Rugs: A Saga or: How Much $ We've Spent On Not Getting A Rug At Pottery Barn

Pretty much from the minute N. and I moved into this place we wanted to get a rug for the living room. Our parents had generously bestowed some nice, but small Oriental rugs that worked fine when we were young and childless in Brooklyn. But childed in NH? We needed more of a carpet. So we made do with this weird 3 rug aesthetic until we got our tax return and decided to buy us some rug. We decided upon Pottery Barn since we had a gift card and PB is like the married with children version of Ikea.

First we had to get a swatch of the rug we wanted because N. in his infinite wisdom said it would be dumb ass to buy a $$ rug we hadn't felt. A swatch o' rug from PB costs $25.00, but it's "refundable" if you mail it back. So we did that. And N. in his photo-shopping genius created a whole rug from one swatch and we realized we couldn't get the color we liked on the computer, but we could get that rug in a different color. Cool, right? It cost me $7.00 to send that stupid rug sample back. And then we got all crazy and decided that we also needed a rug for under the dining room table and once again had to get a swatch and then send that back so now we've sent $14.00 JUST RETURNING things to PB.

But the rugs come and we're happy. We don't even care that we have to move EVERYTHING out of the living room to roll it down and then move everything back all while trying to prevent the Bean from chewing and pulling on 1,000 cables.

Because N. and I are no dummies, we had measured the living room and dining room a lot of times to make sure the rugs would fit. And yeah, the living room rug fit. But it completely absorbed the whole room. We actually have nice wood floors, why not show a little? We put the rug down at 8:30 in the morning and even though we decided that we would sleep on it and make our decision about the rug being too big the following morning by 10:00 AM I was on the phone with the PB people ordering two more rugs---smaller, of course and finding out how to go about returning 8 x10 and 9 X12 foot rugs.

We were too tired to move everything out and roll up the rug so I scheduled the UPS pickup for Monday, which meant we had a good three days looking and walking (and crawling) on the too-big rug. I should mention that it costs $16.00 to return a rug, which means we're up to $46.00.....

Except we noticed that the rug in the dining room was shedding. A lot. Like ten minutes after N. vacuumed, which is not good. After googling, we discovered a very long thread about PB and their shedding rugs. In a matter of minutes it was decided that I could not live with a shedding rug so I tried to cancel the order, but it had already shipped. N. and I spent a whole night looking at new rugs because now that we've tasted the wine, we need to drink it. We find, after 4 hours of searching, a nice, seemingly unsheddy rug at ABC carpet. This rug was quite different as it was bright and lively compared to the PB one, which was dark and foreboding. So we ordered it.

Monday came around and we quickly rolled up the shedding carpet while the baby napped (we got smart) and had the UPS man take it away. Only he brought the two new ones. Luckily, the one for the dining room table seems good although our table weighs 800 pounds and for the past two days N. and I have been too tired to move it so the dining room table rug is now alongside the table rather than under it.

To continue the saga a friend tells me that she owns a PB rug and yes it shed, but only for two months and we should keep the rug because it will be fine. So....now we have the smaller PB living room rug in the garage while we wait for the one from ABC Carpet because you know what kids....we're gonna compare them! And then we're gonna have to send one back and pay yet another return fee.

Oh and wouldn't you know I had to call PB with the tracking numbers from the sent away rugs so they could credit my account and it was going fine until they wanted to give me a SEVEN HUNDRED DOLLAR GIFT CARD. Because you know we paid with a gift card....I had a minor melt down because it was only a hundred dollar gift card not $700! There's some message when you first call PB about their excellent customer service and I have to say it's true. The people are really nice and very helpful even if they retardedly try to dupe you into spending $700 dollars in their store. Thank goodness for that and the fact that after a long wait Mary Jo returned to tell me a $100 gift card would be sent to me, but the rest of the money would indeed be credited to my account. Whew.

Still, we're going ended up spending over $60.00 bucks on not buying a rug. And I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but there might even be rug saga update. As if this isn't long and boring enough....

No Sleep Till Brooklyn!

I just put The Bean to bed after a rather long day. N. is still at work so there was no respite for mama. It wasn't a terrible day though. The babysitter was here and in the later afternoon we went to the gym so Bean could have some fun in the day care. She had a blast although she was very tired by the end. Speaking of tired would you like to know the many ways The Bean lets her elders know she's ready for bed? Yes, of course, you do.
1. She yawns
2. She makes weird, deeply guttural, strangely alien noises
3. She puts her head down---on the floor, on her highchair tray, on the bottom of her closet, on your shoulder, which is the bestest
4. She gets very still
5. She gets very hyper and scampers around the room like a hyena
6. She cries
7. She laughs a lot, which makes you feel like you're being very funny when actually you're not
8. She acts like she wants to nurse
9. She climbs into your lap
10. She kicks her legs and won't let you change her diaper/clothes
11. She yells
12. She pulls her ear
13. She rubs her eyes
14. She pulls her hair, which is a feat since she's still pretty bald
15. She scratches behind her ear
16. Her motor skills start to stink
17. Her eyes get red
18. She starts to look dunk and stoned
19. She's too distracted to eat any solid food
20. While on the bottle her eyes roll into the back of her head--really, it's kind of freaky
21. She just wants to be held

Pretty wild stuff, huh? Luckily, she came with a manual. It's not like N. and I had to figure it out or anything.

Monday Monday

It's been a while. Despite my best efforts, I did get sick. A sore-throat/sinus/cough/tremendous amount of mucous thing. Pleasant. The Bean is still having some ailments, too, but she's mostly better. Although I think she's in a baby funk this week. She spent most the afternoon in a terrible mood despite a good nap and a positive, truly entertaining mama. The census lady got a huge smile for some reason though. And we were both throughly entertained by the dogs next door. I don't know what we would do without those crazy dogs. Watching them run and round like lunatics really entertains Ms. Bean. When she's a bit bigger, the dog's owner has said she can go into the yard (instead of peering over the fence) and run around with them!

I'd like The Bean to grow up with dogs so she won't be afraid of them like I was when I was a kid. The Bean's papa does love him some dogs and I imagine we'll get one at some point, but we need to have a big yard where it can go outside. Also, I'd like to live near some kind of park thing. So maybe in 5-10 years we'll have a dog. I also like cats quite a bit. More than cats, I like coming up with names for cats. Don't you think a cat named Waffles is genius. And Guacamole. I think that would be a good name for a cat too. We could call him Guac.

My next post will be better. I hope.

Cute But Also A Little Nasty

Poor Bean. She's got a variety of ailments these days. She has pink eye in both eyes, which means there's green goop all over her eyeballs and stuck in her eyelashes and she has to get 2 drops in each eye 4! times a day for 10!! days. No fun. But we gotta kill the goop. She's also got snot running out of her nose like it's going to win the 100-yard dash or something. And she has a barking cough that sounds just awful at night. Very little sleep was had by the Bean familia last night. Today, Ms. Bean was so sleepy that according to the babysitter's report, she fell asleep in her high chair in the middle of her lunch.

And now mama's throat is starting to hurt....But I'm downing tea and Tylenol like they're nachos and margaritas so hopefully I will not succumb.

More happily, it was nice out today! The sun shone and Ms. Bean crawled around in the grass in the backyard! That was very fun. We are so going to LOVE summer. And if we don't, if we be complaining on this blog, you come up to NH and slap us around some, y'all hear?

Disregard The Last Post!

I've spit out the cake since it's come to my attention that actually the last post was only 93. Stupid Blogger was including the drafts.
Yes, hard to believe that even among all this drivel there are some posts that are too lame to be published.
Unfortunaelty, this is not one of them.
Only 6 to go....

All About The Benjamins

This post was going to be all about how my generally awesome brother KILLED all my sweaters when he went psycho with the moth balls this past summer, but then I learned that this was to be my 100th post and thought I'd save the one about my brother for another, less special time.

So Mazel Tov to me!! 100 posts about moi! In a less than a year! That's pretty self-involved even for me! Here's a sampling of what those in the know have to say about my blog.
N says the blog is "wordy and full of typos and mispellings, but is also a lifesaver for myna birds."
The Bean says that the blog is "full of poop" but I think she's talking about herself.
The Brother who killed the sweaters says that this blog "brings tears to his eyes and fills him with much jealousy and rage."
Malice feels the blog is " too fraking cheery" and Jenny thinks there ought to be "more about cakes!"
KW feels as though the blog "relies too much on me, as the sole commenter" and The Muel is " too busy buying things on Ebay to read it regularly, but hears that's it's not too shabby."
The Bean would also like to add that in addition to being "full of poop" that ten posts tagged under "lame" is indeed "LAME!"

Okay, well I need to go as N. is bringing me a wonderful slice of chocolate cake to celebrate my 100 Golden Moments.

Feel free to let me know how awesome you thinketh the blog is, lurkers! And do keep sending the chocolates.

8 Months, Baby!

Today The Bean turned 8 months! That seems crazy, no? To celebrate her 8 months The Bean woke up at 5:30, which has unfortunately been the theme all week. She got some yogurt and some fruit for breakfast from her dad, which made her pretty happy.

She stayed up for her 9:00 nap until 8:50, which was pretty amazing. She woke at 10:00 just in time for her babysitter. And to celebrate, she was actually happy for her babysitter, which considering the bad times last week was quite a present. Yay!! Bean! Mama likes it when you're happy with others:) Mama celebrated 8 months of being mama with a latte (decaf) and a roll at Borders while The Bean was being sat.

Because she's 8 months, The Bean happily ate her lunch of spinach, carrots and sweet potatoes, and cut up pieces of bread, which she attempted to feed herself. Go Bean Go! Then she took her 1:00 nap at 1:00! Miracles do happen now don't they?

After she woke up at 2:00, all of us (daddy included!) went for a walk in the beautiful 60 degree sunshine. To top it all off, Bean went swinging in her favorite swing on The Green.

Because mama was ill prepared, the first course of The Bean's 8 month dinner was oatmeal and Vermont organic applesauce. The second course was most exciting as it included salt! The Bean had her very first Dr. Prager's Spinach pancake! Mmmmm, said The Bean! Give me more! So Mama did! Give me more, said The Bean. So Mama did and kept doing until Daddy appeared quite shocked at how much pancake The Bean had eaten. And he didn't even know about the avocado between the courses. Hopefully the tastiness that is Dr. Prager's won't upset The Bean's stomach.

All in all a pretty exciting day, Ms. Bean. You keep growing, pulling yourself to STAND, feeding yourself, crawling into our laps, getting into stuff, laughing, making us laugh, dancing, yelling, and being your all around interested and interesting self!

Only 4 months till you can eat cake, baby girl.

Ok in OK!

So, I haven't mentioned anything here about it, but we just got official word that N. got a job at Oral Roberts University in Tulsa! Oklahoma. We didn't mention this to anyone since we thought his chances of getting the job were nil. He had two interviews last month, but it was still a long shot since we're not Evangelicals...and I'm Jewish. And the baby is Jewish too.

But the powers that be decided it was OK for us to go to OK so okay!

It's really weird. I started this blog almost a year ago because N. got the job in New Hampshire. Now it's going to be about moving to Oklahoma, which is going to be so different than New Hampshire. It's like Brooklyn is to New Hampshire what Mars is to Oklahoma.

As a liberal New York agnostic Jew, I'm nervous about the politic climate and all those bible beaters, but it's a really good opportunity for N. He's going to be the photography department since they don't have one yet. They don't even have a dark room! Unfortunately, he's going to have to take a sizable pay cut, but they're optimistic that it should only be for a few years.

One positive thing about the move is just how interesting this blog is going to get. I know it's been kind of tedious and dull with post after post on winter sucking, the baby not napping, and me not having any friends. Moving to Tulsa is going to be this blog's savior, people. I know it.