Just Simply Holly

Just to forewarn you, in case the title didn’t, this is going to be a rant.  I promise you, however, that I will watch my language!

A few months ago my husbands cell phone, that we have on a family plan through our phone company, was suddenly snapped in half by an irate mother because her son picked it up and called 911 and told them “Help me, there is a crazed lunatic in my house”.  I was pissed so I grabbed it out of his hand and rather than hang the phone up, I snapped it in half.  Hind sight is 20/20, dumb butt me didn’t put the insurance on the phone, and when I called the phone company I was told a replacement phone would cost almost $300.

Now, enter the hubby.  He called the phone company this past Tuesday trying to find out if he could get a replacement phone and have it added to the bill.  Amazlingly he got a customer service rep who not only was glad to help him, but actually figured out a way to get the hubby’s broken phone AND the kids’ phone replaced for a total of $30.  This my friends, is a VERY good thing!  The lady told him that they would be shipped ASAP and all we would have to do is call them to transfer the service over to the new phones when they arrived.

They arrived today.  But past experience with me and the customer service reps from our phone company has shown that it is not possible for me to call them for ANYTHING.  The last time I was on the phone with them was the day before our service was to be transferred here, and it almost resulted in us having service through them suspended indefinitely.  I don’t like this phone company, they are a bunch of butt tards!  So, I waited until the hubby came home from work to let him call them to activate the new phones, just to be on the safe side ;)  At this point, I am still in a good mood.

The first time he called them the customer service rep couldn’t even find the order for the new phones, she put him on hold once for over 10 minutes, came back to say she was still looking and when she went to put him on hold again, she disconnected the call.  So he called back and got someone else.  This person was pleasant, according to him, but TOTALLY clueless!  It took her over an hour to get things set to activate the two phones.  Now comes what has me so pissed off!  After getting all of the numbers off the old AND new phones she then asks him for the number off of my cell phone.  I found it curious as to why she would need this because nothing with my cell phone was changing.  My hubby gave her the numbers, they talked for a few more minutes, I hear him say something about 24 hours, say “yes” a few times, then say “Thank you, I look forward to hearing from you tomorrow”.  He then hangs up the phone, looks at me and says, “They have to reset our entire package, all phones are off for the next 24 HOURS”.  I’m like WTF?  EXCUSE ME?!?!?!  He said they had to do that since the three phones share a family plan.  OK, I can understand this somewhat, but my thought is that shouldn’t she have forewarned us of this BEFORE she did it?  No, I am not one of those people that is constantly on my cell phone, I use maybe 100 minutes a month, if that.  But tomorrow is a week day, the kids will be in school, and I have several things I HAVE to do in town.  What happens if the kids’ school has to get ahold of me while I’m in town?  I won’t have a cell phone, and town is a 20+ minute drive from home.

Yes, I know, this is all probably VERY trivial, but it still makes me mad!  I’d have been fine if this would have happened on a weekend, it wouldn’t have have hardly any affect on me.  But to have it happen on a week day really messes things up!  And no, I’m not going to call them and complain, I’d probably end up costing us our cell phones, the house phone AND the DSL for an indefinite period of time.  And if that were to happen, I can guarantee you, I’d go postal….LOL!

I tell you, I’m getting pretty annoyed with many websites I’ve visited lately. This past week I’ve visited several websites that I normally don’t go to in order to find where I could get the items I was looking for on Black Friday for the best price. But for some reason I kept getting popup after popup on many of them. Thankfully the latest computer programs have given us some of the best popup blocker programs available, but every once in a while one will still manage to sneak under the radar and popup anyway. I don’t get it though, I know that I can’t be the only person who gets this annoyed by popups! You’d think the people who build these websites would want people to enjoy their sites rather than become annoyed when they visit them. I know that for myself, when I site has popups that fly under the radar and manage to get past the program that I use, I hit my browsers back button and make sure I don’t ever visit the site again!

This morning has not been a good morning.  The dogs are driving me NUTS, my son woke up at 5 grumpier than heck and on top of that, when I went to put the load of clothes that I put in the washer last night into the dryer this morning, I discovered that the spin cycle in the washer went out and there is NO WAY the clothes in the washer would be dry in time for my son to go to school.  And since his PUBLIC school is run by asinine idiots who decided that the kids need to wear uniforms, and ALL of his uniforms are in the washer right now, he has no clothes for school.  I also discovered last night that the vent hose has come off the back of the dryer.  If ever there was a week that I was ready for my husband to come home, this week is definitely it! I feel so stressed out right now, and when I get stressed, I get VERY grumpy!  And when I’m grumpy, well, I’m not a person you want to be around at all!

I wanted to get laundry caught up today, but that obviously isn’t going to happen!  I think I just need to go back to bed and sleep the day away!  6:00 PM can’t get here soon enough!

It’s no secret that I’m a news addict, I read, watch and listen to the news as often as I can. And I enjoy all aspects of the news, whether it’s local, state wide, or national. I think paying attention to the news is one of the few important things that I do in life.

I just watched a story on Good Morning America about the closing of the last Maytag Plant in Newton, Iowa. The plant in Newton has employed the towns residents for many generations and the town feels the closing of the plant to be similar to the death of a close family member because of how large of a part the plant has played in Newton.

But what disturbs me the most is this clip that I found in an online article at the Charlotte Observer:

The machines once made by Maytag will be redesigned to fit on a Whirlpool chassis and built by workers in Mexico and a nonunion factory in Clyde, Ohio, where they earn significantly less than the union represented workers in Newton.

They also said during the news story on Good Morning America that new jobs have been created in Newton, but that they pay less and don’t offer the benefits that the jobs at the Maytag plant did. I find all of this disturbing. I understand that businesses have to make cuts and changes in order to make money, and I also understand that sometimes people will lose their jobs due to these cuts and changes. But why has our country allowed things to get to the point that good jobs are being cut and companies are allowed to give these same jobs to people paying them a much lower wage and/or even sending the jobs to other countries? YES, I know about NAFTA, but do I know all details about it, no. But it just makes me sick! Read more…

You know, there is nothing more that I dislike in life than a product that is faulty. Or at least that’s what I thought, but now I think the thing I dislike less than a faulty product is a company that doesn’t even have the courtesy to return emails when you ask them were to buy the parts to fix their faulty products.

Enter the Sterilite company. I’m sure you’ve all heard of them, as a matter of fact I’m fairly sure that you have at least one plastic product in your household that is made by them. My problem is their touch top kitchen wastebaskets, specifically the model#1085, which is shown on this page. I currently own 2 of these, and let me tell you, they are the biggest piece of junk wastebaskets I have EVER owned! One is only a couple of months old, the other is more than a year old. The problem with them is that the springs that make the top “pop” open when you push the button do not stay on the wastebaskets. They are continuously coming off, sometimes falling on the floor, but many times falling into the wastebasket, meaning you have to dig through the trash if you didn’t happen to notice the second the spring came off. Read more…

OK, so it’s not the Sahara hotel like I envisioned it would be. We got the keys to the new house tonight and to say we’re going to have to do some work before we move next weekend is one of the biggest understatements I’ve ever made. To put it frankly, it’s a MESS! The people that moved out left SOOOOOO much stuff behind, including fish and turtles! Why they haven’t done any cleaning before now is beyond me. They’re supposed to be getting the last of the junk out today so that I can start cleaning tomorrow, I’m just hoping I’m able to get it cleaned AND get this house packed this week!

If there is one thing you probably know about my life by now, it’s the fact that it’s full of never ending drama. Whether it’s family related, school related or pet related, there is always something going on. That’s why it shouldn’t surprise me that my dogs have once again destroyed something, but this time it isn’t going to be cheap to replace.

I was upstairs attempting to do some cleaning in my pig sty of an office when I went downstairs to get a cup of coffee. When I got to the bottom of the steps I could see all three dogs behind the recliner in the living room. As I got closer I was able to see that they had totally destroyed two of the speakers to the home theater surround sound. Remind me again why I have dogs please?

As you may or may not know, I am in my second semester of college, but my first semester at the college I am currently attending. When I decided that I was ready to go back to school, I contacted several local colleges to get as much information as I could, before making my final decision as to which school to enroll in. I consider myself an intelligent person and I also feel that I’m a pretty good judge of whether or not other people are being truthful to me, that’s why what I’m about to tell you bothers me so much!

After going over the information I had received and each schools website, I ultimately decided to enroll in a local school called Stautzenberger College. The reason(s) for my choice included the fact that it was close to home, they presented themselves as a more “personal” school, meaning that they explained to me that when or if I needed help that the help would be available to me. They also convinced me that since I could “muddle” my way around graphic design that it might be better for me to learn web design first, that way I could do web design then go back to school and “tune up” my graphic design abilities after getting my Web Design degree. The enrollment “specialist” I was working with knew from the get go that my intention was to get my Associates Degree, then move on to a 4 year college and get my Bachelors Degree, he assured me that this was possible. I wasn’t too sure they were right about the web design though, graphic design had been my passion for many years, and I wasn’t completely sure I wanted to learn web design. But in the end I listened to them and enrolled. Read more…

You know, I may not have much to offer as far as things and money go, but the one thing that I do offer to the people in my life that are important to me is loyalty.  If there is something I can do to help them, I will, if they need to talk, I listen.  I just got a phone call from my sister a couple of minutes ago.  This is the same sister whom we helped paint and prepare her new home every weekend for 3 months charging them not a single dime for any of the work we did.  Yes, they did give us a beautiful entertainment center once they moved into their new home, but there was also another agreement between us and them as to a used Chevy S-10 pickup that we were to buy from them for $500.  They knew that we were waiting for our student loans to come in to buy this from them and they were perfectly fine with that.  That was until I talked to her this morning.  It appears as if someone has made them an offer on said truck and, well, they’re in a “bind” right now and really need the money.  Her exact words were “I know you guys are in a jam right now because of your car breaking down and that you’re basically down to one vehicle and you were planning on buying this, but we had someone else make an offer, so basically now it’s going to go to whoever brings us the cash first”.  EXCUSE ME!?!?!

I’m done!  I told my husband that it’s simply time for me to cut ties with my family!  I’m tried of crap like this!  I’m tired of being told one thing one minute then them turning around the next minute and changing their minds!  I’m tired of the fact that whenever she calls and says she needs me, whether it’s to come and help her do something or just someone to talk to, that I’m there for her, but when the table is turned, she could care less!  I’m just tired!

I’ve told my husband more than once that if he wanted to keep the lawnmower on the back patio, rather than in the shed, he needed to fix or replace the outdoor lighting that hasn’t worked since we moved in here. But did he listen? NOOOOOO And what happened? When he went to put stuff in the burn barrel he realized that the lawnmower is gone. Do men ever listen?