1y45wks Post R2 Life the world and a tattoo

Gosh I don't know how I let 2 weeks get away from me again, my profuse apologies to those who have been wondering what has been so very exciting that I didn't get round to posting an update.

The honest answer is - well it' all been rather 'beige' and I didn't want you thinking 'gosh her life must be so dull' - but really there has been little to no excitement and I really didn't want to torture you with a long post of BLAH.

This is a short one this week, I'm taking my funky thyroid meds each morning now, bloods for March are next Wednesday (yes I know that's April - but I managed to wander out of the surgery last month without booking for this one, and Easter happened and they couldn't fit me in)

We had friends over at the weekend and I managed to turn up a rather lovely oriental banquet for them with Brisket cooked Sous Vide (in a water bath) for 48 hours and Ribs SV for 24 hours, some rather sexy home made fried rice and Dim Sum. It was great to catch up, share gossip and just enjoy each others company.

The dogs are all getting along famously, looks like Bella has given both Amber and Winston a new lease of life, even Murphy-Cat tolerates Bella (but still hates Winston)

On the MS front as usual nothings happening life is great

OHHH actually I do have one piece of 'news'

I finally got round to having a memorial tattoo done for my family, it's been 5 years in the coming - so what was originally something to remember Mum and Dad now incorporates my brother Ian into the design as well. I have a 2 1/2 inch tall design of an elephant holding the strings for 3 heart shaped balloons, one navy blue for Dad, one red for Mum and one pale blue for Ian. It's healing up nicely and absolutely what I wanted.

1yr 43wks Post R2 - Cursed Sofa Part 3 - Life and Puppies

There is an acronym that's used sometimes in Text messages and on Internet forums

ISYCMTSU

(I Swear You Couldn't Make This Shit Up)

This is the point I have now reached with the Sofa delivery - I'm writing it and even I can't quite believe that so much incompetence could be leveraged onto a single customer without forethought, planning and perhaps a need for sustained cruelty to the individual.

Sofa Delivery 'Act-3' was last Wednesday this is how it played out (please forgive the inelegant copy and past from last week's post) (and Yes I am now naming the furniture company involved)

• Oak Furniture Land Delivery driver called to say he would arrive within the hour
• Window fitter arrived to remove window
• Delivery Driver called to say his Lorry wouldn't fit down the road (it was supposed to have been on an appropriately small vehicle like last time as per the order and emails to confirm this)
• Delivery chaps pushed the Chaise part of the sofa down the lane on a big roller skate contraption
• The incorrect 'sofa' part was removed through the gap where the window had been
• The Chaise (note I'm not calling it the correct part) was inserted through the window Gap
• Window fitter commences refitting the window
• Drivers remove packaging from the Chaise

ARGH

• It's NOT the one I ordered
• It's the right make, the right colour
• It's one with the solid back cushions not the scatter cushion back that I ordered or it doesn't bloody match the sofa part
• Because it's not the part I ordered even if the delivery drivers leave the large scatter cushions from the incorrect sofa part - it's still one large cushion short and looks rather odd (but they've left them here so whoever was due that 'sofa part' has no big cushions so thats another unhappy customer somewhere)
• On a bright note the drivers did leave the 2 small cushions from the other chaise to try and fill the gap left by the incorrect number of large cushions

Back on the phone to them again trying to get this all sorted, my order is somewhere in the UK - but nobody seems to be able to tell me where. They're sending me the cushion (from the Chaise they can't find) this week by courier (because otherwise they can't guarantee it wouldn't turn up on a lorry again) The refund of the cost of getting the window removed and reinstalled (again) should hit my bank account this week, and I can keep the 2 small cushions the were left (because they can no longer reunite them with the chaise they took away - because they can't find that either - so there's another unhappy customer out there somewhere)

They've managed to arse up 3 customer orders in one go with this mess and a 8-12 week delivery lead time means I'm not the only one who's having an outright hissy - seriously they couldn't organise getting drunk in a pub with a free bar.

We had a lovely couple of nights out last week with Aunty Kathy while she was here, back to The Hand & Flowers in Marlow for one of them with fantastic food as always. The dogs all had a whale of a time at K9 chasing balls and each other and getting VERY muddy in the process.

In other news Bella is settling in well without too many puppy related accidents (and no further unprovoked incidents on defenceless plants) and she's definitely still growing - like a weed - she's going to be quite tall by the time she's done.

My hopeful news from last week didn't work out the way I'd hoped, but there is more on the horizon.

All things considered life is pretty awesome as always, the MonSter is contained and that's just what the Project Plan had scheduled.

I found a new blog today from someone having round 1 right now that I've found well written and made me smile - if you have a moment please take a read, it might help xxx

http://Www.amyvsms.blogspot.co.uk

1y42wks post round 2 - Birthday / funeral / Cursed Sofa Part 2

To add some clarity to what will seem like a random post ….. this bit below was written last week but I didn’t post it.

I swear the successful delivery of the new sofa is cursed ……

It’s the journey of the damned and only heartbreak frustration and sorry lie down that pathway.

The reorganised delivery along with the ‘organised’ window fitter who was to remove the living room window so the sofa part could be slotted through and reinstall the window happened on Wednesday afternoon as organised.

·        The window man turned up and removed the window

·        The sofa turned up this time on an appropriately sized vehicle

·        The sofa fit through the window

·        The appropriately sized vehicle left

·        Window man reinstalled the living room window

Sounds great eh?

I should point out at this juncture the furniture company deliver but do NOT unpack

So the sofa parts remained in the packaging until the hole in the front of the house was plugged up so it wasn’t covered in snow …..

Upon unwrapping Gareth discovered that for the L shaped sofa rather than delivering the sofa part and the Chaise part along with the foot stool – they had delivered 2 sofa parts so it doesn’t actually fit together at all

I’m in WALES …. In a workshop and now I need to deal with this.

At this point I manage to insert every bad work I know into a single sentence – sometimes more than once.

Unlike last week, this time there was no crying while I spent 1 hour and 15 minutes being passed around from one customer service team to the next. Having used up all my swear words before they answered the phone I didn’t even say a bad word. By the time the manager was put on the phone to deal with the ‘difficult’ customer all that remained was cold fury with a side order of mean and vicious.

It’s quite extraordinary how helpful and quick they can be when they say it’s going to take a while to locate the missing part and reorganise the delivery and my response was:

‘That’s fine – it’s snowing out, I have 3 dogs and they all love coming in to sit on the sofa to warm up – the longer you leave it here the hairier, smellier and dirtier it’s going to be before you want to deliver it to the customer who actually ordered it’

There may also have been a ‘small threat’ that I was going to publicly post the delivery labels and photographs complete with comfortable dogs on their corporate twitter feed for the world to see (mean and vicious)

·        They’re coming Tuesday

·        They’re paying to have the window removed and refitted this time

·        They’re unwrapping the damn thing to prove it’s the correct part before they leave

In other news ‘Snowmageddon’ has reached the UK my drive to the south coast on Tuesday morning was unpleasant, coming back at lunchtime was more so as it had snowed some more. I then swapped cars and drove to Wales – more snow by now on teenie tiny twisty turny upy and downy hilly bits (sorry got carried away there)

The drive back out of Wales yesterday was in parts quite frankly terrifying in almost blizzard like conditions where you can’t see in front of yourself, or the lines on the road or even the edge of the road which blends in beautifully with the 100ft drop into a ravine because it’s all bloody white.

It was lovely to get home and sit on a sofa albeit not quite the configuration we ordered with the dogs and promptly ‘christen’ it by falling asleep on it 😊

Back in the office today, but out tomorrow for Arthur’s funeral ☹

In other news it’s my birthday on Saturday,

Roll on the weekend – I need a rest

CLARITY point again – its now Monday, the weekend is over and what follows is the weekend update:

So in the clutches of ‘snowmageddon’ Arthurs funeral took place on Friday. Thinking about it logically I think he would have approved of the affair even though pretty much everything happened in ‘disaster recovery mode’

The minister was snowed in and couldn’t get there (cudos to the lady at the crem who stepped in at the last minute) 2 of his 4 daughters also couldn’t get there because of the snow. The service ended up being ‘facebook lived’ out to those who put safety first.

It wasn’t to plan, but we got the job done and gave him a good send off, not a dry eye in the house when Scott talked about what a great person he had been.

Saturday was my birthday, Gareth and I went for a lovely Argentine Steak meal at CAU in Reading and did things quietly, Aunty Kathy is coming on Tuesday for a couple of days and we’re off out for posh food Tuesday and Wednesday night at The Hand & Flowers and then The Royal Oak Paley St.

‘cursed sofa part 3’ happens on Tuesday – they found the chaise part, it’s coming along with the window fitter to remove and replace the window all over again.

The snow is now pretty much all gone apart from the back lane that we use to take the dogs to K9 for walkies.

I have an appointment at 09:30am on Wednesday morning at St Mary’s in London with the new Neurology team so I’m going to try to take the opportunity to visit with my old friends and colleagues at GT while I’m in the city, then a 13:30 meeting while I’m there too.

I’ve been invited out with the girls on Thursday too so we can celebrate that we were mostly all born in March – I’m going to be SOOOOO fat by Friday.

This week is potentially a big week in my life …. Stay tuned for more news next time 😊 xxx