Darvin Furniture: The Exciting Conclusion

My thought process rarely extends past the next carpool. When other mothers ask about my schedule, I am like that old cartoon segment on Sesame Street.  You know the one, right? A little girl skips along trying to remember three things:

A loaf of bread, a container of milk, and a stick of butter.

But in my case, it is:

Get Joey off the bus, pick up Danny from his stop, gather Jack from school.

Once I handle that, only then can I focus on the next three things:

Take Dan to the orthodontist, drive the kids to chess, drop everyone off at swimming.

My life is a series of the the next three things. Yet when I blog, I live completely in the moment. There is no real plan or order to what I write. I'm like that plastic bag in Forrest Gump: I flit and float wherever the wind takes me.

So when I rambled on the other day about my inability to use an expired Darvin Furniture Gift Card given to Joe and me when we appeared in their commercial (see full post HERE), I really didn't consider what would happen next. Sure, I asked everyone to click the comment link and encourage the store to reconsider its stance on my expired card, but I didn't believe anyone would actually do it.

Have I mentioned how AWESOME my readers are? Because they totally did it. They sent Darvin a whole slew of "Let the poor, crazy girl use her flippin' gift card" requests. 

You'd think maybe then I would have anticipated the phone call I received from the manager of Darvin? Wrong again. When the caller ID showed DARVIN FURNITURE on my phone, I panicked.

Crap, were they going to sue me?

Was I in trouble?

Did I still owe them for our TempurPedic bed??

Bob the store manager instantly put my mind at ease. He didn't demand I withdraw my crazy-ass post.  He didn't hand me off to his lawyers. In fact, he was really nice.

And he promised I could use my long, long, long expired gift card whenever I came in next. Poor little Joey would finally get that lamp for his room.

Bob and I chatted a few more minutes about his many years at Darvin and how the commercial still plays in the store (oh God, our big hair!).  Then he confessed something I have often heard, but never quite believed:

"You simply don't mess around with those mommy bloggers, ha ha. Right Marianne? I mean they're like a force to be reckoned with, no?"

Holy moly.  I suddenly felt like The Godfather.  Or maybe more accurately...

The Godblogger.

See Joey there in the middle?  He did that for 365 days in a row.  I think that pretty much makes me a "made" mom, no? 

THANK YOU SO MUCH, READERS AND BOB! 

I promise to use this power for good, and not for evil. 

Or maybe I'll just work on getting everyone some free cannoli.