No election opinions here…. Move along….
Many more people can say it so much better than I can. I’m staying out of it.
In the meantime, Glitter Glue Princess’s birthday is coming up. I’m working on getting stuff ready for that. I’m taking her and one of her best friends to a water park/hotel this weekend in leiu of going to the American Girl Place Store this year (but of course, she still wants American Girl stuff). More on that later.
This is a post about the massive VOLUME of kids who come to my house for halloween.
We had at least 350 – 400 kids come by, but in halloweens of past, I could tell you it was more like 500..
It has always been like this. When we moved into this neighborhood, and there were only 2 families living out here, we only bought 1 bag of candy, thinking noone would come out here. We were woefully mistaken. We ran out in 5 minutes flat.
As the neighborhood grew, so did the number of kids. The neighborhood is connected to an established neighborhood as a mile-long cul-de-sac. It became a problem with parents following their kids at a snail’s pace around the entire cul-de-sac, so the city actually decided to block the roads with the fire trucks, forcing everyone to walk – it didn’t slow them down, they still come en masse. It just makes it fun for those of us who really *live* here to get in to our own neighborhood for an evening.
It is simply not an economical proposition anymore …. With this volume of kids coming through, the quality of candy goes down so people can afford to hand it out – mountains of little tootsie rolls, and lots of cheap penny candy that doesn’t cost a penny anymore…. But I found a way to make it cheaper. I buy rings, balls, and pencils by the gross from Oriental trading. I bought pirate stickers and glow in the dark spider rings for this year. I’m stunned every year that noone else does this out here. Since I was planning for 500, I still have some left over for next year at least… Glitter Glue Princess gives out real candy with the trinkets to her friends, but that only takes a couple of bags instead of the mountains everyone else uses.
We have our fair share of teenagers who just walk around with their pillowcases for candy and no costume on – when asked what they were they say they’re invisible, a gansta, etc… The best answer from last night was from a kid who told us he was a human – loved it! We had a kid show up in a hawaiian shirt with leis around his neck, and boxing gloves who told us he was….. Hawaiian Punch!
So S and I went to Blissfest last month, as was pictured in the earlier posts.
What I didn’t tell you was that I lost my drivers license on that trip. I went and spent a few hours at the Secretary of State getting a replacement, never expecting to see it again.
Fast forward to three weeks later…. Guess what shows up in the mail today???? A letter from Blissfest, containing my license! I honestly had written it off as gone. My entire family is in awe of your power!
If this post gets to Blissfest organizers, I want to offer my sincere thanks in their efforts. They really do give “happy bliss”, even AFTER the festivities are over. Quite frankly, no other michigan music festival can compete! You guys really are THE best.
So, the same person is STILL trying to read my About page, even after I made it private last week – they opened it at least twice.
So, in honor of the anonymous person who is still stalking me: I completely removed it. Good luck trying to find it now – you will get a 404 error.
Sorry to drag all of the rest of you through this… We will resume our regularly scheduled programming very soon, and I will show you some lovely zippered pencil cases I made up….
I love wordpress, especially when I compare it to my hubby’s blog on blogger. I can tell exactly what was looked at. I get stats on what was viewed and where the person came from.
The question I have is why someone looked at the “about me” page yesterday 22 times!?!?!? I’m really not that interesting. If you are the culprit, would you please tell me why? If you think I’d divulge exactly where I lived, you’d be thoroughly mistaken, if that was what you are looking for. There is a reason I only use my first name, and the pseudonyms for my hubby and daughter – anonymity.
*sigh* Maybe I’d be better taking it offline for awhile.
So, I confess. I’m computer literate. Actually met my hubby while taking a basic computer programming class in college on the vm (yeah, it predates the internet – I’m as old as dirt, dig it). Now a few of my coworkers have caught on to this…
So, my coworker brings in his computer (hereafter called the anchor) saying he has a virus. He brings in all his software, including “the recovery disks!” (He says with a smile!) I take the thing home and start working on it over the weekend. Bet your cookies he has a virus/worm/evil monster, and not a nice one at that – it ate part of his recovery disk. Hubby and I do a destructive reformat on this thing, and it still has the little bugger on it. O.k. We pull out the “recovery disks” only to find them totally blank. I call coworker-turns out he didn’t make them when he first bought the computer. He calls the company that starts with G.
I end up ordering them for him and get stuck in customer service purgatory for half an hour, finally ending up emailing the requests for the disks because I am not about to pay for service on a computer that isn’t mine – I just need the freaking disks. No problem – they can have them out in 2-3 weeks. They give me a link to give them a credit card number, which I promptly do on the day they give me the link.
3 weeks go by, with every day my coworker asking if the disks arrived. On the last day of 3 weeks, I email the company that starts with G and ask where the disks are. I get this as a response:
I have created order number ….. for the Restore CD to be shipped to you. Please allow an estimated 2 to 3 weeks for the Restore CDs to be sent to you depending on the availability.
I am looking forward for your satisfaction with our service.
I respond with:
You are stating it will take 3 more weeks? I’ve already waited three weeks – I went to the secure website on receipt of the secure website address and paid. Didn’t anything get initiated once I did this?
The response I get is this:
I do apologize but you need to notify us once the information has been submitted for us to be informed that we need to use the information submitted in processing the order. In this case, we are only notified when the order has been processed.
Umm, huh?
So it is my fault that THEY didn’t process the order? I used the link THEY sent me to have the order submitted on THEIR system – can’t THEIR computer tell THEM I submitted an order – they had the case number and everything. It just blows my mind to see customer service like this in a day and age when everything SHOULD be automated.
So here I sit, waiting ANOTHER three weeks for the stinking disks, being asked on a daily basis if the disks had come.
Please, for your own sanity, avoid the computer company that starts with a G and uses a cow motif, at least if you want customer service that doesn’t use paper cups on a string or telegraphs for communication…
I’m pulling the soapbox back to the corner now.
Glitter Glue Princess visited Grandma and Grandpa in an overnight trip last week during spring break. *sniff* It was her first overnight that was REALLY overnight – the best she had done before this was sleeping over with her BFF who lives next door. This was a really momentous occasion.
Glitter Glue Princess went with them to the Grossology exhibit at the Alden B Dow Museum in Midland, MI. What follows are the photos that she took during her trip:
Ummm, yes. That is indeed snot coming out of the spigot above – gross, yes?
And these are a few taken by her Grandparents…
Glitter Glue Princess is at that age where little girls begin the whole rumor spreading thing about each other. She has not been herself of late, and while driving last night she told me that a couple of girls are making up rumors about her, that the boy who sits next to her is her boyfriend, that general sort of thing. One of her friends told her about this because the friend didn’t know if they should go to the teacher about it or not. She was internalizing a lot of anger at these girls, but rather taking it out on me.
So, last night I taught her about my new bit of wisdom and mindset – Be The Duck.
I developed this while working in an atmosphere of rumors and poor behavior too.
It is like this: Ducks are waterproof – they shake their feathers and all the water just rolls away. What ever rumors, lies, and such come at you – if you are the duck, they will roll right off.
It is kind of like the childhood rhyme “I’m rubber and you’re glue; whatever you say bounces off me and sticks to you”.
Quack, quack, quack. This is our new mantra at our house. She’s only in fourth grade, so we’ve got a long ways to go…
I was recalling a conversation, some months back, that I had with our little neighbor who happens to be Glitter Glue Princess’s dear friend. It was right after the tooth fairy visited, and GGPrincess was showing her the wee little note the tooth fairy always writes her. They have had a long standing communication, with GGPrincess leaving her notes when the tooth got lost at school, and the Tooth Fairy telling her about her life and leaving her little poems. As the kiddo was putting away the note in another room, she smirks at me and says “I bet she believes in Santa too”.
I look at her nonchalantly and say “But of course! He leaves her notes as well!” Looking at her in awe – “Doesn’t he leave everyone notes?”.
Being her sophisticated 10 year old self and laughing – “everybody knows he doesn’t exist”.
Giving her the most stupified look possible I say, “woooowwww! I never knew that! I thought everyone believed in him!”
A while back, Glitter Glue Princess and I were out to breakfast. She says something like, “all the kids at school don’t believe in Santa, but I don’t believe them. They keep saying things, and I just keep my mouth quiet because they would make fun of me. He has to be real, especially since I can see him on radar, and the long letters he leaves me every year. Who else would eat those cookies we make? Dad?!?”
I’m keeping this gig going as long as humanly possible…
