Wrinkle, Wrinkle Little Tar

I think I've become a litmus test for things that can go wrong for hurricane victims just trying to get the roof holes patched and the fences mended, both literally and figuratively.
I've bellyached and whined about all sorts of things in this blog. I've wanted to quit the griping, because negativity can and will become an addiction. It's like the dark side of The Force. Misery loves company.
But yesterday, the frustration viper sank his fangs into me, not once but twice.
It started with a simple attempt at a bank deposit.
Three days earlier, I could almost hear a chorus of angels singing "Ode to Joy" as a delivery van pulled into the driveway and deposited into my hands the insurance check we needed to begin paying for home repairs. Lots of people I know still are waiting on their checks.
The check was made out to three entities: me, my lovely wife, Amy, and the mortgage company. I called my bank, which verified that signatures from all three were needed before a deposit could be made.
Our home lender has only one branch bank in Beaumont, and it is near our house. So early yesterday, I hit the bank's drive-through and was told that Amy and I would have to come into the lobby when the bank opened and together sign an affidavit assuring that we weren't going to blow the money on crack, Las Vegas or pork belly futures.
I called Amy and notified her of this, so she loaded up our youngest son and met me at Roadblock Bank, where we were the first customers in the door when it opened at 9 a.m.
We explained our needs to the bank teller, and she asked us a fateful question: "Is this the final check?"
I told her I didn't understand what this meant. From what I've been told, you use your insurance check to pay the contractor, and if there are additional costs, then you, the insurance company and the contractor get into "supplemental" world. I've heard varying accounts about how this is handled. The insurance adjustor who surveyed the damage said that I would have to fill out a form requesting money for me. However, my insurance agent subsequently told me that his company and the contractor would work it all out.
When I explained all this to the bank teller, it gave her the impression that this was not this so-called final check. So she wouldn't sign it. No supervisors were around to call into the battle, so we left without the coveted Roadblock Bank stamp on the check's back.
With that being the lender's only branch in town, I then was faced with barking up the corporate ladder in search of a solution. But when I did this, I was told that I needed to try another branch, the closest being 30 miles away. He told me that I needed to just go ahead and tell the branch that this was indeed the "final check."
Not wanting to load up the entire family for another branch bank odyssey, or to play mind games with the lender, I thanked him for his time and hung up.
I then called Roadblock Bank again and found someone higher on the pecking order. He assured me that all would be straightened out and that all I'd have to do was come back, wife and all, the next day to take care of business.
Awesome.
But whatever lift that small success gave me got stomped an hour later, when my wife called to announce that the city had cut off our water.
I raced over to City Hall and told them that I had put a check in the mail almost two weeks earlier. They said they had not received a check from me since mid-September and that due to mail-delivery problems, they "may never receive the check."
However, I soon learned from a reporter that the city was not cutting off water unless an account was 60 days past due.
Rather than going to war with City Hall, I just paid the bill and the reconnect fee so my wife and our little boys could get some water. After all, we're in prime potty-training season at this time.
Looking at the problem's big picture, a pre-storm hassle might have been a factor. A couple of months ago, my checkbook disappeared. It might have been swiped off my desk. It might be under a pile of toys in a kid's room. It might have fallen out of my car. Either way, I scurried over the bank and canceled the remaining handful of checks in the booklet. Not the whole box. Just the booklet.
Subsequently, the bank erred and canceled the whole box, so stop payments were made on an entire month's worth of bills I had sent out. To help straighten out the error, the bank gave me a letter to show to all the bill senders, and I personally took the letter down to City Hall to show what had happened. I also paid my bill in full at the time.
So I believe that due to some City Hall error, my account bubbled to the surface, showed the stop payment on that one check and resulted in an order for water service to be discontinued.
I think I've got it fixed, but I'm still going to have to run the bank letter over to City Hall once again to get reimbursed for the $25 disconnect fee.
So that was my glorious day yesterday.
Today, I woke up with a renewed energy for getting the insurance check deposited.
Again, we made a family trip to Roadblock Bank, and again, as expected, hassle ensued.
Despite being told the day before that all was in order, the bank teller, a different one from the day before, went to the telephone. She said she needed to verify the check's authenticity. She returned and notified us that the "system was down" and that we would have to come back.
I told her I would wait. I wasn't leaving without a signature. I desperately looked around and saw a guy sitting being a nameplate bearing the name of the guy I talked to on the phone the day before. I called out to him and introduced myself. He got up, shook my hand and told me that all was in order. But then had a conversation with the bank teller and disappeared.
The teller, after some more hemming, hawing and document fiddling, then motioned to a bank supervisor, who came over and ask me that fateful question: "Is this the final check?"
Yes, damn it, this was the final check. It was the check to end all checks. The check of the apocalypse. The Armageddon of checks. The Rapture of checks. Check it out. Check mate.
Grudgingly, she signed the check, and off I raced to get it deposited before a heavenly bolt could fly through my vehicle's air-conditioning vent and incinerate it.
I can't wait to begin the next phase of this reconstruction circus.