March 2010

As part of our Spring Break adventure, we decided to take the children to an animal wildlife reserve.    I was a little leary to start with but when we got there and I saw this…

…I became downright concerned.    Having been adequately warned that we may very well be bathed in animal slobber, we were then advised that we probably didn’t want to take our own car and instead might want to rent one of their  “special vans”….

…which we did.    Those cute kids and Mom in the pink shirt you don’t recognize are The Man’s sister and her adorable kids.     In tiny lady in the yellow at the end is the only and only MIL and Grandmother extraordinaire and the person who was responsible for the spit bath we were about to take and the laughs that ensued. Check out these pictures and you’ll understand why her grandbabies love her so much.

Armed with approximately 20 lbs of critter kibble, we headed out and were immediately greeted by this guy:

Not getting as much food as he wanted he made his point a little more clear:

And when that didn’t work, he tried to eat the hand of my MIL.

I think my SIL is laughing at her soon to be almost one handed Mom which is just all kinds of wrong.     But we were soon to encounter a much more aggressive and slobbery animal, this guy:

Want to hear me scream like a little girl?   Here you go…

I truly believe he was trying to French Kiss my husband. Also wrong. Want to see the giraffe try to eat the car and kids while leaving a slimey spit string behind? I can accomodate that as well.

But while all that was going on, a sinister creature had approached our car. I’m going to call him the Quick Bird of Death (just like my friend Cynical Dad called the ostriches in his hysterical post “Terror at the Lazy 5 Ranch”. He’s the only person more frightened by Ostriches than me I think…).

And I was all, “OMG, you are the ugliest creature that God ever created” at which point he started to look around to see who I was talking about and was all, “Who me???”

But my favorite picture is this, because while I can’t exactly remember the sound the animal was making as it demanded food, but The Man decided to answer in kind:

He’s sort of the Slobbery Animal Whisperer.

Wait…No, I mean the animals are slobbery, not him.

Most of the time.

The End.

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Spring Break was last week and we headed to Atlanta. We were smart, we booked our tickets to fly out at noon so that we wouldn’t have to freak out on our kids to rush out of the house. We got to the airport and I was stunned and amazed as all of my family made it through security almost as quickly as I can….and without incident. (Let’s not talk about that time that a 4 year old Miss G tried to sneak three lovely shades of nail polish, 2 bottles of hand santizer and one bottle of my Chanel cologne through prompting a special search of her Dora backpack by “authorties”, shall we?)

Anywho, having checked in the night before and having arrived at the airport an hour and a half ahead of time, we headed to the gate with our “confirmed” boarding passes in hand to get our seat assignments.

That’s when it got tricky.

See, apparently the word “confirmed” does not actually mean you know, “CONFIRMED” as in, “Why yes, we do have a seat waiting for you on the plane which is why we lured you here with the word CONFIRMED“.

After watching the final stragglers board the plane and realizing that perhaps I had misinterpreted the word confirmed, I finally turned to the gate agent and said, “We aren’t getting on this plane are we?”

Such a stupid question.

It was at that moment I realized the standby list had 65 (SIXTY FIVE!!!) people in front of us and since this wasn’t the airline I normally fly and have status on, there wasn’t a chance in hell we were going anywhere. The gate agent whose been very busy click click clicking and avoiding eye contact with me finally has no choice but to look at me at which point I completely and totally lost my ever loving mind. “Are you KIDDING me? What is this CONFIRMED b.s.? We checked in LAST NIGHT!!“.

Could I have been nicer given it really wasn’t this slightly bald clickety click  mans fault? Yes. Could I have remembered my two children were standing on either side of me and I could present a better example of how to deal with issues like this? Possibly. But it just wasn’t going to happen that day. Especially not after the slightly balding clickety click typing agent, lowered his glasses to the end of his nose, took a deep breath, sighed and said, “Let me tell you how this works….”

Oh no….

“On Spring Break, we purposely overbook. We gamble…and sometimes we lose.”

At which point Mr. C piped up and said, “Oh mister, do I ever feel sorry for you…”

“You lose?  Do you really? Because I’m the one standing here in an airport with my family holding a confirmed ticket that I thought meant CONFIRMED CONFIRMED not ‘Hey welcome to Vegas would you like to stick your ticket in the slot machine and see if it spits a seat out?!?!?’  AAARRRGH!!!”

I was summarily sent back to my seat with a tsk tsk of the hand so that the gate agent could break the news to the next fool in line holding his own confirmed seat pass as we all watched the plane taxi off.   It was at this point The Man and Mr. C took to complaining loudly, I took to facebook and twitter and Miss G took to peaceful protesting.

I’m happy to say my little protester worked her magic because despite being told we would not be leaving at least until 4:00 and probably not until the next day, one hour later we were called to the counter by the supervisor who had been called in to stop the little “situation” we were creating, told to board the next flight and handed 4 four hundred dollar vouchers for our problems.

SIXTEEN HUNDRED DOLLARS.

Hell to the yes.

So I guess the moral to this story is threefold. First of all, you sometimes have to go jihad crazy on people who fail at customer service to get attention.   Secondly, while I am somewhat easy, I am not cheap and I can in fact be bought for just a little under two grand.   (What…you say I’m still bitter?  I tell you there are exactly sixteen hundred reasons I’m not saying the name of the airline here.)     And third, if possible, bring a very cute little girl with all her markers skilled in the art of peaceful protesting….because a sweet little face can work wonders on the heart of a complaint hardened  supervisor.

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Tricked you with that, huh? She did, I swear…and she didn’t mean to. But first we have to cover off on the early story that leads up to it.

Dallas is not a place you’d think of as a great place to celebrate St. Paddy’s Day. But oh my, is it ever. Every year there is a parade on Greenville Avenue filled with floats, crazy people, partiers and fashion victims.

Witness:

Some people **cough cough** dress their kids up.

Some people **cough cough** let their 8 year old daughters wear their Irish Drinking Glove. Hey, she’s drinking water so it’s okay, right?

Green hair and interesting hats were all the rage…

…as were fishnets and fuzzy green boots.

There were tons of drunk people on floats….

…and people to assist them later in the day.

Because jail really does suck. Not that I have any personal knowledge of that, mind you.

And then there was my friend Gretchen.

We sat there watching the floats go by and teasing people. We’ve been going to the parade together for 20 years now and we are not rookies in the heckling department. When a group of people in wheelchairs went by we reeled it in and politely cheered them on. However. HOWEVER. The guy behind them was on a bike. A special bike. A bike with the pedals up near his hands which Gretchen took as her opportunity to get back into the game and she shouted, “Hey Mister! Your bike is upside down!!!”

Which, yeah, it was. But she was so happy to get back to heckling she missed one key point. They guy only had ONE LEG which I immediately pointed out to Gretchen and Gretchen immediately began to die eleventy million small deaths on the spot.

I’m pretty sure he didn’t hear her because he never looked our way, thank God. I can tell you that Gretchen peered a little closer at her heckling victims the rest of the day though and next year, I’m fairly sure she is going to bring binoculars to make sure we don’t have a repeat of that little incident, God love my slightly near sighted, sweet little friend.

Erin Go Braugh y’all….Have a Happy St. Patricks Day wherever you are!

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Oh my.   Where have I been for a week?

Well,  my new boss came into town last week. I was very focused on getting ready for his visit. Back to back client meetings set up? Check. Presentation materials adequately prepared? Check. Crushed up goldfish crackers and empty juice boxes removed from car? Check. Diva attitude checked at the door?

Yeah, well about that….

The first day went off without a hitch. Weather was gorgeous and I had on a kicky little dress and black patten boots to brace for any unexpected weather. (You in the back with the quizzical look on your face? This is important info…part of the plot line.) (Also, stop laughing at my use of “plot line”.)

The second day however the weather got the best of my resolve to remain in the diva free zone. I didn’t check the weather before I got dressed and bolted out the door to pick my boss up. On the way downtown, I noticed some bothersome clouds in the sky but didn’t give it much thought. After parking the car and walking through downtown to our appointment, I couldn’t ignore it anymore…it was going to rain and I had left my umbrella in the car. So I did what any respectful new employee in very high heels would do, I handed my boss the car key and asked him to go back for it.

Yep, sure did.

Now this isn’t something I’d pull with just any boss. You have to size ‘em up first and make sure they are super nice, which he is. You also have to actually be wearing extremely high heels making it a slower process for you to trot back to the car. I’d give this one an 8 on the diva difficulty scale.

However, I’m never satisfied with staying at the same difficulty level. I like to take my game up a notch or two whenever possible so while we were waiting in the conference room on the 27th floor watching giant black clouds full of rain roll in, the conversation went something like this:

TSM: “Wow, I picked the wrong day to wear python shoes.”
Boss: “Those are python?”
TSM: **stares at shoes with worrisome look**
Boss: **at this point possibly wondering why he chose TSM**
TSM: “Well yes, and they are not shoes, they are Choos.”
Boss: “Shoes.”
TSM: “CHOOS.”
Boss: **at this point DEFINITELY wondering why he chose TSM**

We got through the meeting and a down pore started just as we were leaving the building. My new boss was kind enough to get the umbrella out that he had gotten for us earlier, but I was still thinking of my Choos. No way was I taking those python babies out in the rain. Tell me you would play it differently:

At this point, I went ahead and took the diva factor straight up to a ten. We were on a parking meter that was about to run out of time but it was seriously raining.   Decisions had to be made.   Risks had to be taken.   Shoes had to be saved.     So given the choice of manning up and walking through the rain to avoid the meter running out and getting a ticket or making us sit it out in Einstein Bagels to save the shoes?

I chose bagels and the parking ticket.

And amazingly enough, while $35 poorer but still with the Choos intact,  I am still employed today.

Bravo.

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