Wednesday, November 23, 2011

The Pediatric Phone Line Lottery

Will I win?  I mean, my child finished her antibiotic on Monday night and now has the return of a sore throat, the stomach is still rotten and is now running a low-grade fever.  Can we say SCORE?!

She's cried because she'll be missing their Thanksgiving celebration and her awards assembly today along with potentially missing Thanksgiving with the family. 

I feel so bad for her.

:(

ETA:  It is strep.  She ran another positive on rapid strep at the office.  Children's version of z-pack sent her into 45 minutes of vomiting.  Was on the Children's Hospital nurse's line on hold for 20+ minutes, but had a lovely and very apologetic nurse.  Had a crap day at work and that translated to my getting on the people at Big Bird Rx for giving me half a prescription-- again.  Snot-nosed (not literally, just in attitude) guy behind the counter said, "Well, it IS flu season."  "Yes, so BUY MORE!"  I didn't swear and I didn't scream, but I did let them know that having me come back-- again-- is just not working for me.  I'm sure that they all talked about me when I left.  It just didn't help that they confirmed twice to Hubs and once to me by phone that they had the script there and all was good.  Yes, their customer service line number will be getting a phone call.  I mean, it is delightful to pay full co-pay for half of the goods.  I proposed otherwise and the lady thought I was a raving lunatic.  Hey, they are giving me half of what they owe me.  Why not give them half of what I owe them?  Oh, but it doesn't work that way. 

I'm too tired to bake pumpkin pies.  I think I might collapse.  I've been up since 4:15 AM and I'm beat.  It'll be the first time that I've never had pumpkin pie on T-Day for breakfast.  Maybe I can force myself.  :shakes head in tirednesss:

So tired.  :yawn:

Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Tales from the Trenches: This is something I HAVEN'T hung on a tree.

My friend Cj sent me a link to a Christmas craft.  Now, I've hung some goofy things in trees.  I've made things from milkweed fluff, spices, nuts and dried corn.  I've used things like topiary frames as tree toppers that clearly shouldn't go into trees. 

Can't imagine how you would answer, "So, how did you make this?"

Mmmm.  No thank you.  Once a month contact is good enough.  Don't want that hangin' all over my tree.  Call me picky if you want. 

Yikes.

Smiles in my day:
-  I had a $5.00 coupon on a $50.00 toy purchase for Target.  I purchased said toy (an Our Generation wardrobe for K-'s American Girl doll).  I took it back today (three times through customer service thankyouverymuch) was able to repurchase the wardrobe and get a doll outfit and I could use the coupon.  Hooray for me, right?  Well, they gave me a $5.00 gift card.  "Another one?"  The CS lady said yes.  So, I went on, picked out another outfit (they said that they were on sale for 10.99 so SCORE!), went to purchase it and it came up as 13.49.  Hmmm.  Back to CS.  (One of the three times.)  Apparently, the sale from last week wasn't pulled, they honored it and I got both outfits for 4.00 (including tax) as opposed to 13.49 each.  It was a lot of CS trips, but it was worth it!  Between sales, coupons and the surprise gift card, I saved 25.00 between all three things.  The list price on the wardrobe was 54.99.  Even with the outfits, I didn't break $50.00.  Now, the birthday gift is done.  :)!

Have a great day!

Monday, November 21, 2011

I feel like I've run a printing service these past few days.

The Christmas cards from Shutterfly arrived.  They are delightful!  They have been stuffed into envelopes, personally hand addressed, posted and are awaiting their Wednesday drop.  What all went into making that happen?

I spent last weekend designing the card.

The first box came in and were wonderful.  The second packet of 15 came in looking like it had been wrangled by the postal machines.  Shutterfly is sending me a replacement set and apologized profusely.

With the Christmas cards, I send K-'s birthday invites.

She's having two parties this year.  She's having one girl party at the house with the lovely number of 8 girls.  We'll be having a second party on the evening of her birthday that is just family cake and ice cream.  She'll have school the next day, so it's not like we can party like it is 1999.

Her invites are never print, cut and roll.  I printed the card.  We found shimmery purple and silver polka dotted backer stock, a sticker had to be put on front and some plastic flare needed attached.  Since I didn't see those making it through the postal system, we hand delivered them.  With what I hoped but knew wouldn't be a simple fly-by delivery, there was much jumping, singing and dancing with friends as we delivered.  I still made it home in time to make dinner. 

The second batch was made with a change of date and minus the flare.  I had to assemble and stuff those in. 

I needed to make invitations for the Ladies Christmas Tea that K- and I will be hosting at our home.  Those were a simple cut and drop in, but I needed to find clip art, which was actually a full page border that I had to cut and paste, then track down a classy font I liked, figure out wording and so on and so forth.  I knocked those out.  Then, I pestered my sister for names and/or phone numbers since she couldn't give me addresses for her guests.  (I love the White Pages online!) 

Speaking of hunting addresses down, I spent time online doing that and when that failed, I tracked down my cousin to give me her brother's address. 

Since my weekends are hopelessly full from now through Christmas, I was able to bang out the favors I wanted to do for K-.  I made a CD to go with the theme of her party, designed, printed and assembled a CD cover, burned CD's, stuffed them, found that the glue I used wasn't adhering, did a double layer of glue, found that wasn't adhering and finally went to clear Alene's and gave them a good press in a phone book overnight.  You'd be glad to know that the third gluing is holding.  I divied up the hair doodles (we're Tangled themed and hair doodles seemed appropriate), had to attach those to the long note pad I bought, stuffed those into the neato make up case with a pencil, stickers and a button and we're done.  She's having a taco bar and she'll be going through some of her back stocked craft kits to see what we can do with 8 girls.  I found a Flynn Rider wanted poster, printed it and a few sheets of frying pans.  I'll cut those out and we'll have them pin the frying pan on Flynn for a game.  (So not taking credit.  Go to http://www.pluckymomo.com/ for more details.) 

Finally, I wanted to give a thank you to those who donated to K-'s elementary school Walkathon.  I had taken a photo of her as she was doing the walk, so I flipped that through Picasa, did a quick thank you on the photo and printed those off for the people who needed them. 

And I still have ink left.

Today, we tackled the grocery.  We got all of the Thanksgiving necessities, dropped a load o' cash at the grocery (meat was on sale, too) and came home and unloaded it all. 

K- wanted to play with E-, the neighbor, and her mom and grandma were out raking the last of the red oak leaves that just won't go away.  Since grandma was raking what was technically our yard (but they are our leaves!), I went out to help. 

Now, I'm tired.  The start of the work week is tomorrow and it will only get busier and busier each day.  Wednesday, we should be slammed. 

Chicken is baking away and I must go start some wheat pilaf and steam some broccoli.  Pardon me.  The smell is making me mighty hungry!

Have a great day!