WHOA!

So, after much fuss, we finally have our flood insurance claim money IN HAND and READY TO DEPOSIT! That totally made my Thursday.

The process:

We had a very nice flood insurance adjuster make an appointment to check out the house/property.
He sent us paperwork that we had to notorize.
We take it to my work and have it notarized.
Due to the wedding/honeymoon/unreliable mail in Galveston rig-a-ma-roe (spelling?!) we gave it to Big Dog's mom for mailing.
She noticed (how we missed this I'll never know) the address was incorrect (two numbers in our street address were transposed!!!).

We had to have new forms overnighted to us.
We got the new forms notarized.
We mailed the notarized forms.
We waited...
Got a check....
It was made out to Big Dog, Beachski (that's me!!) AND our mortgage company. Who happens to be based in Michigan.
So I call the mortgage company (hey guys, i really want this money but the bank won't take it without your endorsement on the back).
I wait.
A few days later (and a few more calls) I actually talk to someone - she says I have to mail it to them, they'll take it, and issue us a NEW check for the same amount made out only to us.

SIGH (oh yeah, and it will take 10 days to process, plus mailing time)

Two days ago I told Big Dog that check better get here this week or I'm going on another angry phonecallingrampage! Thank goodness it arrived today and I can calm down... that is, until I start trying to figure out what's going on with our Windstorm Claim!!! At this point, it's not even worth it. We're going to put a new roof on in a year or so (this would have been needed with or without Ike), and we fixed our own fence for pocketchange already... the only worthwhile thing on our windstorm claim is $$$ for spoiled refrigerator goods and something like $50-100 per day we were displaced - as in, not allowed to return thanks to our *awesome* city leaders.

Seriously, can you imagine people that have serious damage and have to wait this long to start making repairs!?! Your Ike damage will by now have started to cause additional damage... which no insurance company will be willing to fix. Thank goodness the only thing we had to do immediately was replace our air conditioning compressor (and get me in a new car, which was a process that, in hindsight, was AMAZINGLY simple!!)

All this on top of a recent Galv. Daily News article http://galvestondailynews.com/story.lasso?ewcd=52e5ef5dcab31e65 that mentioned the actions of our *awesome* city leaders MAY have jeopardized our city's eligibility for the National Flood Program. GREAT - so our last resort for flood insurance could potentially be yanked. (This would be the worst case scenario, but it's pretty bad, none-the-less) Just the possibility freaks me out.

If we hadn't just bought this house 5 and 1/2 months ago I would SOOOOOO be trying to get out of here. I love our house, I love being this close to work, and I'm thankful that we were not still in the apartment complex we HAD been living in (they lost all their 1st floor units - where we were - and we would have lost everything)... but is it worth all of this!?

These things make me sad. I wish our first home experience could have been different. Better. Such is life!