Well, its official. WE ARE PREGNANT!!!!
We went for our 12 week scan yesterday. It was awesome. The Sprout was moving about and waving its hand.
Paul and I have started a blog called The Diary of Sprout, as a way of chronicling our journey through pregnancy and raising our Sprout. Take a gander if you can, we have posted a video of our 12 week scan on the site.
Welcome little one!
So a a little while ago I received a phone call, it was a bit confusing at first, the woman who called told me she was from Hollard and asked if I was the Mrs Jacobson that had lodged a complaint on the website. At first I thought she meant Hollard's site, so I told her no, I had lodged my complaint on the phone with the call centre (ironic that), anyway it turns out that someone had alerted Hollard to a post on Paul's blog that linked to my Call Centre post, and Hollard has stood up and taken responsibility.
I am incredibly impressed that not only did the brand manager at Hollard comment on Paul's blog but the phone call was made immediately to me and I was assured that the matter would be seen to.
Hopefully I will be taking my car in to the panel beaters as early as Monday.
You know what really pisses me off???
Smokers who cant wait 5 bloody seconds to walk outside the shopping centre to light up.
We just came back from Rosebank Mall, we had lunch at the Black Steer and bought some long sleeved T-shirts for Paul and we were making our way from one exit to the other where our car was parked.
At the first exit, about 6 paces from the door some guy just lights up, he was walking towards the door, he was obviously going outside, is he that addicted, that in need of the first puff that he couldn't take 6 steps and then light up???
Then as we are walking towards our exit, a women lights up her cigarette about 10 paces from the door, right under a sign that says NO SMOKING! She was also making her way towards the exit. Was it really necessary to light up right there, was it soooooo difficult to wait the extra 5 seconds?
Before you ask, yes, I'm an ex-smoker, I haven't smoked in over 6 years. No, I don't have a problem with people smoking, its their body, their lungs and they have every right to smoke if they want to. Just do it in a smoking area. Away from children and pregnant women and people with asthma and people who don't want to breath secondary smoke. We are not asking for much, just a few steps more and you can smoke to your hearts content, outside or in specially demarcated areas.
So, Paul had a small accident in my car the other day. It happened on a Sunday and the next day was a public holiday so I had to wait for the Tuesday to get in touch with my insurance company, Hollard Insurance.
Thats where the story starts.
Chapter One:
Tuesday - Call call centre, hold forever, finally get an answer, be told that all the claims agents are currently busy and one will call me back within 24 hours to register my claim.
Wednesday - Call call centre, hold forever, finally get an answer, tell person on other end that I am still waiting for claim agent to contact me to register claim, be told that all the claims agents are currently busy and one will call me back within 24 hours to register my claim.
Wednesday (late afternoon) - telephone rings, is claim agent, takes 20 min to register claim, agent attempts to book car in for assessment for following Thursday, no joy, agent says they will call me back to confirm once they have finalised booking.
Thursday - call call centre, hold forever, finally get an answer, ask about booking of assessment for following Thursday, be told that all claims agents are currently busy and my agent will call me back as soon as possible.
Thursday (late afternoon) - receive text message confirming assessment for following Thursday.
Thursday (very late afternoon) - telephone rings, is claim agent, confirms assessment for following Thursday, give claim agent points for actually following up.
Chapter Two:
Thursday (assessment day) - take car to assessment centre, wait 5 minutes, friendly assessor assesses car, friendly assessor writes up report, friendly assessor helps me choose a panel beater and sends assessment to call centre claim agent, leave assessment centre feeling confident.
Chapter Three (this is where it gets really interesting):
Monday (following assessment) - call call centre, hold forever, finally get an answer, ask about current status of my claim, be told that my claim has been handed to a new agent and that said agent is currently in a backlog of over 260 cases and is working off a list and is not taking any calls and hasn't loaded anything on the system yet, calmly and politely tell person who answered that its not really my problem if claim agent cant do his job properly and is in backlog, be told that a message will be sent to claim agent requesting urgent phone call to me to follow up on status of claim, told that he will call by Thursday at the latest.
Tuesday & Wednesday - wait patiently for claim assessor to call and update me about claim status.
Thursday (morning) - no phone call.
Thursday (afternoon) - Call call centre, hold forever, finally get an answer, ask to speak to agent in charge of my claim and quote claim number, no answer from person who answered my call but can hear typing as claim number entered on computer, start telling person that someone was supposed to call me blah blah blah, she interrupts me, tells me that she is not a claim agent and I have come through to the Message Centre, she says that all the agents are currently busy and she will have to take a message, calmly ask her if there is no way she can put me through to my agent, she informs me that "Its a call centre and as such its very difficult to get hold of a claim agent, but I will send him a message", LOSE TEMPER, loudly and angrily inform message taker that if claim agent doesn't call me back today, even if its at 10pm tonight, I will take my complaint to the next level, I will call the call centre supervisor and shit them all out.
Thursday (night) - So I am sitting here typing this post, I have not heard from anyone yet as to the status of my claim, I am PISSED OFF, what makes it worse is that tomorrow is a public holiday here so the call centre is closed until Monday!!!!!!!! Needless to say on Monday the call centre supervisor is going to get hell from me!
GGGGGGRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Edited - On Monday I spoke to a call centre agent (shock horror), and she was extremely helpful, she assured me that my claim had been approved and that they would fax the go ahead to the panel beater!
Edited again - Thursday - still no call from panel beater to say bring car, gonna call Hollard AGAIN!!!
One more edit - See my latest post!!!
I just read the most recent post on Snicks' blog. Unfortunately her husband has passed away.
My heart goes out to her and her family.
After my father passed away I went for grief counseling. Its not something that helps everyone but it definitely helped me. In one of our sessions, about 6 months after my dad had passed away, my counselor was trying to explain grief and the grieving process. This is what she said...
When grief is fresh it is as if we have a huge hole in our lives, the person we have lost is gone, they have left an empty space. At this point most people will tell you that the hole will get smaller, the grief will go away with time, thats just not true. The hole never gets filled up, the grief doesn't go away. But something else happens, our lives continue to grow. The hole may not get smaller but our lives get bigger. It doesn't make it hurt any less but we learn how to cope with it. We learn how to live again! (She even had a diagram to explain it, which I have attempted to replicate below).
This explanation of grief really touched something inside me, I think it was then that I truly started to feel better, I started to live again.
It may have no meaning or relevance to anyone else, but it helped me and I hope it helps others too.
Why do these things happen, why!
It's just not fair!
This post just touched my heart! Please take a minute to read it.
On a personal note, my father passed away from cancer almost 6 years ago. Its not easy. The cancer, the fight. Its not easy loosing someone you love. Watching them leave this life. Its not easy understanding why they have to go. Its not easy knowing they wont be there for the big things in your life. Its not easy being strong. I know I wouldn't have gotten through it if I didn't have friends and family and people out there thinking of me, of my family, of all of us.
So, in support of Snickollet, here is my candle.
Please take a moment to light one for her too!
Went to get my coat earlier and I found what I thought was a stick on it, turns our it was a stick... a stick insect.
So we made it back from the zoo in one piece and with all kids accounted for.
I think the highlight of our day was the elephants. I am convinced that they play to their audience, the minute they see people at there enclosure they come up to see whats going on and what you want from them. Most times when they spot you they start fooling around like the little guy pouring grass on his head, this time though the big guy was a little frustrated, he had been trying for about 10 minutes to eat a rather large branch, so large in fact that he couldn't even break it with his trunk. So after a few futile attempts at breaking it, he lobbed it over the moat and the fence separating him from us. Luckily none of the kids were standing where it landed. I figure he was just fed up with it so he tossed it. I would be too.
Here are some more pics from our day, they were taken with the 2 mega pixel camera on my Nokia 6233. Not bad for a camera phone...
