Open letter to Comcast

Dear Comcast,

I used to like you. You’ve provided me with hours of entertainment in front of my television (love the OnDemand!) and my high speed Internet was always reliable. We had some slips, some bumps in the road, but I never contemplated leaving you before. Now, I think we might have to break up. It’s not me, it’s you.

See, a few weeks ago, we switched to your VOiP service, which was great. I was excited! I was moving into the future! We had to change our phone number, which is always a hassle, but I was willing to do it for you and that sexy bundled discount. I even paid our home security fee, required with any change of number and the switch to Internet phone, without complaint. And for the last few weeks, it’s been great. No problems.

Then all of a sudden we have no dial tone yesterday. And my mother-in-law calls us to tell us that someone else is answering our phone number.

So I call you to get to the bottom of it. The local people have no record whatsoever of our ever having telephone service through you. That’s impossible, I say – we’ve had a phone for weeks. We’ve been paying our bill. They give me another number to call. By this time, I am livid.

Something you should know about me, Comcast, is that I hate confrontation. But when I’m jerked around and my phone number is given away, I can be just as irate as the person who lives to call your customer service reps to complain. That is not me. But that is also how I was treated. Maybe I deserved it, because I was angry. But maybe there should be a better explanation then “I don’t know what happened.”

While I am grateful that you got someone out to my house first thing this morning, I am angry that we have to have a new number, which will require more money spent for our home security system, more hassles for the woman you gave our number to and more inconvenience for us as we change our number for the second time in less than a month. This is unacceptable to me.

Also unacceptable to me was your customer service rep’s explanation that “This happens a lot.” That doesn’t make me feel like you are committed to giving me the service that I pay for. It makes me feel like six weeks from now, we may be going through this all over again.

So Comcast, my husband and I will be having a discussion about switching to a different provider for all of the services you currently provide. Thankfully, such a service is available to us.

 I hope you will provide some sort of compensation for the incredible screw up. This isn’t any way to treat a loyal customer.

Sincerely,

One less member of your fan club

Mother of the year, part three

Hey everybody! Remember this?

Here’s a little visual refresher:

That was July 2007.

Now, July 2008, we have this:

 

My poor baby had to get stitches Monday after an incident at day care. And what did I do when the call came in? Well, of course I was on the phone with someone very important I’d been trying to talk to for more than a week, so I sent it into my voicemail. And when I saw Dave’s cell phone three minutes later? Same thing. I’m a really good mom.

When I arrived at the emergency room about half an hour later, she looked up at me, all tiny and bloody in the adult-size bed, and said, “Hi Mommy! I hurt my head.” I wanted to gather her in my arms and sob, but knew that would freak her out, so I settled for a breezy, “I see that honey! Does it hurt?”

And when the nurses finally came in to see her, I asked if they needed insurance information. Of course not, they still had it from last time.

So she’s okay, gets her stitches out in the morning and will likely have a small scar for the rest of her life. I took Thursday off work so she wouldn’t have to go to school and watch all the other kids frolic in the sprinklers. And hopefully she won’t remember this a year from now – just like she doesn’t remember the broken collarbone.

She’s still my little fighter. Look at her “strong face.”

Miss Bossy, social butterfly

 

Pop Quiz, Hot Moms

So you’re at a minor league baseball game with your no-nap toddler, when she poops her diaper. Upon reaching the not-crazy-clean restrooms, you discover:

1. You’ve forgotten to pack wet wipes in the transfer from small diaper bag appropriate for church to large diaper bag appropriate for baseball.

2. The poop is not the solid, easily handled by a paper towel kind. It is the runny, seedy, already crusted-on-her-butt kind.

3. The changing table, on which you have already partially disrobed your child and opened her diaper, has no safety strap.

4. She’s already taken off her shoes and dropped them to the floor.

What do you do?

What I did was disgusting and involved saliva and two extra diapers. And a good cleansing when we got home. I won’t elaborate. It even makes me a little sick to my stomach.

Even the bottled water is called “quench”

So I’m in San Diego, and I’ve never been here before. And I’m about to expose you Big City Dwellers to my charming Midwestern naivete because MYGAWD this hotel is fancy/trendy/CRAYZEE. We are staying at the W San Diego, which is kind of like having a role as an extra in an episode of Private Practice or Nip/Tuck.

Everything is fancy and modern  and shiny and mostly black and white with pithy little names like “wet” (the pool) or “sweat” (the gym, closed for renovations) or “wired” (business center). Instead of a picture of flowers or some picturesque countryside in my room, there is a chalkboard. Should I leave a nice note for housekeeping? The elevators have actual real floormats that have to be physically changed according to the time of day. Right now, they say “Good evening.”

I have a down pillow shaped like a beachball in my room and am currently playing my ipod through the state-of-the-art system that is ipod compatible. Each room has a dvd player and small dvd library, with rentals available upon request. There is 24-hour room service (which provided me with a Kobe beef cheeseburger at midnight this morning), and I was a little self-conscious taking a shower because the door only goes halfway across the shower… and it’s clear glass. The girl who checked me in was wearing a half-shirt.

Everyone who works here is constantly saying things like “everyone at the W is a VIP” and “whatever/whenever!” Seriously. The customer service is phenomenal. PHENOMENAL, I SAY.

The hotel bar, from whence I just arrived, is called beach (lower case) and purports to have heated sand. I stepped in the sand and inquired Jeremy the bartender about its temperature. He exposed the hotel managers for the lying bastards they are, telling me that the sand was only heated for the first two weeks the hotel was open, and then they turned it off because it was crazy expensive and kept shorting out the power to the kitchen. HA!

So Jeremy supplied me with my second rather-large pomegranate martini (expense account! which also paid for my split of champagne at dinner!) to carry up to my lovely room with the view of the harbor, and here I am, missing R and Dave and wanting to go home. As always on these trips.

This was the first trip that R truly understood that I was going away. She begged me not to get on the airplane. She didn’t want me to go “play with Diego” (San Diego). She wanted me to stay there and eat hot dogs and play with her new Barbie horsie with her.

But she’s doing great with her dad. It’s great that they have this time together. And good that I have a chance to get away, too, I guess. But there’s only so much loneliness that champagne, a Padres game and two pomegranate martinis can take care of. Even if I do get to listen to my ipod in my hotel room.

I-L-L…I-N-I

Jennie often writes passionately about her love of her alma mater, Texas A&M, and how, as a child, she hadn’t imagined herself becoming an Aggie.

I graduated from the University of Illinois ten years, six weeks and four days ago. In some ways, it doesn’t seem like that long ago. In other ways, it seems like longer. I loved my time in Urbana-Champaign. I spent three years at the Daily Illini, the last year as campus editor. I made some wonderful friends there.

I spent two years entangled in a difficult and sometimes abusive romance with a man who I thought I might one day marry and who broke my heart a little bit every day we were together and for a good year after I got the strength to tell him we shouldn’t be together anymore.

I spent my senior year with my best friend, a woman I felt such a connection with I just knew we would be friends forever – until she became involved with the man who was still breaking my heart.

Senior year was joyful and complicated and bittersweet. I was on my own – no roommates, no boyfriend, no parents directing my every move. That was when I found myself, found who I really was; found the girl who could stay home on a Friday night to write papers for her English 300 20^th Century American Women Authors class and play Flip Cups with the hockey team and  flirt with the goalie on Saturday night. I found the girl who believed passionately in President Bill Clinton and the injustice of a mascot that parodies Native Americans. I found the girl who learned to love herself for who she was, not who she was with. I found the girl who was a loyal friend to a fault. And I discovered the girl who loved cold white wine on a hot summer night, the Chicago Cubs, Old Style beer and the Beastie Boys.

For some reason, I was thinking about all this last night when I was pushing R around the neighborhood in her stroller, her little blonde curls bouncing as she urged me forward, forward, further away from home – don’t go home Mommy! Don’t go home! Someday she will go to college (sob!), but I hope I can put her on a path to independence before that. I hope I can teach her to find herself – and love herself – before she turns 21.

She’s already on her way.