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Mar 28, 2011

Bad Car-ma

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Our family doesn’t have good luck with cars. It seems as soon as we fix one thing, something else goes wrong.

Aaron took our little sedan to NYC a couple of years ago. I expressed worry that something bad would happen to it, parked in the big city. Sure enough, it came home with a big dent in the side from being parked on the street.

Whenever we take a car in for maintenance, they always find something major costly wrong with it. And then a month after all of the expensive work is performed, the check engine light nearly always comes on.

Our SUV got a chip in the windshield last year. We had the auto glass folks come out and patch it. Then a few months ago, the patch gave out and the windshield cracked all the way across. Hello, new windshield!

Late last year, we had a nail in a tire on the SUV. We took it in to get the nail removed and patched, only to find it was in the sidewall and couldn’t be patched. And oh yeah, two other tires have nails in the sidewall. And the fourth tire had a broken stem valve. So one nail somehow turned into four new tires.

Last week, I tried to drive to work in the sedan, only to hear something thumping. Stopped at a gas station and found one tire flat. I tried to put air in it, but could hear the air hissing back out. I filled it up enough to drive home and switch cars, cursing our continuing bad luck with cars.

This poor little car has 188K miles on it. It’s running on a frayed rubber band at this point. It officially has a Do Not Recesuitate order on it – comfort care only. But I need it to last a little longer until we can save up for a down payment on a new car, so I had to buy two new tires for it.

As I drove the car home after getting two new tires, I pulled into the driveway to see the SUV had a low tire. With a nail in it. Seriously?

And then the same day, while driving on the highway, a small rock jumped from a semi-truck, over the car in front of us, and chipped the new windshield of our SUV.

Maybe we need to move to a city with better public transportation? Because we clearly aren’t meant to have cars.

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Filed Under: daily life, fate laughing at me, money, random ·


Sep 13, 2010

Sickness, Dollars and Sense

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Saturday night was a long night. I trudged up to bed around midnight, my body and brain fighting to figure out if it was really nearly lunchtime or bedtime. (Third shift work schedules really screw with your biorhythms.) No sooner had my eyes closed and I was on the verge of sleep, I heard crying coming from Mira’s room. I went in and she was clutching her belly, crying “My bewwy huwts!!!”

Figuring it was probably just gas, I rubbed her belly and back, but she then asked if she could come into my room. Aaron had fallen asleep on the couch, so I agreed and brought her in. She lay in bed with me for about ten minutes before deciding she felt better and went back to her room. I again tried to focus on the inside of my eyelids and aimed for sleep.

An hour later, a repeat performance. This time I got her up and had her try using the potty. (Did I mention we’re potty training? No? Well, we’re POTTY TRAINING! A whole year and a half earlier than Cordy, thank goodness!) Again it didn’t seem to help much, and she eventually went back to bed.

Two hours later, the crying startled me awake. This time it sounded more urgent. I went into her room to see her sitting in a corner of her bed, pointing to the center and saying, “I made a mess! I sowwy! I soooo sowwy!” As my eyes adjusted to the light, and my nose adjusted to the assault on it, I realized she had vomited and was covered in it herself. Poor kid – she’s sick and all she can do is think I’m mad at her for making a mess. You’d think I was a clean freak.

I carefully lifted her out of bed, making sure to avoid her stuffed pink polar bear (which she made sure to tell me that she was careful to NOT get vomit on her prized stuffed animal!), stripped her down and put her in the bath. While she soaked, I cleaned up the mess, remade her bed, and got the washer started. Then I cleaned her up, got her dressed and put her to bed. Mira seemed to feel better after that, and I hoped it was over.

Sunday was a typical day for her. She ate just fine, even though we were cautious at first, she played, and she continued to say, “My bewwy doesn’t huwt now!” Sure, I was exhausted from barely sleeping all night, but she seemed better, so I couldn’t complain too much. It was probably just a virus passing through quickly.

Then Sunday night, right at bedtime, it started again: “My bewwy reawwy hurwts!” At this point, I thought Mira was faking it, having figured out yet another way to stall at bedtime and get some extra attention. Aaron – being better slept than me and therefore in a more generous mood – let her rest on the couch and she promptly fell asleep. Faker, I decided.

Aaron carried her back to bed, and I relaxed in my chair to enjoy a little guilty pleasure I call the MTV VMA’s before I had to go to work. But no sooner than Justin Bieber jumped up on stage, the wailing voice of a little girl could be heard from upstairs. (Yeah, Mira, I’m more of a Lady Gaga fan, too.) Aaron went to check on her and soon came downstairs with a pathetic little barnacle clinging to him. She was again crying that her belly hurt.

Aaron tried to put her on the couch again, but this time she didn’t fall asleep. She tossed and turned and wiggled, occasionally wailing in pain. At this point, I was starting to think it wasn’t an act. But it made no sense – how could she be so sick the night before, then perfect all day long, and now very sick again? That little voice of motherly worry started to build in my mind.

I barely saw Taylor Swift’s performance, because by that point the wailing had reached a fever pitch. Aaron tried to pull Mira into his lap on the floor, but she pushed him away and stumbled over to where I was sitting in the recliner. No longer the stoic doubter, I accepted her into my lap and let her curl herself into me, even knowing I only had five minutes or so until I had to leave for work. She continued to cry, and I asked her to show me where her belly hurt. She placed a chubby hand over her entire belly-button area.

I gently pushed on her belly, trying to remember what to feel for in a three year old, but my nursing skills were falling short. She wailed as I touched her abdomen, constantly shifting around in an attempt to find some relief from whatever was hurting her.

In those moments, as I tried to distract her by pointing out Lady Gaga was on stage accepting an award, real worry invaded my mind. What if this wasn’t just a bug? What if she was really sick?

We don’t have health insurance at the moment. My job is a contractor position and Aaron was laid off in May. My agency’s health plan was nearly half of my salary for a $4000 deductible, and COBRA cost even more. I make too much to be covered on any state insurance plan for children, and the private market? Yeah, well, let’s just say they don’t want to cover our family. I don’t even have paid sick time. If I need to miss a day, I don’t get paid for it. We are the ones “stuck in the middle” making too much to qualify for any help and too little to not worry about the costs.

So in that moment, as I became my own personal WebMD and pondered if Mira had a blockage or if her appendix might burst at any moment, I was also forced to calculate in my head if it was worth taking her to the hospital if she didn’t get better. At what point would the risks outweigh the hefty financial hit we’d face? Just the ER charge alone would be crippling, without even considering costs of any tests or x-rays.

At that point, Mira’s wails took on a new pitch, drowning out the TV entirely, and as I clutched her tight, with Aaron kneeling next to the chair and rubbing her back, I felt the tears in my eyes. Her health was coming down to money. I felt like I was being forced to decide how sick she had to be before we could risk going broke. And I wanted to scream right along with her, wail at how idiotic and unfair our health insurance system is, and sob that any parent should be forced to think like this, to feel this helpless in the shadow of illness and dollar bills balancing on an enormous scale.

And right then Mira vomited all over me. Twice. The silence was shocking to us all.

That sweet little girl then took one look at me, completely covered in more vomit than I thought possible to come out of such a small person, and said, “Mommy, I so sowwy I got you messy. You still wuv me?”

For the moment all of my fears and worries were gone as I stroked her hair and assured her that of course I still loved her and everything was OK. She still didn’t feel well, but the crying had stopped as she was suddenly more concerned about me. (And seriously, I’m really not obsessed with being neat. Sure, I don’t like being covered in vomit, but I doubt anyone does.)

Mira still isn’t well, but I’m less worried about appendicitis now and back to my original theory that it’s a virus. And so we continue to wait it out, hoping she gets better soon and we can avoid a costly trip to the doctor or the ER. I’m still mad at the system, though. Angry that we can’t have affordable health insurance because I chose to take a job I love over something I wouldn’t enjoy as much, because Aaron is unemployed, because we have a host of pre-existing conditions that would deny us private insurance.

We’re average Americans. We have a house, we make a middle-class income, we pay our taxes, and we’re trying to get ahead to provide for our daughters. But we’re also forced to worry that the next stomachache that comes along might be more serious. That stomachache could bankrupt us, could take away that house we call home, and that chance at getting ahead we so desperately want and work hard towards. I know we’re not the only ones in this situation, either.

I’m not an economist (nor do I play one on TV), and I didn’t start this post with the intention of going all ranty, but as a mother I can’t understand why anyone would think that basic universal health care is wrong. At this point I’d even be willing to settle for universal children’s health care. No mother wants a price to be placed on her child’s health – so why would you then choose to put a price on the health of someone else’s child?

Maybe the world would be a better place if mothers were running it.

Filed Under: being a mom, big issues, Mira, money · Tagged:


Sep 1, 2010

Don’t Mess With My Money

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I’m generally an easy-going person. It takes a lot to make me really angry, and there are generally few topics that can make me go totally unhinged. Messing with my kids tops the list, of course, but other notable triggers include social injustice, intentionally rude people, and cheating me in some way.

I’m also very protective of our money. Not that we have a lot at the moment, with Aaron unemployed and all, but what we do have I guard over like it’s the lost treasure of Atlantis. Every penny is accounted for.

Which means you can imagine how I flipped when I recently discovered someone was writing forged checks from our checking account. They had somehow stolen our bank account number and printed up new checks with a different name, address and phone number.

At first, I tried to give them then benefit of the doubt. Oh, maybe this guy got new checks and accidentally wrote down the wrong account number, I thought. This will be an easy fix by the bank, we’ll get our money back, and I won’t need to turn into the Incredible Hulk.

But then my theory fell apart. The address and phone number on the check was for a business in Indiana. The name on the check was not associated with the business. And the bank listed on the check was also not the same bank as ours, despite having the same routing number. It was definitely a forgery.

The bank has been very kind in helping us through this, especially considering I must have looked like a crazed woman as I fumed at being told I’d have to shut down my checking account and get a new one. I’ve had that account for over 15 years. The account number was never listed anywhere because I had it memorized – and now I have to learn a new number, as well as change all of my direct deposit and debit information for the bazillion utility bills and loans attached to the account.

I feel completely violated that my checking account number was somehow found and used to steal money from our account. Not as violated as I felt when our house was broken into and robbed, but enough to wish a lot of karmic harm to that individual. It’s a struggle to earn what money we have, and it pisses me off that someone thinks they can earn their living by stealing accounts and using the money from other people.

The stolen money has been given back to us by the bank, thank goodness. But I’m still angry about the incident. When we filed the police report, the office gave us our report number and basically told us no one would be looking into it. I appreciate the honesty, but it frustrates me even more that this guy (or woman – the check was written to a plus-size women’s clothing store) got away with it because it isn’t enough money for them to bother investigating it further.

We have a new checking account now, and once we pick up our new checks and check cards we’ll even have access to it. (Seriously, waiting a week for my check card is like making me live a week without any money at all – who has time to physically go to the bank for cash?)

I know we’re lucky to have caught it right at the first fake check. The check number wasn’t even that far off from our current sequence, so it could have easily slipped past if I wasn’t (obsessively) examining the account daily and looking at every check image that shows up in our account.

The funny part? When I told my mom our account had been compromised, she immediately launched into a lecture about how this will be all the more common now because of how we use plastic cards for everything and it’s so easy to steal credit card numbers electronically. I think she’s convinced the world will someday end because of our reliance on computers, like our computers will suddenly steal our credit card numbers and buy parts to start building Terminators to enslave humanity. I cut her off with, “Yeah, but this wasn’t my check card – it was all paper fraud, mom! Old-school paper checks!” Ha.

I hope you check your accounts online daily. It’s too easy for a scammer to steal a little bit here, a little bit there, and you might not even notice. Don’t let them take money from you, too – keep your account passwords safe, destroy any paper account information and monitor them vigilantly.

And if you ever meet someone who thinks it’s no big deal to use forged checks? Kick him in the balls for me, OK?

Filed Under: daily life, money · Tagged:


Aug 3, 2010

The Doctor’s Bill Hurts More Than The Shot

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Being without health insurance at the moment, we’ve put off a lot of routine care because we simply can’t afford the bills. Vaccination boosters can wait, yearly check-ups can be put off, and if anyone gets sick, I can put my Super Mom-RN skills to use to determine if a trip to the doctor is really necessary.

But when the school sends home a form requiring a medical professional to sign off that your child has had a physical in the past year and is healthy enough to attend school – and said child can’t attend school without this signature – then you have to bite the bullet and make an appointment.

Mira had her doctor’s visit yesterday, what would have been her three-year-old well-child visit, now more like her three-and-a-few-months well-child visit. Her doctor is actually a nurse practitioner (yay for supporting my fellow nurses!), and Mira spent all morning excited about going to the “dot-torz oh-hice!” Or at least she was excited until we got there and the nurse asked her to take off her shoes to be weighed. Then the wailing started.

Thankfully, the tears stopped when the nurse practitioner came into the room. Our NP is very friendly and outgoing, and Mira quickly recovered herself and became the show-off ham she’s known for. The NP pointed out that Mira is continuing the tradition of Amazon warrior princesses in our household – 95th percentile for height – no surprise there. If she continues on this growth curve, she’ll likely be 5’8″ or taller as an adult.

There were no surprises at this visit. Mira still has speech apraxia. We knew that and she’ll be getting therapy through the school in the fall. She has sensitive skin and a sensitive tummy, which we’ve been aware of since birth. She has a persistent junky cough that is likely just allergies as her chest is clear – the NP’s stethoscope findings matched my own from home. She’s bright, overflowing with energy, and completely healthy with no serious medical concerns whatsoever. And that’s essentially what was noted on the paper required for school admittance.

In other words, we didn’t need the NP to tell us any of this. We just needed her signature.

And then we paid $110 for that signature and 15 minutes of time that only confirmed what we already knew.

Ouch.

I think my checkbook needs a band-aid and a Thomas the Tank Engine sticker now.

Filed Under: daily life, growing up, Mira, money, school ·


Aug 23, 2009

Maybe The Guess Jeans Weren’t Worth It

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“It’s the most wonderful time of the year!” I love hearing that song on the Staples commercial as the dad tosses school supplies into the cart while his two children look like they’re walking to their execution. Back-to-school also means back to routine, and this family likes routine.

We’ve already received Cordy’s school supplies list in the mail, and I’m amazed at all the stuff she needs to have for the first day. Glue sticks, hand soap, box of tissues, notebooks, liquid glue, baby wipes, backpack — and this is just for Pre-Kindergarten!

Of course, thanks to all of the Miracle Gro and bovine growth hormone we feed her, she also needs a whole new wardrobe for the school year, too. (Amazon child.) While I am once again employed, the paychecks have only started to roll in, meaning they’re flying out to pay bills just as quickly. But she needs the clothing, so she’ll have it.

When I was a kid, money was always tight at back-to-school time, too. I wanted the “cool” sneakers that the popular kids had, and I resented that my mom fought me on every fashionable clothing choice. Back-to-school shopping was always a battle, and not just for clothing — who wants a no-name folder organizer when you could have the hip Trapper Keeper in all the fashionable colors?

My mom eventually thought of a way to end the battle. She told me at the beginning of August how much money I had for clothing and supplies, and I could buy anything up to that amount. The clothing budget was kept separate from the supplies budget, and anything that the teacher required us to have (like the box of tissues) was not included.

This meant I had to learn to use my money wisely. I could have a few new items that were high-fashion, or I could shop for cheaper items that maybe weren’t as cool. It only took one season for me to learn my lesson: I blew the majority of my fall budget on a pair of Guess jeans, and while those jeans were awesome, I couldn’t wear them everyday. I got tired of wearing last year’s worn jeans and tops, all because I had to have that one pair of incredibly expensive jeans.

We’re not at a point where Cordy cares about her clothing. She rarely notices what she wears, and almost never complains about what clothing I pick for her. So until that point, I’ll continue to do my best to buy as much as I can for the least amount possible, shopping sales, consignment stores, and accepting hand-me-downs, all while still trying to give her some sense of style. Eventually, she’ll want a say, and at that time I’ll present her with the rule I followed. She’ll be given a budget, and can pick what she needs as long as it fits in her budget.

Cordy really has no sense of money yet, either, although not for lack of trying to teach her. She is starting to learn that we can’t always buy her what she wants, and that some things cost more money than what we have. I’m sure we’ll have that money talk when we go pick out a backpack for her this year. She always seems drawn to the most expensive blinged-out backpack, when I know she’ll drag it on the ground, get it filthy, and spill something sticky inside of it before the first month is over. A simple backpack is better because I know the abuse it will take.

Do you set a limit on your child’s back-to-school spending? Do you have a fixed amount, or do you allow some wiggle-room in picking out supplies and clothing? I’m curious to know how other parents handle the back-to-school routine, since we’re still fairly new at this.

This post is part of the PBN blog blast, sponsored by Capital One and their new Moneywi$e e-Learning tool, designed to teach families about financial responsibility.

And I’ll have you know I wore those Guess jeans until they had holes in the knees, and then made shorts out of them and wore them until they were no longer decent clothing. I think I even considered cutting off the little triangle patch and keeping it after that.

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Filed Under: Cordy, money, school ·