Yay!!!

so we're broke...really really broke. Why am I happy? Because Steve has no money for cigarettes and he's quitting smoking. He said he had none at work last night. He pretty much came home and went to bed shortly there after. I guess hes trying to sleep through some of it. Anyways it's really hard to quit so i'd appreciate any prayers or positive energy anyone wants to send his way for strength.

Family

So many people take family for granted. Blood is thicker than water and all that. Well what if you are adopted? I reconnected with my birthparents when I was 18. My birthmother and I have kept up, but my relationship with my birthfather was more rocky. I lost touch with him and then reconnected when I had tana. When I went into wernersville we lost touch again. I spent 2 years searching the internet trying to find a trace of him... I found him when I read his obit in the paper. I went to the funeral and his wife almost threw me out because "I broke his heart" when I disappeared. However a brother I had never met wanted to keep in touch. He called me once a couple months after the funeral and planned a visit. He never came and I never heard from him again. Recently I saw he had added me on his Yahoo messenger. I don' t know whether it was an accident or not, but I copied the email and saved it in my contacts. I was hoping he was going to contact me but I never saw him online so I fearfully wrote him an email. Those of you who know me, know I don't deal with rejection well. So i just wrote a short note saying "hey i had another baby, hope i didn't offend somehow, how are you"

TODAY HE WROTE BACK!!! So 1. I know he is safe. With him being in the navy I was always kinda fearful something had happened to him. 2. He isn't mad at me Just his life kinda fell apart around that time and he's been focused on his job to deal with it.

So I wrote to him again and included some recent pics of the girls this time. Told him we'd still love for him to be in our lives if he'd like to be, but would understand if that was something he just couldn't handle right now. So anyways that is my excellent news for the day, a great way to start it off.

Medication and Dizziness

So I don't know how much of the dizziness is from meds and how much is from the inner ear issue. It's definitely gotten worse in the last week. Before it was intermittent and just annoying. now it is almost all the time with spells that are so bad I can't move. I've tried moving my meds around as to what time I take them and that hasn't seemed to make a difference. tonight i am going to stop the straterra and if im not feeling better in a few days i'll stop the abilify. Atleast till i get to see a specialist and get everything figured out. I think it will make it easier to pinpoint the problem.

My Birthday

So despite totally stressing myself out I did manage to have a nice bday yesterday. The house looked decent. No one showed until around 5 or 5:30 and then it seemed everyone was there all at once. It was really great to see everyone though and thank you to those that showed up. The kids had fun, first with some video games and then chasing after eachother with water guns. Yeah i got squirted a couple times. but it was great to see the kids having so much fun. Kit took off her clothes and ran around being just cute in general, and i got a chance to sit down and talk with everyone for awhile. I also managed to book two partyLite shows.

Happy Birthday to me

I am officially 29, or will be around 2 this afternoon. I don't know why I felt the need to stress myself out by deciding to throw myself a party. Last weekend no one had called yet to see what i was doing or ask me to lunch or anything. I don't really care about presents, but I do like to get to see my friends and family on my birthday. So I decided to throw a little drop in party. I guess I expected Steve to actually help clean the house considering my health as of late and the fact that it's MY BIRTHDAY. He spent all week looking a bmx bikes online till last night. Last night he piled everything in the living room on the couch and vaccuumed and dusted the big tv. I seriously have so much left to do and don't feel like i can get it done with the dizzy spells and all. Tana has actually been a pretty big help. She even mopped the kitchen last night. so anyways I guess i'm off to go clean and try to get ready for tonight.

Rough Day

So I got to walmart thinking i have a couple hundred dollars in my bank account. Get $112 worth of stuff and my card is declined. Call the bank and i only have $100 so am worried about where $100 went but take off enough stuff to be under $100. Card is declined again. Go to call back the bank and realized i had to dial 411 the first time cause the number on the back of the card is no good. Was already in a full blown panic attack and almost fainted at that point. Run the card again as debit it works. Not really sure how i got home. Look at the bank account and there's only $10 left. I don't see the electric coming out, don't see cable or phone. Have another full blown panic attack, and wake steve up crying that I don't know how i screwed things up so bad. He reminds me that i paid those bills out of MY account not the joint one....oops.

Then i get a call back from the dr tonight. I should not still be having dizzy spells so i have to see a specialist. Lets hope my insurance covers this and that it is something simple to fix.

Spinning the wheel again

So as most people probably know Steve asked me to give medication another try. I've been on abilify for about a week now, and i have to say I do think it's helping. Today I started strattera. That generally makes me pretty sick when i first start it. On top of that i have apparently an inner ear problem that is making me lightheaded and dizzy, and an inflammation in my chest wall that's causing me a good deal of pain. i woke up yesterday with my sinuses all gunked up too. So long and short of it is i'm not feeling so good. I just hope all this passes shortly. I hope this is the last round of medicine roulette i have to play.

PNC Bank...a cautionary tale.

MY BANK JUST STOLE $180 FROM ME!!!!!! First of all I was charged 5 fee for 4 supposed overdrafts. These 4 charges are being shown as having posted Thursday night but in fact they posted Friday night as I DID check with the bank and they were still pending Friday morning AFTER my husbands check was deposited. But here's how my statement reads currently....

charge ........... balance
starting.......... 40.35
giant 22.54 .............. 17.81
overdraft 36.00 ............. -18.19
blizzard 14.99 .......... -33.28
blizzard 14.99 ........... -48.17
redbox 4.24 ............ -52.41
redbox 2.12 ............... -54.53
paycheck +881.27 .............. 826.74
overdraft 36.00 .............. 790.74
overdraft 36.00 .............. 754.74
overdraft 36.00 ............ 718.74
overdraft 36.00.......... 682.74


Friday it looked like this

transaction.............. balance
starting.............. 40.35
giant 22.54........ 17.81
paycheck +881.27.............. 889.08

so anyways I call the bank to complain get as high up as i can in the management. Here is the explanation i'm given.

manager: well when you made the charge at giant the blizzard fees were pending so you had a pending overdraft

me: you charged me for a pending overdraft?

manager: yes that's our policy

me: well if you had already deducted the blizzard fees from my account why was I charged an overdraft from them.

manager; well we hadn't ACTUALLY deducted the money from your account it was just pending. but we had charged the overdraft fee which had overdrawn your account so when they posted they further overdrew your account and you were charged for them.

me: so you charged me for an imaginary overdraft which caused a real overdraft which you then charged me for twice

manager: PENDING overdraft and thats our policy

Me: ok when i go to the gas pump and put my card in it automatically puts a hold on $50 so you would consider that a pending transaction

manager: that is correct

me: so if i had $75 in my account and it holds $50 that leaves $25. If i then put $40 in my tank you would consider that an overdraft even though the $50 hold is refunded

manager: that is correct

me: That is ridiculous

manager; that's our policy


me: Well why are the charges shown as being posted thursday night when friday morning they were still pending. AFTER my husbands check was credited to the account

manager: well sometimes our computer is a little slow

me: it wasn't slow in crediting my husbands paycheck and all of these supposed "overdrafts" are now showing the same timestamp as my husbands money being deposited

manager: well we don't care in what order transactions actually come in. We do them all at the same time at midnight. Our policy is to start with withdrawals for the day beginning with the largest down to the smallest and THEN we make deposits

me: So basically you are purposely fucking me over and making sure you can charge me as many overdraft fees as possibly

manager: That's our policy



ARRRGGGHHHHHHH

Yes i asked them to please help me out as i have had this account 6 years. they said no. I threatened to change banks (which I will be doing after extensive research into each ones policies) They laughed...LAUGHED and said 'I'm sorry you feel that way"

I know you are all going to say 'well you should have been aware of their policies going in" When I opened this bank account 6 years ago it was Bank of Lancaster County. Their policy was deposits first and THEN withdrawals in the order they came in. The never ONCE charged me for a pending overdraft and in fact never charged me for overdrafts that were less than $5. Then a year ago they were bought out by PNC and everything changed.

Yes I know it is my responsibility to know how much money is in the account, but my husband and i do live very hand to mouth. Last year we supported a family of four on under 35K and that was a good year (but an additional person) So yeah overdrafts do happen from time to time. I am ok with paying for them when they do, but i feel like my bank REALLY took advantage or liberties even with the situation here.

So no i am not going to sit here just whining about it. i have already stopped the direct deposit on my disability checks and had those transferred to my personal account i usually use for paying bills and business (basically i opened another account with another bank that my husband doesn't have access to to pay bills to try and AVOID overdrafts since he is not responsible with the accounts and is usually the cause behind an overdraft) My husband will be stopping direct deposit of his paychecks tonight when he goes in. I am going to spend this afternoon making a worksheet of questions and for instances to fill out at each bank i visit and tomorrow making the rounds to decide which bank is best for us.

I just want to say....

getting into bed alone every night sucks. i'm not saying I want to cuddle all the time. In fact most of the time i don't. Maybe just a little until I go to sleep, but then give me my fucking space. There's just something about having someone there though. I can't really explain it. All I know is I just miss my husband so much. I know I should just be grateful he has a job right now, but i wish it didn't take him away from me at night.

What is up with Kit?

She's been really fussy the last couple weeks. I know she's been teething but it is getting ridiculous. So anyways, she was actually PRETTY good last night, in that she wasn't screaming continuously if I wasn't holder her. We get home and I'm changing her for bed and I notice her body feels really hot. Now this isn't that unusual plenty of times her torso will feel very warm to me but when I feel her forehead she's fine. Last night, however her forehead was feeling pretty hot too so I take her temperature.....102.9 Besides the fussiness she didn't seem sick...no pulling at the ears, no runny nose. It's 11pm and there isn't much I can do anyways besides pump her full of motrin and tylenol. This morning the fever is still down, but she was up multiple times last night. Don't know whether to take her to the doc or not. I wish she could tell me what's wrong.