An Awful Day to End an Awful Month

I have a love/hate relationship with September. The kids head back to school, which I love, and the kids head back to school, which I hate. In the love column, I have a quiet house and time to work without interruptions. In the hate column, there are Back to School nights, band meetings, stacks of new year school forms, homework help, after practice pick-ups, and the general hassle of reestablishing a daily routine.

This year has added Driver's Ed and College-planning meetings, physical therapy, and multiple doctor appointments to my already hectic September. And what's a blog for if not to whine about an annoying day to a bunch of lurking strangers. ;-) So, what went wrong today....
1. Spent about three hours on the phone with insurance companies and doctor's offices trying to sort out some claims problems that apparently should never have been problems in the first place.

Of course this involved many trips through automated phone trees with me repeating, "member", "claims", and reading off my ID number multiple times in my best clear as a robot voice, only to be sent to the wrong places. At one point, I desperately tried saying, "representative", to which Ms. Phonebot replied, "Okay, goodbye" and disconnected the call.

Not that it was any better when I reached an actual representative. I think I set a new personal record by being transferred five times in the same phone call. (and I wasn't even talking to Verizon!)

After nearly an entire morning of phone calls, I'm not sure that I made any difference whatsoever. But the claims are supposedly being resubmitted (though apparently nothing has changed that would either explain why they failed before or explain why they go through this time, if they do go through).

I was given a reference number for the conversation so that I can prove I called before when I next call in about the same issue. Hmmm. Is that supposed to be reassuring?

2. Received the budgetary proposal from a landscaping company that would be the equivalent of paying two years of my son's tuition (at a state school). Hmmm, landscaping or college?

To be fair, the estimate is for quite a bit of hardscaping as well (flagstone walk, replacing porch columns, etc.) but the total is two to three times as much as I expected. I had prepared myself for the estimate to come in high and knew we'd have to scale back from my dream plan, but--

I don't even have the words for this estimate. So very, very, very much more than I expected. I'm sure the work would be outstanding and I love the ideas that we talked about at the initial meeting, but I just can't see any way to afford even a stripped down version if this is the estimated cost! :-(

3. Was five minutes late to my two o'clock physical therapy appointment only to find out that my appointment had been at one-thirty. Doh. I don't know what happened there. I had two o'clock stuck in my brain for some reason, but it was wrong, wrong, wrong.

Luckily my physical therapist (who is awesome!) did not have a two o'clock patient and was willing to take my appointment then. She also listened to me complain about my horrid morning and told me she read a tip in a magazine once that said swearing at Ms. Phonebot will supposedly cause a real life person to pick up and save you from the automated phone tree.

She couldn't vouch for whether it actually works, but it is something I will certainly try - with great delight - when I use my reference number to call back about this same insurance claim!