Somebody stop the ride! I wanna get off!

It’s been a crazy couple of days for us. Something of an emotional rollercoaster…so I apologize that I’ve been absent, but I didn’t really have it in me to blog.

Sunday was tough for me. I had to work a long shift when I really could have used the spiritual uplift from being with family and going to church. I feel like I’m coming more to terms with what kind of changes we’ll be making in the near future as we revamp our budget—mostly I’ll be sacrificing some more of my time and convenience—but I know it’ll be worth it. (Plus, it’s good practice for when the baby arrives and by all accounts I will no longer ever have time of my own again, right?)

I was doing my best not to be depressed or cranky, but my very last patient of the day kind of rubbed me the wrong way—and I think I pulled a muscle trying to get her into the proper position for her x-ray. (She seriously just laid there like a dead weight and waited for me to try and heft her around. I hate it when they do that; especially when I’ve got a more limited range of motion at the moment.) So I was not at my best when I finally got home and I opted to try and un-kink my back instead of blogging. It didn’t work. We ended up sleeping on the couch—me for the support and Patrick because he didn’t like being in the bed alone.  

Monday was mostly great. I felt like I was riding an emotional high as I used my day off to get a bunch of deep cleaning done. I totally de-cluttered the front room and kitchen. Plus I moved and vacuumed underneath all the furniture and wiped out all the kitchen cabinets, etc. I felt unstoppable. I even remembered to take out the meat to thaw in the morning for dinner that night. (Of course, I also remembered that I didn’t have one of the ingredients we needed. But no biggie! We had some spare change on hand in the form of a gift card from family, and I planned on having Patrick run me to the store when he got back so that we could eat before 9 or 10 pm for once.)

We were at said store, still feeling pretty happy with our day, and Patrick was looking at our bank account on his phone (trying to plan out bills for payday this week) when he asked me when/why I had purchased a gift card for $57. I asked him what he was smoking—we’re using couch change and gift cards to buy groceries, why on earth would I spend money we don’t have on a random gift card for someone else?

So we both stopped and started looking through the pending charges in our checking account. There were a lot of them. And none that we recognized…It finally dawned on us that we had been robbed. Somehow, someone hacked our card information and starting Sunday night, purchased about $800 worth of crap online (that turned into just over $1,000 with all the overdraft fees they incurred) under our name.

We rushed to the bank and got there just before closing, but even though the teller and manager were very helpful, there’s nothing we can do until the charges actually clear. We cancelled our cards, and once the pending charges clear, we’ll go in to sign forgery affidavits that will dispute the false charges and refund the overdraft fees. And we will definitely be getting new banking info… But the upshot is, we’re hosed. Some free-loading scumbag cheat just stole our entire paycheck and is holding it hostage. We aren’t going to get any of that money back for another 15-20 days while we wait for all the paperwork to be processed.

I kept it together as best as I could while we were in public, but I totally lost it when we got home. We were already late on bills and now we’re going to be even later…we’re trying to call and get extensions on our scheduled payments, etc. but I feel like our prospects are very bleak right now.

My stiff upper lip is trembling and I feel like I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop…because experience has taught me that all bad things come in threes. I just can’t take any more surprises right now. 

**UPDATE**

It is now midday on Tuesday, and I feel like I've been on the phone for forever. Because we were so proactive about talking to the people at the bank, they've already started to work on things from their end--namely cutting off access to our accounts. (FYI, did you know that if you are proactive about stopping your cards and putting a hold on your pin number, that you can no longer access your account information online or on the automated phone system to see if certain transactions have cleared? Because I didn't. Those poor people at the bank must think I'm neurotic with how often I've been checking in with them. I must have gotten under their skin because the last time I called, one of the managers gave me back limited access with my pin so that I can monitor my account on my own now.)

But now I feel like I'm in the Twilight Zone, because I just pulled up our account online to verify some stuff before I start calling our creditors,etc. and the transactions were gone. Poof. Disappeared. Like they never even happened...My brain was stuck thinking, "What the what??" Everyone at the bank assured me that they wouldn't be able to do anything until all the pending transactions cleared, and now the only things I see pending or cleared are stuff that I clearly know we're responsible for... I feel like I'm in one of those freaky science fiction shows. "I swear officer! I saw a little green man standing right there just a second ago!" I remember seeing at least six pending transactions from different websites when we looked last night. And now they are no where to be found. 

I don't know whether to be grateful or not yet. On one hand, I am terribly afraid that I am somehow misreading the information and just not seeing the obvious. On the other, I really, really, really want to believe that this was all some kind of epic clerical error that has already been resolved and not some kind of identity theft situation. Please, keep your fingers crossed and pray hard for us that it's the latter. In the meantime, I'm going to call the bank. Again.