We miss Lima.
The trip back was fine. Will continues to live up to his reputation as World Most Incredible Kid, dealing with both flights, bag searches, plane changes, excessive security checks and more with patience and good humor (two things rarely displayed in your average 2-year old.)
The shit started to roll soon after we arrived in Mobile. I’ll just make a list of the crap on our heads.
I am sick. I think Will picked up a little bug during our final days in Lima (he and I woke with sore throats on Wednesday morning) and while Will bounced back, I have been riding a downward spiral ever since. We made it to the midwife prenatal yesterday (went great; my weight gain is still fabulous at 19.5 pounds at the end of my 28th week and it looks like my iron levels are also remaining impressive) and I crashed shortly after getting back from the appointment. It’s going to be a few days in bed for me.
Within an hour after we arrived, Paul discovered that our the power adapter he needs for my computer (remember, Paul’s died) was missing. Paul talks about this on his blog, so you can get the jist there, but basically, it was there during a bag search in Lima — and it was not there when we unpacked yesterday. This is a Big Deal.
We set our for the prenatal appointment a little early yesterday so Paul could pick up another power adapter (his only option) at Best Buy, getting into our 2002 VW Passat Wagon which had been sitting on my parent’s driveway for the past 6 weeks. My Dad went out and ran the car weekly for about 30 minutes per run and we felt confident the car would be fine. Why wouldn’t we? We impecibly maintain it and all services have been on time and within dealerships. Not more than a half mile down the road, the car goes bonkers. I mean *bonkers*. We assume an electrical problem, realize that we could damage the engine by driving it, turn around and take my parents car. On the way to Pensacola, I call the dealership, who (like us) assumes a low voltage on the battery. We ask my Dad (home early to see Will) to go out and run the car; he tries five times, but the thing is dead. It’s still under warranty, so we call the dealership for a tow. Bottom line: there is something seriously wrong with the car. Apparently, there is some sort of leak that has been letting in rain water (something we have since discovered that is not uncommon in VWs) and there is water throughout the floorboards. Thankfully, we’ve been using this dealership since moving from Michigan (easier to have it serviced here where we have my parents to help with transportation since we’re a one-car family) and they serviced the car during our post-Katrina time in Mobile. They know the car didn’t flood and saw it post-storm. So, they put trust in us and put through an early authorization on a rental. We just picked up the rental (a PT cruiser — the last car on the lot — it’s Mardi Gras time in Mobile and rental cars are hard to find) so Paul will be able to get back to NOLA for his work machines and backups this weekend. Our car will get assessed by a flood expert on Monday and we should know more then. We have to believe that this will all be under warranty — how could it not?
So I’m sick, we’re car-less and clueless on the cars’ problem(s), and — just to kick us while we’re down — we’re still in the throws of grappling with Paul’s flexible spending account program over Will’s daycare and it’s gone up a knotch to the point that we’re close to entering small claims court. Paul has also talked about this on his blog, but the bottom line is that pre-Katrina, Will was to start a part-time daycare program run through Tulane in the fall. We enrolled to set aside pre-tax dollar monies in a flexible spending account to pay the tutition. We had about $850 in the account when Katrina hit. The daycare flooded. We un-enrolled because we didn’t know what was going to happen and it was obvious he wasn’t going to go there in the fall because Tulane was closed. The paperwork Paul signed stated that disenrolling meant that we would forefit any funds that weren’t used by the end of the calendar year — we actually double checked this at the time because we wanted to make sure we’d still have the option of using the funds if we could find an alternative, but since we didn’t know the situation, didn’t want to keep putting money in the account. Turns out that we did use daycare dollars for the couple of weeks of part-time care we had in November and December. When we put in for re-imbursement, the company claimed that our disenrolling meant we forefitted everything. And they’ve just come out from “reviewing” the claim to back the previous statement and refuse to look at it again. So, we’re being denied our own money, put inside of an account for our use — which we used, within the specified time limit, for the specified purpose, by a specified provider, and applied for within the specified manner. In other words — the crooks! The HR at Paul’s company seems to be working on this in the sense that they are sending a lot of emails (pardon my sarcasm on this one, but I feel like this should be HR’s problem, not ours) but nothing seems to be happening. Our next step: small claims court.
And so I repeat: we miss Lima.
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