It all started when some guys at work told Steve that he’s eligible for a discount through his employer.  He kept telling me to do that… ha.  I kept saying “YOU need to find out how,” and he finally did.  Just take a paycheck stub into one of the stores, he was told.  So last Sunday we went in there together but it was just as I predicted…

The account we had was the same one Steve first got in early 1999.  Somewhere along the line, I believe when we added my phone, so around 10 years ago, someone with AT&T screwed up and the account changed over to have my name on it, Steve’s nowhere to be found.  It was never a problem though, so I never said anything about it.  But, of course, because it was his paycheck stub and his discount and my account… no dice.  So the guy in there is telling us we can change the name on the account… for $18 a line.  Let’s see, $18 a line times 5 lines… oh, yeah, $90.  Not happening.

That’s just stupid.  $18 to change the name on an account, PER LINE?  Not even just a per account fee, but one per line!  I don’t usually act this way but I got kinda loud, I stated that I was NOT paying $90 to change a name on the account, it’s asinine.  Everyone was looking at me, heh.  We ended up leaving, the guy wrote his number on a card and told us to call if we got the account changed over.

The next day we called with the plan to ask them to please waive the fee – after all, look back in your records, it’s your fault the name’s not correct anyway.  Steve takes the phone after I’ve authorized him to speak (see: asinine) and then the woman tells him oh, yeah it is $18 a line but if you do it on the internet, it’s free.  Say, what??  Couldn’t have told us that in the first place?  (But again we’re back to why is it free online but not free in the store or on the phone??)

I started the process right away and was told that we were waiting on a credit check for Steve, check back later.  So I did.  Same thing.  Again on Tuesday.  Again on Wednesday.  Finally, on Thursday, when we were both present, I called in.  Something wasn’t happening like it was supposed to online, so back to the phone we go.  The guy we got on the phone said that he’d waive the $18 per line because we at least tried to do it online.  (He was really nice about it so rather than saying it, I only thought “heck yeah, you will.”)   It took for.ev.er.

Finally we were finished with all five lines and he’s telling me how we’re going to get two bills this month, both pro-rated, and that all our plans and features have transferred over.  This was also good because online it was going to raise my internet costs by another $10 a month, though I don’t know why.  I figured I’d complete it then go into the account later and put it back, or call them… again.

Also stupid: I lost the insurance on my phone by doing this.  You can only add insurance within like the first 45 days of getting a phone and apparently you can’t transfer it, so I didn’t get to take it with me and I don’t get to re-add it.

Half stupid: all lines now have an 11 month contract on them.  Steve is not going to like this one when I finally get around to telling him.  On three lines, having an 11 months on them actually shortens the contract but on the other 2, Steve’s and his dad’s, they now have a contract where they didn’t have one before.  Steve’s has been out of contract for years upon years now and his Dad’s a few years as well.  Neither of them want theirs under contract, they want to be able to cancel at any time if they want.  The real sad part about this is they’re forced back into contract without the benefit of getting a new phone.  As for mine, it takes 2 months off my contract and I think it takes a year off of Sarah’s, maybe about 9 months off my mother-in-law’s phone.  So I’ll be able to get a new piece of crap in October rather than December now.

Not finished yet, though, of course not.  Early this morning, I got an email from AT&T stating that Sarah’s line was about to go over her text message limit… um… what??  We’re supposed to have unlimited family messaging and even if we didn’t have unlimited, we only had this new account for 2 days.  Over limit!?  After a lot of trouble getting the online account going again I was able to get in and see that we were going to have all these overages of 20 cents a message and 50 cents for a multimedia message.  Of course, I flipped out, but I couldn’t call, it was about 5 am.  Instead I added family messaging and went back to sleep for a while like usual.

Getting home later I called up AT&T and asked them to back date the family messaging plan.  Unfortunately I apparently screwed that up because supposedly they can only back date it when it’s first added, however, the woman I talked to said she will put a note to refund the overages.

Just… really?  Unfortunately, this IS worth my time, Steve’s supposed to get a 19% discount.  When you’re spending $200 a month on cell phones… that’s a lot.  However, we don’t have the discount yet!  Of course.  I called the number the guy wrote on the card for me, turns out it’s his personal cell phone and he’s not working today.  What an idiot.  So he says to go in at any time and tell someone else that HE said it’s ok and started, just to send it through, or wait until he works on Monday.  It’s gonna have to be tomorrow, on Sunday, because… duh duh duhhhhnnn… now my name’s not on the account OR the check stub so is someone else going to work with ME on this?  Doubtful.  This is just ridiculous.  I don’t see why both our names can’t be on this account, but whatever.  Oh, I also failed to mention that this guy told us the discount could take months to start applying… what the heck!?  I swear, if it wasn’t such a good discount…

Sheesh, I can’t wait for this to be over.

Since she first started with solid food, aka not baby food puree, Kayleigh has been extremely picky. At first, we thought it was a texture thing, but now I wonder if it’s not just pure stubbornness and habit.

We had an occupational therapist come see her. One thing she said was, “I’m bad with feeding issues.” Then she corrected herself to say she’s not bad, just that it’s not what she is best at. Whatever. She had no idea really. She gave me an idea of putting something like peanut butter or sour cream on something that K does like and will eat, but that really doesn’t do any good. K found very quickly that she could bite off and spit out the offending piece, then eat the rest of the item. Other than that, the OT didn’t really tell me anything and then said she would get us a speech therapist.

I think the speech therapist came in expecting to see a child with chewing, swallowing, or choking issues. But that’s not the case, K is an old pro at eating. She just refuses to. The speech therapist couldn’t tell me anything either. She had some nonsense about letting K’s hands be dirty with food but I don’t think that’s done anything. She seemed to be more concerned with the fact that K isn’t talking in words yet. Her report said that it was “very concerning” and then noted, “mom is not concerned.” No, I wasn’t concerned about that, she babbles plenty and makes plenty of noises and she will talk when she’s ready. Not to mention, DOCTORS are telling me not to worry until she’s older than two or certainly at age three. So no NEED to worry now. That was offensive and while I won’t turn away speech therapy, I think she needs more work with eating than talking (and I don’t think I want that therapist at all).

So what does she eat? She eats some Gerber and Parent’s Choice items such as puffs (little cereal-like finger foods with many flavors), crunchies (similar to cheesy poofs but healthier and softer), freeze dried yogurt bits, freeze dried bananas, and things like most types of crackers but those chicken flavored ones, Goldfish and Whales, Cheerios and maybe Chex. That’s pretty much it in the way of feeding herself and what she will voluntarily take in. I do make sure she gets the right nutrition by way of purees still so she gets chicken and other meats from that, vegetables, fruits, etc.

Here’s the thing, it’s not just a refusal to try certain things or anything new, it’s that she automatically THROWS whatever she doesn’t want. This is one reason I think it’s not really a texture issue, I will give her something that’s similar to or seems to fit the criteria of what she likes, the only thing is that it’s new, and she will still immediately and automatically throw it. It took me forever to get her to try the freeze dried yogurt and now she loves them. For instance, today I gave her a Gerber cookie. It feels like a cracker, looks similar to a cracker and even comes out of packaging that looks just like the Gerber freeze dried yogurt (oh yes, be ye not deceived, she even watches the packaging), yet she didn’t even give it a try – just threw it.

At my cousin’s wedding shower last weekend, she was saying, “Oh can I give her some cake? How about some icing. This is sweet, she will like this.” My end of the conversation was going something like, “she won’t eat it, she’ll just throw it. Good luck, if you can get her to take a bite from you, I’m all for it.” Just like I predicted, she refused it all and pushed my cousin’s hand away and then got mad when she was offered anything more. If I want her to eat from a spoon (she takes most of her purees in a feeder where I don’t even think she tastes them because she’ll actually eat things like chicken that way but not on a spoon if she doesn’t like it), I literally have to hold her hands down and force her to take that first bite. When she realizes it’s bananas or something, she’s all for it, but she’s still quite difficult for every bite. It’s like refusal is such a habit that she can’t turn it off.

Here’s an example of the packaging. When K is in her high chair, she watches everything I do, very intently. She was already eating those Stauffer’s Whales which are similar to Pepperidge Farm Goldfish Crackers. E loooooved the Whales when he was little, too, and we’ve gotten them because they are cheaper. But I had the bright idea of trying the colored Goldfish as an encouragement that just because it changes color doesn’t mean you won’t like it. I am to understand that all the colors taste the same. So I bought a big carton and I gave her some. She looked at them on her tray, looked at the carton, looked at her tray, the carton again, then threw them off her tray. She didn’t even try them. I had to go somewhere that night so I put some in this little container I keep in her diaper bag for taking snacks with us. I told Steve that while I was gone, try to give them to her again, but only give them out of that container. He did and she tried them right away and now eats them just fine, even seeing what container they come from. However, this does not work all the time – it didn’t work with the cookie today.

Speaking of the cookie… I tried several methods to get her to try it but she just kept throwing it. She got angry with me and I put it on the kitchen table just out of her reach. This also made her very angry because all she wanted to do was throw it. But she ignored it there for a little while. I left the room for a minute and when I heard a noise, I peeked around the corner and could see that she’d broken her high chair again and had the tray in her right hand and was banging it on the table which is to her right. So I headed in there to get her out before she could fall and when I entered the room I saw that she had the cookie in her other hand (guess that’s how she broke the tray off again, E broke it the first time and I had “fixed” it) and she was sort of tasting it without biting it. As soon as she saw me? She threw it. So maybe the issue is all me, I don’t know. I don’t think this is the first time she’s started to try something then thrown it when she’s seen me.

Do I even need to mention how I have to sweep the floor 50 times a day? Even the dog gets sick of Cheerios after a while.

The last two nights, and now tonight, have been absolutely torture to get this child to sleep. I feel bad letting her cry at all, probably because it hasn’t really been an issue in the past, but I don’t know what to do with this kid! She’s really been throwing tantrums lately, too. She’s started throwing her arms straight up to try and get away from someone who’s holding her and a few minutes ago when I wouldn’t let her go, she turned around and clawed once at my face.

People would tell me that after having E and then everything I went through with K that I deserved a calm, quiet child… yeah, right! She’s just like E is, already! She’s 16 months (13 adjusted) and going on 30. :P

So we set up a new account and started taking donations on it only to find out that we are unable to add his bank information for withdrawal or anything else. The reason? It’s already attached to the previous PayPal account. So back we go with trying to log into the old account and remove that bank account, but nope, it’s locked, can’t even log in and now the message reads: “This account has been permanently locked with a $0.00 USD balance. All information associated with this account has been blocked from the PayPal system and cannot be registered with another account.” (Thank goodness there’s no money stuck in there!)

Finally we get an email response back that helps and we’re told to email compliance@paypal.com and state in some “official” jargon that we authorize removal of bank account with the last four digits of xxxx to be removed from that account and our reasons why. That was what we were told to do and that was it. So when I was at his house the other day, I sent the email for him from his account.

The response we got back was less than helpful. Now we’re told that we have to submit a bank statement to them! I mean, really, is it PayPal’s business what’s on his bank account? I’m sure they’re using it as a way to verify that he owns the account but, really, the email was sent from his account that is associated with the PayPal account and had all of his information in it and applied to an account that one can see is not even used. So that should be enough. But to make things even more wonderful, they want us to either upload the bank statement into the account or fax it in with a specific cover letter that can be downloaded from within your account. See where this is going? We can’t get into the account!

It is so frustrating. In part, because this is just plain ridiculous and in part because they should be up front about the hoops we’re going to have to jump through to get this resolved. Stop adding new requirements whenever you want to and just tell us what is going to have to happen.

So now he has money in his new account that he can’t withdrawal and he can’t even use to pay for an Ebay auction because you still have to add bank information. Pretty ridiculous. I’m about ready to give up and I’m wondering what other payment gateways we can use to take some donations and start fresh. I’m sure I can get his money out of there even if I have to open a temporary bank account to do it. I’m hesitant to try to remove my business account from my PayPal and add it to another one but maybe that would work. Unfortunately, none of the ways I can get the money out of there are going to look good – it’s going to look like money laundering or something (which is why he’s hesitant to do anything but get his bank account removed from the old account and to the new one). And I’m also left wondering what might happen with my accounts – not because of this situation spilling over or something but because PayPal seems to wield way too much power over people.

Ugh!!

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It just seems that one thing after another is staring me in the face and I’m absolutely swamped. I have about a billion websites I’m supposed to be working on, several photo shoots that need to be processed and sent to the proper people, a couple of books I’m supposed to be making, lots of crochet projects… then there’s the every day stuff.

Well, one thing at a time. I’m only even sitting here at 2 am because I’m waiting for a very large batch of photos to upload. I finally got through all the photos my friend and I shot at my brother-in-law’s wedding 2 weeks ago. I did not give myself enough time to get through this, on the cards we gave out that told people when and where they could find photos. Next time I’ll remember to give myself more time! On the other hand, I had no idea that we were going to shoot 1900 pictures, either… We got a lot of good stuff though and I’m also going to upload some to Facebook, but that’s going to have to wait until tomorrow… er… later today.

In fact, I’m such a busy idiot that I double booked us this coming week for doctor’s appointments! K currently has an appointment in one hospital for a kidney ultrasound then consultation with the doctor at the same time she has an appointment in another hospital (30-60 min apart depending on traffic) for a follow up with the lung doctor and then the pediatric ophthalmologist, E is seeing the ophthalmologist, too! The lung and eye stuff was set first, back in December, which would be apparently why I didn’t have it in mind when I said “yes” to the other appointment which was set in March. So first thing Monday morning I get to change the kidney appointments, I think it will be easier to move those than the others. Ugh I’m just frustrated with myself.