Life update

House: still broken. We have water damage from ice dams last winter. We replaced the roof, but still need to repoint the chimney (and foundation for a separate problem), replace the gutters, fascias, and soffits, and replace the enclosed front porch and skirting. It’s been incredibly hard to find people to talk about options and give quotes. I don’t know when we’ll ever get the big stuff fixed. We also have many small unrelated broken things that we have not gotten fixed, with more breaking each week than we can tackle.

House insurance: still broken. We contacted our insurance agent last winter, and filed the claim in August. Sent in a ton of info and asked a bunch of questions, spent hours dealing with an adjuster and a building estimator hired by the insurance company. We’ve received no money from the insurance company, no answers to any questions, and no assurance that we will ever receive anything. Tried to talk to 3 public adjusters about dealing with this on our behalf: one never replied, one is taking no new clients, and one sounded like such a horrible person that we just couldn’t see dealing with him. (Update to the update: Spent several days trying to hire a public adjuster who, it turned out, wanted us to do literally all of his work for him, which is not what we wanted. The insurance company is now offering us $17K on a $50K claim, and being incredibly rude and dishonest about it in the process.)

Cars: working. Still liking the new car.

Dog: vet couldn’t figure out what was causing the vomiting and frequent startling, so she’s ok.

Health: mostly endless appointments between the three of us, and a lot of experiences of doctors not paying attention or not answering questions. No hospitalizations so far this fall, which is a major improvement over last year. Michael’s knee recovered well from surgery last year.

Health insurance: still broken. Dozens of denied claims, endless errors and lies, way too much time spent trying to figure out how to correct the errors.

Lisa’s work: ok! This has been a bright spot, which is huge.

Michael’s work: not ok!

Temple board: unproductive, and too much disconnect from the rest of the board to feel like there’s much hope for improvement. (Update to the update: Turns out much of the board is disaffected or potentially mutinying. I feel less lonely in being dismissed and powerless.)

David: healthy, rowdy, not listening well. Lots of joy, lots of frustration, flipping back and forth repeatedly within minutes.

David’s preschool: suddenly a complete clusterfuck. He’s having a good time, but we need to do a new search for next year for reasons I can’t go into publicly. Have lost a ton of sleep over the situation, tried to offer advice and solutions that have been entirely dismissed, and can neither tolerate nor believe the callously destructive attitude of the people in charge of the situation. I could almost understand the choices they are making if they were gaining something by hurting everyone else, but they aren’t.

City government: difficult and painful.

Search for where to live: Difficult and slow. We cannot afford the places we like, we don’t like the places we can afford. For place, read both house and community.

Hobbies: What? We used to have those? Everything is endless crisis management. We do occasionally get an evening out, which is lovely. I like the aquarium and the science museum and other destinations for David, but I don’t get to do any of it at the pace I want. Travel has been impossible to plan. Hell, meals have been impossible to plan.

Friends: What? We used to have those? We see a few friends regularly, some friends rarely, and too many friends not at all. I find it hard to have conversations when talking about my life reminds me of what my life is actually like, when national news is so horrifying, and when David won’t actually let me have a conversation if he’s in the same building. I want to hear other people talk about their lives without making me talk about mine.

Stress levels: through the roof. Not coping.