Count Your Blessings; Name Them One By One

Holy crud, you guys, what a week. This is a whiny post (although it ends well), so feel free to skip.

The only way to properly convey what we've been through is for you to go through it yourself. But as I wouldn't wish this amount of inconvenience on ANYONE, I'll just sum up. The inconveniences fall under a few major categories:

THE MOVING COMPANY:
Tuesday: Frank, my "guy," never did call me back that day. I did get an automated call from Bekins saying our delivery window had changed. July 1-9 had now become July 11-15. They sincerely (automatedly) apologized for any inconvenience. Gave me warm fuzzies all over, I'm sure.

Wednesday: A cantankerous woman with Bekins calls me and says she got some cryptic message about calling me, and demands that I tell her what's going on, and why she's calling me. I tell her all I know, and she tells me that our "ETA" is the 15th, and that's all she needed to tell me. She didn't know that before? Holy flip, what a company!

Thursday: Frank braves a phone call, and - again - asks ME what's going on. Have I heard anything? I tell him what I know. He tells me he'll make more calls, and - QUOTE! - "I'm not just blowing smoke at you; I'm GOING to call you back today!"

I've heard nothing since. I have, however, carefully catalogued all the expenses we've incurred that we wouldn't have had they delivered on time, and highlighted the relevant receipts.

THE APARTMENT:
Nothing major, other than the fact that we're basically camping here, and had to go two days and nights without A/C.

AT&T:
Okay, this should be a whole separate blog post. These IDIOTS!

We were supposed to have DSL and a landline up and running on July 1st. We came here expecting to find a box of equipment waiting for us at the front office, and found nothing. No phone service, no box of equipment, nothing. I can't even begin to recount all the details of horror and nightmare that followed. TEN DAYS and MANY HOURS of phone rigamarole later, we learned that they can't actually deliver DSL out here. Finally, yeseterday, July frigging 12th, they got us online with U-verse. Made working from home a very interesting proposition for Matt. Amazing how cut off you feel from the world without internet anymore.

BTW, we've shunned a landline. Cell phones are it for us now. Eventually we'll switch to a CA number, but for now it's the TX number.

THE THEFT:
Okay, with all the above, we were staring to feel pretty darned beat. It was starting to get us down, so Saturday we decided to get out of the apartment, start sharing some of the local treasures with the boys. Griffith Observatory is free, so we thought we'd start there. Thought we'd grab some cash first, just in case the boys felt up to a planetarium show.

Matt hits a drive-through ATM and asks for $40. The ATM claims insufficient funds in our account. Ha, ha! You're so funny, ATM! You know perfectly well we've transferred enough from our home equity line to pay for our move! But fine, if you want to play it that way, I'll give it a try. It wouldn't be the first time my card has worked when Matt's has been goofy.

Matt parks, and I head to the walk-up ATM. Same story. Can I have $20, then? No? Okay, into the bank I go.

Bank Dude #1 tells me I have $25 in that account. I tell him no, that's the new CA account I just opened. I want to access my TX account, please. He can't do that, but he can look up the balance. "That account has a negative balance, ma'am." It WHAT?!

He sends me to Bank Dude #2, who gets me to a computer where I can get to my online banking. Scroll down, scroll down, and WHAT? Since when did I pay California Tires and Wheels of San Bernardino $6,946.56? TWICE?

On the phone with Fraud Investigations (with Matt by my side by this time, and three very bored boys bouncing around the bank lobby), I learn that someone got hold of my debit card number and made this purchase over the phone. Tires and Wheels didn't check the security code for the card, didn't care that the address given didn't match the card, and tried initially to charge the full amount all at once, but when that was rejected, ran it as two separate transactions. The second one took us WAY into the red; I don't understand how that one cleared at ALL.

The bank will credit our account for the full amount while they investigate, but it's going to be a tight race between our getting the funds and our needing to pay the moving company. That is, if they actually come on the 15th! Ha ha!

Thanks, California Tires and Wheels of San Bernardino, for being - at the VERY BEST - complete idiots! Thanks, Bank of America, for allowing that transaction to run and not telling me we were suddenly DEEP in the red! And finally, thanks to the universe, for so beautifully topping off a FANTASTIC week!

HERE'S THE PART WHERE I STOP WHINING:

Like I said at the beginning of the post, all these things are inconveniences. We've had a lot of thorns in our sides, but no tragedies. We're all healthy. We loaded up at Costco before the account got wiped out, so we have food, and gas in the car. We're near family. The weather has been absolutely beautiful. The house in Texas has been shown four times over the past week. The boys had a GREAT time in their new ward today (so did we), with no shyness problems at all. And we'll have money again soon enough. And furniture. And now we have an opportunity to teach the boys about forgiveness and gratitude and trust in the Lord. Because we ABSOLUTELY trust in the Lord. I have no doubt all this has a purpose.

And it will all work out, for our good.