Tuesday, February 14, 2012
Return policy on vacation days?
Wouldn't it be nice if PTO/vacation days came with a 100% satisfaction guarantee? Seems like everytime I take a day off work it is so I can just work on other things like the my house, sit with sick kids, or do anything other than actually take a vacation. When I do finally get to schedule a day off that is intended for R&R, why does life seem to always give me a bag full of rotten lemons when all I want is some sweet lemonade? In the words of my children: "It's just not fair!" I should write Consumer Reports and give a bad review for this "As Seen On TV" gimic called "Vacation Days" because of their disceptive marketing, horrible customer support, and for consistently under delivering of their promises.
Sunday, February 12, 2012
Thank you influenza!
I love my wife and kids! Do you want to know what I don't love though? ... Influenza. I feel like the stars are aligned against us. It seems like every time we plan something, someone gets sick before, during, and/or immediately after. The latest example...
We bought tickets to Phineas and Ferb's Best Live Show Ever about a month ago. Our kids absolutely love the show and my wife and I can recite a few episodes ourselves. Even our 1 year old knows Perry the Platypus. We decided to keep it a secret and just drop little hints to build up anticipation since our kids knew it would be in Chicago but didn't know about the St. Louis show. We bought matching Perry shirts for everyone and when we woke the kids up on the day of the show we gave them the shirts and told them the plan for the night. We even bought tickets with a friend. Super excited, parents of the year, life is great.
Skip ahead to showtime. We are all having a great time singing along, clapping our hands, woohoo! Then Agent P comes out and we expected our kids to go crazy. The two oldest did but our youngest, the 1 year old, froze up. "Hmm" we thought... not what we expected but probably just nervous. Nope, of course it couldn't be that easy! Instead, that blank expression was the look of a baby getting hit with the flu. Five minutes later the vomit fest began. I think through the course of the show he threw up 10 times on us. We went through all our extra clothes, started using diapers to catch and cleanup his face with, and finally just had to sit through it.
So the show ends and we start to walk out to the car carrying half of the clothes we wore in. Of course, while we were in the show, our record breaking high temperatures disappeared and it dropped down to just short of an Arctic freeze. The quarter mile walk back to the car wearing wet clothes, carrying bags and carrying a baby was super pleasant. We got home and put Friday night in the books.
Now Saturday rolled around. Our daughter went to stay the night with a friend that she had never had a play date with before. Since I was determined to be a good Dad this weekend, I decided to take my 5 year old out for some father/son fun. We went to Burger King to eat dinner because they had an indoor play place, then we were going bowling, any finally out to get some ice cream.
Well, about half way through eating, my wife called and said I needed to go pick up our daughter at a McDonald's about 10 miles away because she was puking everywhere. We hurried up and got her, apologized to her friends parents for the trouble, and dropped her off at home with my wife, who was supposed to be having a relaxing night while we were out (sorry babe).
OK, so we missed the BK play place but it was finally bowling time. We bowled a couple games and had a great time. When we finished, we stopped and got some Sprite for the sick ones and got ice cream for us. We came home, ate it, talked about our night, and everyone went to bed. I decided to sleep out in the living room on the couch with the 5 year old because he really likes being able to sleep wherever he wants on the weekends and he likes having someone sleep by him. Well, about 2:30AM I wake up to him projectile vomiting all over the couch he was sleeping on. Third strike, I'm out!
So that is how Sunday has started. Can't wait to see what the rest of the day brings. My stomach is already churning. Thank you influenza! Next time, can you call first so we can schedule a visit instead of just showing up unannounced? That would be great...
Well... it's 4:00AM now and I hear the calling of puke hitting a bucket so I have to run. Until next time!
We bought tickets to Phineas and Ferb's Best Live Show Ever about a month ago. Our kids absolutely love the show and my wife and I can recite a few episodes ourselves. Even our 1 year old knows Perry the Platypus. We decided to keep it a secret and just drop little hints to build up anticipation since our kids knew it would be in Chicago but didn't know about the St. Louis show. We bought matching Perry shirts for everyone and when we woke the kids up on the day of the show we gave them the shirts and told them the plan for the night. We even bought tickets with a friend. Super excited, parents of the year, life is great.
Skip ahead to showtime. We are all having a great time singing along, clapping our hands, woohoo! Then Agent P comes out and we expected our kids to go crazy. The two oldest did but our youngest, the 1 year old, froze up. "Hmm" we thought... not what we expected but probably just nervous. Nope, of course it couldn't be that easy! Instead, that blank expression was the look of a baby getting hit with the flu. Five minutes later the vomit fest began. I think through the course of the show he threw up 10 times on us. We went through all our extra clothes, started using diapers to catch and cleanup his face with, and finally just had to sit through it.
So the show ends and we start to walk out to the car carrying half of the clothes we wore in. Of course, while we were in the show, our record breaking high temperatures disappeared and it dropped down to just short of an Arctic freeze. The quarter mile walk back to the car wearing wet clothes, carrying bags and carrying a baby was super pleasant. We got home and put Friday night in the books.
Now Saturday rolled around. Our daughter went to stay the night with a friend that she had never had a play date with before. Since I was determined to be a good Dad this weekend, I decided to take my 5 year old out for some father/son fun. We went to Burger King to eat dinner because they had an indoor play place, then we were going bowling, any finally out to get some ice cream.
Well, about half way through eating, my wife called and said I needed to go pick up our daughter at a McDonald's about 10 miles away because she was puking everywhere. We hurried up and got her, apologized to her friends parents for the trouble, and dropped her off at home with my wife, who was supposed to be having a relaxing night while we were out (sorry babe).
OK, so we missed the BK play place but it was finally bowling time. We bowled a couple games and had a great time. When we finished, we stopped and got some Sprite for the sick ones and got ice cream for us. We came home, ate it, talked about our night, and everyone went to bed. I decided to sleep out in the living room on the couch with the 5 year old because he really likes being able to sleep wherever he wants on the weekends and he likes having someone sleep by him. Well, about 2:30AM I wake up to him projectile vomiting all over the couch he was sleeping on. Third strike, I'm out!
So that is how Sunday has started. Can't wait to see what the rest of the day brings. My stomach is already churning. Thank you influenza! Next time, can you call first so we can schedule a visit instead of just showing up unannounced? That would be great...
Well... it's 4:00AM now and I hear the calling of puke hitting a bucket so I have to run. Until next time!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)