If you can't say anything nice....

...don't say anything at all.

"This LCD page is the worst ever! You can't find anything on here!!"

How am I supposed to respond to this feedback? I know how I'd like to respond but I can't. I'm operating as a representative of the Federal gov't.

Attention users of the world!! Don't submit feedback like this.

And the hits keep coming

Some new crazy feedback...

"what part I can access"

Um, part of what? Are you tied up? How in the world am I supposed to answer this?

We want to hear from you...

Part of my job here at starts with "M" ends with "care", is to answer inquiries from the public submitted via a link at the bottom of every webpage.

Sometimes these inquiries point out a broken link or a database error. Sometimes the user has a really good question that needs answering. Most of the time, the inquiry is not in my area and I reassign the incident elsewhere.

Every once in a while, I get one that makes me laugh.

At 12:19 PM, someone submitted the question, Does Medicare cover any work done to ears cleaning, hearing test, etc? At 12:59 PM, they submitted an update to their original question. "Well- do they or not?"

Captain's log

Day 1 – Baltimore to Wilson, NC
We rolled out of our driveway and hit the road. We were making good time until somewhere in North Carolina when BAM – dead stop. Literally. Micah put the car in park. When the cars around us began to empty, we shut down. I heard the word “helicopter” from the man in the car next to us. Oh no. He came over to our car and said that it was a hazmat situation with an overturned tanker. Holy Moly. It must have been just a vicious rumor because minutes later we were moving again.
Rocky Mount looked like a good place to stop for the night. There seemed to be a motel on every corner. Yeah, and they were all booked, except for that Comfort Inn where we just stood there…ignored. Another guy being ignored said that he’d been ignored for the past 10 minutes. Back to the van.
We tried again in Wilson. We grabbed a king suite. Suite, right? High on the hog, right? Not really. We looked for the elevator and couldn’t find it. We looked for the shower and couldn’t find it. I looked for the lamp by the bed and couldn’t find it. Luckily the bed was super comfy and a dip in the huge tub was kinda fun.
Day 2 – Wilson, NC to Mt. Pleasant, SC
We rolled out after breakfast at Cracker Barrel with Delores, our Garmin, leading the way. After a stop at South of the Border for some fireworks and snacks, we made it to Mt. Pleasant in no time. We were excited to see our very dear friends, Jen & Don. For those who may not know, Jen & Don played matchmaker in high school and fixed us up, so we like them a lot.
We hung out for a while and then headed to downtown Charleston for some grub and sightseeing. Don was a fabulous tour guide. He may or may not have made some of it up. He was very convincing so we may never know.
We figured we may as well stay for fireworks since we were there and it was getting dark. We waited and waited and hollered at the kids to sit down at least a hundred times. When the fireworks started, we realized they were lower than we thought and anyone under 5 ft was not going to be able to see without sitting on someone’s shoulders. Someone said, should we just go?
Back at the house, the boys put on our very own pyrotechnic show. I had orginally worried about one of the guys burning themselves. I shouldn’t have worried. The guys were fine. If only that tree had been so lucky. Way to hustle for the hose, guys! Jen’s voice carried down from the porch, should I call the fire department?

Let’s try this again…

I’ve been having really weird dreams lately. Really weird. No, I’m not pregnant. Bite your tongue. The other night I dreamt that I was shaving my legs….while driving. I had a little cup of water and my leg up on the dash and I shaved while driving to my friend Dorothy’s house. At one point, there was a bicycle cop behind me and I was really afraid he’d pull me over for distracted driving. He eventually fell off his bike and I wondered if I should stop.

I was bummed when I woke up and realized that I had not shaved my legs and it was still a task I needed to do. Rats.

This morning for a brief moment I forgot what day it was and woke Micah up promptly at 5:45. Whoops! It’s Thursday, I don’t wake Micah up on Thursdays. I immediately apologized and said, Go back to sleep. He said, I’ll take a kiss while you’re here. Aw!

In Evan’s Kindergarten class, behavior is rated daily on a traffic light system. Green is good, yellow is iffy and red is “you really pushed your luck today, mister”. As an extra incentive, they’ve added purple for going above and beyond. Ev’s been bringing home a lot of yellows lately. Many have been for wrestling on the carpet. I blame that on Micah.

We’re resorting to bribery to break the cycle. He wants a DS. So from now until the end of the year (June 18), if he gets only green, he will get a DS. We’ve thrown in a caveat that a purple and a yellow equal green.

Hannah wants a DS too. She’s never had a behavior issue at school so that’s not going to work for her. We’re going to have to come up with something for her to achieve. How about she drops the teenager attitude? Or doesn’t interrogate me daily with questions I can’t possibly answer. My favorite is, What’s Dad doing? Really? I don’t know. ASK DAD!!! (Dad is usually within earshot when she asks me this) Another good one is asking me a question and when my answer is “I don’t know”, she just rephrases the question. I’d better set up a fund now ‘cause my girl’s going to law school!

Miscalculation

I am a math idiot. I know this. I’m way too pretty for math. Figuring out a tip? No way. How much is 20% off this $35 sweater? Fuggedaboudit. I ask Micah a math question and he looks at me like I’ve lost my mind. I return the look. He knows I cannot do math.

But you would think I could operate a calculator. I manage a website, for goodness sake. Apparently, I am no good at calculator usage. For the second time in a few months, I have goofed my checkbook by simply not using the calculator correctly. I have no idea how I’ve done this. I use a calculator to guarantee a correct balance. Yeah, right.

I’m looking at my online statement this morning and realize that The Bank’s balance is less than Mine and there are 2 things that haven’t yet cleared. Hmmm. Did I miss something? I went back to October checking purchases and checks and making sure I didn’t neglect to log something in. It’s all there in blue and white.

Ok, I must have miscalculated. I go several pages back in my check register, checking balances with a calculator, and I find it. $100+ plus error. Maybe I left out a number when I subtracted. Maybe I hit + instead of -. All I know is that I cannot be trusted with math. Period.

Anyone want to be my accountant?

Thievery

I’m a flag girl. You know, the pole attached to the front of the house with a flag for every holiday and every season. I even have a birthday flag with detachable numbers to announce how old the members of my family are. I love my flags!

Saturday afternoon, I back the van into the driveway to give her a little wash and vacuum. I suddenly realized that there’s no flag in the bracket. No pole, no flag. What the? I look in the corner of the garage where the flag often goes when it gets really windy. Nothing there. I call Micah to see if maybe he’d taken it down and put it somewhere else. Nope, he hasn’t seen it. I walk all around the house, thinking maybe it had come out of the bracket and been picked up by the wind. Nada.

Son of a b*tch! Someone stole my flag! My pole too! The worst part is, now I’m hesitant to replace the pole and get a flag back out there. They stole my flag security. Right before Mr. Turkey went out for Thanksgiving.

There will be another flag out there in the near future, although the bracket may be moved closer to the front door and there may be video surveillance. Micah even talked about a pulley system with a shotgun. I’m ruling nothing out. Don’t mess with my flags. And don’t even think about walking off with a purple flamingo.

The kiddos didn’t have school yesterday, but they spent the day at school in the care of the before/after care group. I was emptying their lunchboxes in the evening and noticed that Evan hadn’t eaten his sandwich. I asked him why and he told me that he didn’t like that kind. Minutes later, I open Hannah’s lunchbox and she hadn’t eaten her sandwich either. Evan didn’t know why. I’m thinking, my poor babies going hungry because they didn’t eat their sandwiches. I ask what they ate and Evan tells me that they ate the snacks that were in their lunchboxes. I say, no wonder you guys were hungry.

Later, Micah is getting lunches ready for today and is looking for the lunchboxes. I tell him they’re in the frig because no one ate their sandwich. “Oh, that’s right, they had pizza today,” he says. What? Here I’m feeling sorry for them thinking they’d gone hungry and the little turkeys had pizza!

Someone, somewhere in this cubicle farm where I reside does not have their computer muted. I keep hearing the “ping” of a command box. Ugh. Really? Knock it off.

Oh yeah, and now that my BFF has a blog, I'm really going to make an effort to keep mine up to date.