this weekend. I suggested going out for Mexican food to celebrate Cinco de Mayo. Mexican food is a type of food that, in theory, should be easy for Jay to eat. The trick comes in making sure sure the right brands of things are used. Some salsas are gluten free. Some sour creams. Corn tortillas almost always are but, unfortunately, some add food starch which is a big no-no. Jay took on the task of calling the restaurant that we decided on to speak to the manager about having a gluten-free meal. The manager assured Jay that it wouldn't be a problem, put him on hold to talk to the chef, came back and said that he'd be fine. Then he added, "you can have flour, right?"

Later that night at the Outback, the hostess seats us at my all time favorite restaurant set-up...the round table. I love the symmetry. I can sit next to my husband AND my friend. And so can everyone else. It's win/win! We order our food and Jay mentions to the waitress that he needs everything to be gluten-free. She immediately starts nodding because the Outback is Celiac friendly, folks. They totally get that he needs his salad made separately and without croutons. That his steak is cooked on a cleaned grill that hasn't had anything with flour on it. They happily cater to his kind.

Something happened that night, though. I don't know if was the special attention that Jay's meal required or if it was truly a freakish accident (although that sounds extreme when used to describe a lost order at a restaurant) but about 45 minutes after ordering (and I'm just guessing because we really didn't notice. We were completley entertained just talking and drinking our nth soda refill), the manager comes out and sincerely apologizes for having lost our order, announces that our meal is on him and offers us drinks from the bar in the meantime. Jason, always on his toes, asks for free desserts instead. He seemed relieved that we could be so easily appeased.

The night just got better from there. Steak tastes even better when it's free. We gave our waitress a big tip and walked out laughing. If they were trying to retain our loyalty, they did a good job. Even if we were mad at them, with Jay's limited freedom of choice at restaurants, we would have stayed away, at most, a month. Yay for Outback! They get Lucy's Seal of Approval for outstanding customer service.

The Rest of Friday Night

Jason and Andrea got their oldest son, Eli, a Wii for his 12th birthday. I think Jason might love it as much, if not more, than Eli. We went over to their house after dinner and played Wii sports. First, they made Jay a Mii. They have this awesome player-making chip that allows each player to create their animated look alike. Jason and Andrea's really look like them (except Andrea's little person had really big teeth. She doesn't. But she is a happy person) and Jay's guy ended up being eerily similar. He had his square jaw and eye shape. His small nose and light eyebrows.

Jason and Jay played some tennis. I have never been a fan of the whole gaming concept. Having boys, I knew someday it would be a necessary evil to keep them home but I've been hoping to delay the day of joysticks (I know that joystick is an obsolete term...and...that is just a creepy name anyway). I could come around the idea of a Wii, though. It's really interactive. Jay was serving and backhanding and even whiffing.

We all bowled. I was last and after watching the other three score strikes and spares, I thought it must be somewhat easier than bowling in real life. Unfortunately, it caught on to my crazy wrist action the same way a real ball does. I never got an actual gutter ball (which happens frequently in real life...so the Wii still isn't totally true-to-life) but my ball did all the weird swervy things at the end of the lane that it usually does. Really amazing technology. I can't wait to go back for Dance Dance Revolution/Karaoke. Maybe then I can redeem myself from my dismal bowling.

We drove home and I took the twins home. They weren't waiting on the stairs although they were sitting in our darkened living room. I didn't see any major problems right away. So they are really, really strange girls. Strange girls can still babysit, right?

Not if babysitting involves putting on a diaper. The next morning, Henry was so cranky and it took me awhile to discover why. His diaper was off and around one leg. Heaven help these twins. Someday, they might get married and have kids and maybe, just maybe, they will have figured it out by then. I consider my hiring them an act of benevolence toward their future children. Maybe they can wear secure diapers.

A Reminder

I've always wanted a big family. I grew up in one. Jay grew up in one. I'm a fan of the large family.

Then I had Seth. I get so sick when I'm pregnant. Not as bad as some. I've never needed to go to the hospital for IV hydration and I have never needed bed rest. There are definitely women who have it way worse. But that doesn't change the fact that I am a miserable person for those nine months and my esophagus is so torn up that I often throw up blood.

After Seth was about one, I had kind of forgotten how much I hated it. By the time we got pregnant with Sammy, I was ecstatic once again to be pregnant. But then....oh yeah. I hate it. I changed my tune from "We'll just take whatever we can get" after Seth was born to "We're done" after Henry.

Time makes everything rosy, however. Even the memory of throwing up isn't as awful as the actual violent discharge of digested food from the mouth. Henry is at an age when my memory fades and I start to think, "I could do it again. It's not so bad. It's mind over matter. I won't gain 50 pounds this time."

Yesterday, I got a stomach bug. Severe retching and bed by 6:30. With each involuntary spasm of my stomach, my brain screamed, "Remember this! Remember!"



O.K....so still not very journal like. But it was so much more fun for me to write. Sorry:)