i win i win!

Remember how I used to have pictures in my blog posts? That might start happening again soon because we found our camera! Man I was so worried we had lost it. I had just assumed it had disappeared sometime during all the crap-shovelling that goes on in this house on a daily basis and was expecting to find it next to half a mouldy apple underneath a bed next year during Spring cleaning. I almost got it right too: it was in one of the diaper bag's secret compartments, together with a dried out banana peel. Expect pictures again shortly!

I had a bit of a victory today.

I have been battling the evil empire called Neckermann for two months now. It all began when my darling husband gave me a stand mixer for my Birthday this year. All you regular blog readers know this is a vital tool in the Koot kitchen. Unfortunately there is a fundamental wrongness to a woman not picking her own stand mixer and that darling husband of mine, though he meant well and I love him for it, picked a piece of crap. It reminded me of {insert name of random half witted reality tv star here}: shiny but not even slightly useful.

I didn't want to make Sander feel bad so I really TRIED to like the thing. I gave it a good few months before I threw in the towel. The breaking point came when it ruined my umpteenth attempt at butter-cream frosting with its inability to simply cream together butter and sugar. Covered in goop and close to crying I took matters in my own hands and called Neckermann to tell them exactly what I thought about their product.

They didn't care. 

They didn't care that by the time I got the mixer their 7 day trial period was already over, or that they sold me a product of low quality. They didn't care that I couldn't make the butter-cream of my dreams or that the thought of facing the Holidays with this hopeless mixer filled me with fear. They most certainly did not care that I wanted my money back so I could put it toward the much sturdier and infinitely cooler, cherry-red KitchenAid of my dreams. My sole option was to send it in for repair. 

So I boxed it and they had it picked up on October 15th. The big wait began. The Holidays crept up on me, and I found myself going through Thanksgiving dinner preparations with a sore mixing arm, and the fear returned at the prospect of December without a mixer! So I called up my good friends at Neckermann to find out what the progress was. Surely they would have made some progress in a month and a half? A day and many phone calls filled with questions such as 'what was the shipping number again, mrs Koot?' later, they sheepishly admitted that they couldn't find my crappy mixer. I jumped for joy while I told the lady on the phone how awful I thought their service was and that surely now their only option would be to give me a full refund. She wasn't going to do it at first, but I cut her off quickly, speaking very sternly and quickly mentioning something about this not being in the terms of agreement and...

... she caved! 

I won!

HA!!

Oh how sweet it is. It's little things like this I tell you! So I feel good to face the rest of this week, despite having been sick yesterday and today, because it looks like I will be going into the month of December armed with the Mixer of Mixers, the beautiful KitchenAid!