An ode to a car seat

I drive a Toyota Tundra with the crew max cab daily. We also have a Chevy Express 12 passenger van. These are the vehicles you own when you have a portable community that you have to transport from place to place. With four of the children in proper child safety seats and the other three in boosters, I have had my fair time checking out and trying different seats. We've had the Britax and Costco and a multitude old others and they all have their strengths and weaknesses. I'm not getting into all of that now, but I am going to give some praise to one of the manufacturers we use: The First Years - True Fit.

First off, let me say that the color or the pattern of the fabric on the seat does not matter to me at all. I gave up having manly seats in the car the instant my first daughter was born. However, the selections they have strike a nice balance. There is enough color and pattern to make those in the house that care about that sort of thing happy and enough black to not make the inside of my truck look like it should be driven by Ken. As I've already said, though, the color couldn't be less of a concern for me. We have a purple room in out house. Purple. Disney Princess Purple to be exact.

The thing about the seat that makes me want to worship the designers and engineers that came up with this seat is the functionality and ease of use. I know what you're thinking, how hard can it be to use a car seat? Not very, really. Where the difficulty lies is when you have more than one child needs to use the seat depending on what you are trying to do and who you are taking with. Also, when the passenger grows, we all know about the threading of straps backwards and pulling from that deranged hook in the back to re-thread and find it needed to go up two spaces. This thing has two knobs on the side that you pull out and adjust the strap height as needed and loosen or tighten the straps. That's it. You don't even have to unlatch it unless you're going from rear to front facing (which is crazy easy too). Alison also says something about it being easy to remove the cover too with it still strapped but I always just use Windex on whatever spills.

Long story shortened; if you ever have a need to share a car seat between multiple kids, you need this seat unless you just don't like things that are easy and time means nothing to you. If your kids grow at all, its still a good investment so you don't have to put off adjusting the straps when they approach the next height notch. Overall, these are just great seats.

Sunday, Sunday, Sunday!!!!

Not too unlike those monster truck commercials for utter annihilation, Sunday is the d-day when it comes to sweepstakes. Sunday brings a massive amount of drawings for new winners tied with another large amount of one or two day entry period sweeps that pop up. The great thing about those are that the short entry times don't allow for a lot of entries, increasing the chance of winning. Needless to say, Sundays are the only days I really dedicate any amount of substantial time to sweeping.

What makes this Sunday different, however, is that Monday is the last day of the month. The last Sunday right before the last day of the month is a combination of all the monthly, weekly and monthly contests converging. Last time I checked, there are over 1200 sweepstakes ending on Monday. Now, don't get all hysterical, I don't actually enter that many. If I had to venture a guess, I'd say that I'm close to ten percent. Some of the other people that I see on the sweepstakes pages are closer to 90. Not saying they're crazy or anything, just that having seven kids and a family that I love to spend time with prevents much more time than I currently commit. So, in normal people terms (those people that don't sweep) today is equivalent to Black Friday. Well... not exactly because I think I rolled out of bed this morning around 10am and am not bloated from eating too much turkey and pumpkin pie. ..and it's not Friday. The level of busyness and severe need for organization to make it through, however, is exactly the same. Ah, the price we pay for trying to win something that we only want bad enough to spend the time and energy it takes to fill out a form online and have an increase in our spam folder.

If you're a sweeper and your here reading this, GO BACK NOW AND KEEP ENTERING FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS SACRED!! Also, I didn't call you crazy, just less sane than me in the sweepstakes area of the brain. And before you get mad about that, just keep in mind that me being more sane gives you better odds of winning all those prizes. WHY ARE YOU STILL HERE?!? THERE ARE SWEEPS ENDING AS THE WORDS KEEP FLOWING!!!

What came first?

Instead of the age old chicken or egg question, a recent trip to our local Target struck this question in a different way to me. The customer in front of me clearly had a problem with other people. No one in particular, more of a general dislike of all people mixed with the anger of needing basic items to maintain life from a public place. The sneers he was giving the cashier alone was enough to make me want to start sneezing on him, just to watch the immediate freak out that would surely follow. Then the rude comments he uttered in response to the credit/debit inquiry spun me into my 24 hour rule to avoid opening my mouth and saying what we all were thinking. He finished up and the cashier gave a small sigh of relief. My turn. I tried, as many of us do, to give him some acknowledgement to how well he handled himself to a clearly difficult customer. I said, "Wow. Sorry you have to deal with people like that. I'm sure that makes for a long day."  He sneered back at me and said that there are other lines open. I was taken back at this and just stared at him blankly, paid for my stuff and left. While I contemplated calling the store manager to let them know the attendant on aisle 3 needed a break, I wondered how I would act if I had 6 customers like that in a row. Would I be able to still be polite to the next person? What starts the bad customer service experience? Is it just bad service or is it like the last flight of the day that has become 5 more minutes late at every stop, adding up to three hours when it's time for you to fly? What came first, the rude customer or rude associate?

For those of you that are so lost in the internet that you have found your way here, you have just stumbled upon the completely random gripe pad for me.  My name is Aubrey Power.  I am a parent of seven kids along with my lovely wife Alison in DFW. 

Second to my family, two of the things I find joy in are sweepstakes and standing up for consumer rights.  The latter is a trait that I picked up from my mother but I think it has moved its way up in importance the older I get and the more I see it moving the other direction.  What you can expect to find here is a sounding board for both.  The sweepstakes stuff because I don't like to be negative on the sweepstakes sites I go to when I don't win stuff.  It brings a cloud with it that brings down the mood for some of the fine folks that are much more dedicated to sweeping than I am and I won't be that guy.  The consumer gripes will be more of a place where I can say what I'm thinking and read it when I'm further detached so I can work out what the next course would be.  I'm sure that it will also include me bookmarking good deals I find on random stuff.

If you got here because you lost peripheral vision while typing in a website because of a migraine, take a couple of Excedrine and my apology for making it worse.  You can direct your browser to google and search for a blog that isn't random and will be more interesting than listening to the Police scanner.  If you found your way here because you wanted to see what I have to say, direct your browser to the same location but, this time, make the search be for mental help.

Enjoy

Aubrey