This Happened

[Zen]

Well, they should, since it was THE MAILMAN who took the damned thing out!

[Phoebe]

That is hilarious and yet I would be pretty damn frustrated if it was happening to me.

Here we are on Monday morning. I'm not really happy about that State of Affairs. I am a really bad parent of teenagers. My methods are pretty good for other ages but they are really not good for teenagers. Or maybe you would say that my methods for younger ages weren't very good because they've led to a situations later where I have a teenager who cannot be reasoned with or worked with in any way. It is very difficult to remind myself that I am not simply parenting a younger version of my husband, who was an extremely bad and difficult teenager for his parents to deal with. So it is a lazy and easy excuse to say well this one is exactly like Dad. But damnit this one is exactly like Dad, and maybe he should try solving it instead of enabling the bad behavior. My method would be to take every single object she owns out of her bedroom, not allow her to have any phone or even the school issued laptop, and basically treat her exactly like a toddler until she gradually shows some modicum of responsibility that would indicate she can be treated like a person her age. But since that's not what's going to happen I think the problem is going to continue to get worse.

[Tahlvin]

So the holding company where our financial advisor has my wife's and my IRA accounts housed recently upgraded their website. The message on the updated website indicated the old usernames and passwords would work for logging into the new website. Not so for our accounts! So I follow the link to request my password be reset. It asks only for the email address associated with the account. But here's the thing: since I'm the one who manages most of the investments in the house, I had my email address setup on both mine and my wife's accounts. So when I enter the email address to reset the password, and it doesn't ask me for anything further, I always get an email with my wife's name in it, allowing me to reset the password for her account but not mine. So I call their customer service department and am informed by an indifferent CS rep that their upgraded site does not allow multiple accounts with the same password, so I'll have to re-register my account using a different email address.

So I go to the website and try to register for access to my account. It asks me for last 4 digits of my SSN, my date of birth, and my last name, all of which I provide. But the website proceeds to inform me that they cannot locate any matching account in their system. So I have to contact my financial advisor, who setup all of our online access to this site to begin with, and ask him to setup my access again. In the meantime, there's a very sizable amount of our money that seems to have gone into a black hole and we cannot see it. And yes, we wouldn't be accessing that money for about another decade or more, so there is plenty of time to restore our access and everything will probably be fine. But being a software developer who has worked on medical software, and always had to hear comments about financial software being so good because ATMs could communicate across different banks for the past 25-30 years, I find it annoying as hell that this website couldn't even handle multiple user accounts with the same email address, that they probably never did any analysis to see if that was necessary, or that if they did, they never bothered to let us know ahead of time so I could update the email address on one of our accounts to be unique. And given the attitude of the CS rep, and how readily she answered my questions, I'm guessing I'm not the only one who was screwed over by this change.

[Zen]

So... Friday at quarter to five, my wife picked me up from work to FINALLY go get her Toyota Rav4 from the body shop. It had been there for SIXTEEN FLIPPIN' DAYS!

[You might remember my rants... I mean posts... about it before this... I don't recall if I posted about the 2nd accident or not:

One night about a week or so after my son's accident, my wife heard the distinct sound of someone slamming into a car on the street outside of our house. Sadly, this is a sound we are VERY familiar with. Our cars have been hit on numerous occasions, many times by the neighbors, twice by city snow plows, and a few times, like this one, by hit and run drivers... We can't claim that we haven't hit our fair share of our neighbor's cars either, though I would say that we've gotten worse than we've given. It's a narrow road with driveways that are spaced such that it's hard to park on the street without being across from someone else's driveway... It's also a dead-end road and there is another section of the road a few blocks away after drainage ditch and green space that are at the end of the street, so people frequently come down the street looking for an address in the 2300 block and need to turn around when they figure out that this section of road ends in the 2000 block. (There is no 2100 block and I believe there is all of one house in the 2200 block, which is a house that I consider to be the ideal "Free Pizza" house from the 30 minutes or free era of pizza delivery, because there is practically NO WAY to tell that it is actually on our street, since the street doesn't actually continue on their side of the street. It is just a little pull-in area next to the green space, but their mail box is on that side and their address is our street instead of the one the other one that they are on the corner of... It's weird! There's also only one or two blocks of the road before it ends after it starts back up again on the other side of the green space... It's kind of strange that they didn't just change the street name in the other neighborhood... anyway... I digress...)

When she looked out she didn't see any cars, so she thought maybe it wasn't on our street. She drove the Rav4 up to Aurora to take my daughter to an appointment that day, having decided it was road worthy several days after the initial accident, and when they got out of the car at Walgreens to pick up her meds, my daughter walked around the car past the rear driver's side and asked, "What happened to the back end of the car, Mom?" I got a call telling me to call in another insurance claim for a hit and run the night before and they gave me a description of where the damage was. We already had an appointment set up for the other repair so we just piggybacked it on to that one...]

So we took the damned thing in to get it fixed and the original estimate was that it would be done on 01/31. On 01/29 they changed the estimate to 02/02. On 01/31 they confirmed that they were on track for the 02/02 date.On 01/01 they sent a message saying that they were nearing completion and if they encountered any delays they would call at 9:04 am, then at 10:08 am, they sent a message saying that they had updated the completion date from 02/02 to 02/06. Around the same time, we got an email saying the estimated completion date was now 02/09...

SIDE NOTE: Now, this is something that I call COMPLETE AND TOTAL BS! Why? Because if the car was going to be DONE on 02/02, they would have needed to be PAINTING IT before 02/01. It takes at least a day for the paint to cure. When they ACTUALLY FINISHED THE JOB, they called two days before the delivery date and told me it was going in to be painted and that it was still on track to be ready by the delivery date...

So, having the conflicting information, and being fed up with the BS, I called. The guy sounded a bit confused that there was a difference in the dates, but said that it should be 02/06. He said that there was more damage than they thought when they got the parts off and they needed to order another part and they were waiting on that. That was understandable, in a way, but still annoying...

Then, on 02/02, I got the call from our daughter's school that we needed to come pick her up and bring her home for the weekend because of... well... the issues she's been having... I've mentioned them before... (everything's fine...) My wife was working that day, and luckily had a ride home from a coworker, so I left work early, called her at work to let her know what was going on, and drove up to Aurora to get my daughter. We came home, spent Friday night and Saturday together and her issues were resolved by then. (Most likely we're looking at medication change effects. It was two weeks after a dosage change to one of her meds... I hate the way she gets side effects from EVERY MED SHE TAKES! But I can't say she doesn't probably get it from me, so... But I'm not THAT BAD!!! ...sigh...) So, anyway, we had tickets to a play in Chicago on Sunday. ( staring Richard Thomas who played John-Boy on "The Waltons" way back when on TV.) I tried to buy an extra ticket for my wife, since we only had two... SCREWED UP MAJORLY and bought one for the 7:30 show instead of the 2:00 show, because I appear to be an idiot despite the fact that half of my genes have produced at least one certifiable genius, but when we checked the 2:00 show there weren't any tickets that we would have wanted to buy available anyway, so my wife wasn't that upset. She decided that we would take the ticket and she'd either try to give it away to someone or trade it in at the box office if she could. The tickets that WERE available were all in the $80 per seat plus range. I'd bought a nice, reasonable $22 seat for the 7:30 show... If I'd looked at the 2:00 show instead, i wouldn't have even tried to buy any...

We got to Chicago with plenty of time before the show, went to the Starbucks at the corner near the Theater, and had some food and coffee while we waited for to be able to go in. When it was time to go, my daughter and I went in with our tickets and my wife said she'd see if she could get a ticket and text us to let us know if she was watching the show or meeting us somewhere after the show. She ended up giving the 7:30 ticket to the girls behind the counter at Starbucks, making some barista's night on Superbowl Sunday. Then she went to the Box Office and gave them our subscriber number and asked if there were any available seats. They sold her a MAIN FLOOR SEAT for $25! They said she didn't even need her subscriber number. That's SO MUCH LESS than I paid for the flippin' ticket she gave away (with TicketBastard Fees included, that is) that it's painful! After the show, which was FANTASTIC, she told us about it then looked over to our daughter and said, "So, next year when you're going to Loyola," (which is the college she wants to go to, even though she hasn't made her final decision yet) "If you feel like you need to blow off steam on a Sunday afternoon, Give Cameron a call and come down to the Theater district and see what shows you can get cheap tickets for." Sounds like a great way to spend a Sunday afternoon to me!

(Cameron one of her best friends and a theater geek, who is going to be going to Illinois Institute of Technology, which is a bit further south in the city than Loyola... It's actually directly across the freeway from Comiskey Park, where the White Sox play, which is, generally, not considered a particularly great part of town, but the campus seems fine... as long as you stay within the few square blocks that are the campus... The EL actually runs THROUGH one of the building on the campus, so you can hop on the EL from the comfort of a campus building there... That school is her second choice... At this point, her boyfriend is planning to go to Loyola as well... Cameron is also pretty much her boyfriend's best friend. If he isn't with her, he's with Cameron... So I expect they'll spend most weekends together next year...)

After the show, we drove to our hotel in Naperville. This time around, the school decided that our daughter needed to do a "re-entry meeting" like she did last year, even though they didn't require last semester when this same basic thing happened. First she had to see her doctor and be cleared by him, so if we could schedule an appointment early enough with him, maybe we could get a meeting with the school on Monday and be done? But there was a storm coming that evening anyway and we didn't want to drive home in it, so we were already thinking about extending our stay at the hotel, but this meant that we wouldn't be home on 02/06, when the car was supposed to be done... Then I got a text at 7:01 am that morning: the completion date had been pushed back from 02/06 to 02/09... I told my wife that we didn't need to worry about being home to pick up the car on 02/06...

She had her appointment with her doctor on Monday in the early afternoon. We called the school to see if they would be able to fit us in before 5:00, because we had no doubt that her doctor would clear her to return... They were in meeting all afternoon and couldn't fit us in before Tuesday morning at the earliest... The school nurse was telling us not to drive that night because of the weather anyway... It was BAD. The people that came into the hotel said the roads were horrible and they were really glad they had 4-wheel drive. We just stayed around the hotel after we finished lunch at the pancake place that my daughter likes did nothing. I read, a ton, she worked on homework as much as she could, and we waited until morning to find out what time our meeting would be...

Anyway, eventually they called and said the car was going in to be painted on 02/07 and it was on track to be done on 02/09. We picked it up at 5:00 on 02/09... They were STILL CLEANING IT!

The real kicker:

When we pulled into the parking space in my Volvo S80 to pick the damned thing up, my wife pulled too far up and hit the (far too large) curb. This is something that we both do frequently with this car. (And my son does when he drives it as well.) It is VERY low to the ground and has a longer hood than any of us are really used to, even after years of driving it. This time, it seems to have done something though... On the drive home, I was trying to decide if there was a problem with the driver's side front tire. It sounded like I was driving on a tire that was going flat, if you know what I mean? I turned off the radio to listen to it and it just sounded wrong, but the car didn't DRIVE like there was a problem. I looked at it in the garage when I got home and didn't see anything wrong, so I went inside and didn't think anything more of it.

On Saturday, I was spending my usual kind of lazy weekend day, which meant I was still in my pajamas and hadn't bothered to leave the house, when I got a call from my wife around the time she would be leaving work. She was scheduled to work again, for a co-worker whose husband is running for some office in a nearby town and has a lot of campaign functions that she needs to attend (which results in my wife working extra hours for her, which is nice because we like overtime...) starting at around 1:00 the next day. We were supposed to be getting an ice storm that night and my wife decided she wanted to leave her car at the parking garage at work, under a roof, instead of outside at home, which meant that she needed me to come pick her up and then take her to work on Sunday afternoon... On the way there, I heard the noise again, but noticed that it wasn't as bad on roads that I could drive 35 mph or more... strange...

I got there to pick her up and drove toward her and she stopped me and walked over to look at the front end of the car, then said, as she got in, "You're dragging something underneath the front end!" I told her about the noise and when it started. She felt awful and said she shouldn't be allowed to drive the damned thing because of the hood length. I told her that it wasn't her fault and that I hit things as often as she does, etc...

We planned to take it by our mechanic and have him look at it, but first we used some gorilla tape to tape it up before I took her to work the next day. On my way back home (and running one errand on the way) it fell down again... Driving along, the sound changed and I decided I needed to look at it because it sounded like it was further under the car. So I pulled off the road onto a side road with a bunch of businesses on it. I made my way to an auto parts shop parking lot to look at it, figuring I could ask one of the guys in the shop for help if I decided to try to take it off and... it was GONE! So... I retraced my path and found the part, put it in the trunk and am hoping it isn't important!

[WOW... that was a wall of text...]

[Phoebe]

[Phoebe]

OMG Zen I just read your saga and... OMG! Murphy's Law is strong in your area. You need to do some kind of ritual to burn off the bad vibes. Have you considered a bonfire and... something?

[Zen]

[Tahlvin]

[Phoebe]

Thanks, that is interesting. I am not sure whether we should continue to try to manage it in detail ourselves, or turn it over to a professional who handles everything. I found TIAA has brokerage services and that might solve it, not sure.

In other news I have accidentally left the house in pajamas to go do a thing and people are now scrutinizing my legs under the coat, and I am meeting their glance with the cheerful lack of concern I must resort to in this situation. Maybe I will start a trend, like my mom used to say when I'd gripe about being sent outside the home in something embarrassing.

[Tahlvin]

I have to travel this week for work, leaving this afternoon and getting back really late on Thursday. So of course, my son gets sick with strep throat and is stuck at home today, but should be able to go back to school tomorrow (he'll be on antibiotics long enough to no longer be contagious). But my parents are coming up to visit on Friday, because my daughter and son have their solo and ensemble district competition on Saturday, so that's equaling about one less day for my wife to clean the house. And of course, it's taking time away from him being able to practice his French horn or trumpet, since his throat hurts, which means less time to prepare for the competition on Saturday or his jazz concert on Monday. We're just hoping none of the rest of us catch strep from him.

And to make matters worse, the dog gets hurt this morning and had to go for a quick visit to the vet. And as we're going to leave for the vet office, the car refuses to start, and I had to break out the battery charger. Hopefully, it's just the battery being a little low from sitting out in the cold, and I won't have a problem with it refusing to start in the airport parking garage when I get home on Thursday around midnight. But at least the dog will be okay; she just seems to have a sore shoulder and tore a toenail off one of her back feet, so some anti-inflammatories and a few days of rest will hopefully have her back to herself in no time.

[Phoebe]

Poor kid, poor doggo! All sounds unpleasant. But: bright side, today I have parked by both (1) a car stuck in a pothole so bad they couldn't get it out, and (2) someone who managed (?!) to drive up and onto a retaining wall about 4 feet high, such that the whole vehicle was stuck diagonally upon the wall, and police/towers struggled to figure out how to extract it!

[Phoebe]

I have hit the wall of exhaustion. Many things must be done but I no longer have the desire to do them. I desire to lay in bed unperturbed. However my children must be fed. I am not able to sate them by digging up worms, like other creatures might.

[Phoebe]

Alternate reality warning: Ron is sitting in the kitchen, having risen by choice at 6 am after a nine-hour sleep. Could be sign of apocalypse, rapture, etc. Maybe it means we're getting out of the sliding door reality characterized by the present government. I don't know. This is unprecedented in the history of the world so far. He also smiled cheerfully at me and spoke in sentences. At six. He's not getting on a flight anywhere; there is no early work meeting.

[Zen]

[Eliahad]

The wind blew the car door open. I reached for it, slamming my head into the roof of the car.

I dumped my soup on my lap at lunch.

Bussing my table I dumped all of the dirty trays from the bussing station onto the floor.

Bring it day. I've still got a little bit of dignity left.

[Phoebe]

Argh! Poor head. I'm about to open a bottle of wine?

[Phoebe]

Oh dear, drugged texts from the relatives again! I am going to try not responding as if phone dead.

[Phoebe]

Found a bowl in my daughter's room that upon closer inspection appears to be turning into some sort of fermented beverage. Blueberry wine, if you will. Hopefully it goes without saying that we are not supposed to have bowls of blueberries anywhere outside the limited boundary lines of the kitchen. And yet it needs saying so very many times.

[Phoebe]

Ate garlic rolls that had about 3 tablespoons of nearly raw chopped garlic all over them; waited 20 minutes, listening to Mahler's first and Beethoven's fifth, and then passed out utterly cold for ???? time and woke up in a puddle of drool with a giant bulb of garlic having replaced my entire head. I am literally speaking out of a hole in the side of a bulb of garlic right now.

Also: since time immemorial I have taken a scoop of vanilla ice cream, drowned it in orange juice, and then mixed the whole thing up in a much creamier and more fatty approximation of an Orange Julius. Now Chik-fil-A thinks it can sell this thing back to me at many times the cost. You people. I see your twisted game.

Tangential question: eating ice cream gives you heart attacks, right? I mean there's a reason for me to modulate my intake of the stuff in addition to simply not wanting to gain weight? Something in it will line my arteries? My brain is at war with itself over what it remembers of the fax in this region and doesn't want to look it up for fear that things will go wrong.

[Ronster]

The setting:
Yesterday evening about 7:30 PM.
I arrived home and after greeting the dogs go in the house to find my wife and two of my daughters sitting in a darkened living room about 20 minutes into watching "Jumanji". The aroma of lasagna is in the air and I fall off the Whole30 wagon. I go into a dim kitchen and get a plate and cup from the dishwasher then begin dishing out some of the wonderful food that has transfixed my senses.

NOTE: We usually open the dishwasher at the end of the cycle to let the dishes cool down..now back to the story-

I grab a fork from the dishwasher, but finding it still dirty, I put it back hoping the next cycle will do a better job. I take another one from the drawer ignoring the buzzing of my Ronster senses.

About an hour later when the kids pause the movie I go to put away my dishes in the sink, but then I notice that there is a dirty plate in the dishwasher. The gears start to turn. I remember seeing the dogs' "collars of shame" sitting on the end table since it has been about 10 days since their surgeries. They are essentially unrestricted. I recall there being a residue in the glass I took from the washer as well, but that is normal after an interrupted cycle.

The picture is becoming all too clear. I came into the kitchen and put my lasagna on a plate that my DOG HAD LICKED CLEAN and I drank from someones used glass! My expectation made me override my senses.

My family we so very considerate after about 15 minutes of hysterical laughs and about 5 minutes of my heaving at the porcelain throne.

Family, Bruh!

tl;dr
I ate off a plate licked clean by a Yorkie.