Seriously…

• Facebooking: I just got a Facebook page at the urging of my teenage daughter. Considering that most of the teenagers I know would rather die than grant their parents Friend status to their Facebook pages, it did feel a bit funny to sign up. But she is thrilled and so are her sister, brother, and sister-in-law. And over the past week, as word has gotten out to their friends, I find I am getting about 1 new friend request a day from my children’s buddies. They all seem thrilled that Momma B is on Facebook. And it is nice to be able to see the photos they post and to leave the occasional message.

• Targeting Target: I am currently boycotting Target stores. Ostensibly it’s over their return policy, but what really has me upset is a total lack of common sense when it comes to the merchandise I want to return. The dispute is over a set of Target’s Home brand king-sized sheets (Please note that the sheets in question are the Target store brand. Not Wamsutta or another name brand.) My 85-year old mother gave them to us as a Christmas present in early December. Unfortunately, I don’t have a king-sized bed. I have a queen-sized bed. So, when I opened the present and saw they were a) the wrong size and b) the Target Home brand, I decided not to point out the error to my mom, who has some short-term memory issues that she is sensitive about. Based on my past experiences with exchanging Target store brand items, I figured I’d have no problem exchanging the set in question for the correct size.

Well silly me. I really should have asked Mom or my sister, who lives nearby, for the receipt. It’s been several years since I’ve had to exchange anything at Target and since then, the customer service department has been given a new return policy that they are evidently instructed to follow or else. And the policy is that if you don’t have a receipt, a gift receipt, or the credit card number that was used to purchase the item in question, then you are out of luck, especially if the item in question cost more than $20. You see they want to ensure that the item was purchased in the last 90 days. So, even though my king-sized sheet set is a Target store brand and even though this sheet set is currently offered for sale by Target, and even though the king-sized set costs exactly the same amount of money as the queen-sized set ($49.99), they will not let me exchange my sheets for the right size. And as far as I’ve been able to find out, no one, and I mean no one, within Target’s organization has the authority to use their common sense and say, “this is ridiculous, let the woman have the size sheets she needs.” And I did need the sheets.

I currently have a new set of queen-sized sheets. I bought them at Linens ‘n Things this weekend. And I still have the $50 king-sized sheets I can’t use. My mom, when she couldn’t find the receipt, offered to give me the money to buy the size I needed, but I’m not going to take it from her. Why should she have to shell out extra money just because of a lack of common sense on the part of Target’s management? Chances are I could check with my sister Julia and have her make the exchange for me as she probably bought them online for Mom. But Julia has her hands full these days between remodeling a building for a new store she is opening and dealing with Mom’s health issues. So, I guess I’m stuck with the sheets. Let me know if you hear of anyone who is in need of a set of white damask stripe king-sized sheets.

• Room Mothering:  At the beginning of the school year, the Upper School dean of students asked (begged) me to agree to be a room mother for my daughter’s 11th grade class. She had been unsuccessful so far in roping any of the other moms and she assured me that I was just her ‘yes’ mom. In other words, If I said yes, she would be able to assure the other moms that she actually had someone else to do it with them. So, I said yes, thinking how hard could this be? Well, it’s not hard, but it is annoying. And I’m having to do a bit more than I originally thought. Basically, this is coming at a bad time for me work-wise. But this too will pass.