Super Tuesday

(added Information in parenthesis by Jenn)

If you can't tell from the title, it took me a couple of days to finally have the time and energy to sit down and write this. Super Tuesday nothing. Super rough Tuesday times 6! Daniel Powter wasn't the only one having a Bad Day. And McCain got the republican nod for Illinois and not Romney (who has since dropped out), but I won't go there. Regardless, I know you've all had days like this, but I thought you might find it interesting all things considering.

Woke up to a pretty typical day. I got a phone call at about 9:00 am Event #1. The truck wouldn't start in the Wal-Mart parking lot. Jenn calls from inside Wal-Mart because she forgot her cell phone, so communication immediately became an issue. I called Gallo-Miller who had just finished our truck last week, thinking that something that they did caused a short. Dave Miller met me up there in the parking lot. I ended up just fiddling with the battery posts and she started up. Dave offered for me to come back to the shop and he tightened up the neg post connection, which was loose, and we haven't had an issue since. (let's not forget that I had the carseat in the truck with me and Mady was right in the middle of her nap when I called Mark. He woke her up and stuck her old infant carseat in the car in order to take her with him. When they got to Walmart, she was scrunched in the carseat, graham cracker in hand, but happy as a clam!)

Got back to the house and found out that a friend of ours from church had passed away from a brain tumor. The Lord was merciful in that he took him home quick. Jenn and I were both very saddened by the news. Event #2.

We got the mail and found out that we still owed $100 for some major dental work that we had done back in November, and were just now getting the bill. Event #3. Not a big deal, I thought. I will call and they will write off the bill considering the fact that when I paid for all of the dental work in November, they assured me that I paid in full. No such luck. They underestimated the insurance payment. Argh. Ok.

I got a call right after this from Enterprise Rental car (we had a 2008 Dodge Magnum for 29 days while our truck was being fixed). I knew that we had an $800 max for rental car insurance, but the night that I picked up the car, Enterprise assured me repeatedly that if we hit our max, they would work with the body shop and our insurance to get an extension, no worries, they would call us if there were any questions. Evidently, they didn't follow through on their plan. Event #4. Country insurance only paid $800, which we knew, and that we are now evidently responsible for the balance of $191. No biggie I thought, I will call Country and explain to them the situation and they will give us an extension and write-off the balance. Not so much. Country told me that it was ultimately my responsibility. Yes, I know this, but I explained what Enterprise told me the night I picked up the car. Country Insurance told me that they had no right to say that to me. How was I supposed to know this? I've never had a rental car except for my trips to Ohio for work, and that was for business, and only for one day. I called Enterprise back, asked if they would write it off, citing bad customer service. They said that I knew about the max. I told them that they were supposed to call me if I met my max and I didn't have an extension. They said that they tried to call County on 4 different days, and didn't know that I didn't have an extension until AFTER I returned the car. I offered to settle with them for half. They agreed, and I dished out a second $100 for the day.

And then it started to rain. Oh my goodness it rained. And it got warm, and all the 5 inches of snow that we had also melted...and ran right into our basement...Event #5. By about 5 that afternoon, we had copious amounts of watering seeping into our finished basement. I got out the shop vac and we ended up taking out from Tuesday afternoon to Wednesday night about 40 gallons of water out of our basement. It just simply wouldn't stop. We've been here 3 years and not had an episode like this. (For what it's worth, I went and bought a sump pump today and I'm going to install it after getting some good advice from our friends - our basmement's never had one before). I took some trim work off the walls so that the moisture would dry out behind all the wood work I put up after we bought the house. We are concerned with mold growing, which obviously would be hazardous with my CF. It's pretty dry now. We've had the fireplace running to dry it out and 2 fans and the dehumidifier running non stop. It's drying up, but our light gray carpet is getting discolored, and the musty smell is noticeable. At least the carpet doesn't have a pad, so I don't think the carpet is ruined. And it only soaked about 1/3 of the basement.

We went to bed exhausted after cleaning and vacuuming for hours on end (Jenn was a champ through it all!). We fell into bed and turned on our air purifier/noise maker to help drown out my snoring. And...it didn't turn on, the motor had burned up. Event #6. Jenn was much more upset than I was. She ended up sleeping on the couch. Evidently I really do snore, and she can't sleep, even with Daryl covering her ears. Daryl is her body pillow. I call him her body guard. Daryl comes between us during the night sometimes. I don't like Daryl. Down with Daryl. Woke up at 4 am to go down and clean the basement the next morning.

At least Wednesday was better. I took our air purifier to Electrolux where I bought it 6 years earlier and got a free replacement. (The funny thing was that the guy traded it out with thinking that we would go ahead and buy a new $75 filter for it. Nope. Mark traded it out and said no thank you to the offer for a filter and walked out the door. Little did that guy know - all we need it for is noise!)

The water has gone down, but it still needs shampooed, and I'm not convinced it's totally dry. I guess it could be worse...we could have a foot of water across our basement and it had ruined all of our stuff... I found out that we didn't have water back up damage insurance on our home owner's insurance. We do now...a $150,000 structure/personal property basement policy!