Travel Woes
Oh Girls...
Our trip has gotten off to a rocky start. I know I shouldn't be complaining because we are--afterall--on vacation, and I am grateful for that, but allow me to whine for a minute. Maybe it will make me feel better to get things off my chest.
So.
Ten days ago I was SO proud of myself for being SO organized and for thinking ahead SO far in advance and for being SO prepared for our long international trip by packing and shipping a large box of supplies to our hotel here in Israel. I shipped out things like Sam's life jacket/ swim goggles, sunscreen & other toiletries, overnight pull ups/wipes, medicine & first aid stuff, lots and lots of snacks and the kids' favorite goodies, our travel booster seat & backpack carrier (for all the places we can't take the stroller,) gifts for the cousins here, some books for the kids (and for me, I'm close to finishing my current read) and probably more that I'm forgetting. It ended up being a huge, heavy box for which we paid an *absurd* amount of money to send EXPRESS GLOBAL shipping from the USPS. It was supposed to be delivered in 1-3 days. Doing all this actually made the rest of our packing for the trip much easier since I didn't have to worry about all that stuff and we were able to travel fairly light for our actual trip all things considered.
I told myself more than once last week that we should log on and/or call the hotel to see if it ever arrived, but in the craziness of the last day of school and whatnot, we never got around to checking. You see where this is going right?
So we fly ten+ hours overnight (which went pretty smoothly, thank goodness) and arrived a bit haggard in Israel yesterday morning. And...no box. No record of box, nada. We log into USPS after getting settled and getting the wireless set up and there is NO record of the package after June 7th (the day after it was picked up from us.) Lovely. And it's Sunday, so of course the PO is closed. So we wait until working hours today to call USPS. They bump us to FedEx (the international shipping service that USPS uses.) FedEx says they can't help since they have no record of having ever received the package, so it's a PO issue. So we call the 800 # which is automated and frustrating, to no avail. Finally we called our local PO assuming they originally picked up our package and get a really nice woman who was willing to help, but honestly didn't have a clue either. She put me on hold on and off for 28 minutes! Now, mind you, I'm calling internationally....and the minutes are just rolling by along with dollar signs. At this point I'm unwilling to hang up for fear that I will never reach a live person again. FINALLY she returns and said that Fernando, her supervisor, is out to lunch and we need to call back. WTF &*^&$$^%$$. Ugh I was fuming. AND the entire rest of the family left to go out to dinner without me during the time so I missed that (although I honestly don't think I could have sat and enjoyed myself since I was in such a mood...) AND we now needed to find a store to buy diapers and other supplies because it's clear that our package--if it's ever even located--won't show up for many more days and we need things.
I'm just frustrated for so many reasons. Because I need & want many of the things I packed, because I don't want to have to shell out the money or the time to replace the things we need (because then I will end up with a surplus/duplicates of stuff...like now I will have 48 diapers if the package is ever delivered...,)...because if it doesn't show up before we leave then the stuff that we bought specifically for the trip, like the Children's books for Rome, the backpack carrier for Sam, etc. will end up not getting used, AND BECAUSE I TOOK THE TIME TO GET THIS SHIT DONE so that I wouldn't have to worry about all this while I was on vacation and now it's all biting me in the ass. I mean, who wouldn't be annoyed?
In the middle of all this, Omer plugged in our Marpac noise machine for the boys and fricken fried the motor because the voltage converter thing didn't work, and both the boys have the beginning stages of cold. Plus, my MIL was literally laid flat out in bed all day today with a migraine or something like that and she is the one who is the most helpful and capable with the children, so without her, and on top of all this package crap, I literally spent the first day of our vacation in a tight ball of stress. Annoyed, frustrated stress.
And BTW, worth noting that while I've been writing this post I have also been calling the receiving center in Chelsea, NY, where our package is supposedly sitting, nonstop, and NO ONE has answered the phone yet. I must have let the phone ring 500 times by now. Nothing.
I need a valium.
Back to calling the Post Office again....at 11:41pm. Wish me luck ladies. :)
Thanks for letting me vent.
Our trip has gotten off to a rocky start. I know I shouldn't be complaining because we are--afterall--on vacation, and I am grateful for that, but allow me to whine for a minute. Maybe it will make me feel better to get things off my chest.
So.
Ten days ago I was SO proud of myself for being SO organized and for thinking ahead SO far in advance and for being SO prepared for our long international trip by packing and shipping a large box of supplies to our hotel here in Israel. I shipped out things like Sam's life jacket/ swim goggles, sunscreen & other toiletries, overnight pull ups/wipes, medicine & first aid stuff, lots and lots of snacks and the kids' favorite goodies, our travel booster seat & backpack carrier (for all the places we can't take the stroller,) gifts for the cousins here, some books for the kids (and for me, I'm close to finishing my current read) and probably more that I'm forgetting. It ended up being a huge, heavy box for which we paid an *absurd* amount of money to send EXPRESS GLOBAL shipping from the USPS. It was supposed to be delivered in 1-3 days. Doing all this actually made the rest of our packing for the trip much easier since I didn't have to worry about all that stuff and we were able to travel fairly light for our actual trip all things considered.
I told myself more than once last week that we should log on and/or call the hotel to see if it ever arrived, but in the craziness of the last day of school and whatnot, we never got around to checking. You see where this is going right?
So we fly ten+ hours overnight (which went pretty smoothly, thank goodness) and arrived a bit haggard in Israel yesterday morning. And...no box. No record of box, nada. We log into USPS after getting settled and getting the wireless set up and there is NO record of the package after June 7th (the day after it was picked up from us.) Lovely. And it's Sunday, so of course the PO is closed. So we wait until working hours today to call USPS. They bump us to FedEx (the international shipping service that USPS uses.) FedEx says they can't help since they have no record of having ever received the package, so it's a PO issue. So we call the 800 # which is automated and frustrating, to no avail. Finally we called our local PO assuming they originally picked up our package and get a really nice woman who was willing to help, but honestly didn't have a clue either. She put me on hold on and off for 28 minutes! Now, mind you, I'm calling internationally....and the minutes are just rolling by along with dollar signs. At this point I'm unwilling to hang up for fear that I will never reach a live person again. FINALLY she returns and said that Fernando, her supervisor, is out to lunch and we need to call back. WTF &*^&$$^%$$. Ugh I was fuming. AND the entire rest of the family left to go out to dinner without me during the time so I missed that (although I honestly don't think I could have sat and enjoyed myself since I was in such a mood...) AND we now needed to find a store to buy diapers and other supplies because it's clear that our package--if it's ever even located--won't show up for many more days and we need things.
I'm just frustrated for so many reasons. Because I need & want many of the things I packed, because I don't want to have to shell out the money or the time to replace the things we need (because then I will end up with a surplus/duplicates of stuff...like now I will have 48 diapers if the package is ever delivered...,)...because if it doesn't show up before we leave then the stuff that we bought specifically for the trip, like the Children's books for Rome, the backpack carrier for Sam, etc. will end up not getting used, AND BECAUSE I TOOK THE TIME TO GET THIS SHIT DONE so that I wouldn't have to worry about all this while I was on vacation and now it's all biting me in the ass. I mean, who wouldn't be annoyed?
In the middle of all this, Omer plugged in our Marpac noise machine for the boys and fricken fried the motor because the voltage converter thing didn't work, and both the boys have the beginning stages of cold. Plus, my MIL was literally laid flat out in bed all day today with a migraine or something like that and she is the one who is the most helpful and capable with the children, so without her, and on top of all this package crap, I literally spent the first day of our vacation in a tight ball of stress. Annoyed, frustrated stress.
And BTW, worth noting that while I've been writing this post I have also been calling the receiving center in Chelsea, NY, where our package is supposedly sitting, nonstop, and NO ONE has answered the phone yet. I must have let the phone ring 500 times by now. Nothing.
I need a valium.
Back to calling the Post Office again....at 11:41pm. Wish me luck ladies. :)
Thanks for letting me vent.