Who Made This Mess?

Back in February I decided it was time to upgrade my cell phone. My Razor had been good to me, but I needed something that I could get my email on. So I decided that an iPhone was my best bet. I could check my email, go online and store my music on it. I was all for one less gadget to carry around. I passed my Razor down to my daughter and landed me an iPhone. And I loved it. I did not regret this little gem.

Until about a week ago. My phone started freezing up on me. So hubby took it down to the Apple store to have it checked out. They said that they freeze up sometimes and we should do a hard reset on it, that should solve the problem. And it did, for about twenty four hours. Then it froze up again. I did another hard reset. Later that day it froze up again.

By now I was pretty irked. I decided to plug it into iTunes and restore it back to factory settings. That lasted for maybe another twenty four hours before it froze again. I marched myself (dragging the kids behind me) to the mall. When I got to the Apple store, the greeter told me I needed to make an appointment for the Genius Bar. Only the soonest appointment was three hours later. Um, yeah. I’m not hanging out at the mall with three cranky kids for three hours. I made an appointment for the next day.

Hubby took it down for me the next day. They ran some sort of diagnostic on it (anyone else thinking cars here? Hehe, vroom vroom.) and said everything checked out. They couldn’t find anything wrong, and suggested restoring it back to factory settings. Gee, wish I had thought of that….

So yesterday morning, I plugged it in and did yet another restore. And promptly an hour later the damn phone froze on me again. I logged onto the website and made an appointment at the Genius Bar (because by now I’m so impressed with the brains behind the bar) for that afternoon. They had a section for “anything we should know about your appointment.” And boy did I let them have it!

When I got there for my appointment (cranky kids in tow still), I explained to the guy why I was there, how many times we had been there and that the factory restores were doing nothing to solve my problem. He looked at me, looked at my phone, then turned around to the desk behind him. And God bless his sould he brought a brand new phone out for me. I watched him use a little pin thing to pull the sim card out of the top of my phone and put it in the new one. I signed a paper for the exchange and he handed me a fully charged, fully functional, brand new phone. With instructions to plug it in and apply my back-up when I got home, I was off.

I let the kids look at the computer games before we left the store. While they were looking I started plugging in my email settings, and by the time they were done checking out games, I had email. My old phone hasn’t retrieved my email in weeks. Perhaps that was the beginning of the end. I thought it was user error and that I had screwed something up. I guess not.

I’m just happy to have a new phone. Woot for being under warranty so I got it for free! Maybe next I’ll take it in the first time and wear a low-cut shirt. Maybe that will get it replaced faster!

For those of you not involved with Girl Scouts, this time of year is Early Registration time for next year’s program. And I am the Registrar who gets to process it all. By the deadline, of course. If forty percent of this years registered girls and adults register early for next year we get some lovely bonuses. Like forty cents per girl/adult gets deposited into our service units bank account for expenses, our troops get more money per box of cookies sold and of course, we can’t forget the early registration patch. That’s very important for us patch addicts.

The downfall of this job is that I have to deal with people. People who, when I made then announcements about how to properly fill out registration forms for their troops, were sitting in corners of the room giggling like high schoolers. And therefore missed important information, or cant’ do math and wrote checks for the wrong amount.

It amazes me how simple instructions are so hard to follow, or to pass on to registering parents, or to double check to make sure their troop’s papers are all in order before passing them onto me. Because you know, it’s much harder to double check one troops papers than it is to double check thirty troops papers.

For instance, when we say please, please, please do not separate the forms. Not so hard, it’s actually more work for them to do that. But no, I had to send out new forms to several people because they kept a copy. Which really is not smart on their part, because the forms come preprinted, all they have to do is sign. When I send them a new form, they have to fill out the whole thing. It makes more work for them, not for me. I guess they felt the need to give their carpals a little extra workout.

At this current moment, I have to mail in the last of my registrations by tomorrow. I have fifteen troops papers yet to send in. They could have been sent in last week, except for one troop. I contacted this troop leader last week concerning her troops registration check, it was ten dollars short. She said she would bring another one by and we would make an exchange. I have yet to hear from her. I emailed her today, and I’m sitting in my email box waiting to hear from her. I dont’ mind sending her registration in late if that is what she wants. But I know those girls want their patch, and it also affects the rest of the service unit getting the extra benefits if her troop not registering drops us below the forty percent.

It drives me crazy when people don’t consider how their actions affect other people. Especially when it’s the kids that are going to be affected most.

I am so glad the kids are out of school for the summer. I can’t tell you how much I love all the disagreements. There is not enough cheese in the world to go with all the whining in this house. School hasn’t even been out a week yet, and already the corners are getting maximum use. My patience is exhausted.

My friend Vanessa gave me an awesome idea though. Instead of a naughty word jar, have a fighting jar. Every time they fight, they have to pay me. Wouldn’t it just kill them to sit there and watch me count all that money? I might make them all sleep in the same room too. The one who is the best all day long gets to sleep in a room by themselves. I might be on a roll here.

I wonder what other mind games I can create this summer to entertain me and whip them into shape.

Or so hubby calls it. I call it a pain in the ass. The last twenty four hours has been quite interesting. First things first, my computer crapped out on me. That’s a three alarm call right there. Ends up Outlook had a corrupted file and that pretty much screwed everything. Hubby spent last night backing up  what he could to his computer and deleting everything off mine. Today will be spent downloading everything I had before and trying to get my email to work. So in short, I would love to respond to my comments. But as of right now, I can’t.

This morning, as I was dropping hubby off at work, our car died in the parking garage. There was a funny light on that we didn’t recognize. It took about twenty minutes before it would start again, but the funny light was gone. We drove it over to the dealership and explained what happened. They asked if we had traded keys or used one key to lock the car and another to start it. We had traded keys when it died. Apparently sometimes the anti-theft system gets confused and our car thought we were trying to steal it. Par for the course in this house.

Hubby’s carpool buddy is in Vegas right now at a conference. So hubby drove him to the airport in his car, then parked it in the garage at work. After the fiasco with our car this morning, I drove back to Woodinville only to have hubby text me as soon as I got there saying he needed his keys. We had not traded keys when I left because we didn’t want the car freaking out again. So back to Bellevue I went to give him his keys. On the upside of that, he got me goodies at Organic to Go. Yummy.

And last, one of my cats got mad at me about something (I probably came home smelling like a strage cat, it happens), and peed on my damn couch. I have doused all the cushions with Spot Shot and Nature’s Miracle, but I can still smell cat pee. If anyone has any suggestions I would appreciate them. Otherwise I’m going to emtpy the cleaning aisle at the store.  

Boogie and Slobber had their first baseball practice last night. And Coach Daddy played coach for the first time. We spent two hours at a local school’s baseball field, in the sunny but cold weather watching kids try to gain control of a ball with partially mastered fine motor skills.

Slobber lasted about thirty minutes before he got bored. He said that to play baseball you had to chew gum, and their was a lack of gum, and therefore it was not baseball. So to get him to make an effort at next weeks practice, I will be making a trip to Costco (because I didn’t just spend two days there) to buy a bag of bubble gum. Cuz you know, can’t play baseball without bubble gum.

For the last thirty minutes, I tried to coerce him to back onto the field. He tried to coerce me to let him play on the playground. Not happening buddy. He didn’t like that answer. Trying to explain to a five year old that he needs to follow through on a commitement, it’s like trying to boil sand. Or something equally as non progressive. Thirty minutes, of sitting on a bench, making a five year old sit next to me till his practice time is over. Pleasant. Really.

Boogie on the other hand had a great time. Or so I heard. Slobber got cold and wanted to go to the car. Where, once the heater was blasting, he fell asleep in the drivers seat with stinky pinky (his favorite blanket). And really, you don’t want to know why I call it stinky pinky. Your stomach just isn’t strong enough.

Coach Daddy, he was worn out. Even this morning, he was wiped out. And probably glad practice is only once a week!