Well, it’s been a crazy week, just a bit.
Lillith has been sick, I mean like severly sick for more than 48 hours now. She started on Sunday morning with puking, and then a fever started at bedtime. The fever lessened a little bit by last night, and she’s starting to perk up, but now she’s puked again. My poor baby.
And then last week, Direct Energy disconnected our service. I officially hate Direct Energy. Here’s the whole story: When we moved here last June we chose direct energy because they could turn on the power in three days (as opposed to a week for TXU) and promised us a $100 visa gift card, which we were supposed to get with our first bill. After six weeks, there was no bill, two, three four months, nothing. We started calling them. We had no account number, since we had never recieved a single piece of paper from them. The first three months we called them we were told nothing, that we didn’t owe anything, our account was fine, and current. Finally, in November, when we called they revealed that they had a computer error that put all their new customers on “multi-month billing.” We were re-assured that a bill would come soon, although they couldn’t tell us when, or how much it would be. We were assured that their error would not cause problems for us, and we’d have as much time to pay the bill as it took them to send it to us. At the beginning of December, they informed us that we could go online and make “pre-emptive” payments to lessen the amount of the total bill. (Sure after SIX MONTHS you tell us that!) We tried to, but we still had no account number, so we couldn’t even log in. THE WEEK BEFORE CHRISTMAS we finally get our bill: $519.05 due JAN 2nd! The amount of the bill it’sef wasn’t that bad, not as much as I was expecting. But here it was the week before Christmas, and they wanted the whole thing by January 2nd. After christmas we called about our bill. They told us to figure out what kind of payment plan we could make and call back after the new year to set it up. I called back and offered $30 a week, I was told that was fine. Two days later we start getting calls from the COLLECTIONS department, to set up a payment plan. I informed them that I had already called to set one up, and they told me that they had nothing on record for a payment plan for our account, so I set up a new one. They then called EVERDAY for a WEEK saying the same thing: there was no payment plan on record and they were calling to set one up for me. Finally they stopped calling, although at this point I had set up a half-dozen different payment plans. So the day comes to make our first payment on the plan, and I must have been confused about which day it was, because I didn’t pay it until two days later. We have kept all of our current bills current, always paid on the day we recieved them. But I make the payment to our previous balance TWO DAYS late and they send us a disconnection notice. Nothing else happened. they continued to send our other bills as usual, no note on them about how the total balance was due. ONE MONTH after the disconnection notice, Encore somes out and shuts off the power.
Are you as irked as I am? They take SIX MONTHS to send us our first bill, yet we are penalized for being two days late on a payment THAT NEVER WOULD HAVE BEEN LATE HAD THEY NOT SCREWED UP IN THE FIRST PLACE! I’ve gone to a place in town for help paying the bill, but their rule is they can only help with the most recent three months worth of bill. Unfortunately, we’re responsible people who keep our bills currrent and OUR PAST THREE MONTHS OF BILL HAVE ALL BEEN PAID ON TIME! Therefore we’re not eligible for help. In addidtion, Direct Energy refuses to send them seperate bills for our first six months of service, so they can’t even attempt to help us by adjusting our payments backwards. Pretty shitty, eh? Especially since we were told we’d have as much time to pay as it took them to send it to us, yet here we are three months later (NOT SIX!) scrambling to pay the whole thing at once. And, might I add, that by two months after recipt of the first bill, our total balance was less than $300. We’re actually AHEAD on our payments! BTW: We never recieved our $100 gift card promised for signing up…
Ok, so first, the’s the beautiful cabinets I found for the play room. I found them for $5, for BOTH! The picture doesn’t really do them justice, they are so nice! They hold all of our toys so much better then the shelf we were using before. That shelf is now kept on top of the cabinets and holds our books. Speaking of which, our collection was suddenly greatly expanded thanks to a gift from the parents of a high-school friend of mine. Thank you Mr. and Mrs. Young! We love our new books!
Replacing the hardware: $5. Those are $80+ when you buy them new! Now the kids each have their own beds!
A top-loading VCR: $2.50, and it WORKS just fine! Not even any scratches on the front, like someone just put it by their TV and never used it. Very heavy, not made out of plastic like the stuff you buy nowadays. (Yes, that’s Return of the Jedi sitting on top of it. /duck. What can I say? It’s like Nerd Porn.) Please ignore my half-dismantled VHD/DVD player on top. It’s broken and I tried (unsucessfully) to fix it before I bought this one.
I also found this nifty chair for $1, and a little baby bed for the kids’ dolls for fifty cents! We also went to a church garage sale where a grocery-bag of clothes was $1, and there I hit the motherlode of wool sweaters. I’ve since made two diaper covers and one pair of longies from them, and still have lots left over. I guess I’ll probably get six pair of longies and maybe ten short covers before I run out of wool. My more recent obsession with wool and other fiber arts is juicy, fiber-loving fodder for another post entirely. I’ll probably write that one when I get the 4 oz alpaca and 1 oz bamboo that I’ve ordered in the mail.
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The pink shirred sundress is finished, and here is Lilli, less-than-pleased about modeling it for the benefit of the camera.
My first attempts at scultping, shirring, and fabric that will become a shirt, another dress and Mei Tei.
I know I had more I intended to blog about, but I can’t think of anything just now. Here is a sneak peek of the dress project:
