Half Changed World

Over the next two weeks, I have been "invited" to the following activities:

• Field day at D’s school — 9 am to 2 pm tomorrow
• "Mommies and Muffins" at N’s preschool — 9 am to 10 am next Tuesday (they had "Daddies and Donuts" earlier in the year.
• "Moving Up" ceremony at N’s preschool — noon to 2 pm next Friday
• "Coming Out" ceremony at D’s school — 9 or 10 am the following Monday.  (Yes, that’s what they call it.  It’s to celebrate the Kindergarteners.)

Meanwhile, I have an in-town conference to attend Monday through Wednesday of next week, and a business trip the following Monday evening through Tuesday.

I’m definitely skipping Field Day and the Moving Up ceremony —  T will attend the Moving Up ceremony, and may go to some of Field Day.  (N also has a dentist appointment tomorrow afternoon, scheduled before we knew about Field Day.)

I’m feeling like I should really go to the Mommies and Muffins event, because if I don’t, N may be the only kid there without a mommy present.  (Since preschool is 1/2 day, 3 x a week, most of the families have a SAH parent.)  But that would mean missing part of the conference.  And then D will be hurt if I don’t go to his Coming Out ceremony.

Why do schools think it’s a good idea to schedule daytime events that parents are expected to attend other than graduation/moving up/coming out ceremonies during the last weeks of school?  Grrr.

We’ve been in the new house for almost a month now.  We still have a bunch of boxes to unpack, only one room that’s been painted, and a list of things to do that seems to gets longer rather than shorter with time, but it’s starting to feel like home.  I like everything about the house except my commute.

I’m still trying to sort out the options.  The fastest way to get to work is probably to drive.  But it’s bad for the environment, it stresses me out, and parking downtown is expensive.  If I could find a carpool, that would be a clear-cut winner, but so far, I haven’t been able to find anyone who is interested via the neighborhood list-serve.

I tried taking the metro to the bus one evening, and I’m pretty sure that’s not a viable option.  The main problem is that the bus I need only comes every half an hour, so I’d either have to give up another 10+ minutes to the lead time I need to be sure that I don’t
miss it, or risk having to sit around the Pentagon bus terminal for another half an hour.  And it’s a long ride.

Today’s experiment was walking home from the metro station.  It’s a long walk — about 4 miles — but the exercise is good for me and most of the walk is quite pleasant.  But if I’m going to do that, I need to figure out a way to get across routes 50 and 7 that doesn’t require walking through the middle of Seven Corners, which is about as pedestrian unfriendly an area as humanly possible.  If I figure out a route that makes sense, biking to the metro might also be a reasonable possibility.

What I’ve mostly been doing so far is driving to a metro station and leaving my car there.  Since D is finishing the school year at his old school, I’ve been generally driving him to school and parking in our old neighborhood — but that only works as long as I still have the Alexandria parking sticker on my car.   Once I’m not driving D to school, I’d be willing to park at the metro station near us, except that it generally fills up by 8 am.  And my understanding is that there’s a waiting list for the privilege of paying for a guaranteed slot.  One of my friends says that I can park in her neighborhood without a sticker, so I may try that.

The Post had an article this weekend about people who were responding to the high gas prices by telecommuting, one or more days a week.  This makes a lot of sense — it’s one of the few ways that people can really cut down on their commute in the short run, since most people can’t move or change jobs on short notice.  I’m definitely hoping to telecommute at least once a week — my organization is pretty open to it. (One of my coworkers actually lives in Colorado.)

I think I’m in paradox of choice mode here.  When I lived near the metro, I took it to work without thinking about it, and didn’t really pay attention to the semi-regular delays and overcrowding.  And if I lived out in the boonies, I suspect that I’d just drive and not worry about it.  But because I have choices, I’m aware of the downsides of all the possibilities, and keep looking for the perfect one.

We’re in the new house.  We don’t have very much furniture at the moment — a lot of it is still in the storage pods, and we also got rid of some things that were just too beat up to be worth moving (e.g. the 10 year old couch that the cat had destroyed).  Add the increased size of the new house, and the built in bookcases that we had in the old place, and you can see that we don’t have a lot of room to put things.  But we’re starting to feel slightly less discombobulated, and to only open an average of two cabinet doors before finding the things we’re looking for in the kitchen.

The boys are doing pretty well with the transition, although D is grumpy about having to go to school instead of being able to hang out and explore all day.  (But he was fairly grumpy about going to school before the move, too.)  We clearly made a strategic error in talking about the move, though, because we kept telling them that they’d get all their toys and stuff back after we moved.  So we’ve moved, and they want it all right away.

Two months ago I wrote about my frustrating customer service experience with buy.com.  Several people suggested that I should take it up with my credit card company, and I probably should have, but I just didn’t have the energy to deal with it on top of the chaos of moving.  (Buying and selling houses also does funny things to your sense of what’s
a lot of money.)  So I didn’t do anything.  But much to my surprise, I got an email today from Google checkout saying that buy.com was returning my money. 

In another customer service report, back in February, when I wrote about how I liked our trunkis, but they didn’t stay latched, I also emailed the company.  They promptly wrote back asking what colors we needed.  I replied, and then didn’t hear anything further from them.  And then last week, replacement latches arrived, direct from England.  And the new ones do stay shut.  So, now the endorsement is unqualified.

This whole moving thing has been quite a wild ride.  We’re under contract, and moving in 2 weeks.  And it may take us a while to sort out the internet access at the new house.  (We can get fiber optic service, but I think that means they have to come out and lay the lines to the house.)  So posting is still going to be intermittent for a while.

I’m just heartsick about the murders at Virginia Tech.  There’s not much else to say, I don’t think.  I don’t have any VT connections, but everyone I know who grew up in the area or who has college age kids knows lots of people who went there, or are there now.  Obviously the scale is smaller, but it’s in some ways like 9/11 was for New Yorkers, where even if you weren’t directly affected, everyone knew someone who was.

The boys were sick over the weekend, but seem to be mostly on the mend.  T and I both feel crappy now, of course.  But at least the weather is supposed to be nice by next weekend.

One of the indulgences of having a blog is that you have a platform for complaining about crappy customer service.  I don’t know if anyone at the company will read it (although lots of companies do have people monitoring the blogosphere for posts about them), but it will make me feel better.

As previously mentioned, T. went out and got a Wii in November.  We agreed that we’d get a few games for it for Hanukkah.   I discovered that Buy.com and Google checkout were running a discount promotion, so I decided to order the games through them.  But it turned out they only had one of them in stock.  So I ordered that one, plus some books to push the order over the required minimum. 

I placed the order in November.  The books came, but on December 19, with Hanukkah almost over, I emailed buy.com to point out that my order hadn’t arrived.  On December 24th, they responded that they needed to file a lost shipment claim, and asked if I wanted a replacement or a refund.  I said replacement.

On January 2, they emailed me to say "Your claim is currently being investigated. We will update you on the status of your claim via email or phone.  Please
allow between 3-5 business days for us to research and to process your
claim with any relevant third parties, such as the shipper."

They then sent another message as follows:

"As your claim was for replacement and you are in immediate need of
the missing item from your order, we suggest that you place a new order
for the item on the Buy.com
website and change your claim to refund. If you would like us to make
the change from replacement to refund, then please email us and we will
gladly do so for you."

The next day, January 3rd, I got the game from a local store and asked them to switch the order to refund.

On January 4th, I got an email stating "Following your request we have updated your lost shipment claim to
reflect a refund instead of a replacement. We assure you that we are
working diligently to resolve this issue."  I also (same day) got an email saying "We have received your order….We’ll send you an email as soon as your order is sent."

I immediately emailed them back saying I already asked for a refund.  Two days later they got around to emailing me and said that I could cancel the order from their website.  I did so. 

Then I got this email from them:

"As you requested, we attempted to cancel your order for the item listed below from order #31827637.  However, this item has already entered the shipping process and could not be cancelled.  We apologize for any inconvenience and offer you three options when your order arrives:

– You may keep the product.

– You may refuse shipment for a full refund, in which case the carrier will return the product to us at our cost.

–
If you are unable to refuse the package, you may return the product for
a refund. In this case you might not be automatically credited for your
shipping costs depending on the condition of the package or when you
requested cancellation, etc."

Two weeks later, when the package finally showed up, I refused it.

They say that they never received the return, and so won’t give me a refund.  Since they never should have shipped it to me in the first place, I figure this is their problem.  They disagree.

So I’m out 50 bucks.  And there’s not much I can do about it.  But I’m never buying from them again.

Update:  On May 7, I received an email from Google checkout that buy.com had directed them to refund my money.  No further communication from buy.com directly.

The seller got back to us this evening with a counterproposal.  We’ve agreed on general terms, but her lawyer made some changes to the contract, so we want to run them by our lawyer.  So I can’t quite say we’ve bought a house, or even that we’ve got a contract do so, but we’re getting awfully close. 

I’m simultaneously excited and exhausted, and totally overwhelmed by the amount of work that we have to do over the next few months.  We’ve agreed on 60 days to close, but I’d like to get our current house on the market well before then.

Instead of obsessing here all the time, I’m starting a new blog, Feels Like Home, to post about the process of actually buying the house, selling this one, and moving.  It’s probably going to be fairly boring to anyone except those  — like Jackie— who are also going through the process (or plan on doing it soon).  But I think it will help me stay aware of the progress we’re making, not just the list of things that remain undone. 

I do promise to post some pictures.

As I indicated a couple of weeks ago, we may be moving.  We made an offer this evening.  We gave the seller 48 hours to respond, but I expect that she will accept: it’s a fair offer in a buyer’s market, and she likes us.  If she accepts, posting may become very erratic for the next month or so while we deal with all the logistics and get this house ready to put on the market.

Everyone we talk to seems to be assuming that we’re moving because we’re unhappy with the local school.  It’s certainly a factor, but not the only one.  Overall, I’d say that D’s had a pretty good year at school.  He’s learned to read (to the point that I find myself having to explain newspaper headlines), to count up to a thousand or so, to color between the lines.  He considers almost all of his classmates to be his friends, and was heartbroken last week when he was too sick to go to school to perform his role in the Black History Month skit.  (He was supposed to be the manager who hires Jackie Robinson.)

But we do have some frustrations with the school.  D’s teacher has been out sick for two extended periods.  That’s not something that the school can control, but it would be nice if they had sent a letter home saying something about it, rather than leaving me to interrogate D each day about whether she was back.  When I commented to the principal that it was hard on the kids for her to miss yet another day for training right after she had been out for 3 weeks, the principal got all defensive about it, instead of agreeing that it was unfortunate.  None of the kids in D’s class got awards (other than attendance) at the first honors assembly, because the teacher had been out and hadn’t submitted them, so the principal said that they’d have a separate assembly just for that class.  It didn’t happen.

I’m also frustrated by the lack of community.  Only a very few kids ever play on the playground after school.  The PTA is essentially inactive.  And in spite of D’s popularity — kids rush up to him at school to give him hugs — he’s been invited to exactly one playdate and one birthday party by kids from school.  (My guess is that this is a class thing — as Lareau discusses, working class and poor kids are far more likely to play with the kids next door than to go to an arranged playdate.)  And this might be ok if there were other neighborhood kids for the boys to play with, but there doesn’t seem to be much of that either.  T and I finally figured out that, having chosen a place to live based largely on its convenience and access to the metro, we’re surrounded by other people who chose a place to live largely on its convenience and access to the metro.  And our attempts to build community through drop-in-dinners have been a flop.

We’re also bursting at the seams a little bit.  I feel more than a bit silly and self-indulgent saying that, given that my parents raised 3 children to adulthood in an apartment smaller than this house, not to mention the vast majority of people in the world who live in smaller spaces.   But the idea of having a place to put the boys’ bikes that isn’t in the middle of the living room is really appealing.

Wish us luck.

When people ask me what aspect of parenting has been the biggest surprise to me, my answer is always that I didn’t realize how much time I would be sick.  I’ve been coughing or sneezing pretty much constantly since the new year.  That’s why I don’t buy the argument that exposure to lots of germs in preschool means that kids won’t get sick later on — if that were true, I should be immune to just about everything by now.

It hasn’t been a terrible winter in terms of illness — no one has ended up in the hospital or the ER, which is my primary measure of success — but it hasn’t been a great one.  D’s been on oral steroids twice for his asthma, which doesn’t make me happy, although he seems to be doing much better now that we’ve increased his maintenance dose of Qvar.  We also have an appointment for him to see the allergist next week.  And N’s now on oral antibiotics for an ear infection, as well as a topical antibiotic for impetigo.  I feel kind of guilty about that one — we had assumed that he had just rubbed the skin under his nose raw from the constant drippage, but as soon as the doctor saw it, she said it was an infection.

And N was complaining about an ear ache for several days before we finally brought him in.  We got the memo that many ear infections will go away without antibiotic treatment, so were giving him advil and waiting and seeing.  But when his fever started to come back, I concluded that this wasn’t going away on its own.

I hate having to make these decisions.  This is why the Republican argument that the problem with our health care system is overuse drives me crazy.  I’m smart and well educated, but I didn’t go to medical school.  I probably err on the side of avoiding going to the doctor, because I know that there’s not much they can do for routine colds.  But this means that sometimes with hindsight I wish I had gone sooner.  It’s nuts to make it more expensive to bring a kid in for a doctor or nurse to take a look, just in case.  Because the one night that D spent in the hospital with asthma two years ago cost our insurance company more than all the medical treatment everyone in the family has received put together since.

Update:  N puked in the middle of the night.  Is it the Amoxicillan?  Or another bug?

Sorry for the slow posting of late.  I’ve got a nasty cold, and haven’t had the energy to do very much.  Today I worked from home.  This was a good call because it meant I didn’t get stuck on the train delay this morning or the ice storm in the afternoon.  And I was able to sneak in a nap before dinner.  Much to my surprise, both boys had full days of school today — we’ll see what tomorrow brings.  If we move out of Alexandria, we’ll definitely miss being part of a school system that doesn’t shut down in the blink of an eye.

I’ve spent a fair amount of time lying in bed listening to the review copy I received of Norah Jones’ new album, Not Too Late.  Her voice weaves in and out of the music in a quite hypnotic manner, almost like another instrument.  Having listened to it three or four times, I’m afraid the only lyrics I know are those quoted in the review I read, but I’ve enjoyed it nonetheless.

I don’t know enough about music to feel confident about reviewing it with much more than a "like" or "don’t like," but of the music I own, Cassandra Wilson seems the closest in style.  And I was intrigued to see Wilson represented on a list of music that Jones has been listening to lately.

Feeling frazzled, so you get some bullets tonight:

• The blog world is buzzing over the story of the family who got kicked off of an AirTran flight because the little girl wouldn’t sit in her seat and so the flight couldn’t take off.  Assuming that the story is being reported more or less accurately, I basically agree with Mir.  I can’t promise you that my kids won’t make noise, but I can get them in their seats.  And most of the parents commenting at On Balance seemed to agree as well.  But a few seemed to take it as an opportunity to vent their spleen about crying kids, which is a different story entirely.  Yeah, I’d rather not be trapped in an airplane with a crying kid too, but you don’t always get what you want.  Trust me, the parents are even less happy about it than you are.
• As it happens, we’re flying AirTran this weekend to attend a family event.  My boys are both quite excited about flying, and I’m hopeful that they’ll be reasonably well behaved.  D’s been on a 16 hour flight, so an hour and a half shouldn’t be a problem.  But of the 4 times that N has flown in his life, he’s thrown up on two of them.  We’re bringing a big box of wipes and extra clothes, but is there anything else we should be doing?  Is there a nonprescription anti-airsickness drug that is safe for kids and actually works?
• I’ve learned about a local farm that sells grass-fed beef and lamb and makes deliveries nearby.  After reading The Omnivore’s Dilemna, I want to give this a try.  But I have no idea what to get that a) won’t bankrupt us and b) will give us a sense of why it’s worth the extra money and hassle.  Here’s the price list — what should I get and how should I cook it?
• I’ve mostly stopped worrying about my stats, but I happened to take a look at them this afternoon and discovered that I got over 2,000 hits on Monday, which is about 4 times what I usually get and more than 2 times my previous high.  I think it’s because of this article in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.  This is far more than the increase in hits I got last year when quoted in the NY Times.  I think the difference is that the Post-Intelligencer used a hotlink to the post it referred to, which the Times never does.