Why I'll Be Buying Some Presents from Amazon.Com This Year

The end of last year, frankly, was a mess. We were getting the house ready to sell, we were getting ready to do some holiday traveling, and some horrible things had recently happened in our family. We weren't putting up a Christmas tree for several reasons, some due to the stock advice not to put up anything personal in a house you're trying to sell, but also partially because we weren't in a frame of mind to celebrate.

Everything I did around then just seemed more difficult. The last of the weights that were pushing down on us just fell at the end of last month, in fact, when the house finally sold. Things just weren't going well, and I just kind of knew that things would be a struggle for us for awhile. The last thing I needed was a new problem, the sort of random thing that can happen to anyone.

I bought a digital photo frame for my parents for Christmas, loaded it with pictures of our daughter, me, and the mister, wrapped it up, and sent it. I reused a shipping box that had held something I purchased from Amazon.com, a lovely boxed hardcover set of Calvin and Hobbes that was the mister's present last Christmas, bought at such a steep discount on their Friday sale that I doubt they made that much profit on the sale. I carefully covered over the shipping info from Amazon to send the box to my parents, taping a piece of heavy construction paper with their address on it over the top of the box.

What happened to cause the random problem that I needed like a hole in my head was this: somewhere between Missouri and Virginia, the piece of paper ripped somehow and the address information was separated from the box. It still apparently had the sticker that was printed by the shipping machine I used at the post office that directed it to the right zip code, but the street address was gone.

When too much time went by before the package reached my mom and dad, I dug out the receipt with the tracking number on it and set about trying to find the package. It had a weird status when I checked it online, and I ended up making phone calls that ended with the postmaster of the post office where the package had apparently been at one time, but no one seemed to be able to put their hands on it.

I was so upset over this package being missing. Part of it was the money, because it was a kind of expensive present. Part of it was the work I'd put into choosing the pictures and putting them on the memory card, pre-programming it so it would be easy for my parents to use. But part of it was that it was one more damn thing that wasn't going well.

I made, at the postmaster's suggestion, about three more calls to him while that post office tried to figure out what had happened to this package. I was losing faith that anyone I knew would ever see it again. I even began to wonder if someone had opened the package, unwrapped the present, saw it was a larger-ticket item, and decided to keep it.

Then one day, my doorbell rang. I went to the door and found a package UPS had left on my doorstep that had shipping labels from Amazon, along with a neon yellow sticker on the outside saying something about an item that was being returned to me because Amazon didn't know why it had been sent to them.

I opened that box and found MY box inside. That box had clearly been through a LOT, dinged and ripped and dented, but inside THAT box was the digital photo frame. It wasn't wrapped (I imagine Amazon had to take off the gift wrap to figure out what it was) but all of the pieces were safely inside the box.

There was a note inside the box saying that they had sent me back my item because they couldn't locate an RMA involving that item. I thought it through for a few minutes and then figured out what must have happened.

The USPS must have seen the old shipping label on the box, the original one from Amazon when they sent me the books I'd ordered. Having no other solid info to go on (I'd ripped off the part with our address), they sent the box to Amazon in the hopes that the puzzle would untangle somehow.

Amazon then got a box with an item that I don't even think they sell, but they looked up the shipping information from my original order, probably the UPS tracking number that I'd sharpied over but was probably still readable from the barcode. When they got the shipping info, they sent the box to me at their cost, along with their note about not having a matching RMA request.

I felt horrible that Amazon had incurred a cost in helping to get this box back to me. I went on a mission to find someone in their customer service to explain the whole debacle to, finding someone in the right department after a few stops and starts. I explained what had happened, how they'd come to be in possession of a product I hadn't even purchased from them, and that I wanted to reimburse them for the shipping costs.

The lady sent me an email back in our little chain of replies back and forth that basically said, "Don't worry about it. Just think of us in the future when you're shopping online. Happy Holidays."

I'm not a member of Amazon Prime, and while I've bought my share of things from them in the past, I doubt I'm even in the top 70% of sales for private individuals. There was nothing in my account that could have persuaded this woman or Amazon in specific to give me special treatment. This was just how the company treated me when I approached them to tell them how they'd helped me. They did me one last favor and told me to forget the shipping cost, which was extremely generous, considering that they were the last step in a chain that helped me find this gift that went astray and get it back to my parents.

That, both the effort they took to ship the box back to me and the kindness of their customer service agents, means that I am now going out of my way to find the presents I'd like to buy on their site. That's how you turn a customer into a devoted repeat customer. I'm happy to thank them with my purchases and my loyalty. Thanks again, Amazon, for making a really difficult holiday season that we had last year just a little less stressful.

Craftiness

I finished two projects recently, making some new toys for the B out of some pretty basic supplies.

Project 1: Lower case letter puzzle



We have a Melissa and Doug upper case letter puzzle that helped me teach her the upper case alphabet pretty quickly, but I'm always worried that we'll lose a letter or two and you can't get replacement letters for those puzzles. As much as I love our Melissa and Doug puzzles, I decided to try to make a basic one that would be easy to make replacement parts for if something went missing in the depths of the house that only a two-going-on-three year old can find.

I used clear packing tape, a cardboard box, one sheet of green construction paper, a sharpie, a pen, a pair of scissors, some glue, and an exacto knife. I drew the letters with a sharpie on the smaller pieces of cardboard salvaged from the old moving box that had come apart, making them nice and round and easy to read. Then I cut around the letters, trying to make the silhouette of the piece look as much like the shape of the letter as possible without getting too ornate. (Because then making replacement pieces would seem difficult when it's time to make them, and the likelihood of getting it done would be lower.)

Then I took the two long sides of the cardboard box body and cut them to the same size. I put the green construction paper over the piece that would be the "bottom" of the puzzle and taped it in place. Then I laid the cut-out letters on the piece that would be the "top", trying to arrange them evenly from side to side and top to bottom. I drew around the pieces with the pen and then used the exacto knife to cut out squares that were just larger than the pieces. (I used all the scrap cardboard under the piece to keep the exacto knife from cutting, for example, the carpeting, or my leg.)

Then I glued the two pieces together, the piece with the holes on the top and the piece covered in green construction paper underneath. I taped the sides for good measure, and ended up using the packing tape over the top (cutting out the holes with the exacto knife) just to make it more durable.

I drew the letter in each hole so she could match up the shapes of the letter pieces with the puzzle, and she was ready to play!



Total cost: We actually already had all of the parts I used for this project around the house. It was probably about a dollar's worth of tape, a little bit of household glue, and then a cut-up moving box that had fallen apart under the weight of the items in it when I tried to move it from one place to another in the garage. So basically, this one was free because of what I had around the house.

Project 2: Felt play food



I saw a post on the CRAFT magazine blog where someone had made some play food out of sheets of felt, and I thought I'd give it a go, especially since I finally got the front bedroom, where we are storing a lot of boxes and things, straightened out enough to set up my sewing machine.

For this, I just got some different colors of felt sheets at the craft store and then cut out food shapes freehand. Then I went to the sewing machine and sewed them together with appropriate colors of thread, stuffing some with polyfill to make them puffy and leaving others just a flat two-ply of felt.


Left column: bread slices
Top right: bacon
Bottom right: pepperoni pizza slices


Top: carrot
Middle: lettuce
Bottom: tomato, slice of cheese


Left to right: orange, banana, apple, watermelon



Total cost: About 8 sheets of craft felt at 20 cents each: $1.60 + tax. One bottle of puffy fabric paint for the tomato: $1.49 + tax. I also want to go and get a bottle of orange to make lines on the carrot, a bottle of black to put seeds on the watermelon, and white to put a little shiny highlight on the apple and the orange. I already had the polyfill, but that's not too expensive if you needed to buy it, and I already had a set of different colored spools of thread that came with my sewing machine when I bought it. If you didn't have the colors of thread you need for the different foods, that part could add up a little because those spools of thread are always more than I think they'll be whenever I look at them in the store. But still, a lot less than buying play food from a store, and most of that stuff is plastic and not really as fun to play with than fun, soft, squishy food.

So there is a record of my recent craftiness. Both projects were fun and the B seems to enjoy the end products, so it seems like time well spent.

Pants -> Skirt

So, you all know the B is tall. She outgrows her jeans in length before the waist is too small. What's a mom to do?

So of course, I cut em' off, got a bandanna from the $1 bin at Target, and made a skirt out of them. Just the tiniest pain in the butt, but I finished it in one 1/2 hour session of cutting and pinning and then about an hour of sewing today.

It's not perfect, the enormous pockets on the original pair of jeans didn't help at all, and she keeps saying, "No!" when I ask her to put it on to have her model it for a picture, so, though I think they came out fine, perhaps it isn't the rousing success that I was hoping for.

Bargains!

I went to a special consignment sale for kiddie stuff today that was organized for charity, and it was super-sweet! This was the "pay to get in" day, but it was only $2, and I figured, "Why not?"

Man, did I clean up getting there just after they opened.

Nice little play kitchen, with a bunch of food-related bits to play with and stick in the drawers and stuff, only $30! It was really clean and nice. Looks like it was played with about four times.

The B's Halloween costume! We were looking into kitty costumes, in honor of her recently beginning to say "kitty", but this bunny costume, worn once and looking pristine, was only $5!

And in a more embarrassing point, I also learned that the B knows (putting bag over my head) the name of at least one of the Teletubbies, and she decided it was important enough to actually say it. She doesn't say "milk" or "more" or "hungry" or anything useful like that, but she knows which Teletubby "Po" is, and she can say his name when she sees him.

Goofily embarrassing as it is, and yes, I know she shouldn't watch Teletubbies, but we DO interact while she's watching it, and it makes her so unbelievably happy that I can't help myself. I bought her the little Po figurine and she's been carrying it around, loving all over it. She even gave it a little kiss.

Nice outing, though, all around!

Mommy Brain

Earlier today, when I didn't have hands free to type, I thought of a great idea for a blog post. It seemed really important and insightful. I also remember that it, shockingly, had nothing to do with the B. I even remember chuckling to myself over some random pun or something that I was going to include.

Yeah, that's all gone now. I can tell you how many ounces of milk the B drank today, and I can also tell you, down to the penny, how much the two pair of usually-outrageously-expensive Stride Rite shoes that I got for the B that were marked down 60% and 80%, respectively, cost me. (Damn her cute little wide feet that no one but Stride Rite seem to care enough about to make shoes for.)

See you later, post idea. Maybe you'll visit again. But I doubt it.

I Did It!

Our house, prior to this Monday night, had a thermostat that should probably have been on display in the Smithsonian instead of plugged in on our wall, desperately attempting to regulate our house's temperature.

Well, when you stay home most of the time, save for excursions outside to play with the baby or run an errand, having it way too hot...way too cold...way too hot...etc. all day long is extremely irritating, and I'd had enough.

I took some of the money I've made from my transcriptions and handed it to Amazon in exchange for the modern programmable unit you see pictured here. I was hoping it would switch between heating and cooling on its own, but I was wrong about that. It does, however, keep the house temperate (upstairs and downstairs) all day long, after I've spent a couple of days tweaking the programmable settings for each section of the day.

The big trick was getting it installed. After putting a couple of ceiling fans into the house, I know that we sometimes have the correctly-colored wires there, but we also sometimes just have a couple of black wires there, and it's anyone's guess which one is which. I was relieved, after prying the old, "my edge has been painted over at least 100 times" thermostat off the wall, to see that the wires were correctly sheathed in colored plastic wire covers that indicated their function.

We switched off the power and I removed the old unit, and as the house started to get hot (this was just on the edge of our current cold snap) I set about connecting the new unit. After a run-in with the slightly vague manual that was included with the new thermostat, I looked at an updated one on the manufacturer's website and got confirmation on where I should hook up my red wire.

Hooked it up, switched it on, made my first guess at a programming scheme based on the temperatures we'd been trying to select on the old unit, and it was on and humming away. This was when we discovered how far off the old thermostat had been. All the temps we'd been setting it on that got us the best results with the old unit were completely different on the new unit. The new unit really seems to keep the house comfortable for the whole day, and it does so using less operating time, which means it's using less of my moolah to do it.

I am extremely pleased with the switch and I really wish we'd done it a year ago. It makes me want to go on a tear through the house, seeing what else is old and inefficient, costing us more money to run and doing a poor job of it, to boot. Look out, old appliances. I'm comin' for you.

Pier 1 Trip, Target Trip

I have a feed that tells me when website shops are having sales, and one day recently, a Pier 1 sale popped in there.

I looked at the stuff and was surprised to see that they sell children's toys. Some of them were cute, and really cheap when they were on sale, too. However, the shipping costs seemed a little high, and it was about time for the B and I to go out now that both of us are feeling better.

I mapped out the closest Pier 1, realized then that I had seen it before and that it wasn't very far away, and got us ready to go. It wasn't until we walked in that I realized what a colossally bad idea it was.

You see, she's very excited to be walking. She doesn't tolerate the stroller as well as she used to, and I like her to be able to move around a little on her own, anyway.

But just picture a Pier 1 in your head. All sorts of glasses and dishes, along with other smallish doo-dads made out of glass. Whoever does the shelving there obviously never intended for anyone with a small child to go through there, because everything that a kid could grab, throw on the ground, and break, is right at her eye level.

Or maybe that's a good source of revenue, parents paying for the stuff their kids break.

None of their children's toys were in the store I went to. Looks like it's mainly a website thing, or maybe just larger Pier 1 stores. I, quite wisely, I think, decided to beat it out of there before I was the proud owner of some multi-colored, formerly shabby-chic glass shards.

The day wasn't a total loss, though. We had some play time outside (look for a post about that soon) and I also took the B to Target to stock on up Targetty things. And speaking of Target, I really like the little section at the front of the Targets I've been in recently, where they have bins of stuff for $1 and other bins of 2/$5. There's kid stuff in there most of the time, and some of it is really cute.

That being said, yesterday they had these board books about zoo animals, and there's a rubber version of whatever animal the book is about embedded on the last page, with the rest of the book cut through over it so you can see the rubber animal on each page. When you press on the animal, it squeaks. Our Target had the elephant, panda, and hippo, but the back of the books say there's a tiger one too.

So, if you're reading this and you're going off to your local Target, drop me a line. If no one else has found me the tiger version and you don't mind looking for it, I'd be glad to reimburse you the buck and the shipping if you find the tiger one. The B really likes these books and some collector in me would love to have the whole set.

Tax Man

Tonight at 6:00, I met with a charming man with an MBA on his wall. He took the planner he'd emailed me that I printed and filled out (which he makes easy to do as long as you keep the tax papers that arrive in the mail) along with a few pieces of paper from me. He made small talk as he typed, asking about the B while his wife chided me from the outer office for not bringing her with me.

(Mind you, I'd only been there once before, about a year ago, to have our taxes done last year. They are smart businesspeople, to have such information at their fingertips, the sort of stuff that makes people feel at home there.)

After a story about his four year-old grandson, I heard the printer start printing. He got up, telling me that the B would grow up faster that I could imagine, and came back with our completed tax forms. He got us what I'm sure is the largest amount we could possibly be entitled to on the up-and-up back as a refund. He continued the small talk as he used two self-inking stamps to address my federal and state return envelopes, then went nuts with a stapler, attaching the mister's W-2 to both.

I glanced at the clock on his wall. It said 6:12. I was already writing out his check, and he told me the fee amount as he handed over the envelopes to me. It was an embarrassingly tiny percentage of the money he'd just gotten us back on our taxes. I filled the figure in on the check and handed it over to him.

He shook my hand and we got up, moving back to the outer office, where I was made to promise that the baby would come with me the next time.

Holy frickin' heck, I love finding a place where I know I'm getting a good deal, where I feel better leaving the joint than I did when I walked in. I was stressing hard about the taxes last year when I found this place. I stressed again this year that it would be an awful ordeal, even though this place worked out so well last year.

I am so glad to have been wrong. One weight, gone from my shoulders.

A Quick Math Quiz

I was offered a choice of three coupons for a major retailer for signing up for their free loyalty program. Here are the buttons I was given to select from:


Okay, quick. Which one is worth the paper you'll print it on? If you get this right, you may have the math skill necessary to go on Deal or No Deal. (Was forced to watch this over Christmas and it seemed like a very simple application of probability and only really needed the ability to do a quick 'n' dirty average of some numbers in your head so you can see if you're getting a good deal or not, but I digress.)

Let's throw out the one in the middle right away. A free hot beverage? Eh. Are you really gonna go in there for a damn coffee and not buy either one item worth $20 or a group of items worth at least $50, either of which is a better deal than the free coffee, which I can't imagine is more than $4, the smallest possible value of either of the other two coupons. (And if you're buying $5 coffee at this joint, then you have bigger problems than choosing a coupon.)

From this point, the coupon on the left seems like the best deal, until you see the "one item only" that you get your 20% off of. But hey, let's say you've been eyeing, gee, I dunno, some big box set of DVDs or something. You could turn a $100 box set into a $80 one, which doesn't suck.

From this point, all you have to do is figure out what you're likely to buy on your trip. If your largest item costs less than $50 but you will still be spending at least $50, the right one is your guy. If you are buying at least one item of $50 or more, then you go with Mr. Lefty.

But I wondered as I clicked the button, "How many people actually do the math, and how many just pick one based on whether it dazzled them with sheer implication or not?" I think that percentage would be worryingly high. Oh well. More good coupons for the rest of us then, huh?

Playing With the New Toy

I've been wanting to get this for her for awhile. It's $50-$60 new, but no one has them in stock, including every website I could think of.

Then I googled it, and found one on craigslist for $20, less than three miles away from here. Score. The mister picked it up on his way home from work and we had it here tonight, the same day that I found it on craigslist.

It needed a little cleaning (obviously) but it's in marvelous shape and I wouldn't have thought twice about buying it if I'd seen it in a resale shop in this condition.

This toy gets the best reviews online, and there's about a million ways to play with it. It's your basic baby toy that makes a bunch of noise and delights the baby, plus she can use it to pull herself to a standing position.

As you can see, she took to it right away.

Another Find

It's a kitchen organizer!


It not only has a butterfly on the top, but it has two shelves on one third, a paper towel holder on another third, and a utensil organizer on the other third. Plus there are little cup hooks on the ends to hang other things on.

On top of it, it came with a wisk, two wooden spoons, and a wooden meat tenderizer (not pictured, they were in the dishwasher when the pics were taken). And it's on a lazy susan so you can spin it around. Boss!

How much would you pay? I found this when I went to old town yesterday to a craft/antique/collectibles store. It was on sale for... $4!!

Four bucks! Can you believe it? I've paid more than that for a wisk the same quality as the one that came with this organizer, plus I got all the other stuff too!

Now we need to paint the kitchen light yellow, and I want to make sunflower curtains for the kitchen window. I have a theme! Yay!

(None of you stinky boys reading this care about that at all, do you? Well, tough.)

Antique Mall Finds

I've gone to two different antique malls around here in the past couple of days, and found a couple of things. One that we needed, and another thing that is really pretty and didn't cost very much. I'm pretty happy with the pull.

First up is the coffee table I've been looking for. I wanted something smaller that could get easily dragged out of the way, because the B still lies on the floor in the living room playing with toys and tricking us into thinking she's just about to start crawling.

It has a completely rounded edge, which is good for her noggin in the event that she bangs into it. It swivels, so she'll have fun with it there. And it's round, so she can walk around it once she can pull herself up and sidle along. In fact, she'll be able to do that pretty early, since she won't even have to move her hands at first due to the swivel. So, pleased with this lovely purchase for $55:



This lovely trio of small stained glass (real, not the gallery glass painted kind) was only $12! I need to run out to the hardware store and buy some small chain link to hang it, but so so pretty, right?



I also found four long-out-of-print Little Golden Books for $2, and a bag of antique buttons (good for crafting, you know, as soon as I get time to do that) for $3.

Maybe I'll go to another one today! Or, to the grocery store, where I really should go. I think I've done enough goofing off so far this week. But at least it was fruitful.

Something Good Came Out Of It

New toy
Originally uploaded by lostonpurpose.

We went to the worst ghetto flea market yesterday. It was stinky, in a bad part of town, and not at all like Flea Market Finds with the Kovells on HGTV. I've been to flea markets before, and they're not all like this.

There were the Amway-type booths, where people had obviously sent away for cheap purses and hair doo-dads to resell at ridiculous prices. There were the weird, I-could-swear-it-was-dry-ice fragrance burner thingies that made the whole place smell so horrible that I had a weird headache and felt terrible until hours later. And there were the desperate people who kept after you to buy things (what size shoe do you wear? there are children's videos right there, did you see the toys?) the entire time you were trying to look at their stuff, all of which was overpriced because they were convinced it was old and rare and not just old and busted. Then there were the booths selling stacks of CD-Rs with what I'm sure was bootlegged music and DVD-Rs of movies that are still in theaters. I really wanted to turn them in—it's the people doing that shit that translates into you and me watching fifteen minutes of FBI warnings on the DVDs we legally own, and also why we are trying to be sold on buying a license to play a song instead of the media that it came on to do whatever we like with. I still might turn them in, if I can do it anonymous-like.

We did, however, find this toy at one booth. I was too worn down to haggle and we might have paid three dollars more for it than we could have if I'd bargained, but I think it was a good buy. It's sturdy and not at all busted up. All the enamel on the wires is intact and the paint on the wooden blocks is still flake-free. The lady who sold it to us didn't harp on us the whole time, but she was friendly and cooed a bit over the B.

I gave this thing a mighty good cleaning and presented it to the offspring this afternoon, and I must say that she seems to like it. It helps her sit up, and she likes to chew on it (good thing I cleaned it so well) and push the blocks around a little. I suspect it will be even more popular when she has more fine motor control.

But man, I still wish we'd never set foot in that flea market. Ugh. Made me want to take another shower it was so nasty.

New Hoopty

So as long as I am posting various bits of personal news, here is our new car. It is a cool metallic dark blue, and it is pretty sweet inside and out.

I could gush about the way the remote can open the side doors without the touch of a human hand, or about the storage compartments and the many ways the seats fold hither and yon for maximum flexibility. In fact, I think I might just have done so.

As you can see from my fancy dancy inset and as I believe we've mentioned before, this beast is a Honda Odyssey. I think my favorite feature is that it turns off three cylinders in the engine when they're not needed to save on fuel. I am all about fuel economy, so this is the most fuel efficient minivan we could find.

If you asked the mister what his favorite feature is, he'd probably tell you it's the moon roof. I mainly like that you can pull a little door over it and pretend it isn't there. I dunno why I don't like them, but something about being able to see the clouds over my head when I'm supposed to be safely esconsed within a vehicle is disconcerting.

The End of an Odyssey

If you've been reading my mister's blog then you know we've been considering the purchase of a minivan, which would make our transition to midwestern parents complete.

We pick up the above automobile (picture of our actual car, not of some minivan like it on the web somewhere) tomorrow at 4:00 after faffing around for a bit wondering which model we should decide on. It looks black in that picture but it is actually really really dark metallicy blue. (Deep Midnight Blue I believe is the name of the paint.)

In the end, we are paying just a tiny bit more in order to get the higher resale value and better reliability of the Honda Odyssey. That's not just the schtick their salespeople tell you, it's borne out in Car and Driver and Consumer Reports surveys. It's a really neat car and will be really good for the long car trips we tend to take.

Anyway, we're very excited. And if you all are very, very good, I'll tell you tomorrow about stripping wallpaper and painting our bathroom over the past month.

(Don't we lead fascinating lives here?)

Depinked

So, there are some things that you like about a house you buy, and some things you inevitably won't. One of the things in the "won't" category for us was the Big Pink Room. It's really the formal living and dining room, but that part of the floor plan is very open and it was basically one big open space that looked like it was ever so slightly embarassed.

It really should have been. It was hideous.

I, of course, forgot to take the "before" picture. However, these are the drapes that were in there. Believe me, they matched the walls. This is a bit darker pink, but not a lot. We're talking about a 700 or 800 square foot room. That's a lotta Pepto.

I realize the people who bought our old house probably felt the same way about all the stuff we did. I'm sure they hated the tan in the hallway, the blue in the master bedroom, or the sagey green/burgundy combination we put in the dining room. They easily could have hated the fruit themed wallpaper in the kitchen. I mean, we did. But in three years we just never cared enough to go out and buy the stuff to strip it and start over.

But really, unless the new owners of our new house hated EVERYTHING we did, they have it better than we do. I could show you the Noah's Ark wallpaper room, or the master bathroom that has tannish-gold tile and vanity that they paired with a flowery pink, blue, and white wallpaper. Now, I hate both of those things. But not as much as the pink room.

This is what we replaced it with. We also just took the curtains completely down to let more light in the room. The living room portion is the only room in the house that doesn't have a built-in overhead light. Pair that with four windows covered in those heavy, dark pink drapes (complete with awful matching pink balloon valances) with nearly opaque "sheers" behind them and it was one big dark pinky mess.

I admit that I am a fool for the sagey green. In my own defense, all of our nice table linens are either green or burgundy, so painting to match that stuff was a cost-cutting measure as much as anything else. Now my tablecloth and candles and whatnot don't look so out of place.

In other news, my next post will be an exciting poll for those of you who feel like weighing in. There is this mall somewhat near the house that I ventured out to today (and I paid for the trip with a two hour nap this evening) that has a J.C. Penney outlet store. I've had the worst time trying to find some curtains for the nursery and in that one outlet store I found two possibilities. They were so cheap that I bought enough of both to use and now I have no idea how to make up my mind. Where is LWC when you need her?

So after I put up the curtain rods tomorrow, I'll dress one window in each possibility, take a few snaps, and post them. I don't know if I'll let the commenting public have the last word, but I would be interested in a vote. So keep your eyes open, vote early, and vote often.

Cabinetgate

An emotional, hormonal, slightly off-kilter pregnant woman should never go to an estate sale when she has to leave the house to allow potential buyers to walk through it and decide not to buy it. Odd things happen when friends let friends go to estate sales.

I bought a perfectly lovely little table for $10. It fit in the back seat of my car. I also purchased a lighthouse stained glass thingie that I will refuse to list here what I paid for it because one of the people I gave it to will read this. (It didn't break the bank though, don't worry.) It really should have stopped there.

I passed what is known in the estate sale biz as the "bid box" in the kitchen on the way out with my stuff. Then I remembered the cabinet that was in the kitchen that I saw first thing when they finally called my number and let me in the house.

I put in what I felt sure was a too-low bid on the cabinet and left without really thinking about it. I have no idea how I thought I would get that cabinet back to my house in the event that they decided to sell it for me for my proposed price. I honestly thought it would sell for its marked price and that would be the last I would see of it.

Well...that picture of the cabinet above was taken in my garage, so I think you can all see that I did have to think about that cabinet again.

I got a call while I was over at CK and LWC's and picked it up HOPING it was my agent telling me there was an offer on my house. Instead, it was a nice lady telling me I could buy the cabinet for my ridiculously low bid price if I could finagle find someone to help me with it.

We ate dinner and I ruminated on this. The cabinet will be helpful in the new house. I have movers coming who will move it for us with no additional fuss when we head out. If I could get it back to the house, it would be a win/win. I tried to think of people I know who have access to appropriate vehicles, but as I am already busy carrying the baby, I also had to find someone who wouldn't mind carrying most of the weight of a cabinet for two pretty short stretches.

I thought for a bit, and remembered my friend from Tennessee's hatchback with fold-down seats. You should really never buy a vehicle like this, or desperate pregnant women will call you and ask for favors you don't owe them. He agreed, I was delighted, and the pickup basically went without a hitch. My friend (who I'm not mentioning here by name because I don't know his policy on using his name online) was a real trooper because it was crowded at the sale and sort of warm for moving furniture largely on one's own. He also had to drive down General Booth with the back of his car hanging open, and did an absolutely splendid job. And finally, he was the only one of the two of us smart enough to realize the cabinet had a built-in light and was still tethered to the wall by the cord as we were trying to move it out of the house where I bought it. So, smart and helpful!

I did take him to lunch to thank him, but as he will probably read this, thank you again! My cabinet thanks you! The mister thanks you! Thank you for enabling my temporary estate sale-induced insanity. I promise I won't do it again. Honest.

(I don't think there are any good estate sales next weekend anyway.)

Everyone is being really nice right now and stepping in to help and I would really just like to take this opportunity to thank all of you who have offered or given me help during this stressful transition time. I won't be here too much longer for you to call the favors back, so I know it is especially selfless.

Things I learned today

A watched web page never updates.

Nervous salespeople make me outrageously uncomfortable.

When you hear the figure "30% off wholesale" and you know it's true, it makes you buy things. Even from nervous salespeople who make you outrageously uncomfortable.

When one of your friends forgets to do something and has to fess up to their wife that they didn't do it, it is a friendship test whether he chooses to unfairly throw you in front of the train to save a tiff in his marriage or not. On this particular occasion, count it as a failed test.

Some things are not do it yourself projects.

There is a good reason I wear a sports bra when I play DDR. If I forget it when I plan to play away from home, I should probably just not play.

Trust your instincts when the telephone rings. 90% of the time, some part of you knows who it is.

When you think to yourself, "I have to remember to do that later" at a time when you are perfectly capable of performing the task in question, yet you do not because you are too lazy and choose to procrastinate, there is a 100% chance that you will forget to do it entirely. You will realize it too late, and spend the rest of the day berating your lazy ass inside your own head.

If you go outside your sphere of people you've grown accustomed to and really watch the 'new' people around you, you will get the distinct impression that your average person is at least a little bit insane.

Perhaps the most annoying type of person is one who is poorly-informed in a particular subject, yet completely convinced they have it all figured out. In fact, they are so sure that they correct you, even though it is clear that you know more about it than they do. Double the irritation if it is your job to know the things the person is correcting you about. There is a disease running rampant, and it is 'know-it-all-dumbass syndrome'.

I love my laptop, but I hate that I have grown so accustomed to its keyboard that my right hand is naturally offsetting itself on 'normal' size and layout keyboards.

I currently own three more video games than I have time to play. Yet, I am bored a lot of the time. Someone explain that temporal shift to me.

I have made a shift. Until recently, if I was given a choice of reading a book with a fabulous plot and a so-so writing style, I'd take that over a well-written book with a so-so plot. I've made a complete 180 there.

I'm sure I learned other stuff, but I was probably lazy and forgot to commit it to memory.