Month: March 2010

Customer Service Charter

Phew – sorry for that silence there, Optus decided to test my mental health by putting us in internet connection purgatory.

Dear Optus,
I spoke to a lovely lady who had an Australian accent and may even have been based in this sunburnt land regarding the mysterious eatage of our entire monthly data allowance by the 19th of the month. She was very pleasant. We arranged a new plan to kick in at the beginning of next month and interim measures for the rest of the month because you see, I am kind of useless at real-life relationship management so the internet is my sanity saver. It lets me swear on the outside.   
But you see, being lovely and helpful counts for shit if you then don’t put in place the plans that were agreed upon. 
And why, if a new upgraded internet connection plan can be enacted in four hours do you need 48? Just wondering.
I do appreciate your business hours being until 7pm, it lets me share the love that is this house at 7pm with some poor (as in unsuspecting but he may well be the same financially), probably single chap in India. He appreciated my patience a total of 11 times. I did wonder if he appreciated my children screaming in equal measure. Sorry about that but the lego ship, according to Felix, was “MIIIIIIIINE” and that could only be conveyed to his brother at full volume and velocity.
He was very apologetic and after some delicious hold music (was that the soundtrack to some Stephen Soderberg movie?) told me we would be back flying the internet superhighway within two hours. He gave me a very official sounding job code with NO LESS than 10 numbers (SO OFFICIAL!) which gave me no end of confidence the problem would be rectified. 
If a new upgraded internet connection plan can be enacted in two hours, why do you need four or indeed 48? Just wondering. 
I waited. And kept trying. Unplugging things, rebooting others, trying. Waiting. A little piece of me dying with every ten minute block following the two hour window (which was now conveniently outside your office hours). 
This morning’s customer service man only appreciated my patience seven times which I thought was pretty rude considering he was getting the morning show my kids have perfected. You know the one, it involves telling kids to get ready for school 20 times, screaming it about five and then counting and then pretending to chase them up the hallway. Again, he said it would be done in two hours. ANOTHER TEN NUMBER job code. So special. So very special.  
And then, at ten minutes past the two hour window of opportunity we seem to be back. 
It’s only taken four days from the initial phone call. 
So I just wanted to let you know, CUSTOMER SERVICE COUNTS FOR SHIT IF YOU DON’T ACTUALLY DELIVER. 
The end.
Yours in eternal frustration and fear of slow connectivity,
kim at allconsuming
I’m so back bitches.

Something to make you smile on a Sunday



With thanks to Pip for giving me goosebumps and making me smile with this.

Sad brain day

OH dudes, I woke up today with a bad case of sad brain.

I think this is for a number of reasons:

  • there were a couple of goals I set for myself at the beginning of the year, none of which I’ve made any inroads into
  • the big boys got back from a week away at school camp and the upshot of that is a severe case of  HOLYCRAPFOURCHILDREN-itis. 
  • the stress culminating from Mum’s hip replacement surgery and her coming home on Thursday. She is by absolutely no means being overly demanding but, it’s just stressful. 
  • the stress of all the choosing a high-school/looking-to-the-future focus for Oscar palaver
  • the ongoing incredibly boring reality of living on a shoe-string and knowing that this is just how it is at the moment, blah-de-blah-blah-blah
  • another hospital trip last night due to the finger Oscar had jammed in a door on camp looking like a big purple sausage and really needing an x-ray (the upshot being it’s not broken, just severely severely bruised and OMG the staff at Mona Vale Hospital Emergency Dept were just staggeringly brilliant with him) 
  • My concern about my weight finally reached critical mass (boom tish) and while I haven’t been swimming in 3 weeks, this week saw me finally reign in the eating that has been going on and while I have felt infinitely better from that alone, the whole food management plan tend sot make me go loopy at the best of times. 
  • not sleeping well due to crazy dreams. One of them involved us going to Melbourne and staying w/ Sooz only to discover her small inner-suburban home was infact a quirky old house in a paddock with – get this – ELEVEN clotheslines. Sooz should be laughing by now because she doesn’t have a clothesline and is in fact, the second person I know married to an architect who have children but no clothesline, which to me is like having fish and chips without the chips – possible but just bloody stupid. They had 11 clotheslines as there was a special deal at Bunnings that involved you buying that many to score an outdoor table setting. But this was no ordinary outdoor table setting, it was one that you only sat along one side and was perfect for one side of their house for the kids to sit at for afternoon tea to avoid the hot summer sun. See, not getting good quality sleep. Eleven clotheslines. I mean, for fucks sake. They could at least feature consensual adult activities with Jake Gyllenhaal. Hell, they wouldn’t even need to be consensual. I’m just saying.  
I did end up having a huge sobbing cry this morning which these days is highly highly unusual for me. (Gosh, just thinking of how a day without a huge sobbing cry used to be highly unusual.) Chef offered an appropriate level of comfort and the boys were all remarkably concerned (probably because it is now quite a rare spectacle for Mummy to be sobbing) and were all very comforting and huggy. Bless ’em. 
It’s been a bit of a full-on Saturday with Chef taking Felix to cricket, me and the little fellas going shopping for a birthday present for a little boy from kindy (Jasper’s first ever birthday party invitation!) (cue various tantrums for lollies, chocolate, their own toys), then taking little fellas to the party then taking Felix to drama. 
I am bummed because I’m meant to be at Madame FlingFlongs for a bloggers get together but my in-laws are away and there’s no way I could leave the kids with Mum due to her level of incapacitation. 
So we’re all home now and dinner is going to be a sausage sizzle, bread rolls and salad and then watching Mrs Doubtfire together. I might even make an apple crumble. Crumble makes everything better. 

1000+

My internal monologue when it comes to Google Reader:
Fuck, 972 unread??? WTF? I had it down to zero like, three.days.ago. MAN. I am just following too many people – I can’t remember who did that tutorial on that gorgeous cathedral pillow idea or used those stunning fabrics in a really simple 4″ square number. Who was it who just joined weight watchers and has unknowingly given you the final cyber shove to get your act together about losing some kgs? Damn it. Swiss Miss has 42 unread??? HOW THE HELL DID THAT HAPPEN? Didn’t she just have a baby. Wait, maybe she’s the one who is pregnant. Who’s the one who’s newborn has the bowel obstruction, I NEED TO FIND HER. MUST SEE HOW BUB IS DOING. GODDAMNIT. OK. pick your top 10. The ones you read every single day and/or feel disappointed when they haven’t updated every single day. TEN who are you kidding, you bloody idiot, as if you could get it down to ten. Who’s that? Why am I following them? OH yeah that’s right. But they haven’t updated in months. Unsubscribe. Ooh, and them, and them. Unsubscribe, unsubscribe, unsubscribe. Man, that felt liberating. WHAT? 965 still unread? D’OH.

*****

So today I was having ‘a big clean up’.

My goal was to clean up the kitchen, vacuum and get all the bigger boys’ bedroom in order while they are away on school camp.

Instead…
In cleaning up the bedroom I ended up cleaning up the 5×5 Ikea expedite bookcase in the hallway because some stuff had to go out there and it had become a dumping ground. It’s now dusted and organised. But that was not in my plan.

The bigger boys’ room is now only half cleaned up. The lego is half back in there. Their clothes are still not into the new drawers that came with the new longline bunk beds that arrived two weeks ago.

The guinea pigs cage is cleaned.

But achieving that saw me engage in some spontaneous gardening as spreading the used newspaper and hay on the garden required me to re-establish the edge of the garden bed, relocate some agapanthas and water the whole goddamn shebang.

So now I have a clean bookshelf, a rebuilt garden bed and a clean guinea pig cage. WTF?

… and when he was bad he was horrid

You know, from the minute we knew we were pregnant for the fourth time, Grover has been throwing me the proverbial curve ball. Much of the time it is not him per se but the mere cold hard reality of four children. It’s a hell of a lot more than three. Who knew!

But then there are days when it is Grover who is the curve ball. Now before you all get uppity at me (not that any of you ever get uppity with me except when I do things like sort lego by colour) I know it is largely an age thing but having had one child who nearly broke me many times over through the screaming and not sleeping and stubbornness and belligerence and oh my GOD STOP SCREAMING  Felix was/is very challenging energy/draining hugely/rewarding (totally dependent on the day minute way you look at him) and knowing this child seems largely cut from the same cloth my shoulders can’t help but have days of slumpage.

On Sunday, this child of mine engaged in the following pursuits:
– stole his brother’s breakfast, took off with it to the bathroom, locked himself in the bathroom and ate it all.
– insisted on trying out new shoes by walking around outside the shop on the dirty rough ground as opposed to the soft carpeted space in the shop
– screamed. A lot.
– announced in a department store that a wee was coming then walked into the womens change room in what was clearly a physical display that the arrival was imminent.
– got into the tubes of paint and bottle of fluid that make the paints suitable for application to fabric and proceeded to paint the outside of the house and the pathway. (I was at the shops at this stage. The third trip to purchase things for the bigger boys to take to camp, this time the final hope for finding shorts. No one has shorts in store any more. I mean, it’s only MARCH FOR GOD’S SAKE. WHERE HAVE ALL THE SHORTS GONE???)
– screamed. A lot.
– Left Bobo (his soft toy that is a necessary requirement to lessen the amount of screaming AND to go to bed) at the shop where we were trying on shoes that he kept running away wearing. This was, of course, not realised until during one of the later screaming sessions and driven home at bedtime.

– tipped the box we use to transport guinea pigs out all over the floor. Which means hay, guinea pig poo, food and other detritus were spread from here to kingdom come. 
– Opened my new toothbrush and painted the bathroom floor with toothpaste with it (although I’m not convinced it was a painting exercise but just many failed attempts to get the toothpaste on the toothbrush) 
– screamed some more
– had a monumental fuss about going to bed which culminated in him smashing Chef’s bedside light. I would have mustered up even more outrage had a) I not been so broken in spirit by his behaviour all day b)the lamp come from somewhere more exclusive than Ikea and c) had I not broken my matching bedside lamp a few weeks ago in a bizarre fit of cleaning.
– finally fell asleep half on his bed half off it at around 9.30pm

– screamed ‘no, GO AWAY’ in his sleep about an hour later only to then come and collapse asleep in our bed
– did a wee in our bed

This kid, this kid that did all of that in one day, but then has a day like yesterday and today when he is just totally endearing. Motoring around telling funny little stories, running off to the toilet then coming back for help to put his pants back on saying each and every time, ‘did a wee mum, on the pot, good job, high five’.

Ahhh two and a half. Can’t wait to see the back of you.