Making a phone call

Here is how my husband makes a phone call. 

He says something like "I'm making a phone call."  Then he goes in a different room or outside and he makes a phone call and he talks to the other person on the phone and he concludes his phone business.  He returns to the house and he's happy because he made a phone call.

Here is how I make a phone call.

I say "I need to make a phone call."

At this point any of the following are possible:
 
I dial the phone, no one answers, I leave a message like this:
"Hi, I'm just calling to see what you wanted to do on Tuesday.  NO!  I don't want you touching that! So, if you could give me a call back when you get a chance.  What!  Why did you do that?  Now he's bleeding!  That would be great."

I dial the phone, the person answers, and I have a conversation like this:
"Hi, what time is the dinner?  Can't you see I'm on the phone!  Wait a minute.  Do you need me to bring anything?  Ahh, really?  On the floor?  Could you send me an email please, I have to go clean the floor before they get hurt."

I call a company with voice recognition software and this happens:

Pleasant lady with superficially always calm voice:  "Please tell me why you are calling today."
Calm me: "Billing address"
Pleasant lady: "Did you say balance?"
Calm, slightly annoyed me: "No."
Pleasant lady: "Please tell me why you are calling today.  You can say, billing, current balance, past balance, or information on new account."
Calm, slightly annoyed, but still hopeful me: "Billing address"
Pleasant lady: "Did you say new account?"
Calm and slightly baffled me: "No."
Pleasant lady:  "Please tell me why you are calling today."
Calm but getting frustrated me: "Billing address."
Pleasant lady: "Did you say Billing?"
Happy me: "YES!"
Pleasant lady: "Your next billing cycle will begin on November twenty-first.  You have a balance of zero dollars.  Would you like to hear this information again?"
Frustrated me: "No."
Pleasant lady: "Is there something else I can help you with?"
Hopeful me: "Change billing address."
Pleasant lady:  "Did you say  "Open charge account"?"
Frustrated me: "No."
Pleasant lady: "Please try again, is there something else I can help you with today?"
Hopeful me: "Representative."
Pleasant lady: "I'm sorry you are having trouble, is there something I can help you with today?"
Frustrated me: "Representative!"
Pleasant lady: "I am having trouble understanding you.  Please try again."
Frustrated but undeterred me: "Representative!"
Pleasant lady: "I can not understand your request, please try again later."  Click.
Grumbling me: "Really!?"
My happy, noisy, helpful one-year-old: "Billing, representative."
Amused me: "At least someone understood me."



I decide to do things his way.  I take the phone into the garage, I make a phone call.  I complete the phone call, having had a lovely conversation, I return to the house.  I find everyone running around with yogurt in their hair.  I don't want to know so I don't even ask.  Everyone takes a bath, I clean the floor.  My husband comes home to find a clean floor and clean children.  He says "Why did they take baths this afternoon?"  I say "I had to make a phone call."

Super Powers

It seems that every few months we get an illness in the house.  I guess it's from the fact that we leave the house and touch things.  I guess we have to keep doing this, although lately I am against it.  This time it was a short but nasty stomach bug.  Every time an illness enters the house we have the same conversation, it goes something like this...

Me: I'm tired.
My husband: Aren't you always tired?
Me: Yes, but now I think I'm ill too.
My husband: Hmm, but can you take care of the little one who is also ill?
Me: Can you help?
My husband: Yes, until there is a mess, I don't have mutant powers to clean up sick messes without also becoming sick.  You are Wonder-Cleaning Woman.
Me: Not the super power I would have chosen if I could have chosen a super power.

Luckily this time there were only two little ones making messes at any given time so it was easier to keep things clean than if three or four had been making the messes.  It also helped a lot that my husband, who was also ill, helped watch the smallest all day so that I could make sure the rest got where they needed to go.  While I was cleaning the house at midnight I thought about some super-powers I would rather have...

1. Elasta-girl, you know you all want this one.  So that when I'm sitting on the couch with a crying child I can still reach the ice pack in the freezer, the band-aides, or my caffeine.

2. Time freezing power.  Imagine how clean I could make the house if they would just stop for a minute or thirty.

3. Teleportation, not necessarily of myself, although that would be cool too, but of stuff.  Imagine you are somewhere and your child says those words "I forgot my..." Poof!! There it is, yeah Mommy!  I'm thinking that would rock.

4. Mind reading.  Limited of course, there are many people that I interact with and I just don't want to know what they are thinking.  My children on the other hand, I want to know what they are thinking before they do something ridiculous.  That way maybe I can do a better job of stopping messes before they occur.

5.  Super-human strength.  I'm thinking of those times when I really only want to make one trip in from the car but I have two sleeping children and four gallons of milk to bring in.  If I had super-human strength I could just make one trip and get in bed so much sooner.

Happy super-power dreaming.  Which one do you want?

A New Way to Shop

Lately I've been using my limited computer time, without a lap baby, to shop.  My husband and I sat down and budgeted our household purchases and noticed that we were spending lots of time, money, and gasoline to purchase everyday items.  I spent about 15 dollars per month just driving to the store to buy things.  This doesn't include my time actually buying them, or the pain and suffering I go through to shop with four children, or the incidentals that I have to buy to keep said children from killing each other.  As we all know, no mother in human history has entered a Target with the intention of purchasing what is on her list and actually walked out with only what is on her list.  It's humanly impossible to do, and if you can do it once, impossible to repeat.  With these considerations in mind I started looking at options for obtaining things that we use frequently without leaving my house.  I'd done this a few years ago when I was on partial bed rest with my second pregnancy and I found that there weren't many options, everything required huge quantities and the cost of shipping was crazy and I gave up.  I wasn't hopeful this time around, but I thought that maybe times had changed so I started looking with hope.  I came across Amazon Save and Subscribe.  I'm sure that I am way behind the times and that most people have probably looked into this before me as I am not very tech savvy.  Here's what I found.  I'm sure everyone would see slightly different results because no one buys exactly what I buy but the prices were either slightly more, the same, or WAY less than I pay at the store.  The selection of brands and quantities was much better and I found what I used to go to three different stores for in one location.  We started our save and subscribe last month and here's why I'm going to keep doing it.

1. It saves me money.  I have to pay the $80/year Amazon prime fee but I didn't drive to the store, that's a savings of $8 per month.

2.  I don't have to hold my children by the hair while I read labels.

3.  No need to wear clean jeans, I can shop in my pj's with a nice cup of tea.

4.  There are more brands than two available for an item.

5.  The UPS guy delivered my toilet paper to my front door, I didn't have to put it on my cart, put it in my car, and take it to my house.

6.  Things come in really big boxes that my children love to play in and then I recycled.  It's actually less packaging than if I made more trips to the store and had all those shopping bags.

7.  My children can't talk me into buying anything because they don't know I'm shopping.

8.  I don't have to talk to people.  Yes, I might be slightly anti-social to strangers, they sometimes touch me or my children.  I am not ok with that.

9.  There are no free samples of food items that I would never actually let my children eat if they couldn't see them.

10.  Did I mention that the Amazon website is open all the time, I don't have to waste daylight hours shopping.

All of this took some time to set up and you have to figure out your recurring schedule, that might need adjusting later, but it was worth it.  The no shopping for the last few weeks let me spend time keeping my house cleaner and I actually managed to go two days without doing laundry.  Also I heard an awesome joke from my second...

Where do cows live?

wait for it,

in Cowafornia!

So, in order to stay sane I'm having most of my groceries, non-perishables of course, delivered to my house by the nice UPS man. My children think it's great, they get new boxes with every delivery.  Now to see if I can get rid of some of their other toys...