I’m a bit discombobulated today, all over the place with my thoughts. I started out doing a sports registration for a kid which reminded me some of the canceled activities during lockdown resulted in credits issued. I had to go searching through emails and financial accounts to find out what was reimbursed, whether it was a credit on their account for future activity or on my credit cards, how much of it was there that I could apply to now, etc.

There is so much online activity these days, I mean, how does on live without the internet today? Especially when one has kids?

Long story short, I finally got to a registration screen which wanted me to enter the date of birth for the parent/legal guardian (me).

The format said this:

MM/DD/YYYY

So I entered the numbers into the spots as indicated and it refused to accept them. Kept saying invalid. I even tried switching the month with the day just in case the programmer was either dyslexic or experienced some momentary confusion while coding this thing, but that didn’t work either. Finally I typed the name of the month for one of the parents, which is September. I shortened it to Sept which is normal, right?

Wrong.

The only way it would accept it was to type Sep (no t), then NO SPACE between the p and the number (day of birth), followed by a comma, a space and then the year.

Like so: (this is obviously a fake bday) – Sep12, 1919

It then converted it to 09/12/1919

WTF

When I figured this out and entered it like that out of sheer exasperation, it finally took and the system changed the birth date into the original format.

Who are these programmers, and what are they smoking when they create these online forms?

Anyway finally I got to the end of the registration and then was told to click publish which would take me to the payment page.

I freaked a little. We typically pay via credit card for the more expensive activities (hockey, ringette) which we pay off after we move money around, but because of covid, they changed things and they only accept e-transfer now. I don’t keep all the money in the main account so I have to move stuff around to ensure there is enough balance left to pay for it which usually takes 24-48 hours over business days…

omg

Nobody told me about this when I wanted to become a parent.

Nobody wrote about this in the endless arrays of parenting books either.

Anyway, I clicked publish and figured que sera, sera, and then it went to a new page which announced registration was complete. It never went to the payment page as it said it would.

Perhaps the programmer writing the code was also drinking while he was smoking?

Whatever. It’s done. She’s on a list (hopefully) and if someone wants payment they’re going to have to reach out and tell me where to send it.

Sigh.

I’m completely derailed today. My to do list, which included a bunch of writing, is not happening. I can’t pick up my thread (and I had it, earlier, when I started writing at 5 am).

I need to leave the house and go for a drive. Collect my thoughts. Maybe stop at a store and look at some beads. I made a new necklace and bracelet yesterday for my daughter, as a way to decompress from stress or writers’ block, maybe I’ll do that again today. But I’m out of crimps.

• 

• 

My daughter belongs to a ringette team called the Stingers. Get it? Bee sting?

Happy Tarot Tuesday that isn’t. I have content half-ready – sorry I won’t be posting it today.