The Agony & The Ecstasy*

The Agony is that, as I alluded to in a previous post, the Howler's big Santa gift was to be a dollhouse. A gorgeous, wooden, taller-than-she-is dollhouse.


We ordered it from WalMart.com, to be shipped Site-to-Store. We've done this on several other, smaller things, and never had a problem. Apparently, WalMart.com decided to hate us, and the wonders of the technological age decided to beat the living hell out of us.


The Dollhouse was ordered on November 23rd. They remembered and managed to take my money by November 25th. They remembered to email me that they took my money, though.


After checking at the store at least twice, we get a call from a friend of my Sweetie's who works at WalMart, that The Dollhouse was RETURNED. My money wasn't, but The Dollhouse was. And they didn't bother to email me AT. ALL. about ANY of this.


I got on the phone. I dialed numbers. I waited on hold. I talked to people who were absolutely bound-and-determined to NOT help me find The Dollhouse, and who did everything short of hanging up on me to NOT take my complaint.


Turns out, The Dollhouse was sent to the wrong store. What wrong store? Ain't nobody admitting. It was damaged, apparently beyond recognition, in transit, and it was "liquidated." Meaning, some jerk beat the crap out of MY Dollhouse and then sent it home--after not bothering to inform it that it had arrived ANYWHERE.


It apparently wasn't received correctly--those emails are automatically generated, so it's not like a human being had to even make an effort to send one. And, the money taking email claimed that they would hold The Dollhouse for 21 days before returning it. It was officially returned on December 16th.


In doing that math, WalMart in God-Knows-Whereville didn't bother to inform me that it arrived. And they beat the crap out of it for 21 days, then returned it from whence it came. That means that The Dollhouse arrived at some store, somewhere in America, on November 25th.


Now, part of the fun for me in all this is that it is at that point, 6 days before Christmas. It's not-quite 5pm on Thursday, December 18th. I've already scoured my hometown for an acceptable The Dollhouse, and resorted to paying on line, with a credit card, for the priviledge of being on the receiving end of some of the crappiest customer service I've ever experienced.


And they're not giving me my money back for 3 to 5 business days.

Do that math.


The WalMart Customer Not-Service representatives I talked to said things like, "Well, I don't know." and, "There's nothing I can do." and "Let me transfer you..."


I refused all that as "unacceptable."


And I informed them that I work retail, and "No lie, if our places where switched in this, I'd be out of a job."


They did manage to convince me, in my seventh-inning desperation for Christmas morning joy, to choose the "next best" house they had.


The Idiots actually tried to convince me to accept "Site-to-Store" shipping again. I asked them, "Do you EVEN hear yourself asking me that?" and I got a "It's the best I can do."


I informed them, "Well, no, it's not. And if you think I'm going to pay for the priviledge of being bent over like this again, you've got another think coming." (Although, I admit, I don't think they appreciated the sarcastic and bitter out-loud cackle they got when they offered to refund my money to a "WalMart Shopper Card")


They shipped the next-best dollhouse to my door, promising delivery "no later than December 24th" and knocked $25 off the house. (That shipping was $45!) And they managed to process that entire transaction--refunding my money for The Dollhouse and the new sale of the next-best dollhouse--in ONE DAY.


My Sweetie had it put together quickly, and the furniture it came with is perfect.

The Ecstasy is This is an example of Christmas Morning Howler Joy with the next-best dollhouse. It makes it worth it, and this most definitely does:







* Kudos to me : I didn't swear at the WalMart Idiots, and I swear, the only questionable thing I said was the part about grabbing my own ankles. And, given the circumstances, I think that one was acceptable!

Christmas Day

Well, I have to say that Christmas wasn't so bad this year.

We didn't overspend or overshop. My Sweetie did 99% of the wrapping, which was only fair because I did 99% of the shopping.

Since we had all this stuff done by Tuesday, Christmas Eve and Christmas Day were rather relaxing. And somebody at WalMart.com got to keep his job--I'll post the entire saga later.

Although, my Sweetie did give me the gift that keeps on giving--a miserable head cold. I'm still feeling the love, too. Joy!

On the family side, my grandmother claimed, on Wednesday, December 24, that she was never invited for Christmas dinner. My aunt went MIA entirely, and even her children and grandsons had no clue where she was for the day.

My mother is doing a really good job of NOT being nasty about the Toad's grades. I'm so impressed! Although, if you do get her talking about it, it's MY fault--and she sights examples of how it is my fault from things I did as a teenager (I was 21 when he was born.) So she's really reaching up there for it.

My sister is, apparently, out-and-out making up things about me (again, from two DECADES ago) to bolster her view that it is, indeed, my fault.

We were singing our traditional holiday song, including the fa's and the la's.

What joy it is to be us at Christmas.

Christmas Crazy

I'll put the disclaimer at the top:


I do NOT like Christmas. Especially since I started working retail.


But, there are some things about Christmas that I love: most of the music; finding the perfect gift for one of the Spawnlings; Christmas Eve service at church. And, all the truly insane things that people will do, or buy, at Christmas time. It's like the whole wide world goes insane and stupid, and then comes to see me.


A little background on the crazy 'round here: My neighbors aren't really all that bad, but over the years, they've convinced me that they are utterly insane. At one point, shortly after they moved in, the entire family was spotted, at various times, peeing in the yard. Mom & Dad, too.




Now, however, it's too cold for those kinds of annshinnigans, so they just do this: (I apologize for the blurry pics, but honestly, it looks BETTER this way.)

They have a small yard--if it were square, you'd call it a postage stamp. And every year, there's more and more for me to be utter amazed by at Christmas time. And it's RIGHT. OUTSIDE. MY. WINDOW.

This travesty of utility abuse is brought to you by Burgh Baby's Christmas Crazy. (It's the only crazy I got that's specifically for Christmas.)

What a Jerk

Santa, that is.

Have you watched TV's Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer lately?

As a child, it seems to be a sweet story about a guy who started out all wrong, and ended up saving his friends, and Christmas for the children of the world. What it looks like now, though, is about a bunch of obnoxious conformists bullying the guy they don't like into packing up and leaving town. It's twisted to think that after how Santa and even his own father treated him, Rudolph agrees to save their pathetic asses from diaster.

We watched it last night--Santa is a first-class, no-holds-barred jerk. He wants everything to be done his way, and he wants all the reindeer to be exactly the same. That's a sociopathic dictator. He states, early on, that because Rudolph is DIFFERENT, he will NEVER pull Santa's sleigh--no matter how hard Rudolph works, he won't fit in. Santa has spoken.

Then, during the reindeer games, when his fake nose falls off, the other bucks make fun of him, but SO DO THE ADULTS. And the adult *coach* is the one who tells everyone, "Right. And remember, gang, we don't let Rudolph play in ANY of our reindeer games."

The pretty little doe who can see Rudolph for who he truly is, still wants to walk home with him, but when her father tracks them down, she's got no chance.

What jerks they all are.

In her defense, Rudolph's mother tries to protect him--at first. But, after the male "put his hoof down," she's silent for the rest of the story. How sad is that? Even at the end, when ol' Dad shows up to be proud of his kid, in spite of his deformity, she doesn't even roll her eyes.

I'd just really like to know, too, in a place that is totally intolerant of difference (hence Rudolph's banishment) how is it that the tall, geeky elf is accepted and allowed to sing and work with the other elves? How does Santa and his gang miss this guy?

So basically, the Christmas message they're sending to us is that unless you're the Token, don't be different. But if you are different, forgive us our jerkness and bail us out when we need you.

No wonder I have so much trouble playing nicely with others--I won't be the Token, and I won't bail you out when you're a jerk who created your own problems.

A Little Green in the AM

My Sweetie tells me earlier this week that we need sugar. He failed to mention it (or get it) over the weekend when he was baking chocolate chip cookies.

Anyway, I'm thinking that we usually have a 2nd bag of sugar in Tupperware in the cupboard, simply because it's something that when you run out of it, you run out of it, and who wants to go to the store at 11pm to be sure to have sugar for their coffee in the morning? Yeah, it took me about 2 years (and HIM making those 11pm trips several times) for him to get on board with the idea that if it's something we use often, or a lot, we need to always have *extra* somewhere in the house.

The bowl is empty. The canister is empty. He would have refilled it if we had it...Dayum. I have a fresh pot of coffee and NO sugar. Grrr.

Ah ha! There should be some colored sugar with the spices. And so what if it's colored, right? It's still sugar.

I find it. I use it. I'm giggling because my coffee is GREEN now.

Later that day, I find the brand new bag that should have been there sitting up front in the cupboard.

Flash from the Past

I spend too much time thinking these days. Maybe it's the end-of-the-year thing, or it could be the lack of really good stories about weirdness at work inspiring me to drag out some of the best stories I-never-told-on-this-blog (yet.)

There a about a bajillion of 'em, and all of 'em qualify as Flypaper for Freaks. And, in all honesty, some of them still cause me to either giggle, or cringe.

This one is a cringer.

Shortly after we opened, they hired a girl named Katy. She was all of 19 and looked to be about 12. She was a spastic little chipmunk (think Hammy in the movie Over the Hedge), and she was, without a doubt, weird. Some people called her crazy, but I know crazy, and she wasn't it. She was WEIRD.

So, she was (and still is) referred to by many in the store as Weird Katy.

She irritated most of the people who worked there. She irritated customers. One of my favorite "Thank God I didn't have to deal with that" stories about her was when they stuck her at one end of the store, on register, and after about 2 hours, there were dozens of people coming to the customer service desk demanding their change. Naturally, the people at the desk had no idea what these people were talking about. Turns out, she ran out of change in her register, and instead of picking up the phone and calling the person who could bring her more change, she just told cash customers she didn't have change, and they could go to the customer service desk to get it. (She wasn't, unlike most new people, afraid of the phone OR the PA, because she was constantly paging, instead of dialing a number, whenever she needed anything. Then, all of a sudden, this one night, she was apparently off her meds and VIOLA! no phone calls. Those managers should have known something was up to not be answering her pages for hours.)

Anyway, I thought, at one point, that she had a crush on me.

I'm not the friendliest person around, and yet, there she was, ALL.THE.TIME. It was like I was in a Tom & Jerry cartoon, as Spike, the bulldog, and she was the little yippy dog that bounced around him saying, "Hey Spike, hey Spike, hey Spike" ALL.THE.TIME.

If I ended up on register near her, I'd notice that she would be sayingto her customers, word for word, whatever I was saying to my customers. Including whatever inflections I'd give the words.

It was creepy. She made my skin crawl.

Then, I went on maternity leave (and that's the Howler.) When I got back, 3 months later, they pulled me aside and said, "If you work with Katy, watch, and if you see her following Nick, or if she talks about him, or anything kind of stalkerish regarding him, let us know."

My response was two-fold: "First, who is Nick?" (He was hired while I was off. They had to point him out to me.) and "Thank God!" Eyebrows went up "I thought she had a crush on me! At least she's found someone else and will leave me alone now."

I actually made it a point, later, to THANK this Nick guy for saving me from being the object of her affections.

Turns out, she actually was stalking him--in a non-threatening, creepy, chipmunk sort of way. She'd follow him around the store, even when she was supposed to be at her register. She followed him home after work one night--going in the opposite direction of where she lived, in order to know where he lived. He apparently lost her in the dark, when she didn't know if the dirt road he turned down was a driveway, or just another dirt road. Then, Weird thing that she was, she came into work and told him (and several others) about it. One time, his parents came in shopping, went through her line, and mentioned that they were his parents. I was told she followed them out to their car, and creeped them out, too.

She quit a few years ago. She got weirder before the end, doing strange things like talking to nobody, and when she was told to clean and paint some of the shelving beams, she slopped water over them, price labels and all, then immediately slapped paint over them, price labels, water, and all.

Some of *her* customers still come in and try to look at my boobs, or just in general creep me out.

Self-Esteem and the Howler

I realize I'm a day late, but as an excuse I have work. Midshifts leave little time for much else! But, here goes:

First, I have to explain that when the Howler was born, they handed me this little thing...and she terrified me. She looked at me, and I was more afraid of her than I've ever been before in my life. It felt like a primal fear--like I would never be able to survive this. That feeling has mellowed, some, and she's grown into a spectacularly herself kind of person. But even as an infant, she had something about her that said, "Sit up. Take notice: I'm HERE." She screamed for several hours a day, and as she grew and became self-motorvating, she screamed less. I honestly believe, 6.5 years later, that much of the screaming was frustrating at not being able to do the things she wanted to do (we still experience the screamfest whenever she is monumentally frustrated at not being "big enough" to actually DO things.)

And that's just the backstory of our relationship. I worry that I have been given this awesomely terrifying responsibility: How do I help her be who she is, yet balance it with socially and culturally acceptable skills? What I mean is, how do I protect the "who she really is" against the obvious need to be social, have friends, have a place (which, I'm sure, she'll need to be creating for herself) in the world?

I first realized this was what I needed to do when she was just-turned-5 years old. And I learned then that my biggest obstacle would be her father.

She was attending a Christian preschool--a good school, and a good fit for her--and it was the day of her 5-year checkup (including the pre-Kindergarten shots.) I had laid out her clothes for preschool the night before, and she was more than able to get herself dressed. She goes to school, and we head to McDonald's a treat for lunch (I knew those shots were coming.)

At McDonald's, she has to use the bathroom, and of course, I have to go with her. I discover to my shock that she had *failed* to put on the panties I put out for her. She had failed to put on panties at all.

I inform her that we will need to go home and put some one before we go the doctor's. She tells me, "No fanks, Mommy."

"Yes, fanks, Howler."

"No, really. I'm fine fanks."

"No, really. We're going home; you're putting them on."

The conversation continues in this vein for the trip home and to the doc's. I explain that it's not acceptable to not wear panties when out-in-public. She wants to know how I know this (this line of questioning preceded the "are you lying?" line I got the following year.)

I explain that it's just the way it is, and once she no longer lives in my house, she can do as she pleases with--or without--underwear, but until then, she WILL wear panties when she leaves the house, or company comes over.

I'm smothering laughter this whole time.

After supper, when My Sweetie gets home, I tell him about my day--and this little adventure.

He IMMEDIATELY began saying things like, "NOT MY DAUGHTER" and "YOU, little girl, will be a LADY."

I literally dragged him from the room. He kept going. I don't even remember what exactly he said, because I was trying to keep from choking the life out of him.

Everything he was saying was the opposite of the things I am. I'm not a lady (but I could play one on TV.) I still get a rash when my mother says things like this to or about me. He not only misses the humor in it (especially the part about how it was pure chance she didn't wear a dress that day) and he likes the parts of me that are surprising, not-ladylike, and not usually socially acceptable--he revels in that side of me, usually.

And here he is, being a total spaz.

Finally, I get him to shut up enough to ask him, "And if this had been your SON who did this, what would your reaction be?"

"Honestly? I'd laugh, and not think much of it."

"Then that's what your reaction to this would be."

"But she needs to be..."

"OH NO BUT SHE DOESN'T! She does need to know that she is to wear underwear when she's in public, and when people are over, but YOU don't wear underwear all the time, and I don't wear underwear all the time, and SHE doesn't need to either."

He's still clinging to the whole "my daughter will be a lady" idiocy thing. Finally, I ask him if he thinks I'm unacceptable because I'm not a lady.

"No, you're fine."

"Then STOP being your father, and let her be. Help me teach her that who she is is okay, ladylike or not, and that there are rules to follow--like wearing underwear at certain times--too."

I thought that would settle it. I was wrong. Over the past almost two years, I've spent more time trying to buffer his "my daughter" idiocy than I care to admit. He's somehow got the idea that what's okay in his wife is not okay in his daughter. It makes me feel that he isn't admitting that he wishes I were someone else.

Over this past weekend, I'd finally had it. I know my family--especially my mother--is dysfunctional when it comes to what's "proper" and "right." He admits that his family can also be dysfunctional, but in a quieter way.

Don't get me wrong. His parents are decent, hard working people. I like them. I respect them. But it's not a secret that there are times when I bite my tongue for days on end when we visit. His sisters are kind, compassionate women. I like them. I respect them. But there are times when I want to scream because they all defer, sometimes to their detriment, to their father--the "man." They'll cry in secret because of something he's said. And I've heard the story over and over again about his one sister, who as a teen, "used a lot of body powder" as part of her beauty routine. Their father was, according to what I've been told, not understanding/tolerant of it to the point that EVERY. DAY. was filled with some hollering and many tears on her part. Whether she went overboard with the powder or not was not an issue for me--the fact that he was intolerant of her, to the point of making her cry, even if she was not using powder that day, is.

And I see the same thing in how My Sweetie reacts to and treats his daughter. He's a loving man, and he is a good father. He was overjoyed the Christmas he wanted to buy her some Hot Wheels cars and I encouraged him to get the bigger set, knowing how much they'd both enjoy it.

He was delighted the time he went to purchase the PowerWheels jeep for her, and I vetoed the pink Barbie jeep. (He brought home a John Deere tractor. I didn't even sigh or blink. She loves it.) He loves that she plays hard and doesn't worry about getting dirty, the only bugs she can't stand are spiders--in short, she's not prissy at all. She is girly enough to want long hair, and she likes dresses--in short, she's all girl--but she also doesn't put up with any one telling her that she can't do something/like something/be something just because she's a girl. The boys in the neighborhood and at school have come to respect it. And her Daddy revels in it.

But give him something culturally slanted against girls? It gets ugly at my house. This weekend, I asked him if he wanted HIS daughter to have a relationship with her father like HE had with his (they didn't get along for years, and even after he'd been sober for two years, his father was still beating that dead horse.) He said no. I asked then, if he wanted HIS daughter to have a relationship with HER father like his sisters have. He said no.

I think I got through, but the constant monitoring of his unspoken, unacknowledged, and unknowing "my daughter" idiocy is wearing. It's even more frustrating because he's seen the stress and frustration and anger I have when I'm treated "like a girl" at work--he's proud of the fact that I don't hide behind my gender, and that I am respected at work, not because of, but inspite of, my gender. (In other words, there's no qualifying "for a girl" that is part of who I am, at home, or at work.)

I'm still trying to get him to understand that how HE is with her NOW will be part of who she is in ten-twenty-thirty years. How afraid she is of her sexuality as an adult, how she responds to boys in her teens, how she has relationships as an adult are all built on the foundation of not just his relationship with me (and vice versa) but also his relationship--including his unspoken and unacknowledged belief in who she is as a person, as a girl, and as a woman.

I have seen my daughter's self-esteem enemy, and he lives in the house with us.

I'm participating in the Self-Esteem Carnival at Lords of the Manor, go there for more information and interesting reads.