Wednesday, May 30, 2012

Misery Loves Company

This has been one crappy week.  Everyone is miserable and taking it out on each other. 

Last Sunday, Stephen fell down the stairs while carrying the vacuum and he hurt his hand.  Badly.  I insisted that he go to urgent care but he refused and even got quite irate with me about it.  He said if he could move his fingers his hand was ok, just bruised.  He would not even take any Advil for the pain and swelling which then pissed me off because he was feeling badly and taking it out on us with his crappy attitude.

On Monday his hand was no better and I suggested that he call the doctor.  Nope.  On Tuesday - call the doctor.  Nope.  Tuesday night, however, he said he needed to go to urgent care because his hand had become too painful.  In the end, he held out until the morning and went to his doctor.  An x-ray showed a broken bone and he left with a brace and a referral to a hand surgeon.  He now has a funky brace on his hand that looks like a combination scrub brush handle and vice grip!  He has to wear it for 5 weeks but goes back in 2 weeks for another x-ray to see how it is healing.  Hopefully no surgery to fix it!

In the meantime, he refused pain meds (that's ok) but he also has not been taking even some Advil and he is in pain and is a miserable ....  I am so sick of it!  I laid down the law last night and told him that he HAD to take Advil every 8 hours because I was done dealing with his miserable attitude and he was making the whole family miserable.  He agreed that he'd do it (although I am pretty sure he did not take any this afternoon). 

Dex turns 12 tomorrow and his brain has become a teenage brain and therefore he has lost all sensibility.  We went for a "family walk" on the weekend and he chose to wear his big high-top shoes without the laces tied and scuffed his feet for the first 1/2 mile until I bent down and tied his shoes.  He forgot to turn in a permission form for a field trip and just about lost it when he realized he was past the due date on it.  Of course the teacher accepted it the next morning but he was a mess the whole night and barely slept.  Today he had basketball practice and ran off with his high-tops instead of his runners.  Just to note, the high-tops are not basketball high-tops but the skater dude high tops.  I had to drive over to the elementary school where they were practicing after Stephen called me and asked me to bring him proper shoes.

Dex also lost his cell phone yesterday.  He swore he had it on the bus on the way home from school but then it disappeared.  We spent almost an hour scouring the street and the yard for the phone.  He claims he walked around the whole house dialing his cell phone (which was on vibrate) but to no avail.  Tears, despair, angry, more tears and another sleepless night.  Then this afternoon, while moving the computer chair to get to the printer, I found his phone on the floor.   OMG!  What has happened to him?

I have been pushing Jax to be more proactive with finding other friends at school because this summer, his bff is going to be at camps or on vacation most of the summer and it will be a long lonely summer for Jax if he doesn't connect with others.  He has been hanging around with this one boy and a girl a few times.  Today, after walking home from school with them and hanging out for about an hour, he came home and told me that the girl's dad was in jail for stabbing someone and he'd be in jail for another couple of years.  Apparently her grandfather also stabbed someone but that person died so he was in jail for life!  Blink Blink Blink  Maybe I need to sign Jax up for some camps?

And Cars has become quite forgetful.  I have thought in the past that he might have ADD but when I asked his 1st grade teachers about it they said no.  It has presented itself more this year (claims he is always distracted by others when he cannot complete his work in class).  Whatever the issue, his grades are suffering a bit because of it.  He is still doing ok but just ok. 

Now I have thoroughly complained about my family.  I think the next post I will tell you something wonderful about all of them.

Wednesday, May 23, 2012

I just realized that my old blahg formatting is gone so my blahg roll and other info is gone too.  Wah!

Why I Hate Wells Fargo

When we sold our old house in 2007, we needed a bridge loan for 7 days to cover the days between the closing of this house and our old house. Through a mortgage broker, we arranged for a line of credit against the equity in our house and we got the line of credit through Wells Fargo.  The line of credit was to be closed when we closed on the house.  Well, the line of credit was opened up but never closed.  And, on top of that, they also opened a line of credit on our new house (we did not need or want).

We wanted to close these lines of credit since they were not needed but found out that there would be a $500 charge (EACH!) to close them if they were opened for less than two years.  Screw that!  And on top of that, there was a $75 annual fee on these lines of credit (again, each!).  So we decided to wait 2 years to close the line of credits and pay a total of $300. 

Meanwhile, we refinanced our new mortgage in '09 through the mortgage broker and fortunately our mortgage was sold to Bank of America instead of WF.  We paid to close the lines of credit at the same time (and lift the lien on this house).

Even though we closed the lines of credit, Wells Fargo still had a lien in our name against our old house and we found out when the new owner tried to sell it in the summer of 2011. Yes, they filed the lien on the house a week after the house was sold by us to the new owner!  So we no longer owned the house or had the line of credit but the lien was still in place, applied after we had sold the house.  As a result, we had to send a letter to WF, requesting that they close it immediately and then we had to pay some Wells Fargo some fees for faxing information to the title company and processing.  We were charged another $50 to be rid of this damn thing!

WTF - Wells Fargo kept costing us money!

Mortgage interest rates dropped again so we refinanced our mortgage in March of 2012.  Our first payment was due in April. The mortgage was sold part way through March and we found out late in March that Wells Fargo bought it (damn!).  By this time, it was getting close to April 1st so I mailed WF a check with our payment since we had not received an official mortgage statement from them. I then called and arranged for automatic payments of mortgage to come out starting in May.

Stephen was paying bills on Friday night and noticed that our May mortgage payment had not come out. I called Wells Fargo and they said that we two months behind in our payments! But they cashed our check in April (March 30th actually)! How could we be 2 months behind? It seems that WF had taken the April payment and applied it to the principle instead of applying it as a mortgage payment. Then, since there was no April payment on record, the automatic payment scheduled for May was automatically canceled.  Just like that! Oh, but WF did not inform us of this.  That would be too easy. 

So, on Saturday morning, I made the May payment over the telephone and they made arrangements to back out April's payment and reapply it as a mortgage payment. Then I again had to arrange for automatic withdrawals of our monthly mortgage payment.  Oh,  all of this would take up to five days to correct. Aargh!

I have felt sick about this for days even though it was their error. They told me "you are lucky it is a new loan because new loan missed payments do not get reported to the credit bureau for 90 days". Fuck! It was their fault for applying the April payment incorrectly!  I did get a cursory"sorry for the mistake" over the phone. 

I called once more today to ensure that all looked ok with it (it does).

Stephen and I are both educated people and Wells Fargo has completely hosed us over twice! I get so upset thinking of people who are not as educated who are getting royally screwed by companies like Wells Fargo over these kind of mistakes. Wells Fargo has not yet sent us any information that we were late on our mortgage payment although they told me over the telephone that these letters are generated automatically and had been mailed out.  And I am awaiting the confirmation letter that the June payment (and further payments).  Also, waiting to ensure that the June payment actually does come out.

So by refinancing to save ourselves a few thousand dollars a year in interest payments, we really just created a huge headache (and stomach ache!) for ourselves.  I hate Wells Fargo and hope that my mortgage gets sold to someone else.  Soon.

Editing this on June 7 to say that our mortgage did not come out automatically on the day we had set it up for, and had received a letter stating it would be taken out on that day and the same day every month thereafter.  The payment came out the FOLLOWING day.  Great.  So now we will have be on top of this every.single.month to ensure that the payment actually comes out.  This is so frustrating!

Saturday, May 12, 2012

We are enjoying our fourth weekend in a row of sunshine!  I feel so spoilt.  And this weekend it is HOT (well, hot for here).  Today it was in the high 70s and it will be again tomorrow and I think Monday too.  So lovely.

Dex had a basketball game today. Two minutes before the start of the game they only had 4 players and the other team had 10 and they looked all intimidating practicing while our kids stood around wondering where everyone else was.  The 5th player arrived just as the buzzer rang to start the game.  Then 5 minutes into the game, two more kids showed up so they at least were able to get some rotation and were not exhausted by the end of the game.  They played well and they won!  Hurray Blue Skulls!

Cars had a baseball game this afternoon and it was very warm sitting in the sun watching it.  His team played well although at Cars' 6th time up to bat his hit a line drive and one of his best friends caught it!  That kid's dad said it made up for the first inning when Cars his a ball right over his friend's head for a double.  ;)

I walked home from the game (Stephen walked there while I drove then he took the car home and I walked).  I am trying to make sure I get some exercise in before the 1/2 marathon next month.  Hopefully I will be more prepared than last year when I basically woke up one day and walked 13.1 miles.  My poor feet still haven't forgiven me.

Tuesday, May 08, 2012

This month is Skin Cancer Awareness Month. Check your skin. Wear your sunscreen.

Friday, May 04, 2012

Today's headline was "Adam 'MCA' Yauch of the Beastie Boys dies at 47" and my first thought was "Wow, 47 is not old".  It is so funny how our perception of age changes the older we get.  If I read that headline when I was in my 20s or 30s I would be thinking that he had had a good run, especially for someone in the music business.  However, now that *I* am 47, I think "Gone too young". 

R.I.P.