23 posts tagged “annoyed”

This word used to bring a funny story to mind...  Back in college when OneUnbrokenBrow took over his girlfriend's CB radio on a car trip and started messing with truckers...  Hilarious...  This weekend, though, "breaker" means nothing but worry and frustration...  You see, a good section of our electrical box is dying...  Why?  Rain... Rain water is literally following the wires into the house and rusting out some of the breakers in the breaker box (then dripping out the bottom -- which is how Clark found the problem)...  When NYSEG did us the "courtesy" of re-attaching the electrical wires to the house after the ice storm last winter, they never notified us that the job wasn't actually finished...  You see, it is technically OUR responsibility to do anything between the pole and the house...  Well, I know that, but I try not to look a gift horse in the mouth...  Had we known that the job was unfinished, though, we would have gotten someone out immediately so that they could attach the "weather head" (I think that is what the guy said it's called) to keep the rain and snow from getting inside via the electrical wires...  I am so angry...  Now, we have no electricity in the 2nd floor of our house and have to wait until the electrician can come back tomorrow (our neighbors know a guy and he was kind enough to come check it out in the freezing/pouring rain to let us at least know what had to be done and whether it was safe to turn the main breaker back on)...  We have no idea how much this is going to cost, and I am really nervous that even the parts are going to be crazy expensive, let alone the labor...  This guy deserves every penny for his work -- don't get me wrong...  But I wish that NYSEG could be held accountable for their part in this...  Sure, they did a nice thing by getting the wires out of our yard -- but at what future cost?!?  Is it too much to ask that they let people know when they will need to do more to make their house safe?!?!?!?!?!?!?  Later days...

Facebook...  Vox...  All sites I have been wanting to update but not really getting to lately...  In "real life," I am getting caught up on laundry and dishes and finding time to just plop on the couch when I am feeling crappy, and I find that those things are a bit more important than having all of my internet ducks in a row...  I just don't seem to have much energy for anything above and beyond subsistance living lately... A lot of well-meaning people at work keep saying that I will probably feel better soon, but I know I probably won't...  I try to tell them that, while attempting not to sound whiny, bitchy, or overly negative, but there are only so many times that you can remind people that you required "anti-puking" meds for your entire pregnancy last time and are trying not to foolishly expect a better outcome this time around...  Sure, I can be hopeful...  But I don't want to be unrealistic either...  It's tough, though, since I am sure they don't really know what else to say...  It's tempting to just pretend everything is peachy keen, but it's a little obvious that you're lying if you say, "Things are great!" as you walk in all pale and chalky grey first thing in the morning...  You know?!?  I won't have Princess at the library today, so that should make things a little easier...  I can't handle her being up my ass all day, and she is so painfully shy that I just want to shake her sometimes...  But, I can understand how being holed up with your family all the time instead of ever getting out would do that to a kid...  Man, I hope bringing Boogie all over with us will pay off in that respect...  We try, you know?!?  Sigh...  Better get going now if I want to try and get a new pair of black shoes (the old ones are ripping apart) before work today...  Later days...

Or a crazy waste of taxpayer money?!?  A week or two ago, the guys were over for gaming, and we all heard a ton of sirens...  It sounded like half of the town must be going up in flames...  Luckily, Clark and I have been through this before and knew not to be worried...  It is only because one of the sports teams won a major game...  Last night, when I was about to put Boogie to bed, it happened again...  Boogie looked so sad...  He said, "I'm tired, and the sirens are too loud...  It's too scary, so I don't want to be alone in my room."  To show him that it was nothing scary, I brought him downstairs and we waited for the crazy parade to weave its way down our street...  Of course, this would be the one time that they skip our street!  We did hear them on the next street over, though, and I took a "video" (though it's so dark that it's pretty much only a sound recording)... 

Yeah...  I definitely feel like I live in Texas sometimes...  For goodness sake, why do they have to go through the entire town from about 8pm to 9:30pm with sirens, horns, and cheering people?!?  It's not that I am not proud of our sports teams or anything, but I think that it is a crazy waste to spend the extra money for the bus driver and the gas for both the school bus and the fire trucks (our neighbor tole me they had FIVE of them out last night)...  Geesh...  Later days...

So, why is it that the three months prior to April were almost exactly the same, and yet they estimated all low and stuff when they billed us for April?!?  Maybe I’m wrong, but I certainly think it looks like you could take the exact amount of the underestimate from April and add it to the average of those three prior months to get the May bill… WTF?!?

Later days...

Such a nifty invention...  But also potential for a multitude of problems...  This morning, I thought it sounded like there was water running somewhere in our house, but all I knew was that it wasn't the toilet or the sink in the bathroom I was standing in...  You know how the pipes resonate with the sound of water running clear across the house?  I decided that the toilet must be running downstairs and that Clark would deal with it when he went down for his shower...  The next thing I know, however, Clark was hustling pretty fast up the stairs from the basement (though I didn't even hear him go down there)...  He exclaimed, "There's two inches of water in the basement!"  Well, I was officially awake...  I started wondering if it was too early to call Flower, since she just had a plumber at her house yesterday...  I decided to see if I could help Clark figure out where the problem was first, and then I would worry about figuring out if we needed to call anyone...  Clark and I looked around the house and he ended up outside -- where he discovered that the outdoor water line had been left on all winter...  Apparently, we just didn't realize our mistake until now because the hose was still hooked up...  I knew I should have put the damn thing away for the winter, but I was all lazy and stuff, so I figured it wouldn't hurt as long as I turned off the water (which I managed to screw up -- go me!)...  Anyway...  Weather changes took their toll, something happened to a seal in the hose cart, and water was several inches deep in the garden box next to the outer wall of the house...  We figured that must be where the water in the basement had originated...  It was seeping through the foundation...  Sweet!  Luckily, my husband was completely overreacting/seeing things when he first went into the basement...  There was nowhere near two inches of water in the basement, though there is still certainly plenty of water to clean up...  I have already started the process, using our handy-dandy carpet cleaner (because we don't have a normal shop-vac and it sucks up water just fine thank-you-very-much)...  I am upstairs to get some breakfast and to let my tootsies defrost a little...  Man...  It never ends!  Later days...

Well...  Clark and I have written a draft of the letter that we will be sending to the siding/windows people...  We just need to get one more piece of documentation before we can fill in a few blanks and go forward with mailing the letter -- so that it includes all of the information we need to get across...  I was supposed to get a fax on Friday, but it never showed up...  I am hoping that it never came as opposed to someone at work mistakenly grabbing it along with their fax...  Clark will be calling them tomorrow (or Tuesday, if they are closed tomorrow) to see what ever happened to that fax...  I feel kinda bad that the lady who has been dealing with all of this is so nice and seems so genuinely upset that there is nothing she can do for us...  But there is no way in hell that feeling bad for an office manager (or whatever her position is) is going to stand in the way of me pushing for them to do the right thing...  I really hope that the corporate offices recognize how badly their employee screwed everything up and works to resolve this without calling our bluff on the whole litigation thing...  I really don't think we can afford to go forward with a lawsuit, but I am not about to let them know that until after I see what they have to say to this letter...  Bah...  Later days...

So, I was just about to post about all of the craptastic things that are going on with all of our bills/accounts, but one slightly more important thing just came up...  Boogie is, apparently, missing me terribly tonight...  He promised Clark that he had it together and that he would not cry if he got to talk to me on the phone, but he lost it completely when he started to tell me that he wants me at home...  :-(  ... I felt so terrible having to tell him that I would not be home for another couple of hours, but such is the life of a public librarian, you know?!?  Well...  Let's get away from the truly depressing and move on to some of the more unbelievably annoying...  There are several bills/accounts for which I have a lovely story...  Even my therapist said that she practically couldn't believe this "perfect storm" of financial woe...  Let's start with the smallest and work our way up, shall we?!?

Phone Company...  We used to have a home phone, but they screwed everything up...  We signed up for the "One Bill" program so that our home phone, wireless, and DSL would be on one easy bill...  Seems simple, but they managed to eff it up really well...  First, they screwed up the enrollment in "One Bill" and didn't tell me that it didn't go through...  Then, they changed the account to Clark's name so they could try to enroll us again...  Once that worked, though, all hell broke loose...  Even though I used the most recent account number, they kept crediting my payments to the old (inactive) account number...  Did they notice their mistake and work to fix it right away?!?  Of course not!  They sent me to collections and I had to figure out how the hell they were managing to take my money without crediting the correct account...  After a couple more incorrect credits, I decided to cancel the home phone and to get a totally new account number with which to work...  That should have been fine, but they forgot to remove the late fee that I didn't deserve AND moved the balance over to the new account, even though they gave me a quote for what I should have needed to pay (sans late fee) in order to bring that account down to a zero balance when I closed it out...  Now, they have more than $100 of my money and have even DENIED the refund request that one of their customer service associates submitted for me...  As of two days ago, this issue has supposedly been fixed...  We shall see...

Oil companies...  Last year, our oil company told me that I was not allowed to stop making budget payments even though we were so far ahead that there was no way in hell we would use the rest of our credit by the end of the season...  I, basically, told them to screw themselves and that I wasn't paying anymore...  I agreed to pay the current market value instead of the locked-in rate if I needed more oil than our budget covered -- but, lo and behold, we still had a credit at the end of the heating season (even after they topped off our tank to prepare us for the next year)...  I told them that I wanted to use the rest of our credit to pay for the yearly maintenance and cleaning of the boiler and that I would be going with a new company the next year...  All was fine and dandy, or so we thought, until we discovered that their "cleaning" left our boiler less efficient than it had been before...  (Thanks NYSERDA for telling us how it really was!)  They agreed to come back and re-do their cleaning job, but then they forgot to bring the correct meter with them to check after they were done...  We had to schedule another visit, and they ended up coming....... but they billed us for a service call!  No effing way, dude!  So, Clark fought them on that...  But then, a few days later, we received a bill for oil that they delivered...  We were all like, "WTF?!?"  But, it turns out they did deliver oil...  Even though we had told them to eff off, the fact that they cleaned our boiler meant that we were still in their system...  So, they came and delivered oil on an auto-delivery basis...  That means that the company with which we contracted this year -- and to whom we have been paying our monthly budget plan payments -- was NOT the company that delivered our oil...  So, we had to pay this bill AND make our budget payment to the other company for January...  If we want to cancel the contract for the 2008-09 heating season, we would have had to pay a $400 cancellation fee (or wait until after today to pay ONLY $200)...  So, yeah...  We're not cancelling, and we will have to wait until the end of the heating season to get all of that money back...  Gah!  Needless to say, I don't think we will be "locking in" with anyone anymore...  With how little oil we actually go through in a season, it just seems like such a hassle to have to over-pay and then wait to get our money back (since they base their budgets on 400 gallons and we don't use even close to that much in one season)...

Windows and Siding...  Well, they can't find us a lender that will cover 100% of the needed funds...  They also can't find us anything close to the rate that we were supposed to have locked into...  They thought it would be some sort of consolation to tell us that the woman who screwed up our account no longer works there, and that she screwed up some other people's accounts too...  Umm...  No!  That just pisses me off even more to think that this was not an isolated incident...  Some idiot was too busy painting her nails and checking her personal e-mail, so she somehow forgot to send in several clients' final paperwork to the bank?  How the hell do you remember to send people's paperwork in to the NYSERDA inspectors' offices but not to the bank through which people were supposed to be financing their home-improvement projects?!?  I contacted a lawyer, and she said that it definitely sounds like we could sue these people for all of the problems they have caused.......... but a lawyer would most likely require us to pay up front for a county case such as this (the money involved is several times more than a small claims court would allow)...  Since it's not a "slam-dunk" case, the lawyer would not count on getting paid "when we won"...  She thinks it is likely that such a large company would be able to spin it enough to make it look like we were somehow at fault and that we would end up incurring not only the money for the project but also $20,000-$40,000 in legal fees...  Aaaagghhhhh!!!!!!!!!!  So, we have two options now...  We can try and bluff -- sending a letter to the corporate offices, threatening litigation if they do not give us a satisfactory means by which to solve the problem -- or we can just go straight to the bank to take our chances on a personal loan...  I think we may as well try and bluff, and then we can always fall onto Plan B if they refuse to try and work it out with us...  My therapist thinks we should probably have a lawyer craft the letter, since a letter from a lawyer is infinitely more fear-inducing than a letter from a pissed-off client...  But, that would mean probably paying a couple hundred dollars for a damn letter...  Grrrrr...  And, to top it all off, we have already received a "welcome packet" from one of the banks the siding/window company went to about alternative financing...  So, even though we never signed anything, there was a loan account (with an associated-line-of-credit credit card) that we had to cancel -- and I am afraid that having had that account so recently activated may have impacted our credit rating...  Good times!

Beyond the financial nonsense, there is one other troubling thing going on with me right now...  The morning that we got back from our trip to Tennessee, I noticed a rather annoying, sharp, stabbing pain in my lower abdomen...  It manifested itself when I coughed or sneezed, when I bent over or stretched too far, and also when I tried to pick up anything substantial (like, you know, my kid)...  I thought that it would just go away, but it remained for over a week, and even my lazy, procrasting side knew I ought to call my midwife...  Since this pain was very similar to my prior experiences with ovarian cysts, and since pain can somehow deflect to other areas of the abdomen even if the cyst truly is on the side, my midwife thinks I have an ovarian cyst and will, consequently, be sending me for an ultrasound late next week...  The week after that, I will be going to a follow-up visit with the OB/GYN she is associated with...  The pain has already gone away quite significantly, but I know that it is better to be safe than sorry...  With the crazy family history of all sorts of cancers, it makes way more sense to check it out instead of assuming that fading pain means all is well and that it was definitely only a cyst...  They may even determine that my prescription needs to be adjusted, since I have known other women whose medications caused inflamation of their ovaries and significant increases in cyst development...  I guess I will know soon enough, but I really wish I didn't have to go through all this "hurry up and wait" nonsense...

The funniest thing, which my therapist was quick to point out this morning, is that I am still plenty happy right now...  I can laugh about the crazy coincidence that this is all happening at once...  I can look at everything and know that it will, eventually, come to an end...  I can live my life without feeling like I have a dark cloud looming over me and waiting to drench me with even more freezing rain...  And all of this in spite of the fact that my therapist and I are more than a month into a regiment of lowering my dose of Prozac!  I am sure that having such a wonderful and supportive husband helps a lot...  Having so many wonderful friends can't hurt either...  But I really think I have turned a corner in my life and that I have learned how to be truly happy...  I have a cute little decorative pillow/sign in my room that says, "Happiness is a conscious choice!"  And, you know what?!?  I think there may be a little bit of truth to that statement...  Sure crappy things will always manage to find a way into my life...  But I can either fall apart or I can move on with as much grace as I can muster...  And I'd like to think that I have learned to be a little more graceful in this past year......  (Now, if only someone could tell that to my clumsy hands and feet!)  Later days...

Over a picture?!?  Well, it seems that may come to fruition...  Clark has already dropped the "D" word a couple of times today, all because his friends couldn't quietly chuckle and enjoy the picture of him in his footie pajamas...  No!  The Dungeon Master had to taunt him via text, and now I am stuck with a complete and total grump... Thanks, dude!  (teeheehee)...  Later days...

Sometimes it's really hard to balance all of the different aspects of my life... Trying to be a good mother, good wife, good librarian, and good friend can sometimes feel like a battle of importance...  Sometimes I just have to put something before something else; even if it is really hard to choose between them, I still have to make a choice... This afternoon, I was kind of let down by the fact that I made a choice and had it thrown in my face...  I had a very important work meeting that I blew off to go out to lunch with one of my best friends...  Even though I already saw her yesterday, even though it meant delaying my whole family's lunch and skipping my son's nap for the second day in a row, and even though going out to lunch meant missing a chance to meet one of the top three candidates in line for the job as our new library director, I thought that going out for one of my best friend's birthdays should be the top priority...  When we showed up, though, that friend was not there...  When Clark called to see how close they were to arriving, we found out they hadn't even left yet...  Worst of all was the fact that it was now too late for me to make it to the work function...  We ate lunch as quickly as we could and headed over to the library to see if I could catch the tail end of the meeting...  Everyone just looked at me like I was an idiot when I came rushing in and everything was done already...  I honestly think I may have made a worse impression by showing up late than if I hadn't shown up at all -- but I really wanted to be there...  I know it is hard for childless people to comprehend how difficult small children can make life, but I really thought this person got it...  She knew that we already had to get find sitter last night so we could go to the party and that we would have our child today...  I thought she would know that 2pm was not the best time for us to meet her out, but maybe I assume too much on that point...  I don't know...  Maybe I am making a mountain out of a molehill...  All I know is that now I am feeling torn...  Do I try to just get over it or do I make a big deal about things?  Do I just trust the plans that we try to make next time, or do I need to be annoyingly clear when we make them?  Do I re-prioritize the next time this person tries to make plans with me, or do I keep her at the top of the list?  I just don't know what to think...  Bah...  Later days...

How people always mentioned the "7 year itch" when Clark and I told them this would be our 7 year wedding anniversary...  Never knew the itch could be so literal!  Teeheehee...  Damn, I hope my doctor actually calls me back today...  But, yeah, Happy Anniversary Clark!  Part of me can't believe it's already been this long, but part of me can't even remember what life was like before you...  Says in a cheesy voice: "You complete me"...  Teeheehee Later days...