I haven’t been able to keep a file open for the last few days - haven’t written as things happen just to update the day. The days have been so fraught with emotion, I couldn’t bring myself to go back and mull it over each day. But here I am, keeping up with things, and I’m going to try to sum up what the last three days have been like here. Have you all been watching “Wipeout,” the new TV show? It’s based on a Japanese TV program, and the whole family loves watching it. But honestly, I feel like my week has been that show - one big obstacle trying to knock me off into the drink. So let’s go back to Wednesday.
7/16
It didn’t occur to me until later that this was the one-year anniversary of when I broke my ankle. Apparently July 16 is really not my day. So it started out well enough - I was waiting for Kieran to finish getting ready for her play date when I got an email from Children’s Place that they were starting their Monster Sale, when you get 50% off the clearance price. I had a 15% coupon as well, so this would be a pretty good deal. However, I’m a member of their perks program, but for some reason, you don’t earn any points when you make online purchases which really irritates me. Anyway, after searching for awhile and not finding the sizes I needed, I decided I’d try to run down to the nearest Children’s Place while Kieran was at her friend’s house, and Ailish was still at school. I had a pretty narrow window, just a few hours, but I figured I could easily make it there and back. I was disappointed in the store when I got there - most of the things I was looking for were completely gone. I did find a couple of things, $14 worth, and paid for it using my debit card. Then I decided the next mall wasn’t too far from there, and I knew that they had a bigger store, so I was hoping they’d have more selection. The selection wasn’t tremendously better, but they did have a few more things. So, my total came to $24. Swipe my ATM. Declined. WHA? Brad was just paid the day before, and even though I was phobic to knowing our balance, I knew there had to be a mistake. Okay, run it through again. Declined. Could we try it as a Mastercard, I asked? Sure, but it will only be declined again. ACK! So I use a credit card and rush out of there. Now my need to get back to the girls is mixed with dread about the state of our bank account. I am trying to make it through the valley streets and their notoriously ill-timed red lights - I swear to God, they have timed them so you have to stop at every single one - all the while with a boulder growing in the pit of my stomach and I’m chanting a mantra to myself - it’s a mistake, it’s a mistake, it’s all going to work out and you’ll have a good laugh with Sandy over this later. Do. Not. Panic. I consider my options. Should I try a Wal-Mart self service checkout ATM and see if it works there? At least then if it’s declined, I won’t face embarrassment. I kept telling myself it was just Children’s Place’s fault, I mean, I had *just* used it an hour before that! Finally, with time running out before Ailish would be back from school, I decide to head straight for the bank. I had a couple of checks to deposit in the account, so I figured I’d use the ATM and face...the dreaded...balance receipt. Remember, usually I crumple these in a ball and run as quickly as I can from them! Okay, so I put my card in, punch my PIN in, and all of a sudden the whole screen turns red. YOUR CARD HAS BEEN RETAINED. PLEASE SEE BANK AGENT. Oh. My. God. A million thoughts run through my head, none of them good.
Now shaking, I open the door to the bank and thankfully there is no line. I mean, can you imagine if there were? I would have been vibrating, hopping up and down, pulling my hair out, possibly all at once. Certainly would have been entertaining, but thankfully I was the only customer in the store. So I explain the situation. The teller has to call over to the desk of the person sitting directly behind me - someone please explain that? They are literally 10 feet away from each other, and she has to call her? There is no one else there! But okay, whatever. Desk person comes over because she has the key and two people have to be in the ATM room together. They get my poor little card out and give it to another desk person behind the counter and she calls someone to find out the deal. While she’s on hold, I ask the teller, “I have money, right? I mean, it’s not that, right? We’re not overdrawn?” She says no, we have money, it’s not that. I very rarely in my life feel nauseated unless I’ve eaten something bad or contracted the flu, but seriously, I wanted to throw up. What seemed like an endless phone call (I’m sure it was only a few minutes) ended with the information that my card had been “hot carded” because of a transaction at Costco the day before. Hundreds of cards had been compromised at this Costco, and they had no choice but to pull my card. Okay, okay, breathe. This is not so bad. So we look over the transactions from the past few days. It appears that no fraudulent purchases have been made, but she asked if I made an ATM withdrawal of $500 the day before. I said no, my husband cashed a check of around $500 which was a reimbursement check, but that was it. She said she wasn’t sure if it just showed up wrong. I knew he was in a meeting, and it was nearly time to get Ailish, so I said I’d call him and find out more. I left there, feeling better but not much. I grabbed Ailish and while we were walking back to the house, Brad called. I asked him about the ATM, he said absolutely he didn’t use the ATM. So when we got back to the house, there was finally a message from the bank’s fraud department. I called them back, and we looked at the ATM transactions. Not only was there a $500 transaction from yesterday, there was a $500 transaction from the day before, and a $20 and a $480 transaction from the day before that. Let me just say here, it is extremely rare that either Brad or I use the ATM to withdraw money. I use it to deposit checks, and occasionally when I do that I’ll get $40 back, but that’s it. I’m thinking after the second maximum withdrawal transaction, the bank might have gotten a clue, but that’s just me. So now I’m totally having a moment. I have to go back to the bank and file a fraud report. And now that it’s nearly 1:00, I need to get all this done in 30 minutes so I can pick Kieran up and get Ailish to her allergist appointment, which is over the hill.
Back to the bank we go. Ailish asked if we were poor - I said no, just we needed to get things fixed as quickly as possible. She sat and read while I filled out all the necessary forms with the teller. That took much longer than I thought it would, though the bank’s policy to only credit our account with the missing funds once they’ve finished their investigation in 45-90 days also takes much longer than I thought it would! And my mind was reeling - if Costco was not the culprit (because most of the transactions happened before I ever went to Costco), who was? I haven’t made purchases outside of our area in weeks except for that very morning. It had to be a grocery store or a store like Wal-Mart, Target or Sams Club. The whole thought is pretty frightening - somewhere along the way, a store that I trust compromised my information, and I have no way of figuring out who it was. I don’t use my PIN at the gas station, only at places like this.
But I was already running late to get Kieran, so I didn’t have time to ponder these things. I raced to get her, then to get over the hill for Ailish’s appointment. It’s bad enough I had a 20-minute window of being late before they’d cancel my appointment, but also we had to be back over the hill by 3:00 for Kieran’s swim, so this was going to be a stretch. Thankfully, we did not hit traffic, so we made it only 10 minutes late. And also thankfully, there was not a long wait, and not much to talk about except for refills (though I must note here that I really like her new allergist, and she does too, which is pretty important). We were out of there at 2:29. It was then that I realized I was starving, so I stopped at the world’s slowest McDonald’s (or so it seemed at the time) and by the time we made it back on the freeway, it was 2:45. ACK! Thankfully again, no traffic, and Kieran had put her suit on in the bathroom at the doctor’s office, so all we had to do was get her there, get her dress off and cap and goggles on. We made it by the skin of our teeth. Kieran had her session while I caught my breath. Once her session was over, we had to get back to the house because the WrapAround team was coming at 4:00. The meeting went well, but by the time it was over, I was ready for bed. My body had just given out. Thankfully Brad came home early, so he was able to take Ailish to Musical Theater and grab Popeye’s on the way home. I felt a little bit better after a helping of cajun gravy, but still, I was knocked out.
That would have been the end of the night, but then Kieran mentioned Ailish was cleaning madly in her room well after we’d sent her to take a shower (and now past bedtime). We went in there, and she tried to block the door, saying she had it under control. I forced my way in to discover that there was a huge stain deeply embedded in two of the tiles in her room. The advantage to these tiles is that they don’t show dirt, and even if you don’t sweep or mop in awhile, no one will be the wiser. But the disadvantage is that it is relatively fragile. It’s porous, and the finish on it is fragile, so you can only use water to clean it, and if you drop other liquids on it, you have to clean it up as quickly as possible. Somehow, Ailish had been hoarding fruits and baked goods and juices in her room, and something had gone rotten or spilled or something, and it had been there for quite some time. I scrubbed madly at the tiles, but not a single mark budged. By this point, I was crying, no...weeping...it was all just too much in one day. While Ailish had locked herself in the bathroom, Brad and Kieran and I set about to clean up her room. We removed bottles and bottles of juice she’d hoarded in her toy bins, in the empty space between her bed and her headboard, in the drawers of her bed. And then, underneath what we thought was just a pile of towels, we discovered her American Girl doll, or should I say, now the Bride of Chuckie doll. Brad and I both jumped, Kieran shrieked and began sobbing. The doll was covered in marker and paint, stitches and wounds all over her. It was one of the creepiest things I’d ever seen. Brad was trying to calm Kieran down, so he explained Ailish must have been playing doctor (although I’d seen many dolls with band-aids on them before, I’d never seen anything like this), and then he looked at me and mouthed “yeah, right,” but we didn’t realize Ailish was just around the corner. She appeared and I asked why would she do this? She said she was just playing doctor, like Daddy said. I have a hard time believing that, especially since the gown she’d fashioned for her out of paper had Baby Kate on it. While one could assume she was using her middle name, I also know that Ailish thinks Kieran is the embodiment of American Girl, and seeing that K sent chills up my neck. I took pictures of the doll - unfortunately I’ve learned to document, document, document, but thankfully after that, with some Windex, I was able to get most of the marks off of her. There are still shadows of stains, and Kieran never wants to look at her again, but at least it’s not quite as creepy as it was. So after an hour, we finally had everything cleaned up, and I told Ailish we had a new rule - she was not allowed in her room unless she was sleeping or getting dressed. I hate having to have this rule - we were trying to give her space, to give her the time to reintegrate into the family, but trying to give her that just gave her way more freedom to do inappropriate things. She knew the rule about not having food in her room. I knew she was playing cafe, but I thought it was just dishes and order forms - I had no idea food was involved. But now everything has to be done out in the open, where we can see her at all times. So finally, exhausted and still reeling from everything that happened that day and night, I climbed into bed only to find out that while Reilly was locked away in our room when the WrapAround team was here, she peed on the bed - my side of the bed, to be exact. That was it - I was a sobbing mess. Brad helped me get the sheets on the bed, and I melted into the bed. It was then that it occurred to me that if I could make it through a day like that, crying, yes, but still not having difficulty breathing or chest pain, that the next time I end up in the ER with those symptoms and a doctor asks me if I’m stressed, I very well may punch him :)
Thursday was another busy day. Ailish had her urology appt. at 8:30, so we got to sleep in an extra 30 minutes - woot! The appt. was basically a waste of time - I had never heard the advice I was given on how to help her solve the chronic UTI’s - he told me her body has never been trained to go to the bathroom at the right time, so we need to make her go every couple of hours - seriously? I don’t think this is the issue. I took Ailish back to school, then headed to the sheriff’s department to file a report. Even though the bank said it wasn’t necessary, I still thought it should be recorded in case other people reported it - maybe they could find a pattern. They needed information from the bank, so I had to shuttle back and forth between the bank and the sheriff’s department. I knew this was an exercise in futility because the sheriff’s department didn’t really care, but I just felt like I had to do something. I got home just in time again to get Ailish from the bus stop. Brad worked from home that day, so he was able to stay with Ailish while I took Kieran to our friend Ellen’s so she could go swimming in their pool. We hung out for a few hours, and then it was time to go so we could get a few presents for Brad’s birthday. He had originally asked for Rock Band, but then decided that he wanted to wait for Rock Band II, which doesn’t come out until September. Of course, he doesn’t tell me that until last week! So we are standing in front of the rows and rows of games in the video game store, and finally I just had to call and ask what he wanted. We finally settled on two games, and I bought him a reservation for Rock Band II so he’ll be one of the first to get it when it finally comes out. I figured it was easier to do that than search for 6 months, like I did with the Wii. After dinner, I took Kieran to go to Target with me and Sandy and Alysha. Then we had to get back to the house to get Ailish and take her to her Girl Scout overnight adventure. She was going to a lock-in at a local miniature golf-type amusement park. We dropped her off at 10:00 and had to pick her up at 6:45 the next morning. Yikes! She did have a good time, though, and that gave us plenty of time to pick up donuts for Daddy on the way home the next morning and stop at Wal-Mart for decorations and gift wrap.
We got home and I sent her to bed, hopefully to get enough energy to make it through Daddy’s birthday dinner. In the meantime, I attempted to get chores done, but it was slow going. Once Ailish woke up just three hours after she fell asleep, we made brownies for Daddy’s dessert, wrapped his presents and blew up balloons and tied streamers around the banisters. We had a rousing game of balloon volleyball with Duncan, which is truly hysterical. I tell you, Ailish gets her videocam and records Duncan playing volleyball and we’re going to win ourselves $10,000!
Then I realized that Kieran had swim, and we had to get out the door quickly. On our way into the locker room, Kieran’s coach told me she would be moving up to the next level for the next session - woot! But our happiness at that faded quickly when she discovered her swim cap and goggles were missing from her bag. She was so angry with herself, it was almost scary. I kept telling her we all make mistakes, it’s what we do with those mistakes that makes the difference, but she was just so angry, she was paralyzed. She wanted me to go home and get them, and I told her I could try but that she had to pull herself together and get out to the pool. Her coach overheard us at one point and asked what was wrong. I explained and she said they had tons of extra goggles and caps. We searched through the drawer and found suitable replacements, and once Kieran left the room, I thanked the coach and told her that Kieran was a perfectionist, and she was very serious about swimming. Her coach said, “Oh, I can definitely tell. She’s very focused, that’s a good thing.” It is a good thing, but I just would hate for her to fall apart if she doesn’t do as well as she hopes. I’m terrified of her first meet, honestly. I really hope no matter what happens that she takes it well. After her practice, it turned out her cap and goggles had just fallen out of the bag in the car, so I’m glad I didn’t try to run home, because it wouldn’t have occurred to me to look there first.
Daddy finally got home, and we had his present opening ceremony, carefully choreographed by Ailish, much to Kieran’s dismay. I kept trying to explain to her that it wasn’t worth it to fight about it, but she just kept getting so upset. He opened his presents (all video game related in some way, of course), blew out his numbered candles, a “4” and a “2,” you can guess the order :), and then we went to eat at our local favorite Mexican restaurant. Dinner was good, we were stuffed, and back home by 8:30. Daddy was too full for brownies, but the girls had no problem polishing off a piece or two! I was able to catch the last half of the Dodgers/Dbacks game where we actually won, WOOT! And we discovered that Joe Torre has the same birthday as Brad, which is just fate, isn’t it?
I fell asleep around midnight, but then woke up to what I thought was the sound of crying at 1:45. I checked both girls, but both were asleep. I went back to bed, but just a few minutes later Kieran appeared, crying. Is that spooky? She told me when she couldn’t sleep, she made a list of 13 things she’s thinking about that an 8-year-old shouldn’t be thinking about. That just broke my heart. Most of them involved Ailish, some were about me and Lupus, and yes, there was one about money, which I told them was not a concern - that $1500 was our tax incentive money, we didn’t have any plans for it yet, so it’s not hurting us to have it out, though I’d like it back ASAP, thankyouverymuch. But still, in their brains, I can see how anxious that would make them feel. I don’t know how to help - I tried to explain that she needs to find a way to get away from those feelings, find something to immerse herself in, whether that’s swimming or reading, whatever she can do in that moment. She says I’m too busy sometimes to be with her when she wants me, and that made me feel guilty, but there are times when I just can’t be there every second. She cried for nearly an hour, and there just didn’t seem to be any consolation that worked. I do have her talking to a therapist, but I think this is all just getting too big for her. It really hurts to see her in so much pain about all this.
No plans today, except maybe actually get a scrapbook page done. Tomorrow, we’ll use some more free movie tickets to see Wall-E, which we’re all looking forward to. It’s nice to have a weekend with very little in it. Next week is another busy one, and we have Ailish’s birthday in there, which, if history holds true, I’m not looking forward to. We’re trying to keep it as low-key as possible so that she doesn’t have too many expectations and can’t be really disappointed by it all. We’ll see how that works out.
So let's see, what have I learned this week? I am checking my bank balance *every* day. I will never use my ATM card again. That's a lesson for all of you - don't ever use your card as a debit card - if they capture the PIN they can go to any ATM and withdraw the maximum every day until it's discovered. If they just get your account number, there are more safety guards provided by Master Card and Visa. But for me, I am not using it anymore. I am totally freaked out by this. And speaking of freak out, I've learned that Ailish just can't be left alone. It's like her thought patterns are so outside of this planet, I can't even begin to wrap my head around them.
And I find it amazing that every time I say I’m committing to writing my book, life jumps up with some major crisis - maybe I shouldn’t say a word anymore, I’ll just sneak it in while life’s not looking :)
