Happy Insurance Renewal Day!

How to tell when you are taking the kids to too many fun places on a day-to-day basis: today I told Marcus we’d be hanging close to home to try and get caught up on the laundry and his response was to go running to Skyler and say, “Skyler! Guess what? Today is a special day! We get to stay home today!”

Well, I kind of lied, anyways.

Oh lovely day! Once a year, this special day comes around, where I must bravely enter the insurance office and renew my vehicle insurance. It sounds like such an innocuous holiday—however could this be blog-worthy?

Let’s start by examining how this particular day started with a few chips against me. First of all, David had told me that I have BCAA insurance and that makes it cheaper because that’s what our house insurance is through, so it is definitely worth the extra ten minute drive to get it from BCAA. When we got in the van I looked at the insurance and realized that it was regular old ICBC insurance, but if David says it will be cheaper from BCAA then I should surely listen to that guy. Fine, we’ll drive to BCAA, and I will save my family some money because I am frugal and responsible and all of the other important attributes that it takes to run a family well. That’s me. SuperMommy.

When we got to BCAA I noticed a few things right away. Took my little mommy inventory, if you will. First I noticed that the place was very busy, that you had to take a number, and that there was a constant flow of people coming and going in and out of a fairly narrow office space. I corralled the kids in and wrangled a chair. There was a hostess-type lady who came up right away and said hi to the kids, who of course both gave her the stink-eye immediately. I have very friendly children. She offered the kids a balloon, and I raised an eyebrow. I don’t know if she thought that maybe giving them something to play with would make them more agreeable to the entire process, or if she just thought, “Hey, kids! Kids like balloons! I have balloons! The kids will surely like these!” Maybe she had a picture in her head of my kids sitting happily, cradling the balloons in their arms, and smiling at her. That is not what transpired. I had a picture in MY head of my kids running rampant throughout BCAA, chasing after balloons, and getting underfoot. Right on! Because running errands with two turkeys in tow is not nearly interesting enough—it’s much more fun to throw a new wrench in the mix.

Right about then I made a conscious decision to not get riled. Sometimes you have to make that a conscious choice. As in, “I’m pretty sure this is going to go poorly, so I’m going to deliberately not make eye contact with any of the adults in this place, I’m going to put a goofy grin on my face, and I’m going to pretend my children are not driving me insane at this moment in time.” Every time Marcus lunged after his balloon and directly under the legs of some very important person coming in or out of BCAA, I smiled lovingly at him. I said things like, “Marcus, you need to look out for people. You need to remember to look both ways!” I strongly resisted all urges to grab the balloon and crush it in a brilliant display of mommy-tantrum. The highlight was when Skyler wandered behind her balloon right up to a man who turned to walk out of the place and tripped right over her. He managed to side-step her but she still made sure to work up a good cry, just to let him know who he was messing with. He started to say something to me, but either the look on my face or Skyler’s inconsolable sobbing caused him to instead back away slowly. Good choice, my friend, good choice.

So then I’m at the teller, and I tell her that my husband has car insurance with them, and our home insurance is through them, and I’d just like to get my van insurance through them too. She tells me that she can give me a quote, but since the van is in both our names, I would need my husband to come in with me and sign. Okay then. I will just pack up my stuff and go, because I am done. I am not interested in a. Chasing him down, b. Coming back, and c. Dealing with insurance ever again in my entire life. I will choose to walk or cycle. This is surely not worth it. She replies, “Are you sure? Because it may save you money to go through us.” Argh. That’s right, my frugal and responsible duty. So, because I am thirty-three and do not have a cellphone, I ask if I can use her phone to call my husband on the off-chance that he may be in town, close enough to drop by and sign. She seems to find it an odd request, but she complies, and he agrees to stop by if indeed it is worth buying it through them. So I get off the phone and ask her to go ahead and give us that quote. After about ten minutes of her typing happily into her computer, she says, “Are you sure his car insurance is through us? Because our insurance is for our (BCAA) members only, and I can’t find him in our system.” Hmm, that doesn’t sound right. I know for a fact that we don’t have BCAA because we both have new vehicles with roadside assistance plans. What possible explanation could there be? Oh wait, I know! My husband is a liar! He does NOT have insurance through BCAA. By this point both kids are careening off of each other, bouncing off the legs of any person that dares to make their way past, and intermittently screeching. For no apparent reason. I have decided on a new tactic of pretending they are not actually my children. Marcus’s balloon goes up, over the counter, and onto a teller’s keyboard. She is on the phone. I turn my head quickly so it looks like I didn’t see it.

My teller takes pity on me and tells me finally that she can process my ICBC insurance—there is no need for me to go elsewhere. I borrow her phone again to tell David we won’t be needing his “help” after all. Thank you very much. I keep telling the kids (and myself), “Just a few more minutes. Just. A. Few. More. Minutes.” Sign the papers, get my sticker, turn around, and see that both kids are now sprawled out in the middle of the floor. Apparently napping? People are literally stepping over them to get through the office. Awesome. “Okay kids, time to go! You did really well! Thank you for being so patient!” (There’s that big goofy faking-it grin again). Skyler starts crying loudly and moaning, “I DON’T WANT TO GOOOOOOO! I DON’T WANT TO GOOOOOOO.”

I love insurance renewal day. Such a great adventure.