Vanessa Alter : random thoughts

A mouse.   A tan mouse.  He walked to town.  Then he found some hole.  Then he went to the mouse cave.  When he got there, his friends were having a party.  They were making fun of him.  So they threw a bucket of water.  Then he went out of his mouse cave.  He waited and waited until his friends were done with the party.  So his friends caged up his mouse cave.  So he lived with his papa and grandmother instead of his mouse friends.  So he just took a bath.  Then on the next day, his friends were still having the party.  So he waited and waited and waited for thirty days.  Finally, his friends were done with the party.  But he couldn’t get into his mouse cage ’cause they locked it up.  So he didn’t like his mouse friends.  So he got some friends that were named Sean and Sarah.  So they went to the park.  They brought their dog.  So they gave their dog a walk around the park.  So they all went to bed and read haunted stories.  When the darkness was done, that was the next day.  They ate breakfast then got up from the chair.  They put their bowls in the sink.  Then they went to school.  Then they got to play on the playground.  Then they ate dinner.  They didn’t know how to cook ’cause their dad was at work.  So they watched a cooking show.  But their cooking show was dessert cooking show.  Their cooking show was the wrong one.  They wanted to make green eggs and ham to eat but those TV shows were in the south pole so they rode an airplane.  They went to the south pole.  So they went to somebody’s house.  They watched their cooking show there.  That was the only place on the planet to watch those TV shows.  Green eggs and ham…that cooking show.  So they went on the airplane to their world.  So when they were bigger, their job was to work at the space station.  Then, they worked on fixing one of the spaceships.  When they were done, their job was over.  It was twenty minutes.  So Sarah cooked dinner.  When they were done, they went to bed.  In bed, they read dinosaur stories this time.  Then on the next day, the three mice got dressed.  So they wanted to draw pictures.  When they were done, they went to their work.  They fixed three spaceships ’cause there were three of them.  So they went to the park again.  They brought their dog again.  They walked five laps around the park.  The end.

A clumsy cat fell down a hill, rolling to town.  The  cat went to clumsy town.  It started raining.  After the rain, it was dark.  On the next day, the cat got into a rocket and flew to another planet.  It was filled with green, little heads.  Those were the aliens.  There was one little doggy in space.  The clumsy cat picked up the little doggy and flew back to earth.  The cat didn’t know how to fly, so he crashed into a jet.  He jumped out of the rocket and went into the jet.  Then the jet crashed into a house.  The jet engine blew out a candle in the house.  Then the candle flew into space.  The End.

(Sean dictated this story to me and asked me to write it down for him.  I got his permission to publish this original work on my page. :)  I charge 5 cents per word for taking dictation.  The boy owes me 6 bucks.   Anyone else want to hire me?)

I was buying a couple things at the Disney Store yesterday that were “Buy 1, Get 1 free”.  The tag on the items both said $6.50.  When I went to pay, the register rang them up as $8.50 each, and took off $8.50 for the BOGO promotion.  I didn’t argue with the cashier at the time because I thought I must have read the price tags wrong.  So after she rang them up, I opened my bag to check the tags.  The tags were ripped off.  Not the whole tag, just the part with the price on it.  I don’t remember seeing the cashier do that, but either she did, or I picked up some items without tags after reading the price on another item of the same kind.  Anyways, I went back to the shelf to check the price on the items there.  Some had the price ripped off,  some said $6.50.  Curious, no?  I took 2 items identical to the ones that I purchased for $8.50 and showed the cashier the tag that says $6.50.  Guess what her response was…

her: “Yeah, there was a price increase.  They’re $8.50 now.”

me: “What?  So, you guys mark the items up a couple bucks so you can then put them on sale?  That’s silly.  Even the “buy 1, get1″ sign says $6.50.”

her: “Someone was supposed to pull off all those original price tags.”  (She walks over to look at the sign I was referring to)  “Yeah, the sign says $6.50 too.  I’ll have to call the manager.”

The manager came out, but didn’t acknowledge me at all (sorry, but that’s bad customer service), but I overheard her telling the cashier to *sigh* go ahead and give me the difference.  So there I stood as a line of people impatiently waited behind me since there was only 1 register open.  The cashier then  said, “*sigh* I’m going to have to run this as a return then re-ring the items and take the discount.  It’s going to be a HUGE (yes, she really emphasized the hugeness of it all)  pain. *sigh*”   I had to bite my tongue… hard.  Was she trying to make me feel bad for catching them marking up their prices so they could put them on “sale”?  I hate when businesses do that.  Bad Disney!!!!  I’m just glad I got my $2 back.  Yep, all that for just $2.  Well, I’m sure they’ll be marking up their prices even more for their final clearance sale because the store is closing in May.

The moral of the story is… watch the price that the registers ring up… they’re not always right, especially if an item is supposed to be on sale.  This has happened to me at many businesses, many times.  I watch the register display like a hawk because of this.

I also had a similar incident at Walmart recently (another place with a stellar record for bad customer service, in my book).  I was buying a spaghetti squash, but the cashier couldn’t find the code for it, so someone else told her to ring it up as a yellow squash, and they assured me it would be the same.  Since I often don’t just take someone’s word for it, I had to check for myself (stubborn, I know).   I went back to the produce section and  double checked.  Yellow squash was $1.98/lb, compared to spaghetti squash, which was $1.25/lb.  My cost went down by over $2.  Yeah, I know it’s a measly $2, but a buck is a buck, right?  Sorry, but I don’t just give money away for free.

We spent the evening at home with the kiddos to ring in the new year.  Mia fell asleep around 10, so she partied in her crib at midnight.  Sean stayed up and made his own Lego Batman setup with real legos, but he informed us that since he didn’t have a Batman lego dude, he had to use the Indiana Jones dude.  He also kept asking about every 30 minutes when it was time for the sparkling grape juice.  He didn’t care about the changing of the year… he just wanted the fancy juice in the fancy cups and wanted to clank the glasses together and yell, “Cheers!”.  Sean is currently passed out on the couch.  He lost his battle against the sandman about a minute after he told me, “I’m not sleepy at all!  I could stay up for days!”.

Nathan and I awaited the countdown by playing scrabble.  It got pretty close, and he pulled ahead for a bit.  I had the chance to play the word “machined” on a triple word square and use all my letters for the additional bonus, but I didn’t think it was really a word.  I’ve heard the phrase “machined the rotors” when talking about cars, but I thought that was just a slangy way of saying it.  Well, it’s a real word.  I was so sad that I passed up that opportunity.  Nathan was glad I did…until my next turn, that is.  I was able to play “Romanced” on the triple word square and used all my letters on that to get the bonus, so I went and laid  the smack down on poor hubby.  But at least it was a sweet word like “romanced”.  Love you, honey!

After the New Year arrived, I played “Professor Layton and the Curious Village” on my DS and FINALLY finished it.  Now I can get the 2nd game!  Yay!  Now it’s 3 am and I’m going to bed, which means the baby will be up very early.  Oh well, Thus it goes.

Oh, and…..

Happy New Year!!!

On the drive home from Target today, Sean and I spied car that was all muddy on the back.  He pointed to the car and said,

“Look at that car, Mommy!  It’s all muddy!  They need to go to the car wash or something.  I DO NOT want to lick the back of THAT car!”

Me:  “Why would you lick the back of ANY car?”

Sean: (Thought for a second) “I don’t know.  I just might, but not THAT one!”

Yep, sometimes he makes me so proud. 

Sean started playing basketball for Upward.org. It’s a neat program where all the kids get equal playing time and a chance to start. In his age group, they don’t even keep score because the kids are still learning the game. Each week, they also hand out cards to the kids that have a Bible verse for them to learn before the next practice. At every halftime and halfway through the practices, the kids and coaches get together and talk about the Bible verses they’ve been learning and how it applies to their lives. This has really been a great motivator for Sean to commit some verses to memory. So far, I’ve been very pleased with this program (Thanks for telling me about it, P!).

Sean is on a team with 5 and 6 year olds. Nathan and I aren’t big sports watchers, so this has made us realize that Sean has never actually seen a real basketball game. Before Sean started playing, he thought playing basketball was just shooting baskets. So when they have games, he kind of wanders around aimlessly and passes the ball to people on the other team. He even claps and gets excited when the opposing team scores a basket. Watching his age group play a game is pretty cute. Sean is also very non-confrontational, so he doesn’t like to get closer than 6 feet away from the person who he is supposed to be guarding. It is too funny. There’s usually about 4 kids out of 10 out on the court that know what they’re doing. At today’s game, his coach announced him in the starting lineup as “Sean ‘Air’ Alter”. Anyways, we got some free tickets to go see the Lady Lobos tomorrow against NMSU, so hopefully that will give Sean an idea of what basketball is supposed to look like.

She finally said “Mama” today!!! So exciting! She’s been saying Dada for a little while now. She seems to learn a new sound every week. Yesterday it was “nuh, nuh, nuh , nuh”. Mia is now 10 and a half months, crawling all over and walking while holding on to things. She’s growing super fast. Her hair is finally long enough to do real piggy tails, not just half pig tails. She started sleeping through the night with regularity last week. I cannot tell you how happy that make me! Yay!

I just tried to call Southwest Airlines for some information, but all the customer service reps were busy. They now give you an option to enter your phone number and receive a call back when it’s your turn in the queue. They say you don’t lose “your place” in the order of calls, and you don’t have to wait on the phone. They tell you approximately how many minutes it will take until you receive a call back. My range was between 13 and 21 minutes. Now… we’ll see if they call back.

UPDATE: They called back 15 minutes later. Nice.

Sean read his first book all by himself today. It was about a tan fat cat that ran fast. He was so excited that he had to call Daddy at work to tell him. It’s pretty fun to get to share in his accomplishments… it’s like seeing him take those first steps all over again.

I found a website that has a template to create your own home school ID cards for both students and teachers. I thought this might be helpful since there are often businesses that give discounts to students and/or educators but they often require an ID card. You can upload a picture to put on the card as well. The free version lets you print the card on your home printer (maybe a heavy card stock would be good), or you can pay $6.95 to have them print it a laminate it for you. That’s not that great a deal since you can print at home and have it laminated locally for cheaper than that.