Shopping Online

" Hello, I'm calling from CIBC credit card division and we've noticed some unusual activity in your card recently."
   It was not even forty seconds after everyone had left when the phone rang and all the hard work I had done, getting the last pieces of our journey sorted out, fell apart. Apparently Fraud departments aren't accustomed to mothers like myself whose brains wake them up at 5 am with urgent requests like: do we have enough mayonnaise, don't forget to pick up dry cleaning and did you confirm that the hotel in Venice can take us the third night. ARGH. I call it being pinged.  One minute I'm unconsciously sorting through mundane items and the next I'm wide awake and fretting about some unfinished task. Over the years I've learned to just give into it and get up - do the task (quietly) and because it often means doing more than a few things to quieten my ping I just see it as an early start to the day. So after being awake since 5:30am and having an unsuccessful conversation with a desk clerk in Italy, finally sorting through all the requests of a booking firm and getting all the usual morning routine things done, like harassing Miriam to remember to return a game to school ( Where did you leave it, go put it in your backpack now!) remind my husband he's being me today ( It's your turn to make sure hair, teeth, lunches are ready) and my turn to be him ( putting out the garbage) that when they all left, I felt I had earned a nice breakfast and, with such a good start on the day, I'd just go downstairs and tackle a few other of those nagging unending tasks, namely more of the paperwork. Not likely.
   The conversation with Fraud Squad was relatively quick - I confirmed that in less than a week yes I really had paid for two separate camps for my children, purchased a hotel room for a single night in Venice and then booked a flight to Paris. Everything except the flight was fine but because of some funny stuff with entries they had declined to pay for the booking. " Sorry for the inconvenience - please let them know all is fine and they may re-enter the purchase. It'll go through now." Easier said than done. What had taken me merely a few minutes online then took over 2 hours and three phone calls to Spain ( huh?) and even then I ended up starting over and redoing everything. Argh. So much for breakfast.
 
   Planning trips with my family can be both fun and frustrating. It's a random thing. Which one of them will be the one who can't choose, or who gets an idea in their heads that whatever it is we're talking about is scary/expensive/hard or just plain dull.  Sometimes they're indifferent to the options - "yea yea whatever " or then the reverse  ' ooh look there's also this , or this, or ...."  I approach the summer season with dread knowing full well that the best camping sites for August were booked in February, that the few spots in the cool game programs disappear within hours once the registration opens and that somehow, despite all our efforts to figure out how to chill and relax - at some point I am going to be wound up and frustrated because someone is gripping about how this wasn't what they wanted.
    And I'm not finished yet. This week I need to finalize the summer plans and still need to book our activities in Rome. So yes Mr Fraud Squad man - I really do want to make those purchases. I wonder what they'll think when I add a campsite in New York State or book a space at Gemboree in Bancroft the same time I order tickets for a tour of the Vatican. I only hope it doesn't happen again at 5am.