Impending Vacation

First off I will say that I haven’t forgotten to blog since New Years, I was simply adhering to a lesson that Mom taught me. If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all….so I didn’t. I was just particularly cranky at everyone and everything and although mildly entertaining at first, it would likely get boring very quickly. I spared you the grief.

And now onto bigger and brighter things….if we are lucky. Bear with me, this a really long post…

It seems that the vacation Gods have not really been all that keen on getting things rolling smoothly for us. The heater resistor block failed on my van so the fan only runs on high..can you imagine that for 18 hrs? And then Amy’s door stopped working, another minor inconvenience but when you are alone in minus–holy-hell- degree weather with three little ones to haul in and out of the van, that little inconvenience turns into a real pisser.  Then Amy and Nick both get really sick with what I think is a sinus cold… a couple of days pass and I finally take them to the doctor. Surprise! It’s pink-eye! HIGHLY contagious and extremely painful. The doc said that Nick has the worst case she has ever seen. Great, I feel like an ass for neglecting it thinking it was a cold. So now, Nick has an ear infection and pink-eye, Amy has pink-eye and a cold, the baby has an ear infection and a cold and I have pink-eye and a cold. So far Phil just has a cold. Do you know how much fun it is to give eye drops to two unwilling toddlers twice a day for 7 days? Ugh. Thankfully Nick takes the oral antibiotics without so much fighting.

Next, we paid Canada Post a small fortune to deliver the money order as payment for our rental condo in South Carolina. The person at the postal outlet told Phil that the payment would be in Michigan at the condo office in three business days. That meant it would be delivered Monday. Tuesday night no delivery so I started calling Canada Post. They told me that it was NOT three days, that would have cost $50 but it would be there in 5, so by Wed. Thursday am, still no delivery, I’m freaking out because we are supposed to be leaving Saturday on our trip. Phil called CP again, the agent tells him that it is stuck at Customs. They would have someone call us within 24 hrs. I didn’t like the lack of info so I called them back. The next agent says that they have no way of knowing where it is. Now i’m mad and can’t wait to talk to the agent who calls us. Well that night, the real estate people email and say that they got the letter, it has been damaged and opened. She wanted to verify the info for the money order because she is concerned that it has been switched and someone put in a fake. Lovely. She calls the 1-800 number on the money order for info, they won’t tell her anything on the phone so she goes to her bank. They are also suspicious. Now, where we stand is that she deposited the order and we will wait and see if it clears. 3-5 business days which eats into our rental time by ahh…let’s see…3-5 days! Thankfully the owners have still sent us the directions and lock box info for the condo, we will just have to wait until the draft clears for our ID cards and parking tag. Blah.

Today, one last checkup with the kids to see that things are getting better…baby is good, Nick still has pink-eye so keep up the drops and if needed continue past 7 days at our discretion, now, the Dr says AMY has an ear infection. Shit. Oh yeah did I mention that Nick was supposed to have a vaccination todaybut the pharmacist wouldn’t give it to us even though we had a prescription. He insisted on talking to Nick when he phoned. I tried to tell him that Nick is only 2.5 but apparently you don’t need to speak or understand english to hand out drugs. The doc gave us a new prescription to take to another pharmacy and now we go back Monday at 9am.

After the doctors, we headed an hr out of town to a friends garage to get the van issues taken care of. He was mad at a car he was working on so he ignored us for 45 mins while he worked on it. We finally got in, he fixed the door and 3.5 hrs later, we came home. The door worked once, now it is broken again. F*$K!!

I’m tired of my own complaining…I’m not even going to write about all of the other stuff. Needless to say, we aren’t leaving until Monday the 19th, that is the day we are supposed to arrive in Hilton Head…ugh.  I need to get some sleep, it’s 2 am and we have to leave for a funeral in Kingston at 8…

P.S. Phil came out at bedtime, his eye is red and oozing…he’s got the pink-eye now.