NonSoccerMom.com

I suppose that some people are easily swayed by TV commercials, promotional gimmicks, magazine ads, pushy salespeople and the like.  Unfortunately for the marketing world at large, I am not one of these people.

Scene:  At home, around 9:15 p.m. on a weeknight.  My cell phone rings, from a number I don’t recognize.  I answer anyway.

Local cable provider sales guy:  Hello, Ms. [Totally Botched Attempt at Pronouncing My Last Name]!  How are you this evening?

Me:  It’s [Correct Pronunciation of My Last Name].  I’m fine, thanks.

LCPSG:  Well, I’m calling to let you know about our special offer!  Right now, if you sign up for our long-distance service-

Me:  Stop right there.  We don’t have a land line.

LCPSG:  I’m sorry?

Me:  No land line.  I’m not interested in any sort of long-distance package.

LCPSG:  Oh.  I see.  Well is there something else you would be interested in?

Me:  Only if you can lower my current bill and keep my cable and internet package exactly the same.

LCPSG:  Hmm.  Let me see what you have here…it seems the only package I can offer is the long-distance, which is an excellent deal at-

Me:  I’m really not interested, thank you.

LCPSG:  But you really can’t beat a deal like this!

Me:  Sure I can.  By not having a land line.

LCPSG:  [pause]  Well okay!  Have a nice night!

*****

Scene:  On the phone with the company that comes to fertilize our lawn every quarter, something I’ve been intending to cancel for ages.

Customer service rep:  Hello, Ms. [Totally Botched Attempt at Pronouncing My Last Name].  This is Joan.

Me:  Hi, Joan.  I’m calling to cancel our treatment service.

Joan:  I see.  Have you been dissatisfied with the service at all?

Me:  Nope.  Just want to cancel it.

Joan:  May I ask why?

Me:  Because it’s expensive, and we don’t really need it, and we’re trying to save money wherever we can.

Joan:  Oh.  Well, is there anything I can do to keep you as a customer?

Me:  I doubt it.  I just want to cancel.

Joan:  I can offer you half off your next treatment.

Me:  No, thank you.  Just cancel, please.

Joan:  Maybe you would just like to cut the service back to twice a year?

Me:  Nope.  Zero times a year.  I would like to cancel, please.

Joan:  [sighs]  Okay.  Hold on a moment, let me get your cancellation confirmation number.

I got a gift certificate to Spec’s for Christmas, which was of course all kinds of exciting.  Even more exciting, when I went to use it I discovered that a Nautico wine I’d been wanting to try was on sale.  Score!

This one is a 2006 blend of semillon  (93%) and sauvignon blanc (7%).  Now, I love sauvignon blancs but hadn’t ever tried a semillon before.  And I’m not likely to try one again.

Ladies, you know how it smells when you get a perm?  That horribly noxious ammonia smell?  Yeah.  That’s exactly how this wine smells when you first open the bottle.  And let me tell you, it’s awfully hard to get past that odor.  I’ve never tasted that perm solution stuff, but I imagine that this wine was pretty damn close.

Maybe I’m unfairly blaming the semillon and it was actually the “tropical infusion” – whatever the hell that is – that made this wine nasty.  Either way, I won’t be going back for seconds.  (A second bottle, that is.  Because of course I managed to finish this one off.  Otherwise it would have been wasteful, and that will never do.)

Hello!  I’m back!  And rather than bore you with where I’ve been (hint: not Bali), I will just say that I have been exceedingly busy (as usual).  But anyway, blah-dee-blah, I survived.  And in the meantime, N and I managed to get away for Valentine’s Day.  Sort of.

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I look forward to the end of the month, because I get my referral stats from Google Analytics (also because that’s when I get my paycheck, but you know.  It’s the little things.)  The keyword searches always make me laugh, and January’s were no exception.

Apparently last month people were trolling the internet for the following:

• “Ashley Olsen bangs” – I am almost entirely certain that I have never written about Ashley Olsen on this blog.  Or Mary Kate, for that matter.
• “any topic under the sun” – I do, however, write about that.
• “burgundy hair” – Check.  Although it’s faded to a more natural auburn now, clearly indicating that it’s time for a touch-up.  Well, that and the blonde roots.  Classy!
• “cake wrecks annoying” – Actually, I think Cake Wrecks is pretty hilarious.
• “Danny Glover speech impediment” – Only in that crappy movie with Mark Wahlberg, apparently, because I saw him in something filmed after that and he was speaking normally.
• “happy birthday my husband” – Why do people Google stuff like this?  I mean really.
• “how to sign the emotion stabby” – Since it isn’t actually a word, I imagine you’d have to finger spell it instead.
• “I belong to none” -  ?  That’s…good?
• “leftover donuts: to refrigerate or not” – To be or not to be, that really is the question, isn’t it?
• “meme zoo” – What does that even mean?
• “nasty things that don’t belong together” - hahahahaha
• “parentheses supplemental” – Yes indeed, parentheses are often used to convey supplemental information.
• “poltergeist mommy sounds” – I have no idea what kind of sounds those might be.  From what I recall, the mom in Poltergeist mostly did a lot of screaming and crying.
• “sleeping patterns for deer” – I laughed loud at this.  Just…hahahaha.  Also, WTF.
• “soccer mom coat” – I’m not sure what kind of coat this is, but I’m willing to bet that it’s frumpy.  And possibly paired with a visor.
• “song the conversation by garfield” – I’m not sure what this person was looking for, but am pretty sure they found this post.  I hope it helped you, Mystery Googler.  Because that’s what I’m here for.  To help.

I was reading this post of Swistle’s and it (and the comments) got me thinking.

I have never lived in a house (or apartment) without a dishwasher.  I mean, yeah, I lived in the dorm my freshman year of college, but there was a dining hall so it wasn’t like I was doing a lot of cooking.

Other than that, I’ve always had a dishwasher handy.  I wasn’t responsible for doing the dishes when I still lived with my parents – that was always my dad’s responsibility.  Mom cooked, he cleaned up the kitchen (and WOE TO YOU if you stacked dirty plates one on top of the other because then he would have to rinse BOTH SIDES.  But I digress), and therefore Dad was the one who loaded the dishwasher.

The comments in Swistle’s post seem to indicate that a lot of couples fight about proper dishwasher loading, something else that’s a rather foreign concept to me.  Again, probably because I grew up in a house where only ONE person did the loading.

N and I both wash the dishes, but neither of us is particularly anal about the way the dishwasher gets loaded – plus we each have the knack for tetris-ing dishes efficiently.  And we’re both pre-rinsers, so no argument there either.  We don’t tend to load it with pots and pans, or large out-of-the-ordinary dishes unless we plan to run it immediately and there’s leftover room.

So now I’m curious:  Is the dishwasher really a big-ticket issue in some households?  People argue about how it is loaded, or what is loaded in it?  I know there are differences of opinion (the way my father insists on loading the silverware positively IRKS me when I’m back at their house), but I guess since N and I are on the same page it isn’t a big deal for us.

Do you have a dishwasher?  If so, do you pre-rinse or just cram dirty dishes directly in there (like my father-in-law, because it is a dishwasher, after all)?  And am I the only person who would prefer to rinse dishes and load the dishwasher rather than unload it?

(Incidentally, I am quite aware that this may be the most mundane post I’ve ever written.  I was so busy today that at this point my brain cells are all refusing to think straight.  Shut up.)