Friday of Hassles

1) Roman Atwood puts a lot of time into creating the world’s most contagious prank.

(Fun way to show Rockstar yawns are contagious.

They really are: “…..contagious yawning goes beyond mere suggestibility. Recent studies show that the phenomenon is also related to our predisposition toward empathy — the ability to understand and connect with others’ emotional states. It sounds strange, but whether or not you’re susceptible to contagious yawning may actually be related to how much empathy you feel for others…)

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2) In case you’re still yawning, Isn’t This Just.

The Awesomest Wedding Pic Ever?

And there Kings and I thought we so cool with our Elvis Walks Me Down The Aisle At Little White Chapel In Vegas. T-Rex beats Elvis, baby.

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3) Animals Against Mirrors. A.k.a. Someone Please Tell That Poor Animal It’s Their Own Darned Reflection. The umpteenth Cat Scratching Mirror clip might be yawn-some but hey, ever seen a chameleon do a mime of a imaginary wall (that isn’t so imaginary)?

http://youtu.be/kG_QhttG6jo

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4) Little Miss had her 1yr old battery of vaccinations yesterday. She took one look at the mobile we used to distract her for undressing and weighing, and SCREEEEEEAAAMMED. Barely stopped before recognizing goodness-knows-what-other-traumatic-thing-in-doc’s-office and SCREEEEEEAAAMMED all the way through the 2 shots and fingerprick for bloodtests. As in you can’t even tell whether she is being given the shot or not because she’s already screaming anyway.

She’s always been mellow at checkups, but I think in the one appointment yesterday she succeeded in breaking all her brother’s previous records. The nurses and doc must’ve been thinking Wow Just When The Other One Seems To Have Outgrown That……..!!!

Since this is The Big One With Lotsa Stuff In It she’s running a low-grade fever (expected) but more than that she can’t sleep well. And today’s also the day I have to battle Hong Kong Air Con Repairmen And What Appears To Be An Idiot Client Before My Time Slot Who Has Now Hogged Almost My Entire Time Slot As Well so I really need 23 Ways Your Day Could Get Way, Way Worse.

Air Con Repair Saga looks like another blog post waiting to happen. They say their phone calls are recorded – I really hope so, that last 20 minutes I just spent speaking to their supervisor. I could bung the whole transcript up here as a blog post. Y’know, in the interests of Always Sign Your Name To What You Say/ Write So You Own It. (And be prepared to humbly admit if I made a mistake).

Well anyway I carried on typing after they left and the repairman was really nice, proceeded to do a lot of extra stuff to make up for it. When he finally got here. Though everyone refused to confirm if the earlier client really was hogging my time slot (at one point because he was just a few doors away, I said I don’t care about the other units but could he walk over and take a look at the baby room air con first and then go back to potentially hogging client because we had already been waiting 2.5 hours and I had tried to adjust the baby’s timing according and after that I could put the baby down for a nap – the other client then said no, he may not.) 

Omg – AWFUL people.

That was when I called the hotline (again) and asked the supervisor “YES OR NO, ARE YOU ALLOWING A MORE DIFFICULT CLIENT TO HOG MY TIMESLOT??? Please tell me if I have misunderstood how booking this time slot works.” (Because they asked me to specify the number of units and a rough estimate of works so they could allocate the time to the technician to begin with, and we then had to wait in line for a week to get any slot.) 

Like, you wouldn’t believe how many ways there are to wriggle out of saying “yes” or “no” 😀 I can laugh because despite her fever Little Miss didn’t give me much problem when I delayed her nap.

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5) Man sells parking ticket on eBay. Just to (almost) end on a note that restores your faith in humanity to do some small nice thing “just because”. This guy in Birmingham, England got a parking ticket he couldn’t afford to pay, so he put it on eBay – winning bid gets a thank you note for paying his fine.

Now hear this – people bid up the price of the ticket and this guy finally decides he will then donate the extra to another family who needs it for say, medical costs. 

There now, wasn’t that nice?

Better!

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6) “…..I challenge you to recognize what the world scoffs at, that your greatest role in your life will be that of wife and mother…… ……..To solve the problems plaguing our society, we don’t need more women CEOs. We need more women as invested mothers.“

– from Peter Heck, Eastern High School Commencement Speaker.

This jumped out at me, especially the bits in italics, so this is my thought for the week(end). Because of the reactions it provoked. Just because he thought we didn’t need more women CEOs doesn’t mean women CEOs aren’t super. But women being CEOs is getting more common, more popular. So what? Women as invested mothers, CEO or not, might not be. I couldn’t do both, but that was me. 

What I’m trying to say is I know hard core working mothers who are invested mothers. And I know stay at home mums who are not. He didn’t say one had to not be the other. But it says something about society, the number of people who read what they expected to, in this.

Ok, burble. Cute picture time. It’s what we come here for right?

Have a good weekend. Practice raising an eyebrow.