It Could be Worse, Right?

We got a little ahead of ourselves and told you the fun flea story a bit out of order. Ryan had planned on doing some consulting for his former employer after we got a bit settled in to our new home in Boulder. So one of Ryan's first priorities was to set up the computer. He had most, if not all of the main parts for doing this, the problem came when he could not find the box that had all the wires and cables to connect the computers and accessories. We realized that somehow the box with all of these cables was overlooked and packed somewhere in our storage unit. Ryan had wanted to rearrange the storage unit anyway since the day the truck was unloaded into the unit, his helpers had very limited time. We began the process of removing a majority of the boxes and random items in the very full storage unit so that we could rearrange and get to items that would be needed sooner rather than later and bury the boxes that would likely not be used unless we purchase a home here in Colorado. Eventually we found the much needed box and realized why it never made it in to our home - it was not labeled! Oops.

Ryan soon went to work setting up the Mac and the PC. The Mac worked just fine, but the PC was not working. Guess which computer Ryan needed to use for work, yup the PC. He tried several things and even called around for tech support to see what could be done, but it seemed the PC died during our move. Hmm, now what? Ryan would be getting a laptop for school that would be a PC, but that would probably take weeks - we thought it would be better to have something sooner than that. Ryan found a PC on Craigslist for $50 and began setting that up. More problems of course, he had to re-program the enire computer to get it to work. Due to the interruption of the flea situation Ryan didn't get this new computer up and running until it was time for us to fly back to WI.

One of our most important tasks to do when we moved here was to find a midwife. We began interviewing midwives shortly after we arrived. A midwife that we interviewed lent us some birth videos (VHS) in case we were not able to find a birth education class on such a short time schedule. After dinner one night we decided to put in a birth video to learn more about home birth and the birth process. Well, wouldn't you know our VCR died too. We had two VCRs in WI and donated one to Salvation Army, of course we picked the wrong one to keep. In talking with a neighbor about what had happened they offered to lend us their VCR, so we did eventually have the opportunity to watch some of the birth videos.

In the previous posting we mentioned that Ryan's grandmother had passed away and now we needed to make plans to go back to WI. When Ryan was booking the bereavement flights he asked about travel during pregnancy and what sort of documentation, if any, was needed for Jamie to travel. Midwest Airline's policy is that prior to the ninth month of pregnancy nothing is needed, but once a woman enters her ninth month, she must have a letter from an OB (not a midwife) stating her due date, that she is fit to travel, the dates of travel and the cities she will be traveling to/from and this must be dated within 72 hours of the departure date and it needed to be in triplicate. Jamie contacted her former OB office in Milwaukee to see if they would write the letter for her since she would be flying on the first day of her ninth month (35 weeks), both her OB and midwife said that it was safe to travel prior to 36 weeks. Unfortunately the OB was not in and the nurses did not feel that they could approve this letter without the Doctors permission. Jamie would not be able to speak to her OB until Monday (it was Friday), but we were to fly out on Wednesday and this didn't give much time in case the doctor said no. Jamie began to worry and stress out about the possibility of not getting the letter from her OB and wondered what else she could do. Jamie called various contacts that she had made during her first two weeks in Boulder and eventually found someone who would be willing to write the letter if her OB was not willing to do so. The only problem was that to get the letter, Jamie would have to drive about three hours (round trip) to Ft. Collins in order to pick up the letter. Thankfully Jamie's OB approved the letter and it was faxed to the CU Family Housing office. Annoyingly, no one at the airport seemed to care whether or not she had the letter - at the airport Jamie showed it to the man at the check-in counter who didn't really seam to care, and no one collected a copy of the letter as was indicated online and per conversations with the airline. On the return flight Jamie didn't even mention it to anyone and no one asked her about the letter or whether she was authorized to fly during pregnancy. All that stressing for nothing.

On Wednesday, August 1st as we prepared to fly to WI, Ryan received a phone call from a realtor regarding our house. The realtor said that he would be preparing an offer for us and wanted the condition report. They made arrangements to meet at our house after we landed in Milwaukee for the realtor to present the offer that night. Ryan quickly went about hooking up our scanner, scanning a copy of the condition report and e-mailed it to the realtor. Ryan then called the realtor before we left for the airport to confirm receipt of the condition report. The realtor then told Ryan that he was too busy to meet that night, but would e-mail the offer by Monday. Every day while we were in WI Ryan eagerly checked his e-mail and waited for the offer to come through. Finally on Sunday after not hearing from the realtor or receiving any information Ryan contacted the realtor again. Apparently the family that had planned to put an offer in on our house decided to look at one more house and ended up putting an offer in on that house instead. The realtor didn't even take the time or courtesy to call and tell us. Very disappointing to us both, and all that added stress while attending Ryan's grandma's funeral.

Well, enough of the bad news. Next blog we promise to share some of the positive things of life...