12/19/11 – Monday

You know you want a Crooked Acres holiday postcard. One more day! Get to it! (And yes, of course I’m happy to send cards to other countries!) Send your name and mailing address to hollydays@gmail.com .

I’ll take names and addresses until midnight tomorrow.

If you’d like to send me a card as well (never ever required, but always appreciated – I don’t keep track of who does and doesn’t send a card, I promise!), send it to: Robyn Anderson, PO Box 461, Athens, AL 35612 USA.

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In case you missed it over the weekend: Saturday was a repost of an entry from two years ago. Sunday was Spanky speaking (or refusing to), Clay wiggling his invisible tail, and a video from almost four years ago, where I harassed the cats by continually asking what they were doing.

Customer service: the good and the meh.

The good. Last year at Christmas time, we bought a Room with a View from Jeffers Pet when they were having their 12 Days of Christmas promotion. I got it half price, and the cats liked the one we got the previous year so much that I decided to get one for the foster room. So, it arrived, I stuck it out in the garage because I had big plans (BIG PLANZ) to polyurethane it before Fred put it together in case it got peed on, in which case I could just wipe it off and not worry about the pee soaking into the wood. Then I was like “Meh. Don’t wanna. Would you just put it together for me?” and Fred was all “Yeah, one day I will” and then we stuck it in the back of the garage and ignored it for what’s now been a year.

So last weekend I was like “Your task is to put the Room with a View together before the end of the weekend.” I find that if Fred is given his list of what he must accomplish at the beginning of the weekend, it works out better. FOR ME. Because he invariably forgets until I so-very-casually say Sunday morning “When are you going to do that task I gave you?” and then he’s all “Oh, shit!” and has to rush to do it.

Sunday morning, when he’d been reminded and went out to the garage to do it, he discovered that the hardware for putting the Room together had gone missing. I’m entirely sure that it came with the Room, but at some point I took it all out of the box so I could take the box to the recycling center, and the hardware took a hike without either of us realizing it (I don’t think I left it in the box, but who knows?)

Fred looked around online to find the company that makes the Room with a View, and he emailed and asked if it would be possible for us to buy a replacement set of hardware. Within 24 hours he’d heard back from them, all they needed was our address, and they’d send a replacement set for free. Less than a week later, we had the hardware in our possession – they sent it via FedEx, even.

Now THAT is customer service! (Don’t ask me if Fred put the Room with a View together, though.)

The meh. I have a tiny bit of an addiction to Jolly Ranchers. Not just any Jolly Ranchers, though, the Wild Berry Jolly Ranchers that I buy in bulk directly from Amazon once or twice a year. When I say I have an addiction, I don’t mean that I chow down on them constantly – when I’m at home, I may have one a day, but I also go days without eating any of them. But when I do a lot of errand-running, I tend to consume two or three of them. I don’t know what it is about driving that makes me need to have something in my mouth constantly – if it’s not a Jolly Rancher, it’s gum – which I am constantly refreshing as soon as the flavor is gone.

So anyway, a couple of weeks ago, I reached into my desk drawer and found that I had no Jolly Ranchers in the usual place. So I reached into another drawer where I store the bags of Jolly Ranchers. I opened the bag, dumped the Jolly Ranchers into the top left drawer, and went about my business.

The next day, I reached into the drawer for a Jolly Rancher, grabbed one, and started to open it. Then I glanced down at it.

There were ants embedded in my Jolly Rancher. I opened the desk drawer all the way to see if perhaps ants had gotten into the desk drawer, but there were no ants to be seen. I looked through the candy that had come out of the same bag to see if there were ants in any of the other pieces of candy, and nada.

I looked around online to find the customer service email for the company that makes Jolly Ranchers (which is Hershey, if you’ve ever wondered) and filled out the form online to alert them that, hey. There appear to be ants in my Jolly Rancher, motherfuckers.

(I didn’t say “motherfucker.” But I thought it.)

Four days later, I was vacuuming when I heard the phone ring. I didn’t recognize the number, so I kept vacuuming, and when I was done, I listened to the message. It was someone at Hershey leaving a message asking me to call back so they could determine what “the foreign object” in my candy was. (Me, listening to the message: “It’s ANT, you fuckers. Did you not READ the email?”)

When Fred got home from work, I asked him to call them because I hate talking on the phone and I didn’t want to deal with it. Although he offered at least three times to send her high-resolution pictures so that she could see what it was for herself, the lady he spoke to wasn’t interested in all that. She told him that often times, people mistake burnt sugar for bugs.

She wasn’t buying it. She told him that she’d send a postage-paid envelope so that we could send the piece of candy to the company so that they could determine what it was, and they’d also send coupons for free product.

“Determine what it was my ASS,” I said to Fred when he’d hung up the phone. “They’re going to destroy the evidence!”

They’re so unconcerned about all this that a week and a half later, we have seen no mail from them. Probably they’re right, I’m sure that it’s not actually ANTS in the candy. Surely it’s burnt sugar. It’s not like we can see individual legs and antennae and can count all six of those ants or anything.

(Do feel free to go over to Flickr and check out the large or even original-sized pictures. You can see one poor ant over there to the left who was clearly attempting to swim his way to freedom.

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Patty Peppers, you make me wanna kiss you.

Check out that gigantic back foot she’s got going on there.

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The Sons are turning into great big lovebugs. Now when I walk into the room, instead of running and hiding, they all come over to me. Clay immediately climbs into my lap and smacks at the other kittens when they walk by. Opie will also climb into my lap when Clay moves along, and Tig and Jax like to sit near me and squeak at me.

They are way too cute, these guys.

Left to right: Clay, Tig, Opie, Jax.

Sweet monkey Clay.

Oh, is Jax pretty? I hadn’t noticed.

I love Opie’s whiskers in the sun.

Honestly, that scratcher is one of the best things I’ve ever bought. They LOVE it.

Opie and Tig. I love Tig’s wide-eyed look of horror. “WHO knocked that scoop onto the FLOOR?” Gee, I wonder.

Remember when I said that Jax keeps a close eye on Clay? I wasn’t kidding. This picture cracks me up.

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Tom Cullen makes himself comfy no matter where he lands.

(He’s a big cat, but he’s not quite as huge as this particular angle makes him look.)

“How YOU doin’?”

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Previously
2010: No entry.
2009: No entry.
2008: I’m sure the world shifted on its axis a bit when I left the house in jeans instead!
2007: I believe the phrase “JESUS FUCKING CHRIST ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?!” were bellowed in my car about sixteen different times.
2006: I think my favorite part of the video is at the end when the boys are eating and Miz Poo is so intent on getting a snootful of Booger ass that she is uninterested in Snack Time.
2005: I’m sure that if Rachel McAdams knew that pictures of her nipples were going to be splashed all over the internet she would have yanked out the hairs just to spare the Dork Brigade the sheer horror of having to be aware of the fact that she’s a living, breathing human and exists for purposes beyond serving as an image for them to jerk off to.
2004: I’d swear to never use Amazon again, but it’s so FREAKING convenient I just can’t help myself.
2003: Clearly we were in the presence of REALLY important people.
2002: Because I’m just that good.
2001: That’s right, damnit, I’m a chick magnet!
2000: We’re standing strong in the face of those two snowflakes.
1999: Though I guess “substance” would be a matter of opinion.