Blah Blah Blah

The painters have been at my house for 2 days painting colors that a professional designer picked.  Evidently, these colors are so fantastic that they are going to sell my house.  Now I know she gets paid the big bucks but I'm not seeing it.  All I see is a lot of beige, tan & taupe - in otherwords blah blah blah!  Well - let's hope for the best.  House goes on the market in 8 days.

a carpenter, a contractor & a painter walk into a bar....................

My realtor said I need to have the house repainted & the floor recarpeted in order to sell the house, so I call some folks to get bids.  Let me ask you a question - Do I look like I just fell off the apple cart?  Do I come across as a pushover?  I mean SERIOUSLY people - I am not paying 9,000.00 (no I didn't hit the 0 key to many times) for new carpet and 6000.00 for new paint - really.....does that come with specks of gold?   I may look sweet & innocent but contractors beware - inside I'm a smart, savy, independent women who will have you working for me just under cost & you'll be happy to have the work :)

Perhaps a little something stronger than tea!

I just made reservations on British Airways to fly from Seattle to London.  We'll be traveling back & forth over the next few years, so  thought I would get frequent flyer numbers for myself and my children.

Easy enough, right?  I fill out a form & within seconds I get my frequent flyer number.  So, I fill out another one for Lauren & when I hit enter I get an error.  Person must be over 18 years of age, otherwise they have to go on a household account.  I call BA & ask, how do I get a household account?  They walk me thru it and 15 minutes later, I'm feeling good until she says "actually does your husband already have an account"?  To which I answer yes - well then, since he is the head of the household - he has to go into his account & invite all of you to be household members.

Okay let me understand, I can't get frequent flyer numbers for the girls unless my husband sends them an invitation to an email account they don't have - REALLY, SERIOUSLY!  Okay - so I hack into Johns account. I fill out the forms to invite myself & my girls. I use John's personal email addresses for the girls (thankfully he has more than one account) and I hit enter.  Now - I have to contact John (who's in London 8 hour time change) and ask him to forward me the email messages from BA. I fill out the forms & hit send.

At this point, you would think I'm done ah but contrare I get a message that tells me they are sending an email now, just respond & the account will be activiated.  I contact John again & have him send me the messages, respond & finally BA emails the frequent flyer numbers. 

I log into the girls BA account & change their email address to mine, I update their tickets to show their frequent flyer numbers and finally after 65 minutes of time I'll never get back - we are members of BA's household frequent flyer program.

Confused, Dazed & A Little Frustrated

Just found out it will take 8 to 12 weeks for the sea shipment of my belongings to get from Seattle to London.  First of all - SERIOUSLY!  3 months - what are they doing, renting it out to make some money?  Okay - so the real question is do I send the shipment early & sleep on the floor here for 3 months or do I wait to send it & sleep on the floor over there for 3 months.  When I mentioned my concerns I was told not to worry, they can send an air shipment with all the essentials. Okay - so now I feel a little better,  until I ask how long the air shipment takes and she tells me ..........wait for it........."It only takes 30 days".   Are you kidding me!  30 days to get the essential things.  Does she not know what essential means?  

Kings English

I have been taking Italian lessons recently.  My hope was to someday visit the land of my ancestors and at least be able to ask where the bathroom is located.  Well, my dream seems more likely to happen now that we will be living on the same side of the “pond” as Italy.  Which brings me to my latest musing.  There have been conversations in the past about possible places we might move and I have always said I don’t want to have to learn chinese or russian or any such language.  So, imagine my delight when I realized that they speak English in the U.K..  Hey, that is my native language too!  But, much to my chagrin, I have been learning that it just isn’t the same.  What is up with that?  Didn’t the pilgrims come from England?   Shouldn’t we have adopted their language since they started this country?  I don’t know, maybe they were just so mad at the King, that they said we are dumping your tea in the harbor and making up new words so we don’t have to talk like you anymore.

So, in anticipation of needing to know this “foreign” language, I have begun to learn “The King’s English.”

Here are some helpful translations:

Bathroom=loo

Cookie=biscuit

Elevator=lift

Fries=chips

Jello=jelly but jelly=jam

Line=queue

Parking lot=car park

Soccer-football

Trunk=boot

This list might come in handy should you decide to visit me and while you are in the queue at a football game, waiting to order chips with your burger and a biscuit for dessert and suddenly you need to use the loo but you realize that you left your wallet in the boot of your car, you can ask where the lift is that will take you to the car park!