Mom Thoughts

Fall (and the start of school along with it) has come to mean something very different to me. As this post describes, it does hold some pleasant associations for me. But in the past couple of years, my attitude toward autumn has darkened a bit.

You see, I got the call that my mom was sick during the second week of September, two years ago. As a result, September reminds me of last minute flights to Florida, sitting by my mother’s bedside getting the news of her cancer, and being on the phone nonstop to various medical institutions, insurance companies, family members, etc.

October brings memories of bringing her home to California, going to visit her at my brother’s house every lunch hour and every day after work, staying with her on the weekends. This time of year, simple things like going to the grocery store bring me to tears. I’m reminded of my trips to the store during that time, frantically searching for anything my mother would eat. Looking for softer foods, things that used to be her favorites (like black licorice), nutrition drinks that would at least get some vitamins into her body. And I’m reminded of the futility of the endeavor when I’d bring them to her and she’d tell me, “I just can’t, honey. Nothing tastes good and it hurts to eat.”

Halloween is now lost on me. It’s now just known to me as, “that day that comes 4 days after the anniversary of Mom’s death.”

Other things that remind me of Mom in the fall:

1. Kahlua
Mom’s drink of choice as well as what I drank too much of at my brother’s house the night she died.

2. Nemo (as in Finding Nemo)
Trying to brighten up her hospital bed at my brother’s house, I bought a Nemo comforter and sheet set. I re-made that bed around her every day.

3. The season premiere of Grey’s Anatomy
This was the one hour I let myself have alone during my trip to Florida. It was the one hour out of the whole trip I tried to let myself forget the horrors of the lung cancer diagnosis. Now every season premiere of this show brings back that memory.

4. Foot Massagers
I bought one for Mom intending to give her a pedicure to make her feel better. She was never able to sit up long enough for me to do it.

5. Jeopardy/Wheel of Fortune
Mom loved these shows and it was one of the highlights of the day when we watched them together in the evening. Still can’t turn them on without thinking of her.

I’ll write some happy posts about Mom at one point. Probably in the spring, when other memories aren’t so overpowering.

WDW Status Update

Well, we found The Boy's money. Or rather, the credit card found the debited amount. In confusing parlance that could only come from a financial institution trying to cover its ass, we were told that the money came off of The Boy's credit card and was given to WDW for about a nanosecond. Then, it disappeared into the ether (thus, WDW did not receive the funds). But that's not the best part. Apparently, another cardholder with an account number similar to The Boy's was also debited for the WDW funds - however, the debit was not visible to that cardholder. Basically, the credit card company took this stranger's money in addition to taking The Boy's, but NOTHING wound up getting to WDW.

Because of the trace initiated by The Boy (which took a week), both The Boy's account and the stranger's account have been credited back the amounts they were debited. However, that doesn't help with the trip we were supposed to take in 2 weeks. Even though The Boy has his credit card money back now, it's too late to reinstate our trip. Our room with a view is gone, along with all of our dining reservations.

After much fiddling around with dates and costs, we've decided to postpone our trip until next September. For our trouble, we are going to extend the trip to a 10 day excursion and rent a convertible so we can get to places like Sea World and Discovery Cove. This will give us plenty of time to pay it off in advance so we don't run into this situation again. But I'm sure something else will come up to block this next trip. Perhaps I'll contract typhoid fever.

15 Years and 3 Tries (AKA: Walt Disney World Hates Me)

For 15 years I’ve been trying to get to Disney World. Disneyland I’ve done. Probably hundreds of times by now. Mostly because it’s practically in my backyard. WDW, however, has been a pipe dream. That elusive temptress that beckons to me from across vast expanses of the U.S. “Come visit us. We’re so big here. There’s so much to do. Don’t you want to come see us?”

Alas, it’s not to be. I’m now at “3 strikes and you’re out” and I don’t even like baseball. My saga has been long and ridiculous, and I’m at the point where I’m just giving up. It’s too much hope. Too many expectations. And this is coming from someone who for several years bought 2-3 WDW tour guide books a year and read every page cover to cover, studiously making notes about where I would go and what I would see when I finally got to “the World.”

Let me take you through the events that got me here:

Attempt #1
My honeymoon. 1993. My ex and I loved all things Disney, so we thought the perfect honeymoon would be to take “The Big Red Boat” (Disney’s cruise line before its current incarnation) and then spend a week at the parks afterward. Sounds perfect, right? Except that we were poor and paying for everything ourselves. We had one credit card that was maxed out. So my dear mother offered to put the trip on hers and let us pay her back over time. We all went to the travel agent (yes, they had those before the internet), plunked down Mom’s card and were confirmed. We thought.

About a month before the wedding, I got a call from the travel agent that the ship’s itinerary was changing. Instead of leaving Florida 2 days after our wedding, it was leaving the day before. Obviously, this wasn’t going to work. In the early days of the cruise line, they weren’t running cruises back to back. The next one wouldn’t be for another month after the wedding. Well, that didn’t seem like much of a honeymoon. So we canceled, lost a deposit and figured we’d go another time. Ended up in San Diego for the honeymoon instead.

Attempt #2
The ex’s graduation. 8 years later. The ex was finally graduating with his masters in architecture. We were moving to San Diego. I had given notice at my job. I had put a deposit on a rental house in San Diego and given notice on the house we were living in at the time. The ex had quit his job. We had paid for the trip and were going to leave 2 days after his graduation ceremony. No cruise this time, but 10 days at WDW. At the Grand Floridian. The trip I had dreamed of and planned for so many years. Plane tickets were bought, spending money was set aside, everything about the trip was fully paid. We were even going to go to Discovery Cove so I could swim with the dolphins. Then the bottom dropped out.

About a week before the graduation, I got a call at work from the ex. Turns out, he wasn’t graduating. Turns out he’d been admitted to the masters program on probation on the condition that he raise his gpa. He didn’t do that. In fact, his thesis was far from being up to par and they were not only not letting him graduate, but they were kicking him out of the university. He couldn’t take another year and make it up. He couldn’t go into another program. He was no longer welcome at this university that we had taken hefty loans out for. And I had no idea about any of this until a week before my entire life was supposed to change.

Needless to say, this was not news that was received well. In fact, it was the catalyst to the divorce. The ex left to go to San Diego on his own, I stayed and got my job back, and after a while we divorced. Making those calls to cancel that trip and pull everything back (the trip and all the moving related arrangements) just about killed me. My mom was kind enough to make the calls about canceling the graduation party arrangements and contacting the out of town guests that they would not need to make the trip (I felt awful about all the travel arrangements that had already been made). So, WDW attempt #2 was down the drain.

Attempt #3
My graduation. 2008. The Boy lovingly offered to take me to WDW this year if I could stay within a budget. It was going to be a kind of graduation present. So, back to the bookstore I went. I gathered information online, I pored over guide books and blogs. I found the perfect time to go, the perfect package and the perfect price. I had received WDW gift cards for graduation and my birthday, so I used that to put down the deposit with the agreement that The Boy would get me a gift card to make up for it, so he was paying for the whole trip.

Very long story very short, The Boy’s card does not want me to go to WDW. When it was time to pay the balance, he used the credit card. But I started getting worried. So I had him call Disney to confirm. Twice. Everything was fine. Until it wasn’t.

Turns out that even though the credit card issued a confirmation number for the WDW transaction and showed that the money had come off the card, WDW showed that they never received funds. Many calls later, turns out WDW didn’t get the funds, but the credit card has already pulled the money from The Boy’s account, and it’s in the ozone somewhere. So, while a trace is being done, the funds are not available for use by The Boy. Of course, in the middle of all this is the deadline for payment to WDW or the trip cancels. The Boy can’t use the credit card, because the available credit has already been pulled for the phantom payment that nobody can find. Having no other way to pay for it, we had to cancel our trip. We still haven’t found the money (the credit card company is still “tracing” it, and who knows how long that will take). So, no WDW.

I am now convinced that there is some Dharma-like force that is forever keeping me from my WDW dream. Trip has been booked 3 times. Trip has been paid for 3 times. Trip has been canceled 3 times. I’m convinced that if we had been planning to go anywhere else instead, everything would have been fine.

I just can’t take it anymore. I’m at the point where I’m going to accept that I’m persona non grata at WDW and stick with Disneyland. I’ve never had a problem going there. I’ll just stay where I belong.

Oh, and hopefully we’ll eventually find the missing credit card money. Probably just in time for retirement.