Power to the People, Part II

Remeber this post? Well, here's the conclusion. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's been 9 months, blah blah whatever. Do you want to know what happened or what?

Well then, stop with the bitching and read, dammit.

...

N, having previously worked for a bank, knew that calling on a Sunday afternoon would get us nowhere. Instead, he planted his tired ass in the parking lot on Monday morning, after a full night's work, to wait for the bank to open so he could talk to someone in person. Why he thought he needed to talk to them in person was beyond me. I got the waiting-for-a-business-day thing, but in my (correct) opinion, a phone call on said business day would have sufficed. Ring ring, chat chat, kiss kiss, have a nice day, thankyouverymuch! Yes no?

But I digress.

N was told by a minion of Satan cashier that the fees wouldn't post until midnight so there was nothing that could be done until Tuesday morning. Technically, the fees were still pending. So even though our balance had a huge red negative, technically we weren't overdrawn.

Yeah, right.

So N, not having learned his lesson the first time determined to get this taken care of, was once again in the parking lot on Tuesday morning (N's new hours* are 7pm to 7am, which means he normally goes straight to bed upon arriving home). On Tuesday morning, N was directed by a minion of Satan cashier to Satan himself the bank manager. Satan The bank manager appeared to be listening politely while N explained that while we would be happy to pay the $10 transfer fee, we were requesting that the o/d fees to be reversed because it was only by bank error that they were there in the first place. Pull the money from our card, charge us the ten bucks and reverse the ridiculous o/d fees sitting there in gloating triumph on our account. To our credit, N had deposited his paycheck over the weekend so we did at least have a positive balance at the time of this little meeting, even after the staggering o/d fees were assessed. Also to our credit, we were not repeat offenders - this was only the second time in over two years of being with BofA that we had overdrawn.

The one snag was that I had requested the o/d protection to be moved to my credit card so long ago that Satan the bank manager was unable to access any record showing that I did so. He had to take N's word that I had indeed called and asked for this change.

Does this sound unreasonable to you? Of course not. It wouldn't sound unreasonable to any normal human being with half a brain and a modicum of customer service savvy.

Apparently, though, "normal", "brain", and "customer service" were not the words of the day. Satan The bank manager told N that really, there just wasn't anything poor little ol' him could do about it. He didn't have any proof that such a change had been requested and he just couldn't make $175 in fees disappear. Out of the goodness of his heart, however, he magnanimously reversed $43 of the charges.

Forty. Three. Dollars.

Out of one hundred seventy five.

Forty three dollars!!

N was totally exhausted at this point (working all night and then losing sleep two days in a row to deal with Satan and his minions will do that to a person), so he just accepted the verdict and left the bank. He called me on his way home, too tired to realize that was probably not the best course of action ... I have been known to kill maim the messenger in times past (my bad).

Let me tell you, I was LIVID. INCENSED. PISSED-OFF beyond all description. Smoke was pouring out of my ears and my eyes glowed demon-red. My hands turned into claws and my mouth grew fangs. I was growling and cursing in languages that no longer exist. If thoughts could kill, Satan the bank manager would have been all the way past dead and into decomposing, right there at his desk.

My co-workers were startled, to say the least.

Recalling that I look horrible in orange and that jumpsuits really aren't in style this season, I managed to pull myself together. I called (remember, ring ring, chat chat, and all that?) and without getting into the back-story of Nathan's conversation with Satan the bank manager -- no need to clutter up conversation with details -- I calmly and professionally explained the problem to the cheerful representative who had the shitty luck privilege of answering my call.

Said representative was very sympathetic (possibly picking up on the fact that I was almost beyond reason at this point) but told me I would have to speak with the manager, who - surprise, surprise - was not available at this particular moment, and could she take a message? I wanted to tell her to shove her message-taking into a place normally reserved for toilet paper, but I restrained myself. I politely said I'd be happy to leave my name and number so that Satan he could call me at his earliest convenience.

Not *my* earliest convenience, mind you. His. His freaking convenience, which, by the way, I had the sneaking suspicion would be NEVER. But alas, one who intends to win the game must first play the game, so I gave my contact information and sweetly thanked the message-taker.

And then I sat at my desk and waited for the phone to ring.

And waited.

And waited.

And waited.

And at 5:00 pm, when I shut down my computer and left the office for the day, I was still waiting, unsurprised and unamused.

In the car on the way to pick up the kidlings, I called the BofA Big Brother customer service number. I tried to avoid the pointless exercise of explaining the issue by just asking flat-out to be transferred to a specialist, since I knew a peon phone answerer first-line customer service rep wouldn't be able to help me. However, the man who likes to waste everyone's time gentleman insisted on hearing my story, on the off chance that I was wrong about his lack of assisting ability. I rapidly spit the whole thing out in about 12.42 seconds and amazingly enough, was told that he just didn't have the power to reverse these fees. (Obviously, Satan hordes every last drop of power at BofA until there's just nothing left to go around.) The time-wasting gentleman transferred me to a higher power demon account specialist.

The higher power demon account specialist got an earful, and although it was a polite and professional earful, it was an earful nonetheless. By the time I finished talking, it was Rocky-Mountains-sparkling-crystal-clear how aggravated I was. I explained exactly what I thought of bank managers who blow off the concerns of customers in good standing and then try to pacify said customers with a random refund that has no correlation whatsoever to the fees in question. I explained that I did not appreciate being ignored for an entire business day by said manager, who was apparently too incompetent to actually pick up the phone and address the issue at hand. I explained, as I had to every single person who had previously heard this story, that I would be more than happy to pay the transfer fee. I explained that if this was not taken care of, RIGHT. NOW., I would feel the immediate and unavoidable need to close my accounts. All of them. Done. So long, goodbye and thanks for all the fish.

The only person worth a crap at BofA account specialist, being on the receiving end of this deluge, waited patiently for my ranting to finish. She responded with exactly the right note of empathy and apology (hey, I know when I'm being played). Then, within about 3.68 seconds of hearing me out, she hit a few teeny tiny little buttons on her keyboard and POOF! All account fees reversed.

Deleted.

Gone.

Vanished like cocaine up Kate Moss's nose.

No $10 transfer fee, no nothing.

Free at last! Free at last! Thank the only person worth a crap at BofA God Almighty, I'm free at last!

And that, my friends, is how you stick it to The Man.


*These were new hours when I started this post 9 months ago. Yeah yeah, blah blah.

How The Mighty Have Fallen

It's already apparent, at the tender age of 5, that my daughter has inherited her mother's grace.

Which is to say, she has none. Sorry baby girl.

My poor Kays is a bastion of bumps and bruises, scrapes and scabs. It doesn't help that she plays as hard as she can, full-out balls-to-the-wall every time she goes outside. It really doesn't help that she prefers to wear dresses, so her long legs and arms have absolutely no protection between them and the hard, hard ground.

If CPS ever gets a look at her, I'm gonna be in trouble.

JT, on the other hand, has an innate sense of balance and poise that showed up early on. He learned to walk at 9 months, with a lot less of the bumbling and stumbling than one comes to expect from a child at that stage. In 3 1/2 years, he's only had one goose-egg that I can think of. He puts his whole heart into attempting to do everything his adored big sister does, but somehow manages to come out of it with none of the damage that she inevitably accrues. And even on the rare occasions when he does happen to faceplant, he usually bounces right back up, relatively unscathed. It's almost eerie, really.

She's gonna hate him when she realizes this.

It's safe to say that I have, for the most part, stopped worrying about JT hurting himself while he's running pell-mell down the driveway or climbing onto random pieces of furniture toys that are made for climbing. Not that I don't worry a little bit - hey, come on now, I'm a mom not a heartless bitch ... okay, well, that aside, I'm still a mom - but point being, he just doesn't make friends with the asphalt (or dirt or carpet or etc. etc.) nearly as often as his sister.

So earlier today, I felt as much shock as I did horror as I watched my baby boy stumble and fall ... right down the stairs.

Fell.

Down the stairs.

Down.
The.
Stairs.

Our dog, who outweighs JT by a good 15 pounds, pushed past him in a rush, and JT - who was decidedly *not* holding the rail like he's been taught to do - couldn't keep his balance. He wobbled, wavered, tripped and went down. I was standing at the top of the landing, just a few feet away, and it was like I was watching in slow motion. I saw every little misstep, but I couldn't do a damn thing about it.

I watched my child pitch head-first down the staircase.

Instinctively, I knew I couldn't just reach forward and grab him, as I would very likely overbalance myself and take us both down. Visions of broken arms, legs, necks, were all running through my head even as my body's auto-pilot kicked in. I dropped my butt straight down on the stairs, reached one arm out for the rail and the other for my son.

Four steps into his downward flight, I grabbed him.

My hand came clamping down on his ankle like a boa constrictor around a particularly feisty rat. I actually knocked his shoe off in the process. I pulled him up and into my lap, and clasped my arms tight around his little body. JT went from screaming incoherently to wailing at the top of his lungs, clinging to me with all his strength while tears dripped off his face. I held him.

I held him.

With the amazing resilience that kids are born with, JT was dry-eyed and happily walking down the rest of the stairs less than 5 minutes later. I watched him, his chubby little fingers grasping the rail and his sturdy little feet placing themselves carefully upon each step. He didn't hesitate, had no fear of what could have been. That was left up to me; that burden of sitting there, feeling sick to my stomach and shaky in my limbs, was all mine.

I know that there will be many times in my boy's life that he will again feel the terror of that long, scary fall. Sometimes it will be because of an unexpected shove, a hit from behind ... sometimes he will miscalculate the distance from one step to another ... sometimes it will simply be because he's too damn busy to watch where he's going. My job as a mother is to stand there behind him as often as possible, ready to be his lifeline and pull him to safety.

And for those times that I just can't reach him, those spectacularly bad times in which a hard landing just can not be avoided, I hope and pray I will have taught him how to get back up, grab the rails, and get on with life, as quickly and confidently as he did today.

Irony at it's Finest

Two days ago,
my shoelace came
untied
while I was in my last
running cycle
on the treadmill.
Foolishly,
I ignored it and
kept running.
Amazingly,
nothing untoward
happened.

Yesterday,
I took the precaution of
double-knotting
my laces.
And then,
during my last
running cycle,
I tripped
over nothing.
Amazingly,
nothing untoward
happened.

I am
taking
today off.

They Say Exercise Is Good For You

I am not a visual person. No, really - I cannot picture a scene inside my head to save my life. When I read, I don't imagine the look of the characters in the book. I had a hard time in my Bradley birthing class because I couldn't see "my happy place" during labor practice. When I was active in sports, I could never visualize myself executing the necessary moves correctly.

Oddly enough, I could *always* picture myself falling off the balance beam, scratching a serve, hitting the high jump bar, and other spectacular failures.

It seems this predilection has carried over to my current workout of choice, the treadmill. Without fail, every time I get on the treadmill I start having these visions in my head. Visions of me tripping (not a huge stretch, as I do this often), falling off, hitting my head on the metal shelving behind me and bleeding all over the gym floor, giving myself both a concussion and the need for a blood transfusion. Or my shoe comes untied and I step on the laces, causing me to fall forward, go under the front bar, hit my head on the rowing machine in front of me, break my neck and instantly die.

I see these scenarios and various others of the same ilk, always centered around my sheer klutziness and always resulting in extreme embarrassment, injury, and/or fatality. I see them in great detail, going so far as to observe the stunned reactions of my fellow gym goers and the staff members. I see them in color - high def even. I can hear the shocked gasps followed by the murmured conversations about my lack of grace (the women) and how I might have had better luck on a stationary bike (the men).

Am I alone in my calamitous visions of self destruction?

I feel like I may be all by myself on this one. It would seem to me that it takes a particular dose of crazy to have a front row seat at the Theatre O' Death & Dismemberment not once, not occasionally, but every. single. freaking. time! one gets upon one's treadmill and begins one's workout.

Sometimes I think this may be God's way of telling me to get off the treadmill. You know, like that joke about the guy who was caught in a flood and refused to get on the rescue bus, boat, and helicopter because "Jesus will save me!" And then he drowns and when he asks Jesus why, he gets told, "I sent you a bus, a boat, and a helicopter - what more did you want?!"

I wonder if I'll recognize that helicopter when it comes for me. I can see it now ... crash-landing right on top of me.

Sneaking One In

Yes, I'm still alive. No, I don't want to talk about it.

Oh, you didn't want to hear about it in the first place? Well, alrighty then.

I've often thought about blogging over the last several months. I love to write. I enjoy sharing my thoughts in ways that make people laugh. Not to mention I spend 8 hours a day in a private office (ah, what a nice window) in front of a computer that is hidden behind a privacy screen. And lucky me, my proverbial plate at work is often, shall we say, not full enough to sustain Keira Knightley on a speed binge. One would think this would lend itself to the occasional blog post.

Not so, my friends.

I'd love to share with you my long, dramatic, impressive reason for not being able to put together a cohesive paragraph or two for my adoring public. Really, nothing would make me happier than to tell you The Tale of the Wordless Blogger. Sadly, such a tale does not exist. I simply have nothing to say. Everything that has popped into my mind over the last several months that made me think, "Hey, I should blog that!" has simply refused to come to life on my computer screen. At first, I was confused. I was frustrated. Had I lost my ability to communicate through the wonders of the blogging world? Was this the dreaded writer's block? And how could this be, seeing as how I'm not actually a writer? But then it dawned on me. The problem is not my writing, it's the material I've been blessed with {snort} to write about. All I've got are stories involving the minutiae of my life. My routine, everyday, non-entertaining life. Somewhat diverting to me but pokemyeyesoutboring to everyone else.

I had a fabulous idea for a novel a couple weeks back. I recently decided that I need to make some major changes in regards to my health. My dog is on a pooping-inside-the-house spree. I have a new training job and I passed a training-related test. I'm taking a trip back home later this summer. Kays is starting kindergarten this fall and JT is getting along famously in speech therapy. These are all things that crossed my mind as blogging fodder but are so mind-numbingly prosaic that I just couldn't bring myself to post about them. So here I sit. All ready to type and nothing to type about. After all, I've got a reputation to uphold. I am clever, I am droll, I destroy keyboards with snarfed Diet Coke! I cannot just fling random crap at my blog and hope it sticks.

Right?

Well hell.

...
...
...

{now feeling much better due to the wonders of modern medicine}

{and ellipses ... never underestimate the power of a well-placed ellipsis}

The light bulb has come on, people! I am standing up to The Man! Throwing off the yoke of oppression! Refusing to conform to a higher standard of writing! Who needs standards, anyway?! I can post what I want when I want and not give a shit if it's any good or even grammatically correct!

From this day forward, I am a CRAP BLOGGER and PROUD OF IT!

{crouches in the corner and cries}

Who Needs Money When You Can Have Baked Goods

Soooo ... our girl lost her first tooth! After almost a week of wiggling, it just popped right out while I was helping her floss on Tuesday morning.

(Okay, maybe I dug at the roots with the flosser just a little bit. Sue me.)

Kays was super excited that it finally came out, although the blood threw her for a bit of a loop. She got over it pretty quickly though when she realized it wasn't hurting her. Actually, she went so far as to enjoy using a few Q-tips to plug the hole. Something about looking like a walrus was mentioned (walruses being a source of hilarity around here). Yes, I am such a creative mommy, thankyouverymuch.

Of course I ran and grabbed the camera. I've learned my lesson about living a long ways away from extended family - you don't enjoy the moment, you document it on film!

Let me tell you, it's pretty hard to get a sweet, awww-look-at-my-growing-girl picture of your daughter when all she wants to do is stretch open her mouth with her fingers and poke her tongue through the hole in her teeth. But I persevered and did manage to capture some cuteness.

I dropped her and JT off at school that morning, where of course she had to run into every. single. classroom. and show her (lack of a) tooth off to every. single. teacher. in the school. They all made a very ego-stroking big deal of it and she had a very lovely day.

I, however, spent all day on the web and telephone, talking to family, friends, co-workers, the women on my mom's board, the janitor and the Fed-Ex guy about how much a tooth is worth these days. And not just any tooth, mind you, but a *first* tooth.

{Enter sunbeam coming through the clouds and heavenly chorus of angels here}

What I learned is that there is no standard. In this day and age of economic upheaval, the minimum wage earned for shoving a tooth under your pillow has been shot all to hell. The suggested amounts were all over the place.

Some people said $5.

{Pause while you clean the spit from your huge guffaw off your screen}

(You did guffaw, right?)

Some cheapskates husbands people said 50¢.

{Pause while you shake your head sadly in despair for tighwad cheap meanies}

(Are you done shaking?)

Basically the suggestions were of no assistance, and I was pretty much at a loss as to what was an appropriate amount. This was quite bothersome, as I wanted my daughter's first Tooth Fairy experience to be a glorious childhood moment.

Hey, I'm a first-timer here. Give me a break.

After many calls to the husband, who finally quit answering his cell phone using the convenient excuse that he was "working" - yeah, I'm on to you buddy - I finally decided that the Tooth Fairy would be bringing $2; four quarters and a one dollar bill. Kays loves quarters but is also starting to get curious about paper money, so I thought a mixture of the two would work quite nicely.

I snuck into her room The Tooth Fairy arrived at around 11:00 pm EST and did her thing. She is pretty amazing, if I do say so myself.

Wednesday morning Kays wakes up all excited. (This is extremely deviant from the norm, as she takes after her mother). She immediately goes for the prize and is giggling like a hyena. Happiness abounds in Casa de Madness.

Then she turns to me and asks, "Is that all?"

All? ALL?! Excuse me?!

I took a deep breath and smothered my instinct to beat some manners into her calmly replied, "I think so honey. What else were you expecting?"

"Oh," she says, disappointment obvious in her voice. "In Barbie Fairytopia, the Tooth Fairy brings so-and-so a cupcake. I thought I would get a cupcake. Or a lollipop. Did the Tooth Fairy forget my candy?"

Are. You. Kidding. Me. ????

I agonized all day - AGONIZED, I TELL YOU - about how much money to give her and she just wants a damn cupcake.

Fecking Barbie Fairytopia.

Power to the People, Part I

(or, Holy Shit, That's A Lot Of Linkage!)

So. Let's talk banks. Specifically, let's talk bank fees.

Uh-huh.

As a young adult,

{Insert pause for hysterical laughter at the idea of an 18 year old being an adult}

I opened my very first checking account with Wells Fargo. I don't really remember why I chose them; knowing me, it was probably because their ATM was the closest one to my house. I must say that I lucked out; Wells Fargo treated me well over the years. I didn't always have a ton of money in my account ... I clearly remember being anal about balancing my checkbook each month due to the fact that I occasionally had a total of 12 cents left by the 31st. And every once in awhile, I took one too many trips to Barnes & Noble that ended up in a stack of shiny new books and that 12 cents turned into a big red minus sign on my account balance. But in all honestly, Wells Fargo charged reasonable overdraft fees and hey, I deserved them. In over 10 years, I never had a problem with them that wasn't solved on the first phone call.

Sadly, the East Coast has not yet reached the enlightened plane required to enjoy the privilege of patronizing certain West Coast businesses, Wells Fargo being one of them. (Claim Jumper and Del Taco being two more, for which I am rendered completely and hopelessly bitter. But my food addictions are another post entirely.) When we hit the road, we were forced to choose a new bank. Since N moved here ahead of me, by default (ha!) he was stuck with the thankless task of finding the financial institution most qualified to handle our complicated banking needs.

{Insert pause for hysterical laughter at the thought of us having banking needs beyond, "Here's our [ridiculously small amount of] money. Don't lose it."}

Surprisingly, he learned there are only two banks that do business on both the East and West Coasts - Bank of America and Washington Mutual.

Okay, I admit, I took his word for it. I sure as hell wasn't going to be doing the legwork myself. If he lied his ass off pulled a fast one on me is mistaken, please, refrain from letting me know about it, m'kay?

Washington Mutual, affectionately if somewhat nauseatingly referred to by customers as WaMu, has a good reputation. But even though they do exist here in Virginia, they are somewhat few and far between. There are a total of 5 within 20 miles of my house. On the other hand, Bank of America (shortened to BofA and pronounced "boffah" if you're lazy) (like me) has more than ten times that many. Dude. BofA had a bad rep back in the day for completely shitty customer service. So completely shitty that the thought of leaving my beloved Wells Fargo for the Big Bad Nasty made me cringe. And whine. And complain. And kick. And scream. And bitch. And moan.

Well, you get the picture.

But in the end, N convinced me to give them a try. He had heard rumors that BofA was turning things around and really working to regain a good rep in the banking world, plus the convenience factor was undeniable. So I gave in agreed and we stepped over to the Dark Side. That was two and a half years ago.

Up until last week, I have actually been quite content banking in the Land of the Dark Lords. There are ATMs all over the freaking place (including at my work, which is handy for those indulgent emergency lunch purchases) and the banking centers have pretty decent hours for us working peeps. The new ATMs are high tech yet user- and eco-friendly; no more cursing up a storm screaming in the drive though lane being SOL due to the lack of available deposit envelopes! The online banking options are a god-send to those of us who are time-challenged and/or due-date-challenged. And we have yet to suffer from buyer's remorse over any of the BofA products we've been suckered into purchased after careful consideration.

However.

We learned our lesson early on that one does not want to overdraw one's checking account, lest one feels so inclined to pay through the nose in o/d fees. Awhile back, during which time I was lazy and forgetful suffering from Mommy Brain, I let the checkbook-balancing routine fall a wee bit behind and well, let's just say the results weren't pretty.

After recovering from my minor fee-induced heart attack, I swiftly took steps to ensure it would nevah. happen. again. ! No, I did not purchase money-managing software to effortlessly whip our budget into shape. No, I did not enroll in financial success workshops to release my family from the burden of debt. No, I did not sign up for online banking. No, I did not push myself to stay on top of all things monetary.

Oh no.

I got a credit card, baby! Woohoo!

Now now, before you go all postal on me, let me reassure you that I did not go charging up the card with frivolous purchases. Not a single one of my purchases were frivolous!

I kid, I kid. The card came with a zero balance, and still has a zero balance. The point of the card was to link it as a backup for our checking account, in case we were to overdraw. See, BofA automatically links your savings account to your checking account as your backup. In theory, this default works just fine ... you o/d your checking, they dip into your savings and transfer the needed funds to cover your oopsie(s). You are charged a relatively small $10 transfer fee and o/d fees are a thing of the past.

In theory.

However, when your savings account has all of $3.42 in it on any given day, this theory gets shot all to hell.

The fun part is when BofA takes your entire savings balance and puts it in your checking, since everyone knows when you o/d, $3.42 is gonna cover it every time.

Right.

So you get a $10 transfer fee and then, surprise! You still get o/d fees when (shockingly) your savings transfer didn't quite cover your o/d transactions. Nice. Hence the need to a nice, shiny new credit card with {gasp} thousands of dollars of available credit just sitting there, waiting to fly to the rescue should one be so stupid careless unlucky as to accidentally o/d in the future.

Like, um, me.

Now in my defense, I will say that while I used to be the accountant in our little family, my sucker loving husband took over those duties from me awhile back. I was a bit overwhelmed with my SAHM duties (we really don't need to go there again, do we?) and things like, oh I don't know ... coughbillpayingcough ... were getting neglected. N had sizable chunks of downtime at his old job and he nicely offered to get us back on track. Yes, he's a saint. Yes, I'm a lazy bitch. What, you didn't know this already?

So N did his spreadsheet-tracking, online-bill-paying, actually-looking-at-the-mail magic. And for a long time, it worked quite nicely. Bills were paid, money was flowing in and out (mostly out) without a hitch, the hate mail overdue notices quit arriving in the mailbox. N was overworked happy, I was happy, life was good. Then, due to circumstances beyond our control, N was forced to get a new job. And as everyone knows, when you are a shiny brand-new employee it takes awhile before your direct deposit kicks in. For the first few paychecks, one is forced to actually retrieve said paycheck from one's employer and physically take it to the bank. Oh, the horrors.

And when one forgets to deposit said paycheck on payday yet one's bills are on autopay, one is most likely up shit creek without a paddle. (Thanks, Mom, for teaching me that sweet little idiom. It's one of my very favorites.)

Over the course of one horrific weekend, we incurred approximately $175 in overdraft fees.

One hundred. And seventy five. American dollars.

!!!!!

That's like five thousand dollars in Madness money. Seriously. Just looking at the negatives on the computer screen made me hyperventilate. After my initial breakdown, I promptly proceeded to kick my sainted husband's ass nicely ask N to call the bank and see what the hell happened. After all, I had this lovely credit card sitting there with a zero balance. We should have had a (relatively) small $10 charge and then moved on with our no-direct-deposit lives. Why, then, had the minions of Satan BofA system pulled the $3.42 balance from our savings and then, when we (shockingly) came up short, gleefully charged us over and over?

I was incensed, to say the least. Yet I reigned in my initial reaction because really, this was all just a stupid simple error and could easily be corrected. Right?

***************************************************************
To be continued when my brain recovers from the over-linkage shock
***************************************************************