WTF

Is going on?  Do I have poor written across my face?  Do I look poor?  Act poor? Smell poor? What the hell?  A previous post was written in response to a nasty comment that my "friend" had made about me.  The comment was in relation to our trip to Florida in May (and our previous trip in December).  This "friend" wondered "how the hell" we are affording to go to Florida as we are "piss poor". Not just poor, not po', but "piss poor".  Nice.  With "friends" like that who needs enemies.  

Since then I have simmered down and though the comment still stings I have moved on from hurt and anger to total lack of respect and a general "be civil for our husband's sakes".  I now have an acquaintance.  Works for me.  Now onto the newest reason for my anger.

This past weekend we started the process of buying a new vehicle.  I have 3 children and I drive a 2 door Cobalt.  Not exactly the best thing to be hauling around a family of 5 in.  We put a deposit on a new vehicle and have all the financial shit in place.  Good right?  I thought so until Tuesday morning.  I needed to call the finance company for our Cobalt to get a payout statement.

I called GMAC the finance company to get things going.  It was kind of a pain in the ass but I did manage to get the statement.  Later on in the day we received a call from the salesman who sold us our car, I will call him DumbAss. DumbAss was doing his "why are you getting rid of the car" phone call.  I plain out told him that 3 growing children do not fit well in the back seat of a teeny-tiny car (I might as well put wheels on Ryleigh's carseat).  He asked what we were buying to replace our car.  Well it is not a GM vehicle.  I explained that we have looked at our options with GM and they are just not good enough and do not have exactly what we want.

Long story short, DumbAss commented about how it looked like it would be too expensive for us to buy out of our lease.  Exsqueeze me?  Begga pardon?  When the fuck did you become my personal banker?  How the fuck do you know what it is or isn't too expensive for me?  What is it about me/my family lately that have all thinking that we are on the verge of ruling our own cardboard boxdom under a bridge, or living in a van....down by the river?

I know that the "friend" has heard me say, on more than one occasion, that I cannot afford to do or buy something.  I should have been more clear with her and said that I am choosing not to do or buy something because....well, I am going to Florida, buying a new van, renovating my house, clothing my children, you get the picture.  Now, after I am finished doing all of these things I may be poor.  When that is the case I guess I can always call DumbAss the car salesman for financial advice.

Airlines = Suck

The long weekend is now over and the parental invasion has come to an end. I thought that today I could get back to my normal life, you know.....having a zillion things to do and about 5 minutes to do them. First on the list was to check email that has not been checked all weekend. Not that I get important emails or anything but dammit, I need to know where I can get cheap Viagra!

I opened up my email to find that I had 15 new messages. I scrolled through the free crochet magazine offers, Dummies e-tips and exclusive Safeway email direct offers only half-assed paying attention when I noticed SOMETHING IN BOLD CAPS (it does catch the eye doesn't it?). It said noreply@expedia.ca. I always pay attention when Expedia comes a-emailin' as it usually relates to my trip to Florida. The one which I have been counting down the days for since I booked it. The one that is in May that is the only thing keeping me sane. The trip that I risked my Dear Nathan's job for. You know the one I am talking about.

This email was not the email that I wanted to see from Expedia. It was in relation to our flight home. It related to an airline, which at this very moment in time is not in my good graces. It turns out that our flight from Orlando to Denver, Denver to Calgary has been cancelled. Nice. Great. Wonderful. Way to fuck up my dream trip Frontier Airlines. What the hell? Who cancels a flight this far in advance?

I have 2 options as according to Ali of Expedia. I can receive a full refund for our flight or I can wait to see what Frontier is going to do about all us po' people they just screwed over. If I take the refund it is not just for the flight but for my whole vacation package. They cannot just try to find me another flight...noooooo....that would make sense. I am finding that making sense was not in any airline's business plan.

I have decided to place the last shred of faith in air travel that I have in Frontier Airlines. I am hoping that they will put us on another, comparable flight from Orlando, preferably with only 1 lay over within the same 24 hour period that I will be leaving sunny Florida. I am having nightmares (and I am not sleeping so it is really bad) that we will have to fly from Orlando to Japan with layovers in Australia and say....the North Pole before landing in Calgary sometime in July.

Please, please, please....all those in blogland, keep your fingers crossed that Frontier or someone, anyone, comes through for me and our trip. We need to have a flight home so that I don't have to cancel my trip all together. If you know of someone with a pterodactyl that I can strap a seat and some luggage to, I would be happy to receive the pterodactyl's asking price. If it is good enough for Fred and Wilma, it will do for me too. At this point I figure this is more likely to happen than the airline straightening shit out.

Pissed Off!

Ok...the pictures might come sometime before Christmas....I promise that. You are going to be so disappointed when they do finally show up....just so you know.

Today is February 13. I returned from Orlando on January 3. That was quite some time ago. When we flew back from Orlando we arrived at the Calgary International Airport, we were tired, cranky and we smelled like airplane. Once we proceeded through customs (boy those guys need a sense of humor!) we had the treat of going to the baggage claim area. Yippee!!!

As we were traveling as a herd we had to wait for an extra long time to claim the thousand bags that we had brought with us along with the extra ones that we needed to buy in Florida to bring home all our Florida crap. We waited....and waited....and waited.

After about half hour we had all of our bags. Bags, yes. Car seat, no. It was announced that United was still in the process of unloading the plane and that there would still be some baggage coming. So we waited some more. We watched the luggage go around and around on the belt. Nothing even remotely shaped like a car seat came down. At this point we have been waiting for some ungodly amount of time. My Mother is freaking out because the driver is waiting for us (we needed to rent a semi to take all of us and our crap home) and is now going to be charging overtime.

It was finally announced that there was no more luggage on the airplane and then they laughed and said "sorry suckers but yer bags are somewhere between Calgary and Chicago! Screw you!!" Well that is not exactly what they said but I am sure that is what they were thinking. I then proceeded to a counter where there were many angry people and 2 agents who were doing their best to make it to the end of their shift alive. I filled out my delayed baggage report and then inquired how I might be getting my baby home without a car seat.

One lady suggested that we might just let her ride home on our lap. Yeah, like that might have happened. Perhaps if I lived in the next terminal over but I don't....I live 3 hours north of the terminal I was spending way too much time in. Another agent advised us that they would provide us with a loaner car seat but they didn't have one. They had to go and look for one, perhaps borrow it from another airline. They had to borrow one. They found the biggest tank of a car seat known to man. I could ride in this thing and I am not a little woman.

We were advised that our car seat had not been transferred to our plane in Chicago and that it would be on the next flight to Calgary, which should be sometime the next day. From there it would be flown to Edmonton and delivered by courier to our house. Fine, I can live with that. As long as I don't have to drive to Chicago and pick the damn thing up myself. At this point, I am thinking that I should have made the trip to Chicago.

The last time that I spoke with United my car seat had made a trip from Calgary to Edmonton on an Air Canada flight. I am told that the flight arrived but that they have not yet located my car seat, read....we don't actually give a shit, we haven't even looked for it.

I have provided numerous people with a description of my car seat in an effort to make their searching easier. It is shaped like a car seat, big enough that a baby might fit in it. It is yellow. With flowers. A baby will fit in it. No, it does not have a zipper. No, it does not have wheels, then it might be called a car. No, it is not as big as a car, although a baby will fit in it.

They still have not found it. I did get a phone call from the airport here saying that they have my bag. That was on January 23. I have left more messages at the number they provided than I can count, each one getting a little bit more aggravated. No one has called back. I finally did speak with someone when I called some ladies private line. He asked me if my car seat was green. No. Was it a carry on? No. So your car seat is not green and you did not carry it on? No. Oh well, I am going to have to take a description of your car seat and go look for it.....fuck! FUCK! FUCK! FUCK!

I have purchased a new car seat. I can no longer stand to think of mine out there in airline limbo land. I will throw my old one away in the event that I ever see it again as I have no idea what has been done to it. I have been told that I need to mail a claim to Chicago (don't send shit to Chicago, it gets lost there) and then wait 45-60 days before my claim is processed. Then the actual claim decision process takes up to 2 week sbefore they decide if they fucked up enough to pay you back for the shit lost or if it was your own stupid fault for bringing a car seat with you.

By the time this all gets figured out Ryleigh will be driving her own car and will no longer be in need of a car seat, unless it is for her own child. I am thinking that the airline is keeping stuff and selling it on ebay. It has to be that. Or they plan to kidnap all the world's car seats in an effort to boost the amount of people who are required to fly because babies....they don't need car seats on airplanes.

Out of the woodwork

This is not the post with pics that I promised but I am sure that you will get over it. :)

Often times when I am on Facebook I wonder to myself why some people request to be friends with me. There are girls that I went to high school with that are on my friends list but we never really were friends in school, we just knew of each other. I just accept them because....well....I can pad my friends list just like the next person. It doesn't do me or them any harm as I figure that they were padding with the initial request anyway. Over the last few day I have "collected" a few more friends. Again, not anyone that I have been laying awake at night wondering about.

I logged on the other night while my Dear Nathan was watching hockey (groan...when does football start again?) and imagine my surprise to find yet another friendship request. Only this time I damn near peed my pants when I saw who it was. Now let me just start by saying that this person was never my friend. In fact, she hated me. It might have had something to do with the fact that she once asked me if I ever had the chance would I sleep with her boyfriend and I said "uhhh....yeah". She didn't much like that but I figure if you don't want to know the answer don't ask the question.

So who is this person? Well it is none other than my Dear Nathan's crazy ex-girlfriend. Why the hell would she want to be friends with me? This is not the first time that she has tried to contact me either. When we living in Airdrie she somehow found out that we were there and called my house and left a message. I don't even think that she left her phone number she just called as if to say "I know where you live". It really was creepy. I think that the last time that they even talked to each other was 13 or so years ago.

I clicked onto her profile only to find that she had limited it. I looked at her friends list and found that she has no one else that we went to high school with on her friends list which made me wonder even more why the hell she was bugging me. My Dear Nathan did not get a friendship request from her. Why me? I left the request open for a day or so and then just ignored her because I just don't have the time or energy to deal with some crazy ex-girlfriend's weird curiosity. It was the first time that I ever ignored a friendship request. I am no longer a friendship rejecting virgin and it feels great!

I promise....

there is more to come. It may not be all that exciting but it is coming. It will even have pictures! Patience my pretties!