The first one they tried to deliver had a cracked foot and a really ripped corner. The foot actually totally split and fell off in our house. We didn’t accept it.
The second one had a ripped corner. The third one had leather squares that were totally different colors (I sadly didn’t get a photo of that).
Today was their fourth attempt and it had a little bit of discoloration again but not as bad as the last try—but the interior (when you lift the lid) was all scratched up. So we had to send it back again.
This one was actually the least ruined of them all so far and we told the customer service person that we would accept it at a discount and she offered us $50. On a $1500 ottoman. Ummm no. But sure, let’s keep messing around.
So now we get to wait two weeks for the next attempt because they are getting some new ones direct from the manufacturer in the hopes of getting an acceptable one. With all the prior attempts it was generally 3-4 days.
Our fingers are crossed but we really don’t think it’s gonna happen until number eight or nine.
We got delivery of our gorgeous ottoman today. Or should I say attempted delivery! One of the wooden feet was completely cracked—and there was a huge rip on the corner. So they are taking it back and bringing us another. Thankfully they said they had like 8 in stock.
This is what it looks like (at the store). That’s also the temporary loveseat we bought. (It doesn’t really match the other couch at all but we needed something until we can find/order what we really want. Furniture is really backed up just like everything else due to Covid.)
I’ve been casually looking at birch prints, saying if I ever found one I loved (and it was in budget) I’d get it. So when I saw this artist on Facebook and fell in love with the style, I searched and he had birch options! So I found one I absolutely loved and after much thought, went ahead and got it.
Aaaaaand…it looks totally different and I don’t like it. I mean it’s similar and obviously the “same” but it doesn’t have the same feel at all.
The birch trees don’t look enough like real birch trees. (The ones along the right side don’t look like birch trees at all.) The limbs on the left set of trees look like half circles instead of branches. The path is too defined. There’s too much orange and red. The style is similar but not what I wanted.
Now, caveat, these are copies of originals. As in painters copy the style of the original. But I thought it would be a much better copy.
They do have a return policy so I started that process. Their customer service is pretty good and they gave me some options:
Thank you very much for your purchase. I’m sorry that you do not like the painting. We want you to be satisfied with our services. We have the following options for you
1 – you can return with prepaid return label . After the return, we issue a full refund. Please request the return label if you wish one
2 – we can provide a replacement of the same piece/s in form of prints on canvas. This way the image of the master original will be reproduced by a machine in its original size. This option does not require return
3- Free exchange for a different painting altogether or exchange for the same painting that you will like better
For all options we will be sending images for approval prior to shipping . Only after you approve the new piece, we will proceed with the shipping.
I was debating 2 or 3 and ended up going with 3 to try again…and that piece was just as bad. I don’t think they looked at my feedback at all—they just grabbed another off the shelf and sent the pic. Nope. I’ve asked for a return label.
Just out of curiosity, I asked what Facebook thought and everyone agreed it was pretty much a shitshow. So I’m disappointed.
We have been loving Hello Fresh so we thought we’d try a bit cheaper alternative. It would have been perfectly fine had we started with that one and not Hello Fresh. We are really spoiled by all the ingredients for all the meals being separated into bags…because when we opened this box and saw a completely jumbled mess of food Tom and I looked at each other like WHAAAAAT IS THIIIIIIS?!
So we had to split it all up and bag it so we could just grab a bag and go. It wasn’t hard but…like I said, we were spoiled.
We opened up the panel on the basement wall and HOLY CRAP! There’s the rest of our basement! Why oh why wouldn’t the builder have just made this all actual usable space instead of a crawl space?! It would literally double the size of the basement! I mean, we knew it was a small basement for the footprint of the house but seeing it really just blows your mind. If only it was cheap to excavate. HAHAHAHAHA!!
Tom will eventually put some flooring down so we can put some shelves in there. I’m not quite sure what we’ll be storing in there (since it has to fit through the opening plus we have to climb in) but I’m sure we’ll find something.
It’s a never-ending battle to have her keep her desk area picked up. It’s horrible. And frustrating beyond belief. You ask her to pick it up and 30 seconds in she’s off doing something else because she thinks she’s done. GRRR.
I’m super excited about my new $2 Mexican glass glasses to match our Ikea plates but OMG I hate the stickers—they make me murderous. (Yes I know all the tricks to remove them. I just hate that they’re there in the first place.)
I spent too much time refereeing kid drama (today proved they get into trouble when I’m not sitting at the table with them). Plus learned they’ve both snuck their devices which should be an instant loss for a week but…I was so overwhelmed with everything else I forgot.
I spent 4.5 hours with Apple tech support (chat and phone!) trying to figure out a bizarre password issue.
I had multiple random technology and business spreadsheet issues (that necessitated asking a math teacher friend for help).
Discovering WHEN I WENT TO PLACE MY MONTHLY ORDER at 10pm that my business credit card was expired and the new card supposedly arrived a month ago but I’ve not seen it (so I got to hunt for that—unsuccessfully I might add—tonight).
And then I discovered that one of the kids iPads is literally covered in something sticky.
The best part about today? It’s over in 21 minutes.
She said she just wanted to touch base because Katie hasn’t been showing up for class and when she is there she’s often not paying attention. WAIT, WHAT?
She said they can see how long kids are logged into class each day and it should be between four and four and a half hours. And she’s been getting 1-3. Most days are 2 or less. UM EXCUSE ME WHAAAAAT???!!
I mean we know she spends too much time farting around and we are constantly telling her to get back to class, but I’m here with her all day and she appears to be in class. Except apparently not. Her teacher said that she often doesn’t pay attention in class—half an hour in she gets called on and doesn’t even have her book open. So what is she doing???
Of course I’m home but I’m working and doing stuff so don’t pay close attention to her (just like I don’t with Owen) and yes we’ve had some internet issues but not hours worth. Or weeks worth. So it looks like for the near future she will be sitting right next to me at the table and I will be working on my laptop again so I can keep her on track. Just what I want to have to do, right?
The worst part of all this is that she’s waaaaaay behind on school work. She doesn’t do it in class when she’s supposed to OR in her asynchronous time in the afternoon (when she literally has a list of assignments from her teacher) so we’re trying to get her caught up. And that’s a complete joy as I’m sure you can imagine.
We have told her that we know this year is weird. And it sucks. And it’s hard. But none of that is an excuse to skip schoolwork.
Tom was home for the long weekend so I told him he got ALL tech questions and school issues today. He kind of said WHATEVS and planted himself on the couch playing video games.
School starts at 9.
8:55—Owen discovers he has no power on his entire workstation. No lights, no Chromebook charging, nothing. Katie (across the room) is fine. Whaaaaat?! Tom looked at me like AYFKM? I just smiled, chuckled, and said welcome to my Life.
While he was troubleshooting, I was getting Owen set up on my laptop (I kinda wanted to make Tom do that as well so he could truly experience what my days are like, but I didn’t want to be that cruel). Then, because he was messing around with the breaker box, he cut power to Katie’s station (and Chromebook!) so the WiFi went out and she was dropped from her class. And of course could not reconnect. SO PANIC AND DRAMA ENSUED.
Time? 9:03am
Me: Yep. That’s about right. Hubby: ——
Turns out one half of the wall outlet Owen was plugged into just up and died. Completely random. You can’t make this shit up.
Then there was drama with Katie’s headphones (every damn day) and Owen was caught watching YouTube. 臘♀️
Needless to say Tom has newfound respect for me and promises not to complain about my daily texts I send him when he’s not here.
We discovered this destroyed Xbox controller this morning—little orange pieces of Nerf foam that had been picked off the controller the previous night when they were all playing. So it was Owen, Katie, Aiden, or Evan…yet every single one of them flat out denied it. Because of course.
So this was the tech issue I had to deal with today. Katie connected just fine in the morning but after lunch… nope. Long story short, I ended up putting her on my laptop. Turns out Google is having some unknown issue plus these school-provided Chromebooks aren’t great…so this happens. And is happening across the country. Good times.
Well today started out okay with me waking up before my alarm and I got to have some nice leisurely quiet time before the kids got up.
And they showered without much drama and they ate breakfast without much drama and we took school pictures without much drama… And then the shitshow started.
Owen had some technical difficulties dealing with an external monitor and Bluetooth headphones and Google meets and when I asked him if these were the same headphones that he used last year he said yes but they didn’t work for Google meets then either.
YOU THINK YOU MIGHT HAVE TOLD US THAT AT SOME POINT BEFORE THE FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL?! (What I was screaming in my head—not what I said to him.) But he was completely losing it and this was him just four minutes in to Remote Learning. /cry/ Even though I wanted them home to be safe…THIS. JUST. SUCKS.
But things have gotten a little better since 9:04 AM when it was the worst and I think we might make it through this day without me needing to drink a gallon of margaritas.
I went outside to enjoy the weather in my egg chair…and Owen came out on a break and he seemed much better.
I took a picture of [a Chromebook model number] text because it was too small for me to read. 😭 I guess it’s time to start wearing readers around my neck. 😂
So now I get to find someone who can repair it. We were just going to take it back whether we bought it in Michigan (The Stained Glass Cabinet Co. in Traverse City) but they recently closed up shop after 38 years!!
Douchebag teens? Check. We ran into some driving home from the playground.
They were on bikes and wouldn’t get out of the street (they obviously knew I was behind them) and then glared at me as they leisurely criss-crossed in front of me to the side of the street and I drove past. Then they made sure to stare me down as they caught up to us and rode past our driveway blaring their R-rated rap music. Like seriously?
If anyone ever sees my kids acting like that in the future, you have my blessing to drop kick their asses and teach them a lesson.
It was supposed to be a quick and easy project: repaint the front door. Tom had a new paint sprayer and it should have taken 30 minutes. Should have being the key phrase.
Tom started to paint the door and got clumps and spatter and he had no idea what was wrong and it was drying and it was a disaster. He tried to fix it with what he had handy (all our paint stuff was obviously packed away) and I was trying to be helpful by googling the brand of paint and the brand of sprayer and hints but it was just not a good time.
Longer story short, turns out the sprayer hadn’t been fully cleaned after the last job. Doh! Lesson learned. So once that was fixed—and once the door was scrubbed with hot soapy water and then sanded—the door was painted in about two minutes.
Thankfully we had enough paint left to do the door…plus my cement Michigan!
BUT THEN! We had also wanted to put new hardware on and that was an epic disaster. It took FIVE attempts (from least to most expensive!) over a week to get working hardware:
Amazon refurb—was missing pieces.
Amazon new (same as refurb)—broke during install!
Home Depot—after much debate we settled in one and Tom got it fully installed…and then realized the keys were missing (it had obviously been returned).
Home Depot—deadbolt too big (who knew there were two sizes?)
and amazingly it’s not even due to the children. It’s Comcast/Xfinity.
When we called to get service at the new house two weeks ago, long story short we switched mobile service to them because we could get 50% off. Switching SIM cards would be a super easy process—basically just switching one for another. Easy peasy.
HA. HAHA. HAHAHAHAHA.
By the time we got the SIMs our house was packed up so we didn’t have access to our laptops and the process really couldn’t be completed easily on the phone. When we finally did manage to complete it there was an error and when we called the given number the wait time was over an hour. We tried this twice.
Last night, we unpacked the laptops and tried one more time, still had problems, so I tried to get on chat while Tom called. After 45 minutes on hold (and still getting an automated message that we had over an hour wait), Comcast just hung up on him. I managed to get a chat rep and and she initiated both activations. Tom’s phone worked immediately; mine did not. We were told to give it to morning.
Nope. This time I got the most idiot chat person ever–it took five minutes of waiting plus me asking “Hello? Are you there?” for him to say he was waiting for me and he needed me to verify my account (but he hadn’t asked for that). Then he couldn’t tell that a mistyped “ues” means yes and kept leaving me on hold without answering my questions and then eventually said if my phone still isn’t activated by tonight call back and escalate.
We haven’t had any issues with Xfinity internet but so far mobile service leaves something to be desired.
Yes I know these are totally first world problems. And compared to things about our last houses we didn’t like, these are NOTHIN’. But I figured I might as well tell you everything.
The dishwasher is TINY. Like ridiculously tiny. Like I’d be happy to sell it and get a new one tiny. Yes it’s newer and fancy (it’s practically silent) but what good is that if nothing fits in it? Tom is like F@$& THAT IT’S A BOSCH AND IT’S NEW. And while I get that, it’s also an appliance we use daily and if it’s annoying me it’s going to be a constant source of frustration. So we’ll see what happens.
Our shower. It’s gorgeous and totally fancy, but not great in application. There are no towel bars or hooks in a place to easily grab a towel from inside the shower. We can’t put our showerhead on it because of the style…and it seems to be at a weird angle and consequently the bench doesn’t seem to be in the best place (I kept backing into it during my first shower—I’m sure I’ll get more used to it but right now it’s not love). There are also only two tiny shelves and no good room to put a shower rack (and I don’t want to clutter up the bench). And it’s quite disconcerting to be able to see yourself in the mirror while showering!
It takes awhile to get hot water anywhere. We are actually used to that from the rental but we were sure it would be better anywhere else. That said, there’s plenty of hot water! (Ack! No good things posted in this post!!)
There are also a bunch of little things that we can fix eventually…like no hand towel racks in the kids’ bath, Katie’s blinds are missing the rod to tilt them, none of the ceiling fans have lights but there are no lights in the rooms (so it’s still lamps for us), I can’t find which outlet the guest bedroom light switch goes to, and Katie’s carpet has a stain that goes away and magically reappears every time.
It’s there. Then it’s not. Then it is!
So overall pretty damn awesome. Stay tuned for the list of amazing things about this house…
So Tom has been working from home since March. He’s thought he had to go back a few times but they always cancelled it. So it’s been awesome having him here as we prepped for buying the house and moving. The packers are scheduled to be here tomorrow…so just freaking GUESS when he has to go back to work? 😒
A simple thing like unhooking the refrigerator turns to shit because the water valve doesn’t turn off to the fridge so we had a mad dash to find buckets and we had to turn off the water to the house and it still leaks. Only then did Tom remember from three years ago that there’s ANOTHER valve in the basement. What next?!
I take that back. I actually have many nasty words for these young people who apparently think it’s a great time for a pickup volleyball game in our neighborhood.
I think this is the last puzzle that I am buying and we are attempting as a family. Puzzles are just one thing that I would absolutely love to be able to sit and do with my family…but as I’ve mentioned before, Tom hates them, Owen really doesn’t like them, and Katie is okay for a short amount of time.
We have done smaller puzzles (I’ve posted pics recently) but it’s a trade off because Katie loves them but they only take 5-10 minutes. I’ve bought all of 8 or so of the ones she loves (of which Owen will tolerate doing 1-2 of the smaller ones).
I guess maybe I need to look at more options. We don’t have to do them but just in watching Owen try, I get really frustrated because he (mostly) has zero sense of spatial ability or sense of color. I watch the pieces he tries and he’s trying to put a round knob into a long skinny foot. Like huh? Didn’t you learn how basic shapes fit in kindergarten? Why is this different just because it’s not a triangle or a circle? And trying to put a white piece where it’s clearly black. I thought he was just being stubborn so I asked him if he really couldn’t tell or if he was just being silly and he said he couldn’t tell. If I’m to believe him…I just can’t even…?! I mean I guess I know people have those issues, but it just seems so weird because nothing else in his life shows that issue. So I want him to keep trying puzzles to get better at the spatial thing.
Maybe in the next house if I had a separate room to do them in…but there’s no good place here. That said, I rarely have the time.
But one cool thing about this puzzle is that it came flat and put together and we had to make the box! So Owen did that!
They’re cleaning right now…but please tell me we’re not alone.
Also? They cleaned for a whopping two minutes before they started playing with the toys. WHAT DO YOU NOT UNDERSTAND ABOUT CLEANING UP? Yet if I stand there and micromanage they throw a fit.
Honestly, the only rule they really have is that I need to be able to walk to the pantry and the cat room without tripping on anything. If they would just keep those pathways cleared I would be much more lenient. But they don’t. So then I have to let loose on everything else.
P.S. Granted it was over a week, but it’s what happens when they NEVER put anything away when you’re done with it and Mom isn’t standing over them nagging.
I am so tried of every single little issue that I have to take care of or referee. Poor Tom gets an earful every time he ventures up for a bathroom or coffee break.
Katie’s videos don’t have sound on the desktop
Owen can’t login to his google meet
such and such google doc is missing
Katie can’t figure out 9+4 even though she knows how
Owen makes so much noise while he works (feet tapping, humming, singing, gum chewing, etc.) and it drives me and Katie crazy (which then causes them to argue)
they are both watching videos on their separate devices and can’t hear because they’re loud so we have to hunt down headphones
a friend calls their device to chat so they both jump up (its now muted)
I get asked all morning long if it’s time to watch science videos (we do have a schedule for this reason)
the doorbell rings and they both jump up to answer it
Katie’s website doesn’t have sound again
if one is watching a video the other one migrates over
Schoology is down then up then down then up
I have to keep track of emails and texts and websites and assignments
and on and on and on while also trying to do my job…and I can’t seem to get anything done.
I know it’s just the start and we’ll get into a rhythm, but for now, it’s exhausting. I don’t know how parents with more kids or a full-time job are doing if I’m this much of a stressball.
There was a mini movement on Facebook too put up holiday lights and decorations (any holiday) in order to break up the boredom and monotony and give people something to look at when they’re driving by. I’m all about the Christmas lights so Tom dug ours out and I put it up last night.
