Mortimer's Mom

Dumpling's Big Day

It's not all Doom and Gloom around here (well, OK, it sort of is!)

Dumpling started Kindergarten today. Yesterday, she went for an hour yesterday and said "Why can't I stay?" After years of needing to prepare her and be ready for the worst, it was so refreshing to have her be so excited about going back and be totally fine with the new class mix up, the new friends, the new teachers.... Of course, she insisted on dressing up for the occasion....

Today was the first full day, 8 to 1:30, with lunch. Speaking of which, I have a new obsession.... When I get stressed, I need to create/make stuff and since crafting time is non-existent, I have gone gaga for Bento boxes.... I ordered a bunch of supplies online from Japan (via Ebay) and they should arrive in a couple of weeks. In the mean time, the Asian 2$ store had a real bento lunch box and this was my first attempt:

There are 2 hard-boiled eggs under the cucumber/grape tomato flowers, with carrot sticks and carrots and pretzels... She ate every bite of it! My kid, the non-eater, ate her ENTIRE lunch.....

This is what it looked like at my house this morning:

Her feet are Ginormous!

the final craft project, which she has yet to see because she is now asleep, is her lunchbox. I absolutely 100% refuse to let her pick HSM or H.M. She has yet to watch either on TV, so that was NOT happening. Princess would have been fine, but every body was going to have the same freaking lunchbox. So I made her pick a plain one! The horror! But I had a plan. I asked her what her absolute favorite show was, expecting her to answer either Yo Gabba Gabba or Max and Ruby, but she picked Wow Wow Wubbzy, which I really like. I found he creator's blog, played around with a couple of images and voila, the one and ONLY Wow Wow Wubbzy pink lunch box!

I still have no employees, though I did find a 16 y.o. who apparently will watch my kids so we can leave the house to attend things non-work-related (we're having a trial this weekend) and there is only one juice-box of wine in the fridge!!!!

The Dramedy Continues, laugh along with me...

A couple of weeks ago, a long-time employee {who had left at the beginning of the summer (after graduating and looking for a "real" job) and came back in the middle of the summer after realizing that she wasn't ready for said real world} announced that she in fact WAS ready for the real world and was going to be a substitute teacher, starting next week! So an ad went up and we interviewed candidates.

As in the past when we put out such ads, most of the applicants were illiterate, couldn't follow simple instructions (attach a resume and availability) or were not eligible to work in this country. We ended up meeting 4 candidates, one of whom was so boring I almost fell asleep during the interview and one of whom had a bun on his head and an askew pink tie that he constantly fussed over (yes, a man, a grown man, with a bun on his head, for style). We liked the other two, mainly because they were not freaks, could speak in both languages and seemed interested in the job.

Then this past Saturday, another employee, a much less stellar one who wasn't returning after Labour Day, just stopped showing up, leaving us high and dry and scrambling (no phone call, no email. how passive is that? an email, how hard is that? a text message?). Since Saturday, Hubs and I have had to work everyday, only one of us has been home at night to put the kids to bed. This had never happened before. I realize this is the reality for many families, but it is not ours. We have dinner and do bed time as a family everyday. We invented our company so that our work schedule would allow us to be home with our kids every day.

Anyhow, it's been totally crazy around here, especially since M is now gone. Were she around, I would feel a lot less guilty about not being home for dinner 4 days in a row. But with her gone, it's been shuffling and juggling of the poor kids. The effect as been immediate though not what you would expect. Dumpling is not happy about it but she is sort of old enough to understand. BB, however, the happy-go-lucky girl is a puddle of tears. She is majorily unsettled by the absence of one parent. Today was Dumpling's -1 day at Kindergarten, in which she went to meet half her class, M through Z and her teacher. Tomorrow is her first real day, which in fact is not such a big deal, as it's the same school she's been in since nursery.

Today was going to be the day when both of the candidates we selected came in for a trial shift. We always do this, come in for 3 hours and try it out. We see if they fit in and have the personality for it and they can see what the job really entails.

I got out of school with Dumpling just before noon and super manager D called me to say that Candidate #1 didn't show up. Holy crap! That's NEVER happened before. She was really fun and energetic, though her schedule was a bit tight for us, but we were going to work around it to make it work. All right, whatever. I head to lunch with Dumpling (we were having a mommy-and-me date since it's her last day before she's a grown-up Kindergartner).

2pm rolls around, we're heading home from our lunch, shopping and ice cream date.... The second candidate didn't show up EITHER!!!! Seriously! What are the chances?

Of course, not we are totally up shit's creek.... We still have to cover a bunch of shifts and we in fact do not have enough employees to keep the stores running starting next week when they all go back to school.... The ads are running, we are searching high and low, but apparently, I'm not the only one who hates retail!

This post brought to you by a single-serve juice-box of wine

our quaint little small store in the quaint little suburban village/town just came out of it's annual 4 day street-fair/outdoor-sale extravaganza..... Here are a few Tales from Retail for your entertainment pleasure....

• It turns out, I really HATE customers.... OK, not the regulars who like our store and come to find something original. I HATE street-fair attending customers who walk in, compliment us on the originality of our selection, and then proceed to bitch about the prices, the English on the packaging, the fact that we charge taxes during the festival (it's the LAW people!!!!)
• People are cheap. FREAKING cheap. We were heavily discounting the stuff we put on the outside tables. For example, a 35$ Buddha Head candle for 4$. I know! it's less than a third of what we paid for it wholesale. OK, maybe it's got a tiny ding on the back.... it's 4$!!!! You know what, they haggled! Can we do it for $2? Can we give them 20% off (the regular priced merchandise inside the store was 20% off), can we do it for cash, no taxes..... it was non stop, the entire 4 days!
• Robbers come in all shapes, sizes and ages. We always look out for teenagers, but a man in his 60s or 70s wandered into the back store, pretended to look for the bathroom, left in a hurry under the pretense of REALLY needing to go..... sure enough, he made off with the wallets of the employees that were stored in the back-store!!!! And old man! Luckily, mine was hidden among a pile of crap my girls wanted to take home, but we had to spend almost an hour with the police going over the tape and trying to identify an ELDERLY man who robs students!
• I don't know how to be politically correct about this, but one particular customer was a little slow. Lived independently, but wasn't quite all there.... She came one days and bought a box of thank you cards that was marked down from 20$ to 5$. She made the girl at the cash count all the cards AND envelopes in the box to make sure we weren't trying to rip her off by selling her a less-than-full box. OK, I get it, she's not completely there, we obliged.... Then she called us EVERY MORNING to ask us if we had more, if we had new, different stuff on the tables, if we could put things aside for her... it was endless! At least 3 calls per mornings. We are desperately trying to get the stuff outside and on the tables and she keeps calling and calling. And then when she'd come in, she'd get mad because either A) we didn't have any more of what she saw the day before or B) we had new things she hadn't seen the day before.... makes sense, right?
• Finally, my favorite, the CrazyAss-CheapLady, or CCL as I'll call her.... She came on the very first morning, very early, before we actually had merchandise out and were just trying to raise the tents, put out the rented tables, cover them with table cloths, etc.... She walks over to me and starts asking me about some Chinese-lantern type lamps we were selling LAST YEAR at the same event... All of sudden, I totally remember her. She came at closing on the last day last year and tried to bargain 2 for 1 on the lamps we were using in the tents to light them up. I said know, because they were still sell-able and could be used in store displays.
  
  She is here, a FULL YEAR LATER asking me if we still have the lamps and if we'll sell them to her cheap..... I assure her that we sold them during the course of the year and that we don't have her anymore and she seems surprised. Like we just keep boxes of stuff packed for an entire year and just bring them out for the street fest!
  Anyhow, tonight, as we are closing, in the last few minutes, she shows up again. This time, it's a monkey laundry hamper she's after... It was 39$ marked down to 10$. 85% of the stuff is packed and sorted into charitable donation box or stick in the back and sell online at discount. There is almost nothing left. But she's getting on my nerves, so I tell her it's 10$ and that's it. She says to me: "But you are packing up, can't you do better?" to which I respond "It's 10$ and if you don't want it, in the next 5 minutes it's going to charity."
  CCL: :you'd rather give it away for free than give me a discount?"
  Me: "It's already discounted 75%. If I give it to charity, we'll get a tax refund"
  
  At this point, I continue about the business of closing shop, bringing in the stuff, stacking the rented tables, folding the tents, arranging the stuff inside.... She mulls around the store holding the monkey laundry hamper and approaches T. the manager there and asks HER if she can change the price. Luckily, T. and I are totally brain-connected and T. politely tells her the price is firm and final and we are actually closing in a minute.... So she decides to take it and goes to the cash and then proceed to attempt to get the cashier to give her a discount. My girls are all smart and she tells her AGAIN that the price is final. So CCL asks to have it gift wrapped. We do not offer gift wrapping during the festival because wrapping paper is EXPENSIVE and people will by 20 items at 2$ a pop and ask you to wrap them all individually!!!! So nice cashier girl tells her politely that we do not gift wrap during the festival. To which CCL responds "give me the wrapping paper I'll do it myself" Duh! It's not the time to wrap, it's the paper lady! It costs money! At this point, I come up to the cash, explain the wrapping situation to her and tell her that she is in fact the last customer (though there is one couple browsing in the store) and that we are waiting to close up.
  She proceeds to call me rude and a bad business woman. OH NO YOU DIDN'T! I totally went off on her. About being robbed and being tired for schlepping the stuff inside and outside twice a day, about not putting my kids to bed for 4 days in a row, about FREAKING CHEAPSKATES like her who haggle over an already 75% discount and who come back a FUCKING year later to ask about a fucking 20$ lamp....... She told me I needed counseling. She's probably right! But the wine juice box will suit me just fine!
  Oh and PS, the couple that were still browsing thoroughly enjoyed watching me go off on her! The lady had tears in her eyes from laughing so hard and bought something just because she so enjoyed watching me lose my shit!

Thankfully the most amazing grand-parents in the world had come home a little early from a weekend trip and have a sleep over with the girls tonight, so I can enjoy  my juice-box-o-wine in peace!

Street fair butterflies

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Bad, Bad Blogger

I sort of left you guys hanging, didn't I?

The week after the gift show is always super hectic. There are so many new catalogues and products to think of work-wise. And somehow there are ALWAYS two employees away on vacation at this very time, creating the necessity for us to cover shifts. The small store also participates in a yearly street festival with a huge outdoor sales, which means going through TONS of stuff and reducing it to bargain basement prices to Sell, Sell, Sell! You'd be amazed the stuff we find in the back of the warehouse when we empty the shelves and take the time to look at everything! You can literally find a full box of 24 (or worse, 48) of something you just shoved aside and forgot about and ooops, you have tons of stock on your hands!

But as if this wasn't enough, it's also back to school times for the girls, and by that I mean the girls who work for us.... Which means the entire schedule has to be re-invented, to account for the reduced fall/winter opening hours, but mostly to accommodate all the new class schedules. Amazing manager D magically put a workable schedule together and ooops! Somebody announced they wouldn't be coming back. Somebody that was in fact going to be full time.... which means we now need 2 part time people to replace this one.... Add *Interview Candidates* to the list of things I need to squeeze into my waking hours!

And my own girls are also going back to school, so this is their last week to do anything they wanted to do over the summer.... Mental note to self: don't make so many promises about cool outdoors arts and crafts because a rainy summer will leave you scrambling to do A LOT of stuff during the last week!

Finally, to make sure this week is nice and stressful all around, Friday is going to be a very, very sad day around here. After a year and half that feels like five, the Amazing Super Babysitter M will be leaving us.... She has one year left in her program and has to do her internship at the same time, so her schedule doesn't gel with ours.... I can't even begin to tell you the sadness the girls (and their parents!!!) are feeling over this departure. We've had summer sitters before, but M is the only one who stuck around for two of them, who went on vacation with us, who had sleepovers with the girls... She will be missed deeply.

We are going to try to go it alone, since both girls will be in school 8 to 1:30 this year (BB is going to do Lunch Bunch! She is SO excited about that!). We'll see how it works, we might need to find someone to come hang out a couple of afternoons a week, because at this point, if we have to cover the shifts of the employee we haven't replaced, we can't be home with the girls AND at work at the same time!!!

In the mean time, we have already booked M. for some evening babysitting about once a month, so that she can stay in the girls lives. But I tell you, that is going to be one big whole around here.....

Am I forgiven for not posting so much?

my take on China and the Olympics

I started writing a long post about my thoughts on the Olympics.... I was going to tell you how I wasn't surprised by any of it: the destruction of the Hutongs, the Internet control, the lip-syncing bait and switch, the fake fireworks, the gymnasts that look like they are 8 and 10, never mind 14..... I tell you none of it surprised me, because A) every country does this to some extent (the homeless pushed out  of Atlanta, Pavarotti in Turin, fake citizenship papers... please, it's all be done before)

I'm am not saying any of it is right. My daughters watched the opening ceremonies in awe: the sheer manpower behind the drums, that cool pixel/type display, the unbelievable dancers..... How do I tell them that little girl they so admired wasn't in fact signing... what I'm saying is I'm NOT SURPRISED. It's China, it's a communist country, WHAT DID YOU EXPECT?

But I can tell you that my girls are watching with pride. They love to point out all the Chinese girls on the screen. They are getting a kick out of the sports too, (inexplicably, their favorite is weight lifting), but getting to see China, all the side-reports about life in China, just even the background scenery, they are thrilled. And I know that the people of China are proud too.

I was trying to think of a way to make you understand how I felt, and then, tonight, on the news, Brian Williams did it better than I ever could. Watch this report, watch the young lady, watch how her voice shakes....

THAT is why I'm proud of China and what they are doing. Certainly, it is FAR, FAR from perfect. Like I said it's a COMMUNIST country. But they have come so, so far in the last 35 years. Look at the pride in that young woman's eyes and heart. She is so proud of what her country has managed to do. There was another report in the same news cast, about the young people of China coming together to give back after the earthquake. It asked the question what would happen in the future in China with such an engaged generation, willing to give back and work for change. THAT is why I'm proud and excited for these Olympics. Because it's progress, it's change, it's a huge move forward.

Our guide during our first trip to China in 2005 told me, point blank, that she didn't believe the massacre at Tiananmen had happened, that it was Western fabrication. This was an college-educated woman in her late 20s who was in DAILY contact with foreigners and had access to information that most average Chinese didn't, yet she was 100% convinced it was a fabrication. I would venture to think that after the Olympics, there would be fewer people like her.

I'm very very old

For those of you who might think I was drunk-blogging again last night, well, OK, I was. But the picture was blurry on purpose, to protect the innocents. I actually have good pictures on a real camera of The Overachievers Club reunion from yesterday. That's what I used to call this bunch of folks (several were missing last night) I attended prep-college with. In the years that followed our 2 years of schooling together, we went on to collect an obscene amount of diplomas and degrees, everyone speaks several languages and we have lived in so many countries, there was a time there were very places in the world you couldn't find a couch to crash on (including Spain, Beligium and Nepal).

Yet what we do best is get together and laugh, talk, and yes, drink. This used to be an annual event. Every year, during the week between Christmas and New Years, we'd have a party and get together, since most of us, no matter who lived where, came home for the holidays to visit family. The tradition stood for many many years, but after people started getting married and having kids, the visits home were less frequent. My friend C, who was the seed for last night's gathering, hadn't been home in 7 years. So while the locals have seen each other during that time, it was fantastic to gather the gang and remember old times.

The scary thing is that we have now known each other longer than we have not known each other..... We were all 17/18 when we met, and that was 20 years ago..... I'm very old. (though apparently, I can still hold my booze. There was concern I might have a headache this morning but I'm very happy to report that I did not, and I went to work on time!)

College reunion

We have a weird school system here where garde 12 And 13 are free prep college years where you go to decide whbat you are going to do with your life.

These are the people I was drunk with from 1988 to 1990, and then every holiday yearly since...

home sweet home

We are home from our vacation/work trip. I am happy to be sitting on my couch and surfing crap on tv. I have a ton of things I'd like to say about the olympics/China/my daughter's reactions etc, but I don't think I can string it all properly, and the few blogs that I have seen mention anything positive have been bombarded, so I'm gonna hold off for now.

I will tell you that while we were kid-less in Toronto, we used the end of the afternoon after work to go see American Teen. I had been looking forward to it since I first read about it and I must say, I really enjoyed it. Basically, it's a reality version of the Breakfast Club: the Queen Bee, the Jock, The Nerd and the Emo Girl in an indiana highschool are followed through their senior year. It's a fascinating look at modern teenagers and I've come away terrified of what highschool life is going to be like for my girls in 10 years, seing at it now. Girls were mean in my days, but we didn't have the internet to completey destroy a person reputation in 24 hours via text and email.

There was very little personaly shopping on this trip, we concentrated on work and met up with some friends for dinner last night. We could have spent a little time on our own today, but instead, we just got up and drove home, chosing to be home earlier and see our girls rather then see them only at bedtime.

Crafting (of sorts) at the beach

Even on vacay, i'm incapable of not making *something*

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