Today was a day for the books, let me tell you. Where to start? I don’t even know. You have to read this whole entry to get it, so don’t just skim or read half way. Trust me.
This morning I woke up and the first thing on my mind was taxes. I had forgotten to send my tax papers to the accountant and therefore spent last night telling them over the phone what I had. So I spent most of the morning trying to get ahold of them to find out how much I had to send today by 5pm. At some point today I decided I’d really like to have another smart phone, maybe a Blackberry Storm like Jay has. Well, my iPhone has kind of been out of use because my mom wasn’t picking up her phone at all and last time I talked to her and asked her where it was, she said “Umm.. (long pause) .. it’s in the car.” Well today I tried to reach her and her voicemails were full. So I went online and saw her bill and picked the most commonly called number and I called it.
Her on again off again boyfriend answered and I asked him about her. He informed me that she had quit her job, moved out of her apartment and hocked her laptop and my iPhone. It was all I could do to keep from driving down there and checking every pawn shop. You just have no idea how much that iPhone means to me and how much I loved it. It was a Christmas gift from my husband. So he said he would call me if he heard from her and helped me locate my grandparents. I called my grandparents and apparently (not intentionally) freaked them out and they went searching for her. They put me in touch with my aunt that my mom likes a lot and she said she hadn’t heard from her in a while either. Basically I was at a dead-end road, looking at owing money for a cell phone I didn’t have.
I called my mother in law because she was the only person I knew that would talk to me calmly and sensibly. My brother just says ‘Oh well, that’s mom” and my husband dislikes her very much. So I talked to her for well over an hour about my options and what I should do. Basically in the end we decided my mom needed to hit rock bottom before she could get help or it would just continue the way it has been. At this point I felt like complete shit. But at the top of my mind was how much I owed in taxes (number still unknown) and the fact that someone else had my cell phone (which still had service). I’m not sure if I cared more about the phone or the potential of someone using my account.
So I called AT&T to cancel the line and explained the whole situation to the dude. I was hoping to avoid the $175 early termination fee. He spent about 45 minutes sighing and saying, “Just another second.” Finally he comes back and tells me he can get me a refurbished LG Vu with a new contract for free. He’ll send it 2 day shipping and wave those costs. The catch, if I don’t like the phone, I can cancel it within 30 days and my contract is over. Sounds like a good deal to me.
I was still a bit worried about the tax amount because it was now after 5pm and the post office is closed. There’s a penalty if you send after the 15th. About 20 minutes ago the accountant finally called and said, “Well don’t worry about that because you’re getting a refund.” Of course to that I said, “What?” Apparently the extra taxes we have taken out of Jay’s paycheck each month was enough to cover anything we owed, plus we got the child credits. Oh happy day! Can you believe the complete 180 I went through over the past 8 hours?
