Confessions of an Insecure Snowwoman

I have a confession to make!
I did not make that oh so important phone call to VW today!
At about 9 am this morning my friend Elisabeth called and asked if I was free to take the kids skiing and snowboarding today. My oldest wants to learn how to Snowboard and Elisabeth is quite a good snowboarder, so I asked her if she could teach my daughter.
This is where we went:
(To txdave: See, a picture! :-) I am not sure on the font style and colours. I want to keep it simple, not too busy. Thanks for your advice though.)
Don't ask about the strange Snowman I have no idea why it is there, although there are a lot of ski courses being held at this ski lift, mainly for young children. (This is a live Webcam image so it of course changes eg. now there is almost no snow and no snowman...)

My younger one who is on ski's (for four years now) went up and down and up and down and up and down like the energizer bunny.
25 times in the space of the five hours we were there. And she had time for making friends, mooching food of some other family (even though we did have plenty), skiing into a tree and taking about 10 lunch breaks!
The older on the other hand went up the lift eight times. Well mainly due to the fact that she had to learn how to sit, how to get up, how to walk, how to turn, how to fall, how to break, how to do curves, how not to run over people, specifically small children and finally how to board down a hill without falling more than three times! She did good though.
I was mainly sitting there, guarding our table and our food and getting very, very cold. Even though I have a brand new snow suit and my feet were definitely warm, when one gets cold hands (as I lent my gloves to Elisabeth because hers had a huge hole) one gets cold everywhere.
I had a cup of mulled wine, two cups of tea and a cup of tomato soup and I was still cold.
You see I am not allowed to ski because of my medical conditions. Not that I can actually ski. But I would like to learn one day. Maybe. So whenever I take the kids out, (and I don't mean "out" out, though they do drive my crazy sometimes - hence the blog name) I tend to have to sit around and wait. Where we used to live, we had a ski lift just outside our back garden so it was never a problem but now I live in a tiny little village that doesn't have anything and I have to drive them everywhere. Not the ideal thing but I had to find somewhere cheap, fast when we moved back here in February last year.
This evening I had a couple of friends turn up (about half an hour after we came home).
I put them to work (helping me cook dinner), fed them and kicked them back out.
One thing the cold does to you, is that it makes you very, very tired.
I hardly ever turn anyone out. People know that they can turn up on my doorstep at any time and if I am at home, they are always welcome (apart from when Simon is here for the weekend). But tonight I just did not feel like having company. Rare, but it happens.

I discovered something called the Nohari or the Johari Window on a different blog today. Oh boy! It is nice to know the nice things people think of you but bad things? Ouch! Hm. Well it's my own fault for posting it. I wish they had an explain function though, so that people could tell you why they think what they think of you. (In case you don't have a clue of what I am talking about, here are the links: The positive version http://kevan.org/johari and the negative version of the site http://kevan.org/nohari )
I think if there is one major fault with me (and Simon says that as well) it is that I take everything way to personal. I always think people are out to get me, people are speaking ill of me or people just downright hate me. Which comes down to the one point all the people that have picked out my "bad habits" on the Nohari page have agreed upon: Insecurity!
Why I am so insecure I haven't actually figured out yet.
So on that note I will leave you (and me) to ponder and go to bed!
Good night!

The Car... Part 2

At about 2.30pm I got a phone call from the garage asking if it is OK that they pick me up now as the car was ready to be picked up. He'd be there in 10 minutes he said. So I got the kids ready and we waited outside (in the snow - at least the girls had fun) and he was only a few minutes late, so that was OK.
We arrived there about five to three and then we waited.
And waited. The guy I needed to see about my car finally got of the phone, turned to me and said that he was going to get the car now.
And I waited, again. When he came back he said that there was something that still needed to be done and asked if I might want a coffee (after being there for about 30 Minutes).
So I sat and had a coffee, the kids had some water and then played in the children's corner after asking about 50 times whether they could have some money for the sweets machine and always acted like the previous times they asked and I said no never had happened.
I had another cup of coffee and some water and then the guy came and showed me the bill at which point my heart stopped.
537 € for a bloody whole in a pipe!!!!!!!!!
They had to take the dashboard and the glove compartment and the electronics out of the car, make sure they were all OK fix the pipe that had the hole and was leaking wash water into my car and then put it all back in.
Parts cost about 30€ - the rest was work!
So I asked them, once again, how this is possible, with the hole in the pipe being so far inside the car that even if I wanted to I wouldn't know how to get to it to damage it.
Once again I pointed out that there were previous faults which were obviously related to this fault as there was evidence of corrosion and oxidation on the electronic switchboard in the exact place of the pipe having the hole. And they said, that there wasn't really a way for them to detect the fault.
Who thinks of it being the wash water when there are customers to blame...? (I know I am being spiteful again)
So I paid them and asked if there was a way of getting my money back from VW and they gave me phone numbers to call and an address to write to and they did tell me that they would help me as much as they could in convincing VW that it really wasn't my fault and that things like this really shouldn't happen on a three year old car.
We will see!
For now I am thankful the limit of my Visa Card was just upped so I was actually able to pay for it all.
I am however dreading to have to give Simon (my significant other) the "evil tidings" which is what the suitable German phrase "Hiobsbotschaft" translates into on leo.org
I am beginning to think that my car is a real lemon (another one of leo's translations for the oh so fitting phrase "Montagsauto").
By the time I got the keys to my car and was ready to go I noticed that the gap on the side of the dashboard (between the dashboard and the door), which was previously fixed as there was cold air coming out of it and it was constantly drafty (is that a word?), had reappeared!
I went back in and asked them to have a look.
Their reply: See if it bothers you in the next couple of days and if it does, come back and we will see what we can do.
"See it if bothers me"? It bothers me!!!!! It bothered me when I pointed it out and it bothers me now.
However as it was already 5.30pm by that time!!!!! I decided that I was just gonna go and leave it for another day when I have the strength to argue with them again.
Tomorrow I am going to make that phone call to VW.
Wish me luck!

The Car...

Now isn't that typical!
I had the car in the garage last week because it was always damp inside. They checked and of course: found nothing. They even went so far as to insinuate that I might have spilt something in the glove compartment (of all places to spill something...) and basically put it down to "human error".
Well on our way back from the airport on Sunday (we were dropping my husband (I know he isn't yet, but lets just call him that) of to go back to England) my older daughter complained about getting wet feet. (Of course she , as always, got rid of her shoes as soon as she saw the chance, so she was sitting there in socks with her coat wrapped around them...don't ask!) So I checked and her coat and her feet were soaking wet and soapy!?! Sunday was a particularly "dirty road" day. So I had to use my window-washer a lot. It turns out, that there is a leak in the pipe that goes to the rear window and, although there is enough pressure to get it to the rear washer, the water that remains in the pipe is now slowly leaking into the car and, best of all, into the electronics, which of course are just behind the glove-compartment!
So I asked how this is possible on a 3 year old VW Touran. Earlier this year I had corroded electronic chips. I had to fight tooth and nail with VW, in order for them to view it as a guarantee case, as there is really no way I could have (or would have for that matter) dumped a load of water into the electronics of my car and that on a regular basis.
I pointed out that the two cases must be connected but you know what? I now firmly believe that VW trains their people in how to always twist it so the customer seems at fault. Maybe I am being a bit too harsh, but hey, I am pissed off!
So I am now looking at repair costs of (at the moment) somewhere around 500 € and maybe more depending on what other damage the water might have caused.
Plus they did not even give me a courtesy car because, technically I can still drive my car. Oh but I could get a rental and pay them another load of money!!!!
Oh well, lets wait and see what happens...
My daughter is rather upset as well, as I cannot take her snowboarding tomorrow.
Life is great!