Customer Service?

Begin rant:

You know what really ticks me off?

When you call customer service for something, because you just have one simple tiny question, and they make it some huge hassle. Like, they need your name and information just to tell you how much something costs.

Sorry, but if you want my all my info (probably so you can then pester me with phone, mail or e-mail solicitations, or sell my info to somebody else who will do the same), you are probably not going to get my business.

If I call a business I already have an account with - my cell phone provider, for example, or my internet company - to see about a rate change, okay, fine, I see where it might be helpful to be able to look up my account information.

But if I'm calling a gym to find out what the monthly membership fee is, you don't need my name, address, and phone number, and if you ask for it, and make one very simple question and answer exchange (Me: "What's your monthly fee?" Them: "It's __ dollars, plus a __ dollar enrollment fee." What did that take? 20 seconds?), take longer than necessary, use up my cell phone minutes (no home phone, why spend the extra money), and generally make it into more hassle than it's worth, you are NOT going to get my business. Because if it's that difficult to find out the answer to one little quick question, what would it be like to do regular business with you?

End rant.

Our future chef and baker

All the cooking lessons you need - Guthrie teaches you how to make cookies. Don't follow his instructions too closely, though, or they may be a little ... burnt.

They're yummy. If you listen closely, you can hear Turner humming. It's 8 notes from the Nutcracker.

Who says I can't cook?

My men - all 3 of them - disagree.

I had a loaf of bread, fresh out of the machine (okay, it's made with a machine, but it's not from a mix, so does that count as homemade?), and we were tearing off pieces to eat. Until Turner realized it's easier to just pick up the whole loaf. And as someone who has a complex about her cooking abilities (or lack thereof), it made me feel like a MOM to have my boys running around loving something I had cooked. Just warmed my heart, and then my belly. Because there is nothing in the world like freshly baked bread.

It is a Happy New Year

I know things have been kind of quiet on this end for awhile. First off, we've been busy - we had to get our daughters back to their other parents, Eric's been traveling and working, and we're still trying to recover from the Christmas "break."

More than that, though, I've been worried. Why? My mom was tested a few days ago, because they suspected colon cancer. I was scared. I'm not ready to think about those kinds of issues with my mom. So I was a general nervous wreck, impatient with my husband and children, unable to sleep well, and that's only how I was doing - let's not even talk about how she must have felt.

I talked to her after the testing, though, and guess what? They said, at least now, she's fine. FINE.

I'm sure you all, in your various parts of the world, heard my sigh of relief.

So now we can get back to normalcy, worrying about the everyday issues of what's for dinner and do we need milk?

And my big concern now is convincing my mom that she should move here, to south Texas, where she'll never have to scrape ice off her windshield again and she can watch her grandsons grow up, and go to the beach a good once a month.