The Queen's Rambles

I have two major frustrations in my life right now. Totally unrelated to each other, but I need a theme. Frustrations it is! My head is about to pop off my poor little shoulders based on these two things so you might as well hear about them before I make national news for a popped top.

I never thought I would be complaining about anything Indiana Jones, but Oh-emm-gee! I am so over the Indiana Jones Lego Wii game.

Remember when I was a smug non-mother and swore no kid of mine would have a video game until s/he had the money to buy it him/herself? Yeah. That’s not so realistic when you have an actual child who is exposed to things that are out of your control and then won’t. shut. up. about. it.

Plus, there’s the whole “I love my kid and want to see sheer joy on his face which is easily achieved through the spending of Mike’s hard earned money.”

We’re always on the look out for a Wii game that he can play by himself but that has a two player option. So far we’ve not really had any luck. There are a few, but he’s just not that interested in doing it alone. Mr. Social strikes again.

I saw him playing Indiana Jones at the gym with some other kids and didn’t realize how it worked. I didn’t know that you can be terrible at it but still feel like you are acheiving success as long as the other player knows what to do. The last time I regularly played a two player video game Mario was the man. The original Mario. On the original Nintendo. Games have come a long way. The two players are teammates, so instead of waiting ten years for your really good sibling to finaly die already, the second player can jump in or out of the game at will and doesn’t really have to do much. As far as I can tell there is no penalty for sucking. No matter how many times you die you just pop right back up in the same place. No going back to the very beginning, no real consequences at all.

I saw him happily playing the game so I assumed that meant he was a capable player. I had no idea it meant he was just waving around the controller while the other kid did all the work.

You get where this is headed?

He wants to play the game every waking moment, but only if Mike or I play with him. I am ready to throw the flim-flamming game in the trash. I’m going to lose my shit if I have to listen to any more whining about me playing the game. IT IS NOT FUN! At least not for me.

And you know what happens when I shut the game off, as a good mother should do? The kid breaks down in heart wrenching sobs and cries and cries and cries. And cries some more.

It’s unreal. I’ve never seen anything affect him like this and I don’t like it. He was up at 6:30 this morning wanting to play the game.

The only good in all this bad is that our very good friends Julie and Jeff dropped by for a visit yesterday. They brought along their two teenagers, who managed to get half-way through the game before it was time to go. Thank the gods of technology for teenagers. We were stuck in a cave and had no idea what to do, but now we are long past that. One of them also mentioned looking up a walk-through, so once again thank the gods of technology for teenagers. Random teenagers post YouTube videos of the game so you can see exactly what you need to do. Much handier than the old gaming magazines we had to buy when I was a kid.

I’m planning on making Erik some time cards and a timer to try to get a handle on this thing. I don’t know if that will work. If it doesn’t, the game is going to time out for a month. Ugh. Why oh why oh why did I buy that stupid thing? I don’t need a game obsessed four year old.

My other frustration is the cloth diapering world.

I generally really like the cloth diapering. It’s not as hard as I thought it would be and the laundry isn’t bad at all. I bought a variety of diaper types and have figured out what works for us. Now I’m trying to sell off the ones we dislike so we can buy more of the ones we like.

So why am I frustrated?

I have had horrible luck with the various shops I’ve bought through. Some have been great. The FuzziBunz factory seconds store is amazing! But most of them? I’m ready to reach through my computer and smash some skulls.

One store has failed to ship out my orders two seperate times. The first time it happened it was marked at shipped but when I tried to track my order I couldn’t find a tracking number. I e-mailed and they e-mailed back a few hours later with a tracking number. Despite being marked as shipped, they didn’t mail it until they received the e-mail asking about it.

Then last week I ordered some laundry soap from them and it never showed. I finally checked and it wasn’t marked as shipped. They shipped it as soon as I e-mailed them, but I shouldn’t have to send harassing e-mails to get my order to ship. Once would be a pain but forgivable. Twice? Not so much. I’m not impressed.

Another store is really just a work at home mom who sews diapers. I knew there was a five week wait time when I ordered on March 1, but that was fine. Guess what? It is mid-June and I STILL don’t have my diapers. I’ve been in contact with the woman and her whole family was really sick. After my bout with pnemonia I am pretty sympathetic about that, but it still is taking too long. I just e-mailed her again today and she’s claiming my diapers will be in the mail tomorrow. We shall see.

Then there is the whole “super fancy diapers that are supposed to be the best but that are a piece of crap” saga. I think I already wrote about that? Five of eight diapers had several defective snaps and one wasn’t waterproof. I sent those five back, along with a letter very clearly expressing my disappointment and what needed to be done to remedy my dissatisifcation. We shall see if they come through. They said they would repair the snaps. I said I wanted them to pay for my return postage. I shouldn’t have to send back over half my order.

And then there’s the issue of the laundry soap. I’m using Charlies, which several people swear by. Maybe it’s my water, I don’t know, but it doesn’t do anything for our clothes. We’re using it for everything since I’ve learned that you aren’t supposed to use any regular detergent in your washing machine when cloth diapering since it leaves a residue that causes the diapers to repel water. Our diapers are much more absorbant now, but Erik’s clothes are not getting clean. I pull them out and literally still see DIRT all over them. Not just grease stains or other stuff that I would expect to have a hard time coming out, but DIRT. Plain ol’ brown dirt.

If I ever get my order from the shop that doesn’t ship out, I’ll have some Rockin’ Green detergent. Hopefully that will work better. I can’t deal with dirty clothes.

Like I said, I really like the cloth diapering. I feel great that we aren’t contributing so much to landfills and we aren’t spending so much money on a disposable product. I’m just frustrated by the process of acquiring my stash and figuring out what works. I usually have really good luck ordering things online, so to have three bad store experiences all related to cloth diapering sort of colors my overall feelings and makes me crazy. Now that I’ve basically got my stash established I shouldn’t have to do too much more ordering so hopefully I can be un-frustrated soon. We’ll see if I ever get my five diapers back in a usable condition and my other three diapers arrive. That EIGHT out of my planned stash. That’s a whole lot. If I had those eight diapers I would only have to do diaper laundry every three days and not feel panicked about it. We do have a supply of disposables b/c we use them at night, but I still get a little panicky when I’m down to my last five diapers and need to throw a load in.