CAN ANYONE EXPLAIN TO ME, PLEASE?

Aka. "What’s been going on with me the past 48 hours"

**Who was the sadist that thought it would be a good idea to put “prize redemption counters” in places like Chuck E. Cheese or our local pizza parlor? So that kids blow through five dollars worth of tokens in 3.2 minutes but still don’t have enough tickets to get the crap they want? And it is ALL crap, I don’t care what you say. And is it just my children, or kids everywhere, whose basic math skills go out the window while trying to add up the amounts of each prize {crap} and figure out which prizes {crap} they have enough tickets to get? And the bored, minimum-wage-earning teenager behind the counter is rolling his eyes at how long it’s taking, and the dilemma over which toys are best, yet I’m the one repeating over and over, “You can get two tattoos and one piece of bubble gum, or four tootsie rolls and one laffy-taffy, but you don’t have enough for Chinese finger-cuffs, dum-dum suckers, and a new pencil.” Seriously. What fresh hell is this?

**Why my dog, who is so old and tired and lazy that he can sleep the entire day away in the same spot on the living room rug, without so much as rolling over, suddenly finds the energy in the middle of the night to wake us up every half hour to go outside and chase frogs? And because I worry he might actually *need* to go, and heaven forbid we have a repeat of the doggy-diarrhea-on-the-dining-room-floor episode, I get up and let him out every time? Then curse under my breath when he’s standing at the back door barking to be let back in fifteen minutes later?

**Why when I took my camera to Best Buy to be serviced earlier this week, taking advantage of the four free cleanings I get with my extended warranty, the greeter at the front doors put a sticker on it so no-one would think I had stolen it …. And then the sticker left a gummy adhesive residue on the body of my camera, which isn’t really a big deal, I just need to clean it off, yippee for me, because as the mom of three young kids I don’t have enough things to clean around here on a daily basis.

**Why I was just now told that my four free camera cleanings -- THE PRIMARY REASON I BOUGHT THE EXTENDED WARRENTY -- can’t be done unless I am having problems with the camera? And no, I didn’t “misunderstand” the salesperson that sold me the warranty, as the Best Buy guy suggested --- he flat out misrepresented himself and his product. But after the Bonzai waterslide episode at Wal-Mart, I just don’t have it in me to argue with another single customer service person this week.

**Why my nine-year old daughter thought it would be a good idea to take a live wasp to school to show her friends yesterday? And put it in her bookbag, in a Rubbermaid container, without mentioning it to me, so that it was only a fluke I even noticed it and took it away from her before the wasp got loose and flew around the school and stung some kid who would of course be deathly allergic to wasps, you know that’s what would have happened because that’s just the way things seem to be going lately. A live wasp. Whatever happened to taking bowling trophies or your favorite stuffed animal?

**And why is it when I have a zillion and one projects to do around the house, in preparation for our community yard sale this weekend, and my scrapbooking retreat next weekend, and all the ebay stuff I need to ship out, and all the take-home cutting and laminating projects my kids’ teachers have given me (not to mention the time I spent in class yesterday helping Brayden’s class roll out giant sugar cookies and then cut them into the shape of the United States, complete with mountain and coastal ranges) ……….. with all these projects to be done, how could I have fallen asleep on the sofa at 7pm last night?

**And this might very well be the most boring update in the history of the world.

PS. For those people who’ve asked about paying me to burn them a copy of the cd I made for my kids …….. it’s not that I mind, but that I think it’s illegal to burn music off of iTunes and then charge other people for it. But really, you can do it! Just go to the iTunes website and they will hold your hand and walk you through it. As long as your computer comes with a cd burner, and you have a credit card (each song cost 99 cents) it’s really simple to do. Trust me, if *I* can figure it out, with this techno-black-cloud that seems to hang over my head, you can do it! And if you absolutely cannot figure it out, e-mail me privately and we’ll figure out what to do.