No time for flickr mom, this will have to do.

Once upon a time, in a land far away, my mom was an airline hostess.

She is not one of the ladies pictured above, but her uniform wasn't much different than these - I remember when I was 12 trying on her uniform and it didn't even cover my ass. My mom is shorter than me, but holy hell those uniforms were short.

I am sure that the flight attendants today do things vastly different than the "hostesses" back in the day. I have been on some flights where the service wasn't much better than crap, and other flights that were downright fantastic. Being a safety geek, I ALWAYS pay attention to the safety announcement, but I notice that most people don't. Well, this guy fixes that....

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Crappy Customer Service

One of my biggest pet peeves is really bad customer service. In the past week I have come across it more times than I can count, and it damned near drove me nuts.

Today, I phoned my old hairdresser to "try" (you'll see why that is in quotes a bit later) make an appointment to get my hair done. I haven't been to this hairdresser in over a year. She is fan-freaking-tastic, which is a problem because she books a couple of months in advance, and I usually have to cancel appointments I have made far in advance because something always comes up (usually a birthday party, or a practice of some sort for one of the kids that gets scheduled after the appointment is made). At any rate, I thought I'd try again to see if she can fix my lid.

So when I call, I ask the girl who answers the phone if Irene works on Tuesdays. I figure that she would have more availability during the week than on the weekend. The receptionist says "I don't know". So I ask her if she can find out. She goes to check, and then comes back to tell me "I don't think she works on Tuesdays". So I then ask her when Irene's next available appointment is. And she tells me "Oh, Irene is REALLY booked up, I'm so sorry". At this point I am not to impressed, and I really wish I had something witty and snarky to say like "Do you expect me to jump through the phone and check the appointment book myself"? But no, I just say "well that's been helpful" and I hang up.

Stuff like that just drives me nuts. I honestly am thinking of phoning my old hairdresser and telling her what happened (she is the owner of the salon). Of course, I might just phone again a bit later, hoping to get someone else and actually getting an appointment!

I blinked. And my baby turned two.

It was at about this time two years ago that I was in a hospital BEGGING for drugs as I was in intense labour with Renee. I always thought that by the time kiddo number three came along that the whole delivery and birthing thing would be a breeze. How wrong I was. She was by far the hardest and most painful to deliver - but oh so worth it.

As I was leaving the hospital, the midwife mentioned that if she hadn't seen me actually give birth to Renee she'd swear I was leaving the hospital with the wrong baby. Those asian genes sure give the pool a good shake up.





The midwife came by the house a few days later to check up on us. If I had known how awesome having a midwife was, I would have done it with all three kids. The care was out of this world. Nick wanted to be weighed next - he thought that weighing Renee "old school" was about the coolest thing ever.



Of course, grandpa had other ways of measuring Renee - unconventional for sure, but effective.

With two big brothers, it sometimes was pretty tough work being the baby (and only girl).

And that hair! It was wild when it was dry, curly when wet, and RED.

Right from day one she has tried to keep up with her brothers

Even when it comes to eating, she will not be outdone. EVER. She is her mother's daughter.

I am slowly learning how to do her hair - when she lets me....

Often though, she'll just do her own thing.

Happy birthday sweet girl!!!

It's been a rough couple of weeks

I've been a bit light on the posting, partly because I am up to my eyeballs in marking, and partly because I have got at least one of my kids glued to some part of me for most of the day.

The roughest part of the last couple of weeks though is that a good friend of mine lost her husband - he was only 39. She has two young kids and is still trying to comprehend how she is going to go on without him. They were an amazing couple - always together. He worked mostly at night, so during the day he was with the family. In fact on the day he had his stroke she told me that they had such nice day together and I think she is really happy to hold onto that special memory.

Today was his funeral. It was hard. So so hard. He was so young - he has two small kids. We are all still trying to comprehend why.