Drops of Awesome

Personal Blog of Author Kathryn Thompson

Around Town

Craigslist Gives Me Melon-Feet

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I love the idea of Craiglist. You sell things. You buy things. You give away things so that people will haul them away from your house for free. I have been able to give things away on Craigslist that no one on Freecycle was willing to take from me. In theory, Craigslist is just a hands-down all-round super-awesome idea. It has one major flaw that I can see though – People use it.

Yes. When you’re buying and selling on Craigslist, you have to deal with People and People are sometimes flakey and overly picky and sometimes they don’t tell the whole truth about the whole everything. I know this. I have years of experience both dealing with and being People.

The last time I put something up for free on the List O’Craig, I had about 20 people ask to come by for it. I began trying to give it away on a first come, first served basis but the first people to respond were not necessarily the first ones who could come by and even when they said they’d stop by, they often didn’t. So for days, I’d tell one person they could come get it, we’d set up a time, I’d wait at home and they’d not show up. This happened several times so that when I finally got rid of the darn futon, I was thanking the taker PROFUSELY for actually showing up to get the free furniture.

So now I’m a shopper. I’m looking for baby stuff. My MacLaren Quest Stroller of Bliss and Joy that I’ve had and loved for the past 6 years molded and mildewed in my garage over the winter and so I want a new one without paying for a NEW one to the tune of $220. My infant seat has expired and although I’m not sure I believe in expiration dates on car seats, I have enough doubt in my heart that I would blame myself if we got in an accident with the old seat and the baby was injured in any way.

So I found a top consumer reports car seat on Craigslist that was 6 months old and in “perfect condition” from a non-smoking, pet-free home and the woman swore it had never been in an accident. Since Dan does not believe in expiration dates on car seats, he was much more amenable to my spending $85 on Craigslist than $200 at Babies R Us for the infant seat.

However, the day before I was to pick up the seat, the woman emailed me to say her child was still using it and it wasn’t really available yet until she got him the bigger seat. Okay. So it was on Craiglist but not really for sale yet. She apologized and said if I could wait a week, she’d have it ready. This went on for a few weeks when finally she emailed to say she’d purchased her new seat and I could come pick it up.

Not wanting me to come to her home, she asked me to meet her at a grocery store 35 minutes from my house at 6pm as a celebration of cranky hungry kids and rush hour. I told her I could come at 6:30 and she said that by 6:30 she’d be at her church for an event. She told me to meet her there, gave me directions and said to call her on her cell phone when I got close. Well her church was 40 minutes away and it was still rush hour but I packed my kids in the car and drove out to meet her.

The directions were wrong and after driving around for a while I found it anyway because it was a super giant mega-church, having a humongous concert of some kind with a full stage and lighting set up in the parking lot and hundreds, if not thousands of people in the audience. All the parking was full. People were walking from blocks and blocks away to hear the music. I was getting concerned about how I was going to find her and whether I’d have to drag my two kids and my crippled pregnant body for blocks and blocks to the concert and then blocks and blocks back to her car and then blocks and blocks back to my car so I called her.

And it went straight to voicemail again and again and again. I left her some choice messages, sort of polite in a biting sort of let-me-describe-in-detail-all-the-ways-you’ve-put-me-out sort of way and I teared up a little and headed 30 minutes from there to Babies R Us to buy the dang car seat new so I would never have to deal with People again, only sales associates.

To her credit, she called a couple of hours later to apologize and say she’d left her cell phone at home by accident. I could not bring myself to say, “It’s okay,” or do anything to really make her feel better. My feet were swollen. My people were cranky and we’d spent 3 hours about town in rush hour traffic on a wild goose chase. I told her I was frustrated. I told her I’d used half a tank of gas for no reason. I told her I never planned on using Craiglist again. I wished her luck selling the seat and I hung up.

Strangely, making her feel bad did not make me feel better at all. I still had melon feet. My kids were still mad and I was still out $200 bucks, a tank of gas, and a few ounces of sanity, only now I also felt guilty. I could have let her off the hook. I could have not spent the entire drive telling my kids to be quiet because I was busy talking to Dad, Grandma and my sisters about what a total jerk-wad this lady was on my Bluetooth. I would have liked them to have seen me be a bigger person than that. I would have liked to have played 20 questions or listened to Eye of the Tiger and I would have liked to have remembered that I’ve stood people up before, forgotten my cell phone or just gone temporarily brain dead.

But I still kind of loathe Craigslist.

Now tell me. Do you believe in car seat expiration dates?

Carding a Fat Lady

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Since I don’t drink and rarely do anything that requires me to be over the age of 16, I have very few opportunities to be required to show identification. It generally only happens if I’m pulled over for speeding or if I’m at the grocery store buying wine for cooking.

Well yesterday I bought some wine for a risotto I was planning to cook and for the first time in history they didn’t ask me for ID. Maybe it was because the cashier knew me. Possibly it had something to do with the fact that I was toting 2 children along with me and waddling, very obviously pregnant with a third. I choose to believe that I’m starting to look as distinguished as befits my 30 years of age, despite the fact that this pregnancy has me breaking out like a preteen after a chocolate binge.

Then later that night Dan and I went to see the new Harry Potter movie, mostly to enjoy the air conditioning while cuddling child-free. When I purchased the tickets, the boy at the counter asked to see my ID.

“What is this Harry Potter movie rated?” I asked incredulously.

“PG-13.”

And I’m thinking, “This kid really questions whether or not I’m over the age of 13? From the way I feel at this moment, the baby inside of me is practically 13.”

“And you’re carding me to get into the movie?”

He looked confused. He stared at me in a way that only a 15-year-old boy can when confronted with the prospect of carrying on a conversation of more than two words with an adult woman.

And then it hit me as he handed back my credit card. He was checking ID to make sure the card wasn’t stolen. “You need the ID for the credit card, huh?”

He nodded uncomfortably, looking sort of down and away.

So yeah, if you want to get into a PG-13 movie anytime soon, pay cash or have your ID close at hand.

Everyone But Papa Survived

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My parents were out visiting from Montana this weekend and we wanted to hang out with them in a relaxed way, a way that didn’t involve driving into downtown Seattle to see something quintessentially Seattle-like.

titanicInstead, we ate steel-cut oats, played games and explored the Titanic… in Redmond. Country Financial is sponsoring a free traveling exhibit of artifacts from the world’s most famous shipwreck and it happened to be in Redmond this weekend. I was pumped to go. I think my parents were a little less than pumped but they just wanted to hang out with and spoil Laylee and Magoo so they came along for the ride. Maybe their reticence was due to the fact that my dad had a premonition he wouldn’t make it out of the exhibit alive.

There’s something about that boat that’s always fascinated me long before Leonardo DiCaprio cavorted around on the silver screen. I’ve seen movies, documentaries and pictures about the events surrounding the disaster and the efforts to recover the artifacts from the ship and I’ve always wanted to go down in one of those bubble ship things and, I don’t know, look for ghosts and jewelry and such.
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The exhibit was set up in a mall parking lot with a few huge semi-trucks linked together to form an impromptu museum. We got our picture taken in front of a backdrop of the grand staircase and each of us was given a boarding pass with the name of an actual passenger on the Titanic. They told us that at the end of the exhibit we could find out if our passenger survived or not. Is it just me or does Magoo look a bit trepidacious about spending his Memorial Day weekend entering things called “exhibits” that look like giant trucks smooshed together, where the chance of survival is highly unlikely?
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In a fun gesture, the exhibit organizers gave local bloggers special treatment, letting our group skip the lines and giving us permission to take pictures inside, although picture taking was not allowed by people who do not publish their thoughts, opinions and whims online. The coolest thing they handed out to the geeks in attendance was a certified piece of coal that was actually retrieved from the titanic. I’m not sure what to do with said piece of coal. If I had a coffee table, maybe I could put it on there on some sort of special gilded dish and wait for people to ask me about it. In all likelihood its usefulness will only come next time I play Two Truths and a Lie at a sleepover party and I’ll say, “I have a piece of coal from the Titanic in my sock drawer.”
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As we entered, I heard one tween boy rush ahead, “Come on mom. Let’s just hurry through. I just want to see if we survived.” Laylee and Magoo seemed equally unimpressed by the artifacts although they peeked inside each case and listened intently as we explained what an iceberg was and how the ship crashed and sunk. They have a great and strange love of all things morbid.

In the end, everyone but Papa survived. Pretty good odds, I’d say considering the odds of the actual passengers on the ship.

This sign puts a lump in my throat:
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Go to the site and have a look to see if they’re coming to your town. It was a cool exhibit and the price was right. It’s a great chance to teach your kids a little history and maybe instill in them a healthy fear of ice. It may be good in a watered-down glass of ginger-ale when you’re pregnant but when you least expect it, it’ll tear a hole in your hull and send your one true love on a one way trip into the frigid drink.

*Besides the lump of coal in my stocking, some silly putty and the chance to cut in line, I was not compensated for attending or writing about this exhibit. I just appreciate a company willing to support the arts and education in these tough financial times so I’m giving a shout out to Country Financial.*

Click to Read My Product Review Policy

Nickelodeon’s Parents’ Picks Nomination

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Are you bored and looking for a radio button to click with your mouse? I will help you with your problem. Just head over to Nickelodeon’s Parents’ Picks website and vote for DaringYoungMom.com as your very favorite Seattle blog ever. It’s super fun and easy.

I’m nominated alongside some of my favorite bloggers and people (you guess which ones are the bloggers and which ones are the people) so if you like my site, head on over and give it a holla but don’t get distracted and vote for one of the other bloggers OR people. Remember who sent you.

They don’t even ask for your name, your age or the deed to your first born.

Why Even Ask?

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If you order food at any Taco Bell restaurant anywhere in the country, and I know because I’ve been to at least 6 of them, the person wearing the Brittany Spears head set will ask you at the window if you’d like any hot sauce with your order. Every once in a while she will look you in the eyes and act as if she cares whether you want the spicy stuff or not. Most of the time she will mumble, “Youwantanyhotsaucewithat?” as she stuffs napkins and, get this, hot sauce into your bag.

I always, always say, “no,” not because I don’t like spicy things but because I don’t want one more opportunity for disastrous mess in my car. I repeat. I always say, “Negatory.”
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And I ALWAYS get one, if not several, packets of hot sauce in the bag. ALWAYS.

The same thing happens at McDonald’s. When you order a sundae, they always ask you if you’d like nuts to go with it. Over the years, I’ve become intolerant of hard chunks in my ice cream. I don’t trust them. “Was that a peanut or a pill bug?” I ask myself.

So I say, “No thank you,” when they ask if I want the peanuts.

“Does she get peanuts?” you ask yourself.

Yes. Yes she does.

ALWAYS.

If you’re just gonna give me peanuts and hot sauce, why are you acting like I have a choice?

At the grocery store, when they say, “Paper or Plastic?” they then proceed to give you the style of bag you choose, even if you’re like me and choose your own handmade reusable, 100% recycled, free range, biodegradable totes.

Blood in a Baggie

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Sometimes the red tape involved with medical care baffles me, especially when you see more than one provider at once.

Last week, my naturopath told me I looked like crap. She said it a lot nicer than that but basically she told me she was worried about the color of my skin and wanted my iron tested. So she wrote out a requisition for me to have my blood taken at a lab about 35 minutes from my house, the closest one in the chain of labs their clinic uses. She wanted me to do it this week.

I hate having my blood taken. I have bad veins and I’m frequently stuck multiple times before any blood comes out. Now it just so happened that I had an appointment to have blood drawn at the Magical Ultrasound Clinic of Joy this week. So I asked her if I could just have the Magical Ultrasound Clinic of Joy take a little extra blood and check it for iron.

She didn’t see why not so she told me to bring the requisition to the MUCJ and ask if they’d be willing to help me out. Well I was in a hurry this morning dealing with sick kids, sick me and sick Dan and I completely spaced bringing the form.

When I showed up at the MUCJ, I asked the nurse if she’d run the extra test and she said she couldn’t do it without consent from my doctor, without the form. As she gathered the vials and needle, I started to tear up a little. Without looking up, she offered, “I could call your doctor’s office and ask them to fax over a copy of the requisition while you wait out in the lobby.”

“No. It’s okay,” I answered. “I’ve got babysitting issues. My husband’s home sick with the kids and I promised him I’d be quick and home in time to make lunch.” I’ll just drive back out to the lab another day and get it taken again.

But she wouldn’t give up. She wanted to help. “I could take the extra blood and then see if I can get them to fax in the requisition and if they do, I could run the tests. If not, I’d just toss the extra blood.”

I thanked her profusely and headed home, making a quick stop to pick something up at a nearby store while I was in the area. My cell phone rang. It was the helpful nurse from the MUCJ. She said that the naturopath’s office would only use their specific lab, a different lab than the MUCJ worked with but if the naturopath’s lab was willing to send over a courier to pick up the blood, that would work just fine.

The naturopath’s lab has one person working in the office. The same person who checks you in takes your blood. I told her that I could not imagine them using a courier service. Again I thanked her but told her I’d just have to come back again another day and do the draw again. THEN she offered to drive the blood over to the lab herself when she got off work that day. Okay. Cookies, flowers, something. This woman’s got something coming to her.

“I’m not comfortable asking you to do that, but I’m still fairly close, I could come by and get my blood and drive it over to them.”

I asked her if there was any way I could avoid paying $4 again to park in their garage for 5 minutes while I ran in to get the specimen. (I love saying and writing “specimen”. It just sounds so creepish.) She said just to pull up in the roundabout outside the office building, call the office and ask for her and she’d run it out to my car… in the pouring rain. Bless this woman!

So I called my naturopath’s office and asked them if they’d fax the form over to the lab so my blood transport wouldn’t be in vain. No. They said they couldn’t do it because my doctor wasn’t in this morning. I asked if one of the other doctors in the practice could write one up since the information was on my chart. It’s not like I was calling up out of the blue asking for a prescription for medical marijuana. I just wanted to see if my blood had enough iron. Could a test like that ever be harmful? She said she’d check. After a few minutes she came back and said one of the other doctors was willing to do it.

Then I asked her if she had the address of the local lab for me. No. She didn’t have it. Apparently they normally use the Lynnwood lab so she didn’t have access to the address I needed. I visualized her sitting at her desk with her computer hooked to the internet unwilling to google for me and then visualized the nurse at the Magical Ultrasound Clinic of Joy who was willing to look up the address and DRIVE MY BLOOD OVER TO THE LAB AFTER SHE GOT OFF WORK and I asked politely, “If you don’t have the information for the local lab, how are you going to fax the form over to them?”

She said she was planning on looking it up in a couple of minutes.

“Could I hold until you get a chance to do that?”

She said I could and in 30 seconds she had the address for me. I thanked her and apologized for causing all this trouble. “I just didn’t think it would be this hard,” I confided.

“I know. It shouldn’t be,” she conceded.

When I pulled into the roundabout at the UCJ’s office and called up for my nurse, she was down to my car within 60 seconds, a smile on her face and a baggie of blood in her hand. I believe I professed my love for her. Then I drove the 3 blocks to the lab.

When I got there, baggie of blood vials in hand, I gave the lab employee the short version of my story and asked if she’d gotten a fax from my Naturopath’s office. No. She hadn’t.

I did sort of a “follow my eyes” movement over to the fax machine. She followed my eyes and reached the 18 inches to the piece of paper lying face down on the fax machine.

“Your last name?” she asked.

“Thompson.”

“Yeah. I’ve got it.” Then she smiled and said she’d get it taken care of and I suddenly liked her a teeny bit more.

My naturopath’s office is efficient and well run. They’ve stayed open late for me more than once so I could come after Dan got home from work and taken as much time as I needed. My doctor there is one of the most patient and empathetic medical professionals I’ve ever met. Maybe their office staff was just having a rough day today. It was the contrast in the two offices that was so startling.

I don’t think anyone was being malicious or trying to give me the runaround and one person went WAY above and beyond the call of duty. I know that different doctors’ offices contract with different labs. But I still don’t understand why it had to be so hard. Why can’t every person be as helpful and kind as the MUCJ nurse? Why doesn’t everyone get it? Why can’t we all just get along? Why can I keep down a McDonald’s hamburger but not rice?

These are the questions that trouble me today.

TMI

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If you’d like way too much information about exactly how blick I’m feeling right now, you can read about it at Parenting.

In happier news, I had another solid Ultrasound today in an office with little glowing star lights on the ceiling and jazz music playing in the background, a real sheet to cover me instead of a paper gown, a large white leather recliner that lounged back into the exam table and the nicest doctor ever who took time to learn our names and our birth history so he could talk to us like people without glancing at our forms while we were talking.

Things are good, really good and it makes the sickness seem more worthwhile.

That’s Seriously Your PIN?!

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Dan is a digital security freak. I cannot overemphasize the security measures he puts in place electronically to make sure our data is safe, backups, double, triple, quadruple backups, kept in different cities on various servers.

The most amazing though are his passwords. Dan loves beautiful rock-solid passwords. Passwords with letters don’t even qualify as passwords. Passwords with letters and numbers are for sissies, losers, amateurs and people who enjoy having their identity stolen. No. Dan’s passwords use letters, numbers and symbols in ways that are incomprehensible to me.

Sometimes when he sets me up for a new account of some kind, he’ll hand me a password that looks like this: g3Tg0!nG@NddAn$5

“How am I supposed to remember that?” I’ll ask incredulously because I know that writing it down on a sticky note next to the computer is not a viable option.

“It says ”˜get going and dance 5.’” Like, duh!

I nod and smile. Yeees. Yeees of course. The dancing. I’ll totally remember it now.

So we were in Costco the other day when Dan went to pay for the groceries with his debit card. I looked over as he entered his pin and my mouth dropped open in surprise.

“That’s seriously your PIN?! Really?!”

Time sort of froze.

Dan looked up embarrassed, an uneasy smile frozen on his face.

The cashier and the cart-loader tried unsuccessfully to stop their giggles.

And I just stared at him. “Really?!”

“What?” He asked sheepishly.

“Did they assign you that PIN or did you seriously come up with that yourself?! Honestly?”

Then I noticed the eyes watching us and I decided it would be best to talk to him later alone away from the giggling school girl Costco employees.

Outside, I started up again, “How could someone like you pick 7777 as his PIN NUMBER?!”

“That’s not my PIN,” he smiled sheepishly.

“I saw you do it.”

“No. I wiggle my fingers around to mask what I’m really typing when I enter my PIN. I can’t believe it actually worked. Awesome.”

Yes. Awesome indeed. Don’t you feel safer just reading the blog of someone whose husband is such a master of trickery and security? I wish I’d been right, though. He never would have lived that one down.