love

I LOVE when little kids fill out these questionairres. This is definitely going into the "keep" pile. My favorite answer is #3.

Celebration Galore

What a busy week for the Millers!

Rob had a birthday, and Jack had a birthday which was shared with Mother's Day. Busy but fun!

Joan Jett baby

I'm so loving the hot weather so Josie can wear all of her cute sundresses!

I also came up with an idea for using those cute legwarmers that were handed down by my sister-in-law. I feel like once the air conditioning is on, a little sundress is a little too cold for a nap, so instead of having a whole wardrobe change, I just throw some legwarmers on her arms and legs.

 

I so love how she is channeling the Joan Jett look here.

Today

Grumpy baby.
Fighting brothers.
Tired mommy.
Baby opens door and falls down two steps onto garage floor. Skins her back.
Baby falls down again on driveway. First skinned knees. No blood. Phew.
Brothers still fighting.
Kill around 150 ants in laundry room. The tiny kind that you can barely see.
Mommy still tired.
Power goes out. For a few hours. For the second day in a row. Mommy resets all the clocks.
Mommy picks up a Papa Murphy's pizza. Mommy feels a moment of relief.
Full cup of milk spilled down cupboards and onto floor.
Baby falls for a 3rd time.
I am not even going to make that comparison though it's ripe. It's way too sacrilegious.
This time opening the screen door and down two concrete steps onto back patio.
Toilet clogs.
After mommy gets kids to bed, she must decide which to tackle first. The clogged toilet or the second round of ants. Chooses toilet so it's free and clear to dump all of the ants into with the moist toilet paper which is the kill vehicle of choice.
Mommy kills 221 ants. You might think that mommy likes to make up silly and preposterous numbers, and you might be right. But this time, mommy counts just to get an idea of what she's dealing with. And she kills all in sight and lands right at 200, but feeling that 200 sounds a little bit hard to believe, she waits around for another 21 to show up to make it seem more believable to her loyal reader. At last, the floor is clean so mommy can sit down and blog about her day. But then she looks over and sees the reinforcements have arrived.
She wonders if she will still have time to sit down with a glass of wine tonight.
She's not sure because the clock next to her is still blinking.

An open letter of disappointment

Dear American shopper,

I am disappointed in you.

I majored in marketing, with a minor in psychology. I am fascinated at the psychology used in marketing. So I've been following the JC Penney "social experiment" for some time now.

I totally get why they did what they did with the everyday low pricing "experiment". When you are in a constant sale frenzy, as JCP was, and Kohls still is, the associates spend nearly all of their time running around the store removing sale signs and putting up new sale signs. Store buyers, speaking from experience since I was one myself, spend tons of time planning sale timing and inputting the price changes into the computers. So, instead of time spent helping customers, the time is spent coming up with new and different sale pitches which are really just different ways to convince you, the customer, that you are getting a great deal. A bargain. A SALE.

So, JCP decided to do something new and novel. To ditch the relentless sale mongering and just offer the items at the price that they would eventually reach with all of that sale silliness, eliminating the need for constant signs up and down and direct mail pieces falling all over themselves to reach you in time to cash in on the next two day sale.

And, what did we do? We hated them. We stopped shopping there. Despite the fact that the merchandise was still the same, and the store looked so much cleaner and crisper, we decided that not getting a "deal" really pissed us off. Sales plummeted, the store hit the "most hated companies" list, and the CEO was ousted. And now, I see that JCP has issued an apology letter.

To apologize to us, the American consumer. And for what?

They are apologizing for trying to be straight with us and no longer dupe us with frivolous sales, and we are therefore smoothing our ruffled feathers back down and saying that we'll think about shopping there again with a sniff of our nose.

America, aren't we smarter than this? Why are we choosing to be fooled and be played by all of those sale games? Can't we just admit we know better than this? I feel for that CEO who thought that America was ready for this, and I picture him just truly miffed that it went up in flames like it did.

I'm sorry, guy. Better luck next time. We just aren't ready quite yet.

Sigh.