Bereft

Now I know how it feels!  Bereft, i.e., deprived or robbed of the possession or use of something; lacking something needed, wanted, or expected.

And that's how I felt as we got off the bus yesterday afternoon at Mega (the grocery store stop near our home).  For at that time I felt the back pocket in the jeans - it's a habitual thing - but noticed that my wallet wasn't there!

Now, I had had no use for my wallet on our trip into Centro (Michael picked up our coffees at Starbucks and the new glassware at Europea) and the new wallets are sort of awkward getting free of the pockets in my jeans, so  there had been no reason for pulling it out.  Plus I wasn't completely sure I had brought it with me; it had been on the desk near my computer earlier in the day.

So we hurried home and searched - to no avail.  Then Michael thought of calling the friend with whom we had shared our coffee time at Starbucks.  He was no longer there, but went back to check the area in which we had been seated and to ask the manager about turned-in belongings. No dice.  Then he went to the local radio station to see if anyone had turned it in to them (it's a San Miguel thing).  Again no dice, but he was encouraged to return, say Friday, to go through the IDs that are turned in (wallets tend not to be surrendered).

So we set about trying to remember which credit cards had been in the wallet and notifying the companies to freeze those cards and send new ones.  This turned out to be simpler than expected, as most companies have a procedure that can be followed for that purpose online.  And I have a three-page document of websites and their IDs/passwords for my accounts and memberships.

So with that list to jog my memory - and Michael's suggestions - we notified almost everyone.  It did remind us that I really should change my California driver's license address from the post office box in the sub-station that closed.  So having done that, we now just have to wait a bit of time before asking DMV to send me a replacement license. Can't change your address and ask for a new license at the same time - identity fraud, you know.

I was clever enough to not write any passwords or codes on any of the cards, so we felt fairly safe that accounts would not be accessed or charges made.  American Express was great - new cards should be delivered by UPS today at our Texas address, of course, which means I'll eventually see them. One must not, as a general rule, disclose that one lives outside the United States if one wants to continue to have a credit card.  One can arrange for speedy delivery with our mail delivery provider, but there's a $50 charge!  I'll wait a bit.

We decided to visit our local bank to deal with replacing my peso debit card this morning.  The process was a bit drawn out (took about an hour), but it involved canceling my old card (this is done by phone - even from the bank branch) and they don't open until 9 am.  And our executive for preferred customers (that's a nice way of saying 'expats') was also handling a new customer, setting up an account for her, et cetera.  Then there was the fact that we hadn't advised them of our move from our first house (a year and a half ago and a house ago), so when talking to the person on the phone to cancel the old card we had to dredge up the address and other information from our memory banks to identify the account and ourselves).  So this was the time to make that change.  And our bank uses a credit-card sized gizmo to create new access codes each time we go online to check our account and that had to be reset to include my new debit card number.

But I did walk out the bank's door with a new debit card that worked.  And they ran our most recent activity report for us and there were no unknown debits.

Although one can't be sure where the wallet went missing, I have grave suspicions about a male/female couple that bounced against me as we were hanging on for dear life to the bars for standing passengers in the bus as it hurtled down the road on the way home.

Whew!  So I'll eventually have the replacement cards in hand, in a new wallet (thank you, amazon.com), and life will be back to normal.  In time for us to zip off to Cabo late in January for a brief vacation with my brother and sister-in-law (and my sister will also be there part of the time)!  

Now I just have to deal with getting a new visa to replace the one that went missing in the wallet: an appointment to explain what happened to my last visa before it expired; paying the fee for a new visa (Mexico changed the visa format and rules about a month ago); paperwork, new photos, a new visa fee ($3100 pesos or thereabouts); and, of course, today was the last day before the end-of-the-year holiday for Immigration, so we can't do anything until next year.  Luckily we're not leaving Mexico until next May!