attemption sleezy, foreign spammers!

Note to your sleezy, foreign, scamming, spamming self: If you're going to send out mass emails to recipients without benefit of a a formal introduction, let alone a shared language, you might want to study the vocabulary of your recipients a little more carefully, i.e., don't rely so heavily on Google Translator.*

Case in point. This was waiting for me in my personal, private (use only for communicating with friends, family, and teachers so how the hell did you find me?) email box this morning:

Second Attemption: Your Credit Card PreApproval inside

Your Prepaid Credit Card will be shipped soon!

Prepaid Credit Card Approval Enclosed

Poor credit? Instant Approval for Credit Cards!

We have a Credit Card card invitation for you

Enclosed: Cards for people with Bad Credit...

So while I have your rapturous attemption, Sir Spams Alot, I have a few questions:

A. Is this an offer for credit or a last-chance opportunity to save my soul? Because, while in the lives of some the end result may feel similar, for most people money and soul suffer from irreconcilable differences.

B. Prepaid credit? Let me see if I understand. I send a thousand dollars to some unknown destination on the other side of the continent so you can issue me a credit card in the amount of a thousand dollars minus your most generous fee offer?

C. And why would I want to take that risk when I can go to my local grocery store, spin the metal kiosk and prepay in person? Am I not comprensating something here?

*Please don't take this personally, Google. You most definitely rank right up there at the very top of my list of favorite internets friends tools. But for language translation? Needs a little work.

Here's what I mean: I once used you to compose a note for my, then, non-English speaking house cleaner. I wanted her to change the sheets on my son's spare bed. I came home to find her looking at me very strangely. At the end of a confusing exchange, I deciphered her question: Should she cover his bed in notebook, printer, or wrapping paper?

deceived no more

I'm onto you, my little golden bar of soap. You can't fool me: Your sleek size. Your shrinking weight. Your newly slenderized waistline.

Your same price.

You used to be 4.5 oz. You are now 4 oz. And I am not the only one who has noticed.

At the end of each of our relationships, I used to cherish your remains. Take your soap slivers and lovingly place them flat along the inside of the rounded contour of your replacement bar. In the soap divot, if you will. A sliver pit for soap shavings. A token remembrance of all those showers we used to share.

In fact, your carved out cavity seems designed for the express purpose of holding my leftover slivers, doesn't it? Aiding we spurned lovers in our quest to slide you close along our nekkid bodies ever longer, until the inevitable end.

But in doing so, I see that I am covering your logo. Your crafty product designers wouldn't let that happen, would they? And break their cardinal rule of marketing? Thou shalt not cover thy product's trademark?

So no. I will not suffer fools gladly. Your cored out concavity isn't there for my convenience. It isn't there so I can scrimp and save and get an extra two showers out of your incredibly shrinking bar-hood.

It isn't there for my ease or protection either, so that the soap fits more precisely in my hand, preventing those potentially embarrassing and increasingly dangerous drop-soap-reach maneuvers.

Come back, Heath-soap, come back!

It isn't about me at all, is it?

No, the concave hollow is merely a way for your makers, the manufacturers, to fool me, the loyal customer, into thinking the price remains the same. So that they can continue selling more, but smaller, bars of soap. So that they can keep their jobs. So that their stockholders, your pimps, can continue to maintain their lavish lifestyles.

Make me the cuckhold, will you?

Think a-gain.

So, dear soap, no more recycling for me. No more lingering last moments of lucious lathering. No indeed.

I've hatched a plan. I'm saving your golden slivers in a plastic pouch, otherwise known as a baggie. I'm also saving my empty breath mint dispensers. Because it's only a matter of time before your personal size bar of soap will shrink to the size of a Tic Tac. When that day comes, I shall be ready.

So look for me in the back alley ways. I'll be the woman with the wig and the fake moustache, with the look of spurned longing on her face, frantically waving to get your attention, standing behind her car with the trunk open to reveal thousands of candy sized slivers of soap, encased in plastic dispensers, disguised as orange breath mints.

And on that day? Fear not. I shall no longer be your fool. Your cuckhold. Your spurned latherer.

I shall be free.

But the soap won't be.

$1.09 plus tax, please.

plowed under

Not with the cold, white stuff, unfortunately. Wouldn't mind trading in for some of that. No, I'm plowed under with the post-holiday residue.

You know, the ...

crumpled wrapping paper, didn't quite make it into black garbage bag

empty shirt boxes

pile of truffle wrappers, embarrassingly large

dried orange peelings

sweater-too-small-no-receipt-don't-know-what-to-do-with-it

pine needles

fireplace ash

crocheted afghan crumpled on floor, displaced by new, plush snuggle throw

digital watch instructions, printed so small, impossible to read

lost gift card, lost gift receipt, lost mind

It didn't always look like this.

Promise.

Happy Holidays-Almost-Over, bloggy friends!

words every mother dreads hearing

And why, every parent who survives the raising of teenagers, deserves an all-expense paid trip to a caribbean island.

No, wait, deserves to be deeded the island. Along with a different cabana boy for every day of the week.

So here is what I heard:

I picked up my son from his after school meeting. He gets into the car.

Mom! You did NOT wear that today!

me: (whose training and work experience means having an answer for everything)

silence.

son: Seriously. MOM! Tell me you did NOT wear that shirt! I mean, look at it! All those swirly colors. And what are those? Are those sequins?!

me: What?!? I like this shirt. The sequins aren't that noticeable ... are they?

son: OMG, Mom. Are you for real? Yes! You can see them. Ughghghghgghghghghg!

me: It adds a little sparkle to my day. So what? And they aren't actually sequins. They are little sparkly bits. And besides, I think the little sparkly bits .... are ... pretty.

feel stupid much?

Magpie posted a One Word meme yesterday. The first prompt was: Where is your cell phone?

The meme question reminded me. A little earlier in the day I was sitting at my kitchen table (inhaling) (scarfing) (wolfing down) eating a late lunch (sourdough pretzels and cheese, not so much a lunch as a snack when lunch was skipped due to much-too-busy schedule), when I heard my cell phone ring.

I'd been expecting an important call all day (from a district attorney, and you know how those must be put at top priority, right?) so I was up in a flash looking for my ringing phone. Frantically searching my cluttered kitchen countertops, I couldn't find it anywhere. But it sounded like it was close by. Like it was right in front of me. But where?!?

Well, it was close. But it was not in front of me, it was behind me. As in, attached to my behind. Tucked in the rear pocket of my jeans. Right where I put it so I wouldn't miss the call. Thanks to my brain fugue, and my running around like a chicken on meth, the call went to "missed" and they didn't leave a message. Was it the D.A. ? I didn't know. And I never call back unknown numbers when they don't bother to leave a message. So I was left to wonder. And finish my lunch.

(Turns out it wasn't the D.A. and I still have no idea who it was).

Thanks Geekologie for letting me borrow the picture.

my life from now til Dec 25th

Am I right?

As seen over at The Daily Dish. Thanks J, for the email.

rebate madness

I was dazzled by the promise of the rebate high. Yes, I'll take it, I told the cocky, condescending little (he weighed less than me) salesman. Yes, I'll copy my receipt right away. I'll mail in the rebate form without delay. All of the promises of redemption solemnly made by the rebate addict.

Of course, I didn't copy the receipt right away. It sat in my appointment book where the dreaded smudge occurred.

What is it with today's receipts? Printed on soft, shiny paper, the fragile figures smear and fade, so that come tax time all the important numbers have disappeared. Its a conspiracy, but by whom? And for what purpose, exactly?

The store logo is there, however. Indelible, for the world to see. How is that? They've somehow figured out how to leave their permanently legible, fireproof, will survive in a nuclear holocaust advertisement.

But I digress. The rebate form, also printed on this shiny paper, has two critically smudged numbers: the rebate number and the P.O. Box number where the form gets mailed for processing. I've heard it said, if one tiny number is incorrectly copied, NO REBATE FOR YOU, SUCK-UH!

So I spent the better part of my Saturday afternoon with my strongest reading glasses on, under the brightest reading lamp, trying unsuccessfully to deciper the smudged numbers. Got my son involved in the investigation with his perfect vision. Together we pieced together a few more numbers with a bit more clarity but not the whole series.

Panic rising, I then follow the "What to do if you have questions" portion of the form. It directs me to to the Office Despot website. Click on the supciously cheery link, "If you're looking for a mail-in savings form, you're in the right place."

More hard-to-read numbers are required: Product SKU, Model Number and Offer Number, none of which are labeled as such on the receipt. But I make a determined effort, tentatively plugging in scads of alpha-numerics. Press "SUBMIT" and .... The webmaster's reply: "No records were found that matched your request." Again and again, failed attempts to deliver the website generated mail in form. Arghghgh.

"This is exactly why they offer these %$^#$! rebates!" Says SAM.

"That and the corporate powers intend to keep consumers confused and sleep deprived so we'll hand over our credit cards without hesitation." Say I.

This image lifted from Tobiasly’s Blog, a fellow cynic who thinks Office Despot has a scam going.

So I've given up for now. Will follow SAM's advice to call the store and demand assistance from the rebate pusher.

And when I recover from yet another hangover? Rebates Anonymous for me. This time I really mean it.

has she lost her mind

Or is she using excellent time management skills?

For the first and only time in my life, I seriously wished I had a camera phone yesterday. I was leaving my office parking lot. There in the late afternoon sun stood a woman behind her bright red, shiny pickup truck. The tailgate was down revealing a truckbed full of clean laundry. About two months worth, by my house standards. Ask me how I know what two months worth of laundry looks like.

What was she doing behind her red pick up, you ask?

Why, she was folding her laundry, of course.

That's right. Out of the back of her pick up.

I assume her husband or child was inside the building having a therapy session. And that she was making good use of the empty time that others of us might waste thumbing through Hollywood gossip magazines. Or programming our cell phones. Or staring at acoustic ceiling tiles.

After my initial shock and double take, I thought, that is one (brazen hussy) smart lady! She knows the secret of getting things done, no matter how (ridiculous) odd it appears or who sees her doing it.

The most original time saver I ever came up with occurred when I had infant twins and a three year old. I stopped folding my underwear. And pajamas. Straight into my dresser drawers they went. Who cares about wrinkly PJs? Who even saw my underwear anymore? Not very original, though, now really.

I also started wearing the same clothes two days in a row (underwear being the exception). Occasionally three days in a row when I managed to avoid baby spitup. Leaving the day worn clothes on a chair, waiting for the next day. No folding. No deciding what to wear. Two days for the price of one. But again, no originality. (I do occasionally still resort to the two-days-in-a-row clothes. Ok, I do it a lot now.)

I stopped shaving my legs. Not very sexy.

I also started carrying an empty basket around from room to room, alternating the picking up of stray items and the putting away, in their rightful place, of other stray items. A trick I still employ to this day (and am now the proud owner of three full baskets of stray items waiting months or years to be put in their rightful place). Maybe somewhat original but not terribly effective.

I suppose that's why I was so fascinated with the parking lot laundress. I'm no time manager. In fact, I am the master of taking 3 hours to do something that mere mortals can do in 3 minutes. Just ask SAM. He'll tell you.

Some call it procrastinating. I call it the fine art of piddling and dawdling. And now I call it blogging. Getting in touch with my inner writer (yeah, rrrrrrrrrright).

I am also the master of worrying way too much what others are thinking of me. I'm an unconventional thinker who behaves way too conventionally out of fear of disapproval.

So the folding laundry in the back of a pick up? Probably won't see me doing that. At least not in a red pick up. SAM's is white.

What creative time management inventions have you come up with lately?