CPRMom

*Update below* Almost a month ago I bought the World's Most Powerful Hand-Held Solar Charger online.  At least this is what they called it on their website. A few weeks later it arrives.  The only directions with it were a small piece of paper that said to plug it in to charge it fully, drain the battery, charge it fully, and then drain it, and then it would be ready to use.  No other directions were provided.  No mention of solar charging.  This should have been a hint that I obviously missed. The cord that came with it was loose and wobbly when connected, so I used my own cable and followed the directions.  I drained it by using it to charge my own phone.  As a battery pack it charged really well.  It had a flashlight which did not work.  I emailed the website, outdoorshiking.com about this, but never received a reply. After charging/draining, I set it in the sun. And waited. And waited. It never charged. I took it on ou...

I think every business owner gets lots of unsolicited emails from companies trying to sell products and services to them.  I usually ignore them.  They usually send 2 emails.  The second outlining why I need them.  The second usually more informal, like a friend catching up, using comments like... "I haven't heard back from you".  Yup, right... you didn't hear back from me because I deleted your email. So today I get a third email from this company, it was kinda entertaining.  Identifying information on the company removed.  I might find this amusing, but they might not like being the subject of a blog post. Gail, I have been trying to connect with you over the past two weeks, to learn about your programs and who the best person to speak with on this subject. Being that I haven't heard from you, this leads me to a few possible circumstances: 1) You’re all set with suppliers at Coastal CPR and First Aid LLC, and if that is the case...

Sunday I ordered CPR & First Aid supplies from 2 different companies.  Two because the supplies for my new AED trainer are not carried by the company I normally order from. Why do I have loyalty to one company? Because tomorrow, Wednesday, my order from the usual company will arrive. The status on the website or the second company is "order processed" and I have yet to get a delivery alert to my email. This is only my second time ordering with this new company.  They even sent me a lovely handwritten note thanking me for my order.  As much as I thought the note was a nice touch, I'd rather receive the stuff I ordered.

This is what I typed in the 'how was your interaction with us today' box: I went online to upgrade my phone.  Somehow the phone I was looking at got put in a 'saved cart', that I am unable to access.  It asks for my email, I put in the email on our account (my husband's) and it tells me it is invalid. :(  I had to call - first call went to call center that NO ONE was on the line.  I could hear the background noise of the call center, but no person.  So I hung up and called again for customer service, who transferred me to the call center.  Maybe I'm tired, but I had a hard time understanding him.  Order placed (took forever), and then I ask... how do I access or clear this saved cart?  He transfers me.  I'm on hold with overmodualated music (you really should fix that, it's obnoxious).  So now I'm on hold, typing this and I  look at my phone and realize I've been on the phone for 40 minutes to place an order and wait for customer ...

This past weekend I attended mandatory camp training.  This is required every 2 years to review the staff guide, emergency procedures and health & safety info. This could have been an awesome training opportunity.  Instead it turned into a colossal waste of time. The training was scheduled for 5 hours.  In the first 3 hours we heard more inside stories of incidents that occurred over the previous years than we did actually covering the material that was provided to us.  2 hours into the training class I was irritated.  At 3 hours I was just sad. When it ended 4 hours later I just wanted to go home. I was sad because this was an opportunity to learn and review some pretty important information.  But the rambling stories and “… several years ago we …” detracted from the small reviews of the printed material.  A good portion of the emergency information was glossed over or not covered at all. I had to drive almost an hour to attend, a...

Add the subtitle:  and how creating schedules in my house is like herding cats. My instructional business is part-time.  I don't teach full time.  I could try to, but I'm just not sure there is actually enough people out there wanting to take classes to have enough registered participants in each class.  I also like being part-time as I can teach around my family's schedule. And this is where I should put "Cat Herding" on my resume.  Except, we don't own a cat. I usually schedule my classes 3-4 months ahead of time.   Not this time.  Here it is June, and I'm finally posting the summer class schedule.  We were supposed to take a trip, which didn't end up happening.  Then we were signing the kids up for summer camps, looking at creating smaller vacations while college touring all while not knowing which colleges since my oldest has been so busy with school, softball and work that I only see her for short pockets of time - if at al...

So this is the post I started on Friday, and then got busy and now here it is Monday. A few weeks ago I received an email from someone needing CPR AED certification quickly. This happens a lot for me. Sometimes deadlines or card expiration dates creep up quickly and suddenly folks realize that their certification card has expired and they either can't work or turn in their re-licensing paperwork without a valid card. The challenge was - all my upcoming classes before the date she needed it by were full. I also don't have a lot of available time. sigh My business is feast or famine, ... seriously. I'm either popular or I'm not. Since the courses lead to 2 year certification people only come looking for me once every 2 years. Right now I'm super popular. It's exciting and its overwhelming. Because not only do I run my small business; I have 4 children, a part-time job I love and a small content/writing business. Oh and I volunteer WAAAAYYYYYY too m...

We're just finishing up the second week of school and we've already had to go shopping several times for various things. My husband took the easy job of taking the girls for their back to school supplies. I get the fun jobs like taking the kids for sneakers and soccer cleats. Oh, yeah - don't let me forget to mention that he has had a lot of overtime the past few weeks so the whole gang was able to go shopping in force. So this post is a major slight rant. I'll apologize for it in advance. The rant is not about shopping with 4 kids to buy 2 pairs of soccer cleats. It is about the lack of customer service we were able to experience at a very large sports box store. It was the week before soccer practices start for most public schools. We're new to soccer, the girls have never played before. We found (on our own) the soccer section. No signs pointed us the right way, we just happened upon it wandering around the store (with 4 kids). My oldest is tall for he...