I have a cold. My head is stuffed and it’s hard to breathe. So I am a bit out of sorts, thus complaints and whines bubble to the surface. For instance. I treated myself to some expensive (for me) software recently – home design stuff – and allowed myself the indulgence partially because of the $30 rebate. I dutifully registered the product, clipped the upc, identified the serial number and on and on. All the hoops one must jump through in order to be eligible for a rebate. This week I received a postcard saying that they couldn’t process my rebate because I hadn’t sent the serial number for – get this – the landscape design software product. Hello. I didn’t buy any landscape design software. Which is why I don’t have a stinkin’ serial number for it. So I called the customer service number printed on the card. Ma’am, you need to supply the serial number (for the landscape software). Our records show that there is no serial number provided. Kindly resubmit your rebate, and include the serial number. We’ll be happy to process your rebate request. But I did that already. Ma’am, you need to supply the serial number. Our records show that there is no serial number provided. Kindly resubmit your rebate, and include the serial number. We’ll be happy to process your rebate request. I’ve already submitted everything you need, and the serial number is printed on the rebate form. I don’t understand why you need me to resend that number, when I’ve already sent it Ma’am, you need to supply the serial number. Our records show that there is no serial number provided. Kindly resubmit your rebate, and include the serial number. We’ll be happy to process your rebate request. I hung up on her. (How rude! I never hang up on people!) She was obviously reading a teleprompt and not actually trying to listen or help. (But I did copy my copy of the first submission and resend it. Thirty dollars is thirty dollars, even if one has to deal with morons.)
And another thing. I joined a yahoo group of baby wearers in my area. It seems that most of these women are SAHMs, my dream job that I can’t have because it doesn’t pay the kind of greenbacks needed to satisfy the bill collectors. They get together to try different baby wearing techniques, and meet on weekdays. I’ve piped in that it would be nice to meet on a weekend some time, perhaps. Later, in an email thread, one of the members noted that weekdays seem to work best for most people. Most people chimed their agreement. Reading that snippet really irritated me. I’m not one of the Most People. I must have issues. I’m only a part-time baby-wearing mom, since my baby is shipped off to a childcare provider all day, and I like for him to get plenty of playtime on the floor when he’s home. I don’t end up wearing him very much. But when I do, I’d like to know the best, safest, and most comfortable way to do it, hence the appeal of the idea of networking with other baby-wearing moms. My rant is running out of steam. I don’t even know where I’m going with this. Oh. I was feeling guilty and overindulgent in my obsession to find the best, safest, and most comfortable way to tote my baby, then discovered that my home made handful of contraptions and marvels pale in comparison with the stashes that some mothers out there have. And they have the commercial name-brand spendy items, in the $60-$90 range per piece. Per piece! And they have many! I think I’m just insanely jealous. They get to stay home with their wonderful bundles of joy, and they get to spend all kinds of crazy dollars on gizmos and gadgets. Are they married to surgeons or lawyers or what I just don’t get it. I have a great job, really, in comparison to many people out there, but I can’t justify a wardrobe of baby carriers. Maybe it’s just part of my own issue that I harbor from growing up ‘poor’. Or maybe the offset is the baby wearing demographic. What kind of people are into attachment parenting and baby wearing Hip young mothers married to corporate executives, I guess. In all fairness, there are people in the group who exhibit some thrift and modesty in their stashes. I must just be jealous. Or, I could look at it another way. Take the $10 or $15 I spend on materials for each contraption I come up with, add in the time it takes me to design and construct them, and the unit cost comes out to be, OMG, $298-$303. Either my day job pays a lot per hour, or else it takes me a heckuva long time to design and construct a piece, considering what an able seamstress I am (not). Okay, but who can say their non-working time is dollarwise equivalent to their paid working time We’re talking apples and oranges, folks. So my contraptions end up costing the real world dollar amount of $10 to 15 each. Which isn’t to say that my non-day-job time isn’t valuable. It IS, it IS. Priceless. Look at it another way. What is the cost of entertainment, if one has an entertainment budget (which I do not). I wanted to see U2 in concert when they were here. Tickets sold out in three minutes, so I couldn’t even consider it, but if they hadn’t, I’d be faced with paying over $95 for a ticket in the nosebleed section behind the stage, with no view whatsoever. So I wouldn’t have bothered anyway. $160 for a decent seat. Times two. Who goes alone Cool Cat would want to go too. So that’s $320 for what, 2 hours Let’s say it averages out to about $127.50/hour for entertainment. See The entertainment value of designing my contraptions Totally worth it. The construction part is another matter. Sewing gets to be a bit tedious for me. I’m so anxious for the finished product that I fail to enjoy the journey. Sort of like how I view my life. Now there’s an epiphany. Dang, I need to figure out how to enjoy the journey. Yikes. That one stopped me cold. I must go contemplate.
