Monday, October 5, 2009

Zombies, Curtains and Tatting, Oh My

Ever since homeschooling began, weekends have taken on a strange aura for me. As a stay at home mom, weekends are irrelevant, except that my husband is home. I still have tons of work and no break in sight, but with the addition of weekday teacher to my chores, the weekends bring an actual break. It's weird and really only a small break, but I like the way it separates things. This weekend, while I did get some tatting done, was more about the house...again. This time t was rewiring light switches and finishing up some curtain issues. Remember the kitchen ones giving me so much grief. Well, I just went and got some normal damn curtains with a valance and hung them higher to fit. I really would not have dealt well with the tiered curtains one is "supposed" to hang in there. I feel they might have driven me subtly mad over time.

Now here's my embarrassment for the weekend. I had a customer make an inquiry about whether on not something had crystals embellishing it. The piece had none, so I responded that it was "sans crystals". Yeah, I didn't think anything of it, until the customer responded that they didn't know what sans crystals were, but she wanted hers without any crystals. Oops. I've always had the problem of large vocabulary. I've used it as a social cushion, a way to deal with bullies as a child, and even to intentionally make customers feel stupid...when I worked in retail. Don't judge me, you try retail for nearly a decade and tell me how much you still 'love' people. Anyway, that wasn't my intent here and I felt really awful, but how do you even apologize for using a word someone doesn't know? I tried, of course, but I haven't heard back form them. I fear I may have doomed myself with a poor choice of words. Why couldn't I have just said 'without'? Oh, well...you can't go back right?

Also went to see the movie Zombieland, like much of the population. I do so enjoy a violent movie, particularly one with this amount of comedy mixed right in. There was one point in which the film threatened to get emotional, but rallied past it with a ridiculous joke. I enjoyed it so much that when I realized that I had yet to create the Wunderkammer post for today, I just used the movie as a platform. Though I do apologize that one of the pics is a bit of a spoiler.

Along with schooling today, I'm going to get those pendants I gave away to twitter friends ready to get into the mail. I also have at least one mask to tat and I think I shall stay on the mask track for a bit, just in case Halloween does actually bring the customers around even without an etsy feature. Yes, I'm still harping on that...they've got 25 days to throw one of my masks up somewhere, I'm just sayin'. Then of course there's the house work and hoping that the landscapers come around soon to fix the front yard grass and sprinklers and check on the back which they did actually finish though it took forever. So onto the week I suppose.

6 comments:

Sewicked said...

It's hard to smooth over, without sounding patronizing. The best you can do is ~'I'm sorry, I should have been more clear; yes, it's without crystals.'

Although I only worked 6+ years retail, I guess I'm an oddball; I loved my customers, most of the time - course I was working in a fabric/craft store. I think that makes a difference.

Waterrose said...

I also miss the demarcation between the weekday and weekend. It was definitely there when I worked for someone else. Now I wake up in the morning and have to seriously think about what day of the week it is. One just slides into the other.

One thing I learned as a child, if you don't know what a word is....you look it up. Now it's even easier...no books to drag out. Perhaps that comes with the love of reading as well.

Fairly Enchanted said...

In that circumstance, I think I would have just gone with it and not pointed it out. "Oh, alright. Yes, I can do it without crystals..."
Awkward situation, indeed! Luckily, I haven't found myself there for a while now, but I'm no a stranger to it.
Here's hoping you hear back soon!

mermaiden said...

i probably would have used the same wording, cause i like it and it sounds cool! waterrose is right- whenever i am confronted with bigwordisms, i just look it up!
i once described someone as "petite", and the person i was talking to said, "yes, and she's small, too." um, er, hmmm. face to face it was a tough one.

Sarah Dungan said...

Am I a terrible person for thinking I'd just say "if you purchase this listing I can send you a piece with no crystals."

H J Hess said...

I am getting on my soapbox now.

You do not need to apologize for your extensive vocabulary; neither do you need to apologize to others for their lack of knowledge. As other poster's noted, if you do not know a word or phrase, look it up in the dictionary... oops, umm-ehr, "just F** google it" (yes, Virginia that is an actual website!).

Okay, I'm done and off my "former English teacher" soapbox.