Dear Electricity Company

I am feeling extreme dislike towards you (I had to thesaurus 'hate' so I didn't feel so wicked hating. I did this after I had an internal debate about whether it's okay to hate companies or whether it's just as bad as hating people, but then I thought it's probably as bad, because it eats away at me to hate, whether it's company or person, so I decided to go with extreme dislike so I won't dwell on it or let it eat me as much..).

Back at the start of the year, when I signed up with a cheaper company, why didn't you just let me go? Why did you lure me back with illusions of loyalty and trust? Why did you promise me easy transactions and offer to match the cheaper offer of the new company? Why did you display for me your proud Australian history and seem confused and suspicious of a new company who seemed likely to take our money and go bankrupt immediately?

How come every time I tried to discuss our plans with you, you eventually realised I needed to be James? Then why did it take you 6 months and 26,000 (ish...) confused sounding phone calls with various employees to change our account to both of our names? How come you had to completely cut us off as customers twice to achieve this (not that we weren't grateful for the 'Welcome!' packs each time we re-signed up...well, James re-signed up - why, to this day, over 6 months later, can't anyone in your fabulous nation-wide company enter 2 names as account holders even though you all claim you will and then blame 'the last person you spoke to' for the discrepancy?!).

Why did you forget to send our last bill??!

Fortunately for all of us I'm kind of a bill-anticipating crazy person, so I knew we'd probably get 2 all at once, when you guys realised you hadn't charged us yet for last quarter.

But why today, did I get such a GIGANTIC, HUMONGOUS, LARGE bill?! There was no discount!!! Our rate has gone up much more than 10%, and the bills were another third and another half (respectively) higher than any bill we've ever received before!!! I know they've 'upped' their prices too, and I'm not a fan of them either right now, but STOP blaming the government!!

I pride myself on always expecting the worst with financial matters, so that I'm never unpleasantly surprised, but you WON! You outdid all of my gloomy expectations and predictions about the size of this bill. It is enormous :(

And then, after keeping me on hold for 45 minutes just now, why did you offer me a $25 credit? I don't want one! I just want the 10% discount! Aaages ago! When you offered it to me! Back when we were still your customers of nearly four years, before we became new customers, and then new customers again...and again. I might be more excited about the $25 if I really thought you'd ever give it to me, but nothing in our history gives me much hope. And so you tell me to call in 2 weeks, and get the process started to receive that 10% discount, because according to your records, we've just become customers again after transferring to a different company, and you can't give new customers a discount right away. I don't even know what to say to that. We signed with the other company sometime last summer, for 1 day, until I called you, you offered me the same price, and I called and cancelled within my 10 day cooling off period. Really? Just signed with you?

Glad game? Well, I can be glad to finally be able to empathise with people in movies who finally just turn to the closest wall and begin banging their heads up against it.

I think I'll go do that now.

Sincerely,

Someone whose Christmas you just ruined, and who will now turn off her computer, and everything else in the house, before participating in the aforementioned physical activity.

'Children' (AKA I Love Conference!! :))

Just a quick quote I love so far from one of this years General Conference talks :) It's actually partly a quote from a Christian mother from another faith from her blog, but this is a paragraph from the talk given by Elder Neil L. Anderson called 'Children' in the Saturday Afternoon Session - I loved it. You can find it here.

"Many voices in the world today marginalize the importance of having children or suggest delaying or limiting children in a family. My daughters recently referred me to a blog written by a Christian mother (not of our faith) with five children. She commented: “[Growing] up in this culture, it is very hard to get a biblical perspective on motherhood. … Children rank way below college. Below world travel for sure. Below the ability to go out at night at your leisure. Below honing your body at the gym. Below any job you may have or hope to get.” She then adds: “Motherhood is not a hobby, it is a calling. You do not collect children because you find them cuter than stamps. It is not something to do if you can squeeze the time in. It is what God gave you time for.”7"

I really like that last bit :)

I always enjoy going up to the chapel with my family to watch conference, but yesterday we actually came home for the second session so the girls (who were kind of crazy) could go to sleep and cause I wasn't feeling too smashing (hold the cards and flowers, I'm fine now :) And no, not at all pregnant), and I really, really enjoyed watching it at home with James, not worrying about the girls disturbing the general peace!! In fact I liked it so much that we're going to watch this morning's session at home again while the girls nap, and then just go up to the chapel for this afternoon's session :)

If you haven't yet, I highly recomment watching/reading/listening to some - it has been really wonderful :)