Morgan's motherly instincts were put into full throttle this past week, when the baby had his first Mishap in the middle of the week. I shall set the scene: it was a night like any other, the birds chirped, the bees buzzed, the children ate their Cheerios, all was right with the world. Morgan sat watching the Thursday night programming while our son happily romped around her, pleased that she had returned home from a long day of work and had gone back to being a mommy.
As he got his daily exercise on the mommy gym (home version) and climbing equipment, the Mishap occurred. A miscalculation of his body's placement sent him tumbling forward uncontrollably. Unfortunately, his fall was broken...by the armrest. Specifically, the armrest decided it would be nice to save him a trip to the floor, catching him by his face. Yes, he did a faceplant directly into the armrest of our futon.
Only a parent or one who has lived with a small child can understand the sudden chilling silence following such an event. Even I, facing the computer, knew what it meant. I heard a giggle, then a thump, then complete and utter silence. For those who do not know what this silence means, I recommend the film The Perfect Storm. In the movie, the sailors who are the storm's victims experience a brief but disturbing calm much akin to the situation I am describing. That's correct, ladies and gentlemen. That silence was the eye of the storm.
When the screaming began, it was the loudest and most horrible sound ever uttered by our son thus far. Suffice to say he was very displeased with the turn of events. He screamed like this for the better part of an hour while we tried to remember the things we knew about concussions, broken noses, the common cold, dysentery, heartburn, and the Sears return policy, as well as any other piece of information that may or may not help us make our son feel better.
He experienced a brief but frightening nosebleed, which sent the three of us into a further frenzy, as I tried to reassure Morgan that no, our son was not dying and no, she did not have to get the blood out of his nose so he wouldn't suffocate while he slept. Readers, our son is 18 months old and knows quite well the many complexities of breathing through one's mouth, but as I stated above, one poor mommy's care giving instincts had been pushed to their limit, and she was prepared to precisely shift the Earth's gravity and make us all do faceplants, so that we might experience what our unfortunate son did.
Even now, five days afterward, she still had the occasion to approach me and ask, "are you sure he can't still get a concussion?" To which I always respond, "no dear, I'm pretty sure we're in the clear on that." If he grows up and joins a football team, suffering a concussion in his early 20s or so, Morgan will turn to me, scowl, and say, "there! I told you he was going to get a concussion!"
21 May 2007
14 May 2007
Animals Watching Animals
Last week was Mother's Day, but it was also Morgan's 31st birthday and my mother's 50th birthday. As you can imagine readers, during the week I was willfully immersed in a pool of estrogen, only to emerge at the other side of the weekend feeling that my soul had become a finely scented potpourri contained within my body.
Morgan's birthday went over well; the family has been avoiding elaborate birthdays lately due to lack of funds, but she received some nice e-cards. Her boss at work changed all the cash registers to display a message wishing her a happy birthday, which was nice but then the cashiers all had to be retrained in their use; they don't adapt well to changes in the work environment. Exaggeration aside, when she got off of work she baked herself a chocolate cake, and ate it as well, defying the old adage.
On Saturday, we celebrated my mother's 50th birthday and Mother's Day by going to the Philadelphia Zoo. It never ceases to amaze me that even on her birthday (perhaps moreso) my mother's personal wishes are ignored by those around her, but she always takes it in stride. We spent the day walking around looking at animals that looked somewhat less than thrilled to be on display for large crowds of smelly humans.
Only at the zoo can one truly see the casual degrees of cruelty humans exhibit toward animals. Of course we all know there are the worst breeds, which I got to see a few of during the day. There were the children who wanted to chase the peacocks around as they roamed the zoo, but there were others, like the woman who thought it was funny in the primate house to set off the flash on her camera repeatedly right in the faces of the spider monkeys "just to watch them flinch" (the lovely Morgan confided in me that she really wanted to deck the woman but had restrained herself). And you always get those people who utterly ignore the "don't tap on the glass" sign and tap the glass, literally right below the sign, to get the animals' attention. Remind me again, which group are the animals?
It being the middle of May, we witnessed several pairings of the zoo's wildlife, but the one that stands out in my mind was between two giant tortoises, because the crowd gathered around the pen became highly excited, whooping and cheering and giving catcalls as though they were at a frat party cheering on an amorous couple then going about their business claiming that we're the civilized ones.
I'll confess this to you in all honesty, readers: I dislike the zoo. It's a reminder to me that we really haven't come very far in becoming more civilized and humane in the past few hundred years, we've just gotten a better idea how to be civilized, which makes it even worse when we inevitably ignore it.
Morgan's birthday went over well; the family has been avoiding elaborate birthdays lately due to lack of funds, but she received some nice e-cards. Her boss at work changed all the cash registers to display a message wishing her a happy birthday, which was nice but then the cashiers all had to be retrained in their use; they don't adapt well to changes in the work environment. Exaggeration aside, when she got off of work she baked herself a chocolate cake, and ate it as well, defying the old adage.
On Saturday, we celebrated my mother's 50th birthday and Mother's Day by going to the Philadelphia Zoo. It never ceases to amaze me that even on her birthday (perhaps moreso) my mother's personal wishes are ignored by those around her, but she always takes it in stride. We spent the day walking around looking at animals that looked somewhat less than thrilled to be on display for large crowds of smelly humans.
Only at the zoo can one truly see the casual degrees of cruelty humans exhibit toward animals. Of course we all know there are the worst breeds, which I got to see a few of during the day. There were the children who wanted to chase the peacocks around as they roamed the zoo, but there were others, like the woman who thought it was funny in the primate house to set off the flash on her camera repeatedly right in the faces of the spider monkeys "just to watch them flinch" (the lovely Morgan confided in me that she really wanted to deck the woman but had restrained herself). And you always get those people who utterly ignore the "don't tap on the glass" sign and tap the glass, literally right below the sign, to get the animals' attention. Remind me again, which group are the animals?
It being the middle of May, we witnessed several pairings of the zoo's wildlife, but the one that stands out in my mind was between two giant tortoises, because the crowd gathered around the pen became highly excited, whooping and cheering and giving catcalls as though they were at a frat party cheering on an amorous couple then going about their business claiming that we're the civilized ones.
I'll confess this to you in all honesty, readers: I dislike the zoo. It's a reminder to me that we really haven't come very far in becoming more civilized and humane in the past few hundred years, we've just gotten a better idea how to be civilized, which makes it even worse when we inevitably ignore it.
08 May 2007
Tuesday is the New Monday
Yesterday's episode was going to be about the move into the new apartment, but due to extenuating circumstances (i.e., me forgetting to write the post until today) it's coming to you a day late. However, as unluck would have it I have an even better coincidence to tell you all about today. But first, the move!
At the end of our last episode, we had (finally) been approved for the new apartment. The resulting frantic rush to move the remaining boxes and assorted items to the new apartment that hadn't already been put in storage was a sight to behold. Our friends came through for us where we couldn't have otherwise, having no car (and no license), helping us to throw our remaining belongings into boxes, and lifting all manner of heavy objects until well past midnight, when we were all sweaty and tired monsters. If we were lucky in one thing in life, readers, it would be our friends.
The process of settling into our new apartment has been an arduous one. Our belongings are slowly trickling back out of storage, but we are uncomfortably deprived of our furniture until able to rent a truck or find a friend with a truck. And let me tell you, we have a lot of furniture. Otherwise, our Internet service has been installed, and we now once again have a link with the outside world. To which I say, hooray!
In any case, that has been our past week in brief. However, today something very interesting happened to me, but first some back story.
Six months ago, I purchased a hosting package, including a domain name, from a company known as Dot5 Hosting. The package seemed pretty good; a shared hosting package with loads of bandwidth that was not too expensive. However, one day after I purchased the hosting package, my site crashed. For the next 36 hours. For those of you who are not web savvy, having your site go down for 36 hours is the equivalent of a nightmare where you are plummeting to the earth at the core of a meteor made entirely out of hungry tigers, after being dunked in barbecue sauce.
Naturally, I immediately called their customer service number and was met with a busy signal. This continued for the next four hours. So I sent an e-mail through their website asking quite nicely if they would please cancel my service, because I would be going with another hosting service (HostGator, which turned out to be quite lovely and more than deserving of that shameless plug). A support employee named simply "Gary" (it's like Cher) replied:
"I am sorry to hear that you would like to leave Dot5Hosting. Is there anything in which I could do personally for you to keep you with Dot5? I would be more than happy to go over any outstanding issues you have personally.
-Gary
Priority: High
Status: Closed"
Status closed? I e-mailed "Gary" back and told him no, thank you, I'd just like to cancel my service.
A month and some change went by and after looking at my online statements from my bank, PNC Bank of Delaware (I haven't received a paper statement in more than a year; more on that momentarily), I discovered that Dot5 Hosting was still charging me, and the blank page I left behind on my hosting was still there.
Okay. Simple enough. I'll just call my bank and dispute the charge, I told myself. So I did just that, and my bank is as helpful as can be. They started processing the charge dispute and told me they'd mail me a form I had to fill out and mail back. Great; I reminded them that I haven't been getting my paper statements for the past six months, and they verified my mailing address and promised they'd get those statements sent to the correct address. Also, they canceled my debit card and said they would mail me a new one.
A week went by, and I received my new debit card but not the dispute form they needed me to fill out. I called, and they said it might take a few more days. So I waited another week and called again. No news, but they promised they would call me back. Another two weeks went by and there was no word. Then something strange happened.
Another charge appeared on my account, claiming it was a magazine subscription purchase from a Best Buy in New York. Stranger yet, it was charged to my old card. If the card had been canceled, how did it get charged? I haven't been to New York in years, and I sure wouldn't be going there to buy a magazine subscription. So I called them again and they had my $29.95 refunded to me within the week. Odd...it had already taken them a month to handle a $23.85 refund which they hadn't yet, but a $29.95 refund took them a few days, as did the refunds of the overdraft fees that resulted from all of this big mess. Hurray.
Yet another two months went by, and I had pretty much given up on getting back my $23.85 and that resulting overdraft fee. My tax return had put me back above a negative balance and I was happy enough. However, I looked at my online statement a couple weeks ago and what did I see? Another $29.95 charge from Best Buy. Okay, I decided. I was getting to the bottom of this. And I was going to get all of my money back, not just some of it.
Today, I called PNC Bank customer service, and explained the situation. The first woman I spoke with told me that I would have to go into a branch to change my address before I disputed the latest charge from Best Buy, because "I had no recent activity on my account to prove who I was." Huh? She also told me that I'd have to call their dispute department and speak to them about my problem with Dot5 Hosting. I thought to myself, "it begins!"
So I called the dispute department, gave my information, explained my situation and was put on hold for the agent who was handling my dispute. I was put on hold for 20 minutes. In complete silence. No hold music, no anything. So I started talking into the phone, just talking, "hello, is anyone there, I'd really like some hold music please, you can even go back to playing the banjo music that your customer service department had on before." The lady I was speaking to before picked the phone back up, confused. She hadn't transferred me to the agent; she had accidentally put me on a strange sort of hold and put the phone down. D'oh! So she transferred me and the agent picked up right away.
Deborah, the dispute agent, was the kind of woman who is more used to doing her work than to talking to customers (a trait that I appreciate in anyone), and she explained to me the situation from their end, which was this: they had mailed me the form I needed to fill out and send back, and I hadn't sent it back, and it was now too late for them to dispute the charge. D'oh! I told them I had never received any form, and that I also hadn't received my statements for the past year. She recommended that I call customer service and try to speak to a supervisor about waiving the charge, seeing that it was not a substantial one. "Yes," I said, "I'll do that."
So I called customer service again, and got a nice lady with a bit of a drawl to her voice, who first told me that she could use my debit card number to verify my identity and change my address, then process my latest dispute. Then she explained to me that she couldn't do much of anything about what I wanted done, and that I'd have to pay $5 for each month's statement that I wanted mailed to me. Wow, what a rip-off. I suppose it became clear enough that I was frazzled (after about two hours on the phone, who wouldn't be?) and she cut herself off mid-statement and said "tell you what, let me see if I can escalate this." To which I responded, perhaps a little forcefully, "please do!"
The escalated version of the nice lady with a drawl was a supervisor with a particularly soothing voice named Dara. I commented on her name; Morgan and I have a friend named Dara, so I found it pretty amusing. I told her the situation up to that point, dropped Deborah's name, and told her I was very displeased with how I was being handed around like a hot potato. So Dara asked me to hold, and put me on hold for a very long time. When she returned, she agreed to send me my last year's worth of bank statements, and to refund me all of the charges I had disputed, and if any charges had been missed that I should call her right away and get her to handle it.
So, today's sad story has a happy ending. And all I lost is hours of my time!
At the end of our last episode, we had (finally) been approved for the new apartment. The resulting frantic rush to move the remaining boxes and assorted items to the new apartment that hadn't already been put in storage was a sight to behold. Our friends came through for us where we couldn't have otherwise, having no car (and no license), helping us to throw our remaining belongings into boxes, and lifting all manner of heavy objects until well past midnight, when we were all sweaty and tired monsters. If we were lucky in one thing in life, readers, it would be our friends.
The process of settling into our new apartment has been an arduous one. Our belongings are slowly trickling back out of storage, but we are uncomfortably deprived of our furniture until able to rent a truck or find a friend with a truck. And let me tell you, we have a lot of furniture. Otherwise, our Internet service has been installed, and we now once again have a link with the outside world. To which I say, hooray!
In any case, that has been our past week in brief. However, today something very interesting happened to me, but first some back story.
Six months ago, I purchased a hosting package, including a domain name, from a company known as Dot5 Hosting. The package seemed pretty good; a shared hosting package with loads of bandwidth that was not too expensive. However, one day after I purchased the hosting package, my site crashed. For the next 36 hours. For those of you who are not web savvy, having your site go down for 36 hours is the equivalent of a nightmare where you are plummeting to the earth at the core of a meteor made entirely out of hungry tigers, after being dunked in barbecue sauce.
Naturally, I immediately called their customer service number and was met with a busy signal. This continued for the next four hours. So I sent an e-mail through their website asking quite nicely if they would please cancel my service, because I would be going with another hosting service (HostGator, which turned out to be quite lovely and more than deserving of that shameless plug). A support employee named simply "Gary" (it's like Cher) replied:
"I am sorry to hear that you would like to leave Dot5Hosting. Is there anything in which I could do personally for you to keep you with Dot5? I would be more than happy to go over any outstanding issues you have personally.
-Gary
Priority: High
Status: Closed"
Status closed? I e-mailed "Gary" back and told him no, thank you, I'd just like to cancel my service.
A month and some change went by and after looking at my online statements from my bank, PNC Bank of Delaware (I haven't received a paper statement in more than a year; more on that momentarily), I discovered that Dot5 Hosting was still charging me, and the blank page I left behind on my hosting was still there.
Okay. Simple enough. I'll just call my bank and dispute the charge, I told myself. So I did just that, and my bank is as helpful as can be. They started processing the charge dispute and told me they'd mail me a form I had to fill out and mail back. Great; I reminded them that I haven't been getting my paper statements for the past six months, and they verified my mailing address and promised they'd get those statements sent to the correct address. Also, they canceled my debit card and said they would mail me a new one.
A week went by, and I received my new debit card but not the dispute form they needed me to fill out. I called, and they said it might take a few more days. So I waited another week and called again. No news, but they promised they would call me back. Another two weeks went by and there was no word. Then something strange happened.
Another charge appeared on my account, claiming it was a magazine subscription purchase from a Best Buy in New York. Stranger yet, it was charged to my old card. If the card had been canceled, how did it get charged? I haven't been to New York in years, and I sure wouldn't be going there to buy a magazine subscription. So I called them again and they had my $29.95 refunded to me within the week. Odd...it had already taken them a month to handle a $23.85 refund which they hadn't yet, but a $29.95 refund took them a few days, as did the refunds of the overdraft fees that resulted from all of this big mess. Hurray.
Yet another two months went by, and I had pretty much given up on getting back my $23.85 and that resulting overdraft fee. My tax return had put me back above a negative balance and I was happy enough. However, I looked at my online statement a couple weeks ago and what did I see? Another $29.95 charge from Best Buy. Okay, I decided. I was getting to the bottom of this. And I was going to get all of my money back, not just some of it.
Today, I called PNC Bank customer service, and explained the situation. The first woman I spoke with told me that I would have to go into a branch to change my address before I disputed the latest charge from Best Buy, because "I had no recent activity on my account to prove who I was." Huh? She also told me that I'd have to call their dispute department and speak to them about my problem with Dot5 Hosting. I thought to myself, "it begins!"
So I called the dispute department, gave my information, explained my situation and was put on hold for the agent who was handling my dispute. I was put on hold for 20 minutes. In complete silence. No hold music, no anything. So I started talking into the phone, just talking, "hello, is anyone there, I'd really like some hold music please, you can even go back to playing the banjo music that your customer service department had on before." The lady I was speaking to before picked the phone back up, confused. She hadn't transferred me to the agent; she had accidentally put me on a strange sort of hold and put the phone down. D'oh! So she transferred me and the agent picked up right away.
Deborah, the dispute agent, was the kind of woman who is more used to doing her work than to talking to customers (a trait that I appreciate in anyone), and she explained to me the situation from their end, which was this: they had mailed me the form I needed to fill out and send back, and I hadn't sent it back, and it was now too late for them to dispute the charge. D'oh! I told them I had never received any form, and that I also hadn't received my statements for the past year. She recommended that I call customer service and try to speak to a supervisor about waiving the charge, seeing that it was not a substantial one. "Yes," I said, "I'll do that."
So I called customer service again, and got a nice lady with a bit of a drawl to her voice, who first told me that she could use my debit card number to verify my identity and change my address, then process my latest dispute. Then she explained to me that she couldn't do much of anything about what I wanted done, and that I'd have to pay $5 for each month's statement that I wanted mailed to me. Wow, what a rip-off. I suppose it became clear enough that I was frazzled (after about two hours on the phone, who wouldn't be?) and she cut herself off mid-statement and said "tell you what, let me see if I can escalate this." To which I responded, perhaps a little forcefully, "please do!"
The escalated version of the nice lady with a drawl was a supervisor with a particularly soothing voice named Dara. I commented on her name; Morgan and I have a friend named Dara, so I found it pretty amusing. I told her the situation up to that point, dropped Deborah's name, and told her I was very displeased with how I was being handed around like a hot potato. So Dara asked me to hold, and put me on hold for a very long time. When she returned, she agreed to send me my last year's worth of bank statements, and to refund me all of the charges I had disputed, and if any charges had been missed that I should call her right away and get her to handle it.
So, today's sad story has a happy ending. And all I lost is hours of my time!
30 April 2007
The Lesser Evil
As you know, we submitted our paperwork to the corporate office of our (hopeful) new apartment complex for early approval with the intent to move in over the weekend before May 1st (that being this past weekend). Naturally, we had all of our plans laid out nicely; lease signing here, move-in here, happily ever after here. Just as naturally, the new complex went out of their way to satisfy our expectations that this would not happen.
Morgan, my fiancee, called the apartment complex last Tuesday to ask them if we had been approved yet. Monica (presumed spelling), the woman in charge of overseeing our application process, was not in the office. At all. All day. Perhaps she had pressing business. Do women in middle management play golf? The outcome was similar on Wednesday; maybe it was just a long game? Who knows.
Morgan called them on Thursday and finally got hold of Monica (flustered because she had got too much of a tan golfing) and asked her what was going on with the apartment. "Everything's fine," she said. "We're still waiting for approval from the complex." So Morgan said her goodbyes and hung up.
Now, before I go on, there is something you ought to know about Morgan and I. We have both worked retail positions for several years, and we're both quite familiar with what it's like to be caught in the crossfire by a customer who is irate with your company's poor management skills and directs that anger at us, the undeserving lackeys. Anyone who has worked retail knows what I'm talking about. However, the difference between Morgan and I is that this experience gives Morgan more patience and temperance in dealing with people, whereas I meaningfully seek out the cause of the botch and apply severe amounts of displeasure.
This is not to say that I call people up and yell at them; quite the contrary. You could say that I'm more like...assertively nice. I'm sticking to that story, no matter what Morgan tells you.
So when Morgan called me and told me what Monica told her, I decided to give them my own call and give them a piece of my mind. A very courteous piece of my mind. So I called them, spoke with Monica, and asked her what was going on. "Everything is fine," she said. "We're still waiting for approval from the complex."
"Okay," I said, and hung up, only to realize that I had gotten the same response Morgan had gotten. The next thing I said was simply, "D'oh!"
So, Morgan called on Friday and asked them what was going on. Now comes the fun part: "We're sorry," Monica said, "but we can't approve you until you fax us a copy of your son's birth certificate." Wait, what? Birth certificate? They already had his social security number. And why didn't they tell us this sooner? We've had his birth certificate in storage for weeks; in fact, it's one of the only documents we have yet to lose.
To make a long story short (too late), we were not given keys so we could move in over the weekend. We spent the weekend in a mad scramble moving almost all of our belongings into our two storage units, and only found out today (Monday, hurray) that we had been approved. Morgan quite literally just got off the phone with Monica, who told us that there were electrical problems in the apartment that needed to be repaired. We talked her into giving us our key, but she said we could sign our lease after the repairs were done. Our friends assure us that this is a good move on both our parts, but I am skeptical; I'm waiting for them to say the repairs are too big, that we don't have a lease protecting our right to be there, and that we have to leave.
Joy. Expect the worst, hope for the best, my motto goes on.
Morgan, my fiancee, called the apartment complex last Tuesday to ask them if we had been approved yet. Monica (presumed spelling), the woman in charge of overseeing our application process, was not in the office. At all. All day. Perhaps she had pressing business. Do women in middle management play golf? The outcome was similar on Wednesday; maybe it was just a long game? Who knows.
Morgan called them on Thursday and finally got hold of Monica (flustered because she had got too much of a tan golfing) and asked her what was going on with the apartment. "Everything's fine," she said. "We're still waiting for approval from the complex." So Morgan said her goodbyes and hung up.
Now, before I go on, there is something you ought to know about Morgan and I. We have both worked retail positions for several years, and we're both quite familiar with what it's like to be caught in the crossfire by a customer who is irate with your company's poor management skills and directs that anger at us, the undeserving lackeys. Anyone who has worked retail knows what I'm talking about. However, the difference between Morgan and I is that this experience gives Morgan more patience and temperance in dealing with people, whereas I meaningfully seek out the cause of the botch and apply severe amounts of displeasure.
This is not to say that I call people up and yell at them; quite the contrary. You could say that I'm more like...assertively nice. I'm sticking to that story, no matter what Morgan tells you.
So when Morgan called me and told me what Monica told her, I decided to give them my own call and give them a piece of my mind. A very courteous piece of my mind. So I called them, spoke with Monica, and asked her what was going on. "Everything is fine," she said. "We're still waiting for approval from the complex."
"Okay," I said, and hung up, only to realize that I had gotten the same response Morgan had gotten. The next thing I said was simply, "D'oh!"
So, Morgan called on Friday and asked them what was going on. Now comes the fun part: "We're sorry," Monica said, "but we can't approve you until you fax us a copy of your son's birth certificate." Wait, what? Birth certificate? They already had his social security number. And why didn't they tell us this sooner? We've had his birth certificate in storage for weeks; in fact, it's one of the only documents we have yet to lose.
To make a long story short (too late), we were not given keys so we could move in over the weekend. We spent the weekend in a mad scramble moving almost all of our belongings into our two storage units, and only found out today (Monday, hurray) that we had been approved. Morgan quite literally just got off the phone with Monica, who told us that there were electrical problems in the apartment that needed to be repaired. We talked her into giving us our key, but she said we could sign our lease after the repairs were done. Our friends assure us that this is a good move on both our parts, but I am skeptical; I'm waiting for them to say the repairs are too big, that we don't have a lease protecting our right to be there, and that we have to leave.
Joy. Expect the worst, hope for the best, my motto goes on.
24 April 2007
The Baby Walks At Midnight
For the past several months, we have been struggling to persuade our 18-month-old son to go to sleep at a decent hour. Our doctor told us this would be a difficult task, given the fact that we are living out of the common area of our apartment, and I am a night owl by nature. This week, our child has resorted to vampirism.
An average day starts for the sproglet and I when we awaken, sometimes shortly before noon but usually after, face our day with groggy grumbling shared between us, and go about our daily business. This for me consists of working on the web projects that are intended to bolster the family's income, while fending off the child, whose daily entertainment is, quite simply, "finding new ways to give daddy gray hairs".
This is followed by an afternoon nap, which I regulate heavily and he resists regulation of; if he does not sleep enough, he is cranky for the entire night. If he sleeps too much, he spends the rest of the night zooming around the house like a Japanese economy car on a shot of nitrous oxide, driven by an over-caffeinated and socially repressed businessman. Now, mind you, his elective is always the latter, and he is very good at persuading me to allow this to happen. When he naps, it is more like he enters into a catatonic state from which no sound, act of violence, or bodily jostling can awake him. Even the lure of an unattended computer keyboard is not enough to rouse him from his "standby" period.
As a result, we usually spend the rest of the evening experiencing The Child Who Wouldn't Quit Running. This is also accompanied by a light dose of The Child Who Pulls Things Until They Fall Down. On a good night, he falls asleep at midnight. On a bad night...
This has been a week of bad nights. The baby sleeps until a whopping 11 p.m., and awakens to discover that the whole night is ahead of him, and darnit, he wants to paint the town red. Or crayon the living room red; they've gotta start somewhere. So he stays up, even with all the lights out and one of us in a dead sleep, zooming around in the pitch dark, using his baby-vision to see obstacles that may in fact be fatal to incautious mommies and daddies.
The final result is this: he does not go to sleep until the sun is on the verge of poking its head above the horizon. Only then does he crawl onto the bed he shares with mommy, curls up, and goes to sleep like the delightful little angel (haha, sometimes my jokes make me laugh too) that he is.
An average day starts for the sproglet and I when we awaken, sometimes shortly before noon but usually after, face our day with groggy grumbling shared between us, and go about our daily business. This for me consists of working on the web projects that are intended to bolster the family's income, while fending off the child, whose daily entertainment is, quite simply, "finding new ways to give daddy gray hairs".
This is followed by an afternoon nap, which I regulate heavily and he resists regulation of; if he does not sleep enough, he is cranky for the entire night. If he sleeps too much, he spends the rest of the night zooming around the house like a Japanese economy car on a shot of nitrous oxide, driven by an over-caffeinated and socially repressed businessman. Now, mind you, his elective is always the latter, and he is very good at persuading me to allow this to happen. When he naps, it is more like he enters into a catatonic state from which no sound, act of violence, or bodily jostling can awake him. Even the lure of an unattended computer keyboard is not enough to rouse him from his "standby" period.
As a result, we usually spend the rest of the evening experiencing The Child Who Wouldn't Quit Running. This is also accompanied by a light dose of The Child Who Pulls Things Until They Fall Down. On a good night, he falls asleep at midnight. On a bad night...
This has been a week of bad nights. The baby sleeps until a whopping 11 p.m., and awakens to discover that the whole night is ahead of him, and darnit, he wants to paint the town red. Or crayon the living room red; they've gotta start somewhere. So he stays up, even with all the lights out and one of us in a dead sleep, zooming around in the pitch dark, using his baby-vision to see obstacles that may in fact be fatal to incautious mommies and daddies.
The final result is this: he does not go to sleep until the sun is on the verge of poking its head above the horizon. Only then does he crawl onto the bed he shares with mommy, curls up, and goes to sleep like the delightful little angel (haha, sometimes my jokes make me laugh too) that he is.
16 April 2007
A Smattering of Misfortunes
Conducting the first order of business, there is a Noreaster coming into our area, and this morning we were treated to our first evidence of its approach; half of the master bedroom is flooded. What boxes and belongings remained in that bedroom were redistributed into other parts of the apartment to protect them from water damage, and we managed to avert disaster, temporarily. We're holding out for both bedrooms to flood, forcing us to evacuate all of our last belongings, but we are torn: do we hope for the flood to cause extensive damages that will cost our complex more to repair, or do we hope for a peaceful and quiet rain shower?
I for one am not averse to a bit more inconvenience, in exchange for sweet, sweet retribution.
There was some good news this past week; we have not been disapproved outright for an apartment at a different complex, which is to say we're not sure if we've been approved, but they at least haven't called and laughed in our faces at our pathetic attempt to find a home. We spent the whole day Friday hounding them for the results on our background checks, and just before they closed their office they told us that everything checked out, and to come in the following week to "fill out paperwork".
"Great!" we thought, "that must mean our lease!" No, apparently not. Now that we have applied and not been refused, we'll be...applying again, as far as we understand it. So, reiterating my previous statement, we have not been refused, but it doesn't specifically seem that we have been accepted, either.
This is where the process hits another hitch: we were told we'd be able to move in before the end of the month, but now they are telling us we wouldn't be able to move in until the beginning of next month. Curious...this means that we will be expected to leave this apartment a day before we can get into the new one. While I'm sure the process will allow us to move in a few days sooner (we hope), it still makes things a bit tight. Will we have to find a place to move all of our things in the interim? We do not know.
I for one am not averse to a bit more inconvenience, in exchange for sweet, sweet retribution.
There was some good news this past week; we have not been disapproved outright for an apartment at a different complex, which is to say we're not sure if we've been approved, but they at least haven't called and laughed in our faces at our pathetic attempt to find a home. We spent the whole day Friday hounding them for the results on our background checks, and just before they closed their office they told us that everything checked out, and to come in the following week to "fill out paperwork".
"Great!" we thought, "that must mean our lease!" No, apparently not. Now that we have applied and not been refused, we'll be...applying again, as far as we understand it. So, reiterating my previous statement, we have not been refused, but it doesn't specifically seem that we have been accepted, either.
This is where the process hits another hitch: we were told we'd be able to move in before the end of the month, but now they are telling us we wouldn't be able to move in until the beginning of next month. Curious...this means that we will be expected to leave this apartment a day before we can get into the new one. While I'm sure the process will allow us to move in a few days sooner (we hope), it still makes things a bit tight. Will we have to find a place to move all of our things in the interim? We do not know.
09 April 2007
"Justice is Not Found in a Courtroom"
When you think about eviction, you think about buck-toothed yokels or uneducated ghetto dwellers, or perhaps clowns pouring, distressed and unkempt, out of a small car. Here's a funny story about our eviction from our apartment. Names have been kept the same to expose both the innocent and not-so-innocent.
My fiancee, one-year-old son and I live in a two-bedroom apartment in Claymont, Delaware, at a complex named East Pointe Apartments. A month after we moved into the apartment, in June, we began having problems with water leakage. The entire floor from the outer wall to a couple feet out from that wall in the baby's room became a small lake every time it rained. We tried to be positive about it:
"Look honey, the nest of spiders living in the baby's closet drowned."
"And he looks so cute in his new galoshes!"
Over the next month, our bedroom also began to suffer; stains began to appear in the section of wall that represented the corner of the building, and those stains then bubbled out as the dry wall began to rot and grow mold. We beseeched the complex to fix the problem, because we feared for the health of our young son; we have family who has experienced problems with their health because of mold. They tore out the damaged wall, even dug up the earth around our foundation and put tar on as a sealant, but didn't fully repair the wall they'd torn out, and refused to respond to our complaints that damage was appearing in other locations.
As days, weeks, and ultimately months went by, nothing happened. We resorted to sleeping in the living room, for fear of tiny beasties floating around in the air of the bedroom, breeding and creating ecosystems, complex democracies, and - we imagine - their own little despotic slumlords. Finally, we were forced to take the law into our own hands. This is not to say that we donned our crime-fighting outfits (of which you know nothing about, if you value your life); we called Code Enforcement.
A nice man named Victor Morgan appeared at our door several days later, on one October morning, and strolled through our house to observe our complaints. We apologized profusely for the mess (we are not organized people at the best of times, and make no excuses, but without the use of half of our apartment we were at unrivaled levels of sloppiness), which he waved off in a friendly manner, and even played with our son a little bit. To us, in our depressed and anxious, defeated state, Victor was our first bastion of hope.
He looked at the place and he tsked several times to himself, and when he left he had a laundry list of citations against the complex, and his promise that he would testify on our behalf in court.
This was when I made my first big mistake: I wrote a letter to the complex, requesting that the citations be immediately remedied, and threatening legal action if there was no response in a timely manner. I probably shouldn't have included that leather glove with the letter, either. And the kiss of death upon hand delivery may also have been overboard.
Their immediate response was harsh. The so-called acting community manager, a woman named Sandy Masters, came to the apartment and walked through partway, then told us that our mess was unacceptable and refused to even look at the rest of the place - let alone the master bedroom and the torn out wall.
What followed over the next month was a number of letters. First, that we were being evicted because of the messiness in the apartment. Second, that we were being evicted because they didn't have suitable accommodations to relocate us to. Finally, the claim was filed due to non-payment of rent; that's right, they claimed that we hadn't paid our rent one month, and were evicting us for it. I like to imagine that Sandy Masters was sitting in an office walled with windows at the top of a tower made entirely of obsidian as she did this, and cackling as she strangled a puppy for each letter she signed. Again, this is largely the product of my imagination.
Several months went by where nothing happened, and we made our second mistake: we didn't order our bank statements, or copies of the fronts and backs of our checks. When the court date rolled around last week, we didn't have the information we needed to prove that we were current on our rent; we had every impression we were being evicted for the reasons in the letters we had received. Who could evict us for messiness and not having another place to put us, and after our complaint to boot? We were confident. We had a pro bono lawyer, Jane Evans, who was confident as well. There would be no losing this case, and our counter-suit would put our kid through college.
It was not until we held a pow wow with our lawyer outside the courtroom, and reviewed the statements my fiancee printed from her online banking webpage, that we discovered our third, and biggest mistake: every rent check we'd written since the eviction notice was sent was written out to the wrong complex, cashed by our complex, and then denied in their accounting ledgers. Did we have the backs of the checks to prove it with their stamps? No.
The case was disastrous. Sandy Masters sat at the witness stand and told every lie that her high-paid lawyer prompted her to tell, while we told nothing but the truth that destroyed us, and even our own lawyer was sighing and shaking her head by the end. The ruling by the judge was in the favor of the apartment complex, and the only comfort Jane Evans offered my fiancee as she cried in the empty courtroom afterwards was this frighteningly true statement: "justice is not found in a courtroom."
My fiancee, one-year-old son and I live in a two-bedroom apartment in Claymont, Delaware, at a complex named East Pointe Apartments. A month after we moved into the apartment, in June, we began having problems with water leakage. The entire floor from the outer wall to a couple feet out from that wall in the baby's room became a small lake every time it rained. We tried to be positive about it:
"Look honey, the nest of spiders living in the baby's closet drowned."
"And he looks so cute in his new galoshes!"
Over the next month, our bedroom also began to suffer; stains began to appear in the section of wall that represented the corner of the building, and those stains then bubbled out as the dry wall began to rot and grow mold. We beseeched the complex to fix the problem, because we feared for the health of our young son; we have family who has experienced problems with their health because of mold. They tore out the damaged wall, even dug up the earth around our foundation and put tar on as a sealant, but didn't fully repair the wall they'd torn out, and refused to respond to our complaints that damage was appearing in other locations.
As days, weeks, and ultimately months went by, nothing happened. We resorted to sleeping in the living room, for fear of tiny beasties floating around in the air of the bedroom, breeding and creating ecosystems, complex democracies, and - we imagine - their own little despotic slumlords. Finally, we were forced to take the law into our own hands. This is not to say that we donned our crime-fighting outfits (of which you know nothing about, if you value your life); we called Code Enforcement.
A nice man named Victor Morgan appeared at our door several days later, on one October morning, and strolled through our house to observe our complaints. We apologized profusely for the mess (we are not organized people at the best of times, and make no excuses, but without the use of half of our apartment we were at unrivaled levels of sloppiness), which he waved off in a friendly manner, and even played with our son a little bit. To us, in our depressed and anxious, defeated state, Victor was our first bastion of hope.
He looked at the place and he tsked several times to himself, and when he left he had a laundry list of citations against the complex, and his promise that he would testify on our behalf in court.
This was when I made my first big mistake: I wrote a letter to the complex, requesting that the citations be immediately remedied, and threatening legal action if there was no response in a timely manner. I probably shouldn't have included that leather glove with the letter, either. And the kiss of death upon hand delivery may also have been overboard.
Their immediate response was harsh. The so-called acting community manager, a woman named Sandy Masters, came to the apartment and walked through partway, then told us that our mess was unacceptable and refused to even look at the rest of the place - let alone the master bedroom and the torn out wall.
What followed over the next month was a number of letters. First, that we were being evicted because of the messiness in the apartment. Second, that we were being evicted because they didn't have suitable accommodations to relocate us to. Finally, the claim was filed due to non-payment of rent; that's right, they claimed that we hadn't paid our rent one month, and were evicting us for it. I like to imagine that Sandy Masters was sitting in an office walled with windows at the top of a tower made entirely of obsidian as she did this, and cackling as she strangled a puppy for each letter she signed. Again, this is largely the product of my imagination.
Several months went by where nothing happened, and we made our second mistake: we didn't order our bank statements, or copies of the fronts and backs of our checks. When the court date rolled around last week, we didn't have the information we needed to prove that we were current on our rent; we had every impression we were being evicted for the reasons in the letters we had received. Who could evict us for messiness and not having another place to put us, and after our complaint to boot? We were confident. We had a pro bono lawyer, Jane Evans, who was confident as well. There would be no losing this case, and our counter-suit would put our kid through college.
It was not until we held a pow wow with our lawyer outside the courtroom, and reviewed the statements my fiancee printed from her online banking webpage, that we discovered our third, and biggest mistake: every rent check we'd written since the eviction notice was sent was written out to the wrong complex, cashed by our complex, and then denied in their accounting ledgers. Did we have the backs of the checks to prove it with their stamps? No.
The case was disastrous. Sandy Masters sat at the witness stand and told every lie that her high-paid lawyer prompted her to tell, while we told nothing but the truth that destroyed us, and even our own lawyer was sighing and shaking her head by the end. The ruling by the judge was in the favor of the apartment complex, and the only comfort Jane Evans offered my fiancee as she cried in the empty courtroom afterwards was this frighteningly true statement: "justice is not found in a courtroom."
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