NICE WHEN A WEEK ACTUALLY GOES RIGHT

A better week.  

Day after I wrote last week's post I was surprised to receive the renewal for our van – since it was suppose to take until sometime next week to reach us.  Weather has been terribly hot and we are not going anywhere, so we have not changed the window sticker yet.  (Van parked on our driveway so not a problem that the old sticker is still in the window.)

And – after being told that I could not renew that prescription both by our pharmacy and our medical insurance – we received a call Monday asking why we had not picked up the prescription yet and we only had 2 more days to pick it up before it went back into stock!  We went in to pick it up – I was sure that they were going to charge the full price for it – after all, it was the only insurance saying it would not pay for it yet that stopped it from being filled – and if that was that was the case – I would say to put back into stock for now.  Surprise!  It was charged at the usual co-payment.  Not exactly sure how this happened, but it did.  

When we went food shopping last week we stopped at a Wendys near the supermarket for lunch.  This particular Wendys has never been the best, but it is greatly lacking right now – not sure if change of management or if we just never had lunch there before – we used to go for dinner on some Saturday nights.  

How nice it was to go in the supermarket, make only one trip into it, and do our entire food shopping and not even have a problem fitting all the bags in the cart after we shopped.  We have not shopped for a normal sized shopping order in over 15 months.

And then, also on Thursday, we did something else we have not done in over 15 months – we went out for dinner!   Back in the normal times we would go to an Asian buffet for dinner on Friday nights.  We went on Thursday night as we figured it would be a lot emptier than it would be on Friday night.  Very pleased that they handed us large gloves to use when going to the food bar and masks were required for same.  A number of unused serving trays on the food bars  – but not sure if this is due to it being now or if this was always the case on Thursday nights, though we presume the former.  

Everything we do these days continues to involve being organized.  We have to remember to bring our masks (no longer required by state or local government, but often required by the various businesses we are going to  - plus we feel safer with them on.  I carry at least two plastic sandwich bags in my pocket when we go anywhere – we can open doors (at stores without automatic doors) etc with them on our hands instead of touching the doors with our bare hands.  The Corona virus counts here may be very low and we may be fully vaccinated, but I know of too many people who will not the vaccine and feel safer not touching doors that everyone else is touching.  

When food shopping to prevent needing to continuously up and down the same aisles or need to go back to the store in a day or two as we forgot something – we make sure to shop with a list.  I have a strip of paper on the refrigerator for us to list items we are going to run out of – try to do this in time not to run out.  Unless we are going for less  than 10 or so items I write them into a computer spreadsheet.  On one of our early trips into the supermarket during the pandemic I listed by type items that we might use by aisle number – though it is my numbering system – the first aisle we go to in the store I have as aisle one, the next one as aisle two and so on through the food items.  After food is listed non-food items -  cleaning, vitamins and such.  Next on my list is refrigerated items – which involves walking back to the far end of the store, followed by meat items and lastly frozen items.  As we walk through the store we can pick easily find the items we need to buy.  I try to keep each section of the list to match the order in each aisle.  Putting them in this list also helps as my handwriting is terrible and I can always read what I printed out – while I cannot always figure out what I hand wrote on a list. While we are a bit more comfortable walking around in the store, we don't want to be in it longer than we need to be.  I am packing the cold items in different bags than the non-cold items as I am still wiping everything down with alcohol when we come home and want to make sure that I get to all the cold items quickly.  

When we go out food or other shopping we have to remember to bring bags with us these days.  Just as our area went into the pandemic last March, it became illegal for stores to provide plastic shopping bags and either a county or large city could impose a fee for paper bags or the stores in area which did not do so were allowed to charge up to 10 cents a bag for paper bags.  Our areas does not have the fee so it is up to stores if they are going to charge and whether they charge the entire 10 cents (plus a penny a bag in sales tax) or not.  Most, of course, are charging the full 10 cents.  One dollar store which is location of a chain store will automatically put one's items in a paper bag and charge for it – not ask if one wants a bag, even if one is buying one item.  They got me once with this.  The two times we have back I quickly say that we have our own bag.  What we have been going is carrying some of the old plastic shopping bags with us into stores other than when going into the supermarket for more than a couple of items when we bring double bagged paper bags with us.  If the plastic shopping bags are folded down correctly I can fit 4 of them (maybe even more) in each of my two back pockets leaving my hands free until we are done shopping and I am bagging the items we bought after we ring them up.    So, I have to organize our bags also.  When I first read a book about organizing the author said that one does not keep bags - “Have you ever walked into a store and they did not have bags available?”  I still went on keeping most of the bags we got which were normal sized or larger.  Husband made the same comment to me as the author had printed and I replied “you never know”  Up until this law went into effect I had been using those plastic shopping bags as free garbage bags for our bathroom and bedroom little garbage pails.  I now still use them – but dump them into (upstairs) the office pail and (downstairs) the kitchen pail and put the shopping bag into the little pails to use again unless they are messy.  My stash of bags that I would “never need as the stores always have them” will last us for years at the minimum, since they are being used over and over again.

What have you been doing differently to deal with all of these sorts of things this past year plus?

THOUGHT OF THE WEEK -
Who ever thought that going food shopping for just what one needs in the coming week would become something looked forward to.

CHANGING ONE ADDRESS FOR MAIL - EVERY TIME I THINK I AM DONE - OOPS

 First, I should mention first that we still have bills, statements, etc. delivered to us in hard copy by USPS mail and we do NOT do anything financial online unless there is no other option – we are old school computer users (back to main frame computer programming) and know that there is NO such thing as a secure connection.  

We have had problems in the past with mail delivery at our house and had transferred almost all of our mail delivery to a USPS box we had for our business at a different local Post Office to deal with it.  We found this worked extremely well – go on a trip, no need to have mail held as it would automatically be held when there was too much in the box, need to have something delivered other than USPS – with street addressing it could go to our box.  

Then along came the corona virus.  We don't want to go out at all, let alone into a crowded Post Office – whether to send mail out or get our incoming mail.  More about that from last March 26 at http://wheredidileavethat.blogspot.com/2020/03/   and from last April 16 at http://wheredidileavethat.blogspot.com/2020/04/ and I am sure there is more at other post inbetween.

So we started changing our mailing address back to our house address with any and every one we could think of.  Every time I think I am done changing our address back to our house – something else pops up.  

Latest things which popped up -  Our car insurance renews soon and I checked to make sure our house address was the mailing address for same – it is, but that started me thinking about other insurances  and I checked our homeowners' insurance comes to our house but our RV insurance goes to our PO Box.  I telephoned the insurance company and changed the address – would not want to take a chance on the policy renewal being mailed to our box and never finding its way here.

We are members of Costco and a similar warehouse company called BJs.  My excellent computer records for bills reminded me that our Costco dues are due during January – usually paid by now – but no renewal received and the renewal goes to our PO Box.  So today I called Costco and, yes, we should have received the renewal by now.  I changed our mailing address with them and checked the amount due for the dues and the mailing address to which I should send the check – I paid it, as I have paid so many other bills this past 9 months – with a cover letter.   Our BJs  renewal is next month – I called them also and changed our mailing address with them also.  Strangely, the various ad circulars from both of them all come to our home address.

I am well organized, well at least as far as paperwork, especially bills.  I went through all my papers, all our credit cards, etc. and made a list – I contacted each company to change our mailing address to our house – but each time I think I am finished doing so – something else pops up.  Worst of all, some day, soon I hope, I will have to reverse this and change all of the mailing addresses to back to our PO  Box so it does not go astray and we can again go on our little trips with the mail snugly and safely in our little box at the Post Office.

THOUGHT OF THE WEEK-

We will soon have a new control of our government here in the U.S.A.  I hope that they will be organized and get control of the pandemic so we can all go out again and be with friends and family as we did before (and go to the Post Office again for mail) without fear of getting of getting Covid-19.  

Until then- please be careful and safe and keep yourselves and your families well.

MOM AND MY FAMILY HOME

We are currently dealing with mom and two cardiologists. For those of you who joined since or have forgotten, mom is 90. Shortly after her 90^th birthday she started having problems (http://wheredidileavethat.blogspot.com/2019/05/sometimes-fate-is-having-fun-with-one.html) and can no longer live at home alone. She went through short term physical rehab at a very nice local facility and since then has moved into their assisted living facility. While they do a great job of helping her and taking care of her – mostly she gets around by herself - they have been doing physical therapy and she can walk with a walker better than she has done in years - and she is back in her full mind again from just the fact of having people around her and things to keep her mind active.

Back in August it was found that she blood clots in her legs and she was given medication. She was also referred to my brother-on-law's cardiologist who is also a vein doctor for followup scan about a week after the clots were discovered. I posted the story of that nightmare - wheredidileavethat.blogspot.com/2019/08/29 Her leg was not scanned. We ended up going back not the 3 weeks later that this doctor wanted, but instead on October 7 as it took until then to get an appointment. The scan was not done then either as the appointment was made by a third party appointment service for someone who does not do scans – understand we drove out to where mom is, got her into the car, took her to the doctor's office and had her medical history taken – and nothing else – TWICE (and of course her medical insurance was billed for 2 office visits). When we left the second time we made an appointment for the scan – for this coming Saturday (remember this is about 2 months after we were told that she needed to have her legs scanned right away and then a week later when her leg was not scanned - we were told it needed to be done in 3 weeks). Despite everything we had been told, the doctor does not do the scan, so after it is done we will first have to return on November for the doctor to interpret the scan.

Next problem – mom has a pacemaker. It was put in 10 years ago. The battery in it is tested every few months and the last test was at the start of October and we were told that the battery had less than 2 months left on it. Soooo, the replacement of the pacemaker was moved into priority. This came up shortly before the second time mom did not have the leg scan and we asked that cardiologist's office (per the doctor – they only do heart “plumbing” and we need someone who does heart “electricity” for this) for a cardiologist who would do this procedure as mom's doctor for same is an hour away where our family home is. We were upset that this doctor would have the same sort of circus for an office as the other, but it is quite the opposite. Mom was seen by this doctor (M) a week after she had been in the other doctor (B)'s office. Yes, she needs to have her pacemaker replaced. I was telephoned the next morning with two appointments – a week later (yesterday) for presurgery exam at hospital and next week she will have the procedure. 2½ weeks and this will be done – the other doctor 21/2 months and still nothing has been done!

In the middle of running with mom (plus all the car problems) I realized that I had to renew one of husband's medications and called the pharmacy. The doctor refused to renew it without an exam. We really cannot fit in a doctor visit for us right now – mom's pacemaker does take precedence, so I telephoned and explained and made appointments for us the first week in November. Ummm, I missed that we are going for blood work in the morning of the day mom is scheduled to have her scans read – and it is election day! Well, we work it out somehow. Doctor renewed prescription for 10 days – when we were not due in for 3 weeks – but we had enough left to work it out.

Then it occurred to me that the scan of her legs would be done between the presurgery testing and the surgery – telephoned the doctor doing the surgery to make sure that this would not be a problem – we did not want to give up the appointment that would, hopefully, finally resolve her leg scans, but the pacemaker is more of an emergency. It is not a problem.

My sister will get mom to the hospital for the pacemaker surgery as it is 9 am. We figured out that between allowing for rush hour traffic (as we do not live near where mom is) and then the hour and a half we need to pick her up, get her in the car, drive her the 20 minute trip (and again – it is rush hour, so need more time) and then get her into the hospital – at 8:30 – would mean that we would have to leave home at 5:30 am. My sister lives near mom and the hospital.

Okay, so 4 doctor appointments for mom, 2 doctor appointments for each of us, I have to go to a client tomorrow, my birthday falls in the middle of all this which is all within a month – and at some point we will be called to go pick up our RV out of state. We also had reenactment event, board meeting, and general meeting – which husband as VP had to run and we had signed up to do a presentation for the meeting – over the past weekend. And on the day between our blood work appointments and our doctor appointments I have my embroidery guild meeting.

That's a lot of stuff – well, we can go for weeks with nothing to do, so it is a lot of stuff for us to do. But that it is not all. We - mostly my sisters - have been working on getting stuff out of the family home so it can be sold. http://wheredidileavethat.blogspot.com/2019/08/clearing-out-my-old-closet-at-family.html A tag sale company is will hold a sale in the house this coming weekend. My sister had set aside of box of stuff she came across of my stuff. Since the sale starts Friday and I have to work tomorrow – we had to go today and get the stuff. I had hoped it was one or more of the items I told her I wanted – a tablecloth I embroidered in high school which has disappeared and a small book about our family in the old country. I expected a small, office size file box. There was a huge box waiting for me. Some was not mine and I left them for the sale, some we tossed out, most of it I don't really want, but much of it had my name or other info on it and I took it home to shred it. I also now have an embroidery that I made for one of my parents special anniversaries for them.

THOUGHT OF THE WEEK -

I was about to write the thought of the week I was going to write about with all this going on I have kept up – I am doing the laundry, the vehicles are taken of…

Then I remembered – we checked the oil in the car today (it has a problem, there is a class action suit, and we hope it will recalled and fixed) and it was down ½ quart – and we forgot to add oil. Normally it would not matter and I make note to add the oil tomorrow, but tomorrow I am driving to almost Manhattan for work and will be driving in stop and go traffic, at least one way. So I texted husband upstairs (yes, I am that lazy) and he came down and we added the oil – in the dark.

Then I remembered – that it had been raining Sunday when we arrived home from the reenactment event and we had not unpacked the van – we had brought 2 folding reproduction stools, only one of our box benches, a flat table top, the legs to the table and a twin sized blanket (it was cold I used it to keep warm until the sun warmed up the air a bit – and then when it rained, it kept me dry.) Husband will be driving the van tomorrow as I will have the car – so we had to unpack the van.

What more can I say for the thought of the week than – it is life, it goes on, one has to do what one can do, when one can do it.

THE CRAZINESS CONTINUES ON

Another week already? For those of you who have been/will be in Dorian's path - I hope that you and yours come through safely.  To say that it is a horrible storm is to greatly understate the situation.

Things are still hinky here - I called the insurance company for our reenactment unit again to try to resolve the problem of the paperwork not being right.  What the employee and I did manage to figure out is that it is not a paperwork problem - the changes to the policy do not seem to be right when we discussed them.  She was to check with their underwriters and the files to see what happened and then call me back.  I waited a week and then called her again - last Friday.  The agency was closed for a four day Labor Day weekend.  I called her again today, Wednesday.  She was not in - working from home (I got the impression she was not well).  She called back while we were out - which is why I said I would call back instead of her calling me, and left a message to talk to someone else at the agency - I will call them tomorrow.  I have been trying to resolve this since June - policy renewed in late May.  At this point we only have 3 events left before the insurance will renew again next year. I have now requested a printout of our payments to our medical insurance company in 2018 three times - hope this time they send the correct papers and not a summary of what we owed - what we owed and what we paid could be totally different amounts (although not in this case) and the county will not accept what we owed - they want a list from the insurance company of what we actually paid.  That and one other set of papers is the last of what we need to file for our senior real estate tax exemption.  Then I can assemble the "tome" of papers that have to go to them for this exemption.  We learned our lesson last year.  This year we will not mail the paperwork to them (and we had mailed it by certified mail and had a record of when they received it).  We will drive to the real estate tax assessor's office and I will walk it in and get a receipt from them that they have everything.  Husband will sit in the car as parking is just about non-existent.  Newspaper article recently said that our new County Executive is going to make this department actually answer their phones and help people.  When one calls the message on their end is basically - "We don't have time to take calls."  and sometimes also "And we don't have any parking for you to come here."  Public servants.

I have managed to do a bit of house cleaning this past week - I admit it, I am sooo off schedule as I just have not had a chance to get to anything.

I have been tasked by my sister to find sources to sell items from our family home - a library of books, a collection of records (LPs, 45s and CDs), china and glass - useful and decorative, dad had a number of clients who were artists and they have pieces from some of the clients and other pieces that purchased - only a maybe ten to twenty, but some of them may be valuable.  We need to get as much as we can for items which can be sold as we need it to keep mom in the assisted living program she is in and likes.  Time is also of the essence as mom has a reverse mortgage on her house and every month more interes accrues. The sooner we get rid of the stuff in the house the sooner we can sell it - the less money that goes to interest and the more that goes to mom. I emailed a client that I have still have whose husband is one of the artists and asked if either of them knows of a gallery or auction house to contact.  I know the husband's work still sells from time to time and figured that they must still know who to contact.  Problem, of course, is that we need to not just find someone to buy (or take on consignment) the stuff we need to get rid of, but need someone honest who will not buy stuff for considerably less than it is worth.  I just found a site that was recommended by a seniors organization for pricing items.  I will have to look at it.  Quite frankly it was this part of clearing out the house that intimidated me.  My sister had talked as if she had an idea of who to call about all this and I had felt better about it, now I am overwhelmed again - and quite honestly, my sister is handling most of everything. Anyone with ideas about getting rid of all this stuff without getting "taken" - please let me know, it will be gratefully appreciated.

I had the first meeting of my embroidery chapter today.  I was not sure that I would that I would get to the meeting as husband is desperate to go away for a few days - both for sanity and because we have spent a lot on the RV to keep it in good shape, we do not use it, and it needs to be used - especially driven - to keep in it in good condition.  Due to rain storms today where we were to go, we dropped the plans - bad for husband as he is upset, but good for me as I had my first non-work day without him since June.  I did come home after running a couple of quick errands after the meeting and did not take the entire afternoon for myself as I normally do, as husband is sure that the Dorian will turn and hit Long Island and we will lose our electricity, so I did not want to leave him moping and in a panic all day by himself.  We are learning a new stitch that I had wanted to learn and it was such a pleasant time at the meeting.  I really need to find another group to join also - I have tried to get husband to join a group without me, but he is not interested and finds an excuse not to join any group that is related to his interests when I find them.

I normally write my post using a word processing program that I like and then copy it to the site.  Tonight for some reason it would not work - it opens, but does not work, so I used good, old Notepad to write - any spelling errors or oddities in appearance of the post are due to that.

THOUGHT OF THE WEEK -
Well, one has to go on and do what one can.  Having my embroidery chapter keeps me sane - what keeps you sane when it is all piling up?

CATCHING UP - THREE STEPS FORWARD AND ONE STEP BACK

I have been trying hard to catch up this week on everything since, I guess, the beginning of March.  Things are getting done, but then, of course, new things pop up.

I actually have the stuff on my desk down to 2 piles - to do and to scan.  The to “enter” pile is gone - yay! 

I managed to lower the to scan pile today - I scanned in the tables of contents for 5 issues of a history magazine I read.  (I scan in the table of contents of magazines we keep for research.  This allows me to either search all of the tables of contents in a file to see if there are any related articles to a specific subject or to “page” through all the tables of contents without having to take out all the magazines.)  I also quickly scanned in the instruction manuals for the two new outdoor light fixtures that we bought and installed.  Again, easier to find the instructions in a scanned file than by going through all the instruction books.  I deleted the instruction manual of light fixture that one of these replaced as it stopped working right and was tossed out after being replaced.  The other is a light in a place where we never had one before.  I marked the instruction books with the year and will put them in a file to toss at the end of next year, so I will have them for now if anything comes up and they have to be returned.  The replacement light is next to the side entry garage door and I scanned an enlarged copy of how to adjust the light (it is motion triggered), which husband sealed in plastic and we have put it in the garage for convenient access if needed.

My embroidery chapter is in the middle of the renewal period so I have that out in the “to do” pile as I will have to forward the dues collected for our National and our Region to them at the end of the month.  I also have not finished dealing with the renewals for our reenactment unit (also in the “to do” pile) - I have a few new members who I have to add our to our list (already sent their dues to the National of same so if they went to a National event they will be on the list of unit members).  I then have to make the membership lists for both groups for our members to use.  This is especially important for the reenactment unit as we have events coming up, as well as our monthly meeting and the unit commander needs the new members info so they receive their notices. 

I renewed medications for myself and my husband - we need to do so quarterly.  I waited a bit longer than normal due to everything else going on and our weekly boxes when filled by me last Saturday night were short some pills, that have now been added.  (I keep an additional week of pills laid out in our travel pill boxes so I could have pulled the needed pills from same if we had a problem getting them.  I keep the travel boxes filled as it makes it easier if I have a cold or such and husband has to fill the regular boxes that we use in the house for our pills - they are counted and sorted and he just needs to put them in the house boxes.  Houses boxes are in individual boxes - a weekly box by day  for each of us for morning bills - in our bedroom - an lunch and dinner box for each of us in the kitchen, and a bedtime box for husband in the kitchen.  The travel boxes are one set of boxes with separate sections for the times of day and can be removed from the tray which holds it. I put all of the pills for both of us in each day’s box so that pulling out the box has all our pills for the day - as opposed to the boxes we use in the house where each box has a week’s worth of pills for one of us for a certain time of day.  (I hope that makes sense.)


We are also in the middle of dealing with insurance for our reenactment unit.  One is an accident policy for our members (we do have black powder guns being used as well as an open fire at events) which, after discussion with the rest of the board during the year, we checked and we are increasing the very low coverage we had before.  That bill should be here soon as it is due this month.  The other policy is a liability policy for the unit.  We have been looking for a new insurance company.  The one we had up to last year is no longer writen in our state as of last year. We found this out at the last minute last year.  We found an alternative last year when we needed to find one extremely quickly.  We wanted to see what else was out there now that we had a chance, plus we figured that additional companies might now be writing policies in our state now that the company we used to have was no longer doing so - and they would have had time to start doing so.  Much effort and time has been put into this - mostly by husband - and after all this, the policy we found last year, is still the only alternative.

We did have a call from mom the other day asking us to come and do a favor for her.  She had gotten a delivery of a new paper shredder.  It had been left in front of her front door - so she could not open the door, so could we come and please bring it in for her.  We did so and husband also set up the shredder for her and made sure it worked - that took just over an hour. 

Husband also had us finish dewinterizing the RV water tanks.  This takes time to fill the tanks repeated times - first time with bleach added to the water and which is run the water lines of the RV, then let sit  and then let out through the clean water let out (as opposed to having to let it all into the dirty water tanks and then dump those tanks  - which cannot be let run into the street, as clean water from the clean water let out can be done).  The tanks are then refilled with plain, clean water and let out the clean water let out several times to get rid of the bleach taste/smell.  Wet job and time wasting, but needs to be done.

Today husband had a new project for us to do.  We siphoned out the gasoline in the snow blower into a gas “can”.  That gas and the gas left in the other can were poured into our cars for use.  The snow blower was then allowed to run to use up the gas in it.  If this is not done the gas in the snow blower goes bad over the summer and it cannot be started in the fall/winter for checking that it works and for us. 

But these odd tasks are getting done and the piles on the desk are going down. 

I also paid our business credit card bill today - out in the mail tomorrow and tomorrow afternoon our will pay our main credit card bill and it will go out in the mail on Friday - when we will also transfer money from savings to checking to cover it.  (The money to the business checking account to pay the business credit card was transferred last week.)  All bills are paid in full every time.  (Well 2 exceptions over the decades which had specific reasons not to pay in full.) 

THOUGHT FOR THE WEEK -

If you fall behind - slow and steady will get you caught back up even if new things pop up that have to be done.

HOW MANY THINGS CAN NEED TO BE REDONE?

I know I complain a lot.  Life used to be relatively organized.  I would do things and be done with them.  Lately everything seems to be awry.  I do things and they have to be redone.

One of the things I do in November is reserve the meeting room for the following year for my embroidery group.  This was relatively simple at first.  I would receive the paperwork in the mail early in November, fill it in, have my signature notarized and mail it back - and we had room - free - to meet in for another year. 

We had met in a series of churches over decades - back to before I joined the group in the 1990s.  (The group is around 40 years old.)  We would pay for our meeting room. The group used to be over 400 members.    The group would have workshops and interested members would pay for same which would allow the group to pay for a meeting room. Over the years members aged (with the inevitable result) and moved away.  Women were working and could not come to day meetings.  (A new group had broken off from ours and meets at night in the next county - some members belong to both groups.)  Interest in embroidery waned.  We were down to around 20 members.  I figured out (as treasurer) that in 3 years we no longer would have anything in the treasury and the group would be gone.  As I was about to sign the agreement for the next year, I noticed a mailer from the local township.  One of the parks caught my eye.  I called and asked about the use of a room for meetings.  We had just enough percentage of members who were residents of the township for a room - since we are non-profit - it would be free!  We were given space at a park other than the one I saw and we have been there for 5 years now.  The women who work in the park office have been very nice.  The first woman who ran it, however retired.  Since then it has been a bit confused in renewing the room.  Last year I did not get the form until late so I had made a note for November 1 to check with them.

October 31 I received a phone call asking for the group’s email address.  I called back and left it on voice mail.  A week later, nothing had come and I had not heard from anyone.  I called back in case my voice mail had gone astray and was given someone else’s voice mail and left the info again.  Another week - I called and was told that the forms would be out shortly. The next week was Thanksgiving.  I was telephoned the day before same by the woman who used to run the department who again asked for my email - I told her the story and she apologized.  She called back later to check which park we meet in.  Thank goodness it was all finally going to be done with!  On Tuesday the next week I received the paperwork by email.  I filled it in.  Wednesday I went to the bank and had the paperwork notarized and on Thursday mailed it back.  All done, finally, how great.

The following Tuesday I had a telephone message when we got home from errands, basically, sorry. another group meets in that room then.  Hmmm, we meet in that room then, maybe the nice former director had filled us in already on some chart or form?  I called her back the next morning.  No - another group was meeting at an overlapping time to ours - and she had a different location for us to met.  I questioned how this had happened.  The other group got their paperwork in first.  I told her the story of trying to get the paperwork and how unfair that someone else had, apparently gotten their paperwork earlier than us and taken our space.  I also explained that we were a group of “old ladies” - which we are, at 65 I am the youngest - and I was afraid that finding the other park would be too hard for them.  She hmmmed a bit.  Then said that since we only meet once a month and the other group meets more often maybe she could get them to give up the room for the once a month.  She did and we have the room back for next year.

Totally unrelated - and dealing with the county instead of the township - husband and I are entitled to a reduction in our real estate taxes due to our age and income.  I started collecting information for the paperwork in January - well I actually collected some during 2017.  I had to telephone our medical insurance companies for last year (which we had 4 of do to R switching to Medicare partway through the year) and get printouts of the premiums paid to them - listed by month paid.  Of course one only gave a total and I to keep after them for the correct info.  I also had to get listings of what we paid for prescriptions (Walmart pharmacy was the easiest of all the info needed for me to get) and the dentist and doctors from the providers themselves.  I did not bother with the doctors as payments to them were minor.  We have to get statements from who we paid - canceled checks are not accepted.

In late August I received the renewal papers from the county (we had gone through all this last year for the first time).  I filled them in and continued to chase down missing information.  While husband was incapacitated I finished the forms and started making the photocopies I needed to give them - photocopies of income, of the medical expenses, etc.  I wrote a summary of what I was giving them.  I wrote a cover letter.  We mailed it out certified mail (almost $7 postage) on November 27 - and received the information that it had been delivered and signed for on November 29.  We sat back to wait to hear from the county in April - maybe earlier if they wanted some other information.

Monday night we got a robocall from the county executive that we have not yet filled the renewal for our exemption! We panicked.  Tuesday I was taking my mom to her doctor and I called before I left for her house.  I got a voice mail setup and left my information and asked them to PLEASE call back and let me know if they were missing our application - knowing that they would not call back.  Oh, well, this was better than last year.  Last year when I called for information their telephone number was continually answered by voice mail that said, basically, we are too busy to answer the phone - goodby, although after calling for several weeks the message was changed by adding - that there is not enough parking here, so don’t come either.  While mom was in with her doctor I called again.  This time there was a message that people were called who should not have been called and - the message only applied to those over 65 and if one had receipt from them for the paperwork given, they were fine.  It offered a chance to talk to exemptions (overall I was calling the county tax assessor’s office) and I did so - same message as in the morning and I again asked to PLEASE let me know if they have our paperwork - just leave the message on our answering machine, they did not even have to talk to us.

Local news last night talked about the robocall error  - it showed the lines that people were on for 2 hours due to the call - as did the local paper today - 400,000 called instead of something liked 50,000!  But again it was said that as long as one had a receipt from them there was no problem.

Well, we only have the proof of delivery from the post office.  So being crazy people - we copied all the supporting paperwork, reprinted the forms and resigned everything and reassembled it all.  Tomorrow morning we will be going to the county assessor’s office.  Hopefully the crowds will no longer be there having heard on the news or read in the newspaper what the situation is and we will get in fairly quickly - perhaps even told that of course they have the application and paperwork.  But I anticipate a long wait to get in and who knows what has happened to our original paperwork.  Husband will drop me off and try to find a parking space - there are a lot of parking lots (free) but in addition to the county office buildings (at least 3 I know of) there are the courts (at least 2 buildings), general office buildings in the area and the train station which serves 2 train lines, so parking is not easy - which is why we mailed it in the first place.

Does this happen to everyone - or just us?

THOUGHT OF THE WEEK -

Always get a receipt.  Always follow up. Always make and keep copies (or give copies if you can and keep the originals).  Never assume that all is going well.  Do this for smaller things also, but especially for big important things.

UPDATE -

Even with all this going on, I managed to take more of my required tax courses and now have finished 14 of the required 20. I have a left a 6 hour (credits) course that has a 3 hour exam.  This exam is timed and has to be completed at one sitting, so I will have to set aside an evening alone in our office to take the exam - I do get 3 chances, but I have not yet (in past years) needed more than one attempt.

WHAT IF YOU OR YOUR OTHER HALF WAS UNABLE TO DEAL WITH THE HOUSEHOLD OR FINANCES?

Gosh darn!  I did it again!  I forgot to post yesterday! 

Now, I was doing well, at the beginning of the week I had an idea for what to post about - which I forgot, but as I wrote this very line, the idea came back. 

Husband has been having a bad week - his back now is down to an ache and it varies from worse to better - twice it disappeared completely for a couple of hours - but sometimes it gets worse when he takes the medication or when he soaks in a hot shower, the idea our doctor recommended.  We happened to be at the doctor’s office today - before all this with his shoulder, I had made appointments for our annual visit and its bloodwork, and today was the bloodwork.  Doctor said it could take 6 weeks for his shoulder to stop hurting completely - 4 more to go and neither can take much more of this - for him the pain and inability to go out and do things as he gets too exhausted and it makes his shoulder/arm/ - and now also - neck hurt more.  He is frustrated with it all and I am exhausted from trying to help him. Every thing is a bit confused.  I am not completely sure what day it is unless I check.  (Good thing we have our pills in several day of the week boxes, so it helps remind us what day it and whether or not we took our medications.)  When we go for lunch at Wendys I order and get the lunch while he gets the table - the opposite of what we normally do - which also confuses the employees - one fellow there lists me as Mrs. “husband first name”.  Others just list with me his name.  And then again, the weekend crew which does not know us as well asked for my name - I gave him my middle name to avoid having to spell my name. 

On the other hand I have gotten a lot of decluttering done as we are home so much.  I have finished scanning in the articles from the older reenacting magazines that we decided to scan the articles he wanted into the computer and then get rid of the magazines.  They are now stacked up to take to next month’s reenactment unit meeting and pass them along to others who have joined more recently and not had a chance to read them.  In one magazine he only had one article marked to scan - and that was two pages - see, we really did not need to keep the entire magazine at all.  As these magazines leave, I have room for the newer ones.  I started today scanning in the articles from the magazine from the national of my embroidery club.  These magazines after they are scanned go with me to the meetings or places where we do a “stitch in public” and I give them out to people who might be interested in joining us so they can see the nice magazine they will get from national and also get rid of them without throwing them away (ditto the other ones we bring to the reenactment unit meetings).  I also have been making telephone calls that I put off as we are not home and awake enough time to make the calls.  I still have to call our eye doctor and make an appointment for us - but not sure when to do so as he can’t drive out there.

Okay, now the idea I had for this week.  Have you done anything to allow someone else to take over running your household if they had to? For decades I tried to get my husband to pay attention to our finances - where we bank, what money comes in, what bills have to go out, etc.  He never wanted to talk about it  - it would be bad luck.  I started paying his bills for him before we got married and kept doing so - “You’re an accountant.  You do it.  You are better at it.”  I would say to him as I tried to get him to look at things and how I do them “What would happen if I was kidnaped and you had to find the money to pay them to get me back?”  Death was not allowed to be mentioned.  “I would tell them that have to put you on the phone to tell me where the money is so I could pay them.”

In December 2012 we were in a bad car accident - in front of the house next door to ours.  We luckily were not only still alive somehow, but also uninjured.  This scared him.  He suggested to me that I should I make up a notebook with all the information that someone would need to take over our bills, deposits, running the household, etc.  By this he meant, even more than himself, if someone had to take it all over because we were injured. 

I started doing this and in the ensuing 6 years I have done parts of it and then redone so.  To date it is in my computer and not in a notebook, but I am working doing so.  I found a old looseleaf book to use.  (Better to recycle it to this than have it sit in the closet and buy a new one.)

My first go around with this - back in 2013 - was to write copious notes about when each bill comes in, when it has to go out, how I write the check, and how I post it in my financial software.  Second go around, I scanned one of each bill into the computer as an example. 

Currently I am scanning in each bill (first page only) when it is paid along with the check that pays it, anyway, as part of my bill paying.  I have to make new notes about each bill and put it the notebook.  I also figured out that I would put in the information we receive annually about our garbage pickup, with written instructions to go along with it.  I want to write up information about how to use the washer and dryer.  How and what I clean (okay, plan to clean and don’t always get to).  When things such as the oil burner inspection needs to be done (the company we have a contract with did not call last year - or this year and with dealing with husband and still trying to get to my client to go to work there (for 2 months work now) I never had a chance to call them to ask why I haven’t heard about an appointment for 2 years or set up an appointment.  Where what Christmas decorations are stored in the basement and so on.

What prompted to me to write about this now is an article I read in a publication reminding me how hard this can be on the survivor(s).  I have had several clients who had their home/family run traditionally.  The wife took care of the house and the husband took care of the finances.  In each case the husband died and I had to help the widow figure out what they had.  This was in the pre-Internet days which was an advantage as for some items we just had to wait until the widow received something in the mail.  In January/February one receives all the papers for income taxes so that helped.  In addition in some cases we had to check the state unclaimed/abandoned property office (each US state has one - not sure what is done in other countries) to see if anything had slipped by us and had been turned over to the state for the state to hold until it was claimed.  Especially important for all spouses (and/or someone else) to know about is any life insurance which has its premiums  paid off as nothing may come in the mail from the insurance company.

In addition these days the items maybe sent by email - and one may not be able to check the spouse’s email.  Generally items online are not something that can be inherited.  By this I mean if your spouse had an (or more than one) email accounts and you do not know how to sign into them, you may not be allowed to get into them as they were your spouse’s account not yours.  In addition if there is a Facebook account etc. you may not be given the information to sign into it - it is their account not yours.  Do you and your spouse (by which I mean any significant other) share a book download account?  If it is in your spouse’s name you probably lose the books in it as they are not for sharing and cannot be inherited. 

So if you and someone share accounts make sure that both of you know how to sign into them and what the passwords are.  In the article I mentioned, the poor widow was going crazy trying to figure out her husband’s security question answers to be able to set new passwords when she did not know what the passwords were to the accounts.  Her husband’s first pet’s name - she put in what she thought it was, but it did not work.  His first school - not the one she thought it was. 

THOUGHT OF THE WEEK -

None of us likes to think about injury or illness or death of ourselves or those we love - and we think that we have lots of time to deal with it.  One never knows.  Make sure that you and your other half -if you have one - or someone else who is close and responsible - know about each other’s accounts and log in info.  Make sure that you both know what your (joint if applicable) financial situation is and how and when money comes in and goes out and from where it comes and where it goes.  Make sure that both of you know about all insurances related to each other.  Try to have a list of bills you pay monthly, quarterly, annually, etc. for reference.  Have a list of incoming money and when, how and where it comes- especially money that is not a paycheck.  If you own a house, car, stocks, etc. make sure both (or all) of you know where the ownership papers are for it.  Bank Vault?  Locked box in the closet? The back of several drawers?  Also if you (or your other) has jewelry include the information about where it is, what it is, and if it is valuable.  (My husband knows that the jewelry in the jewelry box on top of dresser is all junk jewelry of no value, but there is a small box stashed with minor items that are real jewelry and the rest is in our bank vault.)

Also if you have all this information organized, in case of an emergency you can take the information with you if you have to flee your home from any of these horrible weather situations which have become more common in recent years.  I have a copy of the computer data backup I put in the bank in my “grab and go” folder which has copies of our car and house titles, insurance policies, and I put the bank statements when I reconcile them in the folder - and take out the prior month’s statement and file that one away.  This way I have the most recent bank statement to come with us - including the ones for the two organizations that I am treasurer of. 

I HAVE LOST MOST ORGANIZATION IN THE HOUSE NOW!

Okay I admit it.  Between tax season, warping the loom with husband, dealing with our RV, etc. I have lost my organization.  I have bank statements from a month ago which have not been reconciled (I did our main ones, but not the smaller ones).  I have managed to keep current - barely on paying bills and just realized “How much?” we need to pay the end of the month bills - WOW!  I am behind on things I need to get done as treasurer of both clubs.  Just when I think we are done with all the other stuff we have to do - something else will pop up.

We managed to get the propane detector installed in the RV - but it does not give the signal that it is checking that it is working that the old one did and this one (same company, same model) says it should - manufacturer says that it does not do it as much as people complained of the noise.  We did test it - twice - with the gas from a cigarette lighter and it does go off. 

The carbon monoxide detector was sent back yesterday to the company we bought it from.  It is not only, not the one we were told it was, it also was not the one pictured online and does not work in an RV.  We had to find it elsewhere and order it again and are waiting for the new one to come - again, we can’t go anywhere until it is in the RV and is working.

Now that the weather is nice husband announced it was time to dewinterize the RV.  This is two processes.  First we dewinterize it - we fill both water tanks and run water through the water taps - hot and cold - sink, shower and outdoor taps, as well as into the RV until the water runs clear so that the non-toxic antifreeze is no longer in the lines.  We did this last Friday.  This is a fairly quick straight forward thing to do.  Since we had planned a trip in December which we did not take, I did not bring the bedding in (sheets and pillowcases were washed as I do them all season)  to wash.  I pulled one set of bedding (in a laundry bag in a plastic bag) and brought it in when we were done.

We knew we needed bleach for the next step - but since I don’t use bleach for laundry, we decided to check how fresh the bleach we had was - it was not fresh enough to use as it did not smell like bleach.  Husband was at full crazy panic mode in general over all this, so I could not bring myself to tell him that when I took the bleach out from under the sink - a place I go several times a week - there was water on the floor of the cabinet.  I wiped it up while he was out of the room.  I then traced it and it seemed to be coming from the outgoing pipe - I put down paper towels and tied one around where the leak seemed to be - where two pipes joined.  I had in my mind that he had washed his hair in the sink the night before - perhaps something happened?

Saturday afternoon we packed our van with the items we would need for a reenactment event with our unit on Sunday.  We have a rain date for this event, but the scheduled day for the event is the same day as two other events in the same community - one across the street from where we will be - which brings people to the area and we have more guests than otherwise.  Reports were for rain - maybe in the morning, maybe afternoon, maybe all day - maybe light, maybe heavy... So we packed so that if the event was moved inside our headquarters we could bring much less with us than for a regular event, but had the rest of the stuff with us just in case it is nice.  (In case you are wondering - we have two wooden boxes with rope handles which are storage for our stuff and also seating for us.  We packed what we would need no matter what all in one of the boxes.  Husband portrays a person who is printing and selling period publications so we have his inventory and a table setup - that would not be needed if raining.  Members of the unit eat the cooking demonstration so we each bring period looking tableware.  I bring my embroidery setup - I had just what I needed in the box we would take and the backup stuff in the other)  Sunday it was dreary but dry and the idea of setting up a bit outside and planning to run inside if it rained was decided on.  We brought just the one box.  Luckily the day stayed passable with just some passing showers.  At one point during the day - I was sitting outside stitching and talking to people - husband and our unit commander came to me and asked me to move inside.  Why?  There is a staircase - really a ladder on an angle - which goes to the attic.  We keep it tied off unless we have members (generally two young men who are brothers) upstairs for safety in many ways. Well, apparently people were not keeping track of their children and the children were walking up the stairs.  So I was relocated to sit in the front of the stairs and block them with my box.  I ended up doing tours of the room and house also while there - with the box left to block the stairs.  Oh, I could not find the reproduction cap I bring to events to wear.  I keep an older one that is a bit youthful for me in one of our boxes - in case I forget.  So I brought a new, unworn one that I did not want to use, just in case, but found the old spare one to wear.  Later at home I was talking about the cap I normally wear with husband and he mentioned that the last time I wore it was December when we did the Candlelight Nights event.  I went and checked my older winter jacket that I had worn to those events - safe and snug in the pocket was my missing cap!

Monday we started the second step of the dewinterizing process - we need to sanitize the tanks and system - in case anything grew in anything during the winter.  Again, this is a fairly easy thing to do - fill the tanks with water, add a small amount of bleach to each and then drive the RV up and down the driveway with short stops to mix together.  Normally we would have done this after the what we did on Friday on the same day.  We then run the water through the same taps as we Friday (but not the toilet bowl - bleach cannot go in it) until we smell the bleach in the water coming out of them.  Husband decided to replace the water that had been used from the rear tank (front tank full as the rear tank runs into the front tank).  We normally have a problem with the rear tank after this process as some sort of bubble forms and we cannot put water in it when the tanks are emptied after this bleach process and he thought this might resolve the problem as there would be a full tank in the rear.  Well, the problem was already there and we needed the setup he had made to deal with it - it is a bunch of plumbing parts put together so we can put a long, thin tube (think fish tank tubing) on the end of the hose and feed the tube all the way into the tank and fill it from the bottom/inside of the tank.  He took it out to use.  It was so cold this past winter that parts of the assembly burst.  So off to the home stores for replacement parts.  We went to the “orange” company’s store - no one to help us and no parts that we needed.  We went to the “blue and white” company’s store and the man in the department tried hard to help us - he found where the part should be, but was out.  We walked around and husband came up with an alternate assembly and we bought what we needed.  In the confusion of all this, we forgot to take the insulin (which needs to be kept cold) we picked up at the pharmacy from the car - in just under 80F weather - at least it was in a cold bag, so hope it is okay - this is something I never would have let happen if not for all this craziness taking over my mind.

Tuesday we let the water out of the RV (This involves unscrewing a small cap from underneath the RV - guess who gets to do this.)  We then refilled the tanks - and again ran the water through the lines.  We repeated filling, emptying and letting the water through the lines.  We needed the special setup for the back tank all but the last refill. I brought in the other bag of bedding to wash.

Today we let the water out for the last time and now the water system is ready to be used.

We also received on Tuesday a notice that our reenactment company’s insurance will not be renewed as they are no longer writing the policies in our state - so now I am looking for a new policy for them.  Husband searched online for coverage - all listed the company we had the insurance with.  Today I called our personal insurance broker and asked if they can help - they had me fax the info to them - but of course the fax machine (an all in one with printer, scanner and copier) decided that there phone number was “restricted” and we could not fax to them.  We have never heard of this.  After about 40 minutes online husband fixed the problem - we hope.  In the meanwhile I emailed the information to the broker.  In scanning in the paperwork, I managed to get ink on the scanning unit - all pages had a line down them - and we then spent about an hour finding and cleaning the ink off the scanner - of course the instructions were not in the manual and he had to find them online.  I also sent an email to our national reenactment unit - located in the same state as us - asking them about the insurance they have.

For good measure I burned my hand in steam while cooking dinner last night - and in recoiling from the steam, put a bad cramp in my side.  While my hand is not badly burned, it does still hurt (last night I could only type on the computer with my left hand - not as easy I would figure to do).  Today while we were taking apart the RV electric plug in system that we plugged in to make things easier, I dropped a large and heavyish circuit breaker box on my foot - the opposite side - so now my hand and my foot hurt.

I did tell husband about the leak under the stove last night.  The other night I fit a plastic container under the pipe and since then it has been dry.  We will keep monitoring the box for water. 

Hopefully tomorrow I will be have time to do the bank recs.  Time to email reminders to embroidery chapter members who have not renewed to do so - I have to have them in the mail by May 31.  Send out a check owed to a reenactment unit member who overpaid the family’s dues.

THOUGHT FOR THE WEEK -

Sometimes it all just gets away from one.   One can go crazy - as my husband does - or try to keep calm and know that somehow and sometime (hopefully soon) the craziness will end and one will be able to start over and catch up.  Laundry is being done - but some of last week’s was still in the dryer.  Bills are paid.  Garbage and recycling has gone out.  (While we were in the garage during all this I found a good sized cardboard box for next week’s recycling - I need to have a big enough box to include the empty and rinses out old bleach bottle.)  My hand is better, but not perfect today and will recover.  My foot has a small bruise but will recover.  The biggest concern left is finding replacement insurance in the just over a month we have to do so - but hopefully it will be resolved in time and not for much more than we used to pay. 

Does this ever happen to you?

SCANNING TO MAKE IT EASIER TO FIND PAID BILLS

Last October - October 26, 2016 post  I posted on the usefulness of having a printer and a scanner to help one get organized and keep papers organized.  Here’s an additional thought on that subject.

I am good - really good - at keeping track of bills to pay and paid bills, after all, I am an accountant.  I have a paid bills file next to my desk - one of those large wallet things with sections in it.  When I pay a bill I post it in my Quickbooks program, mark it paid, attach any charge slips, etc and then file it in the appropriate section of the paid bills file.  I generally have a section for each credit card and type of bill.  The credit card we use most often actually has two sections - bills paid January through June and bills paid July through December as there are a lot of charge card slips. The sections for taxes have folder in them to further divide the bills.  I will not go into all of the sections right now as I am already digressing too much. 

Early in January I pull out all of the paid bills from the year before.  Other than tax related bills, the bills are put into an old manila folder box which is redated with a black marker for the year of the bills in it. These bills will sit in this box until around May when I go through my other files for last year, add the paid bills, tax returns, etc and box them up in a box in the top of my office closet.  I pul out the oldest box up there - when I do this for last year I will be pulling out the 2007 box - basically shred what is in the box, relabel the box with the new year and store it all in the box, which is returned to the top of the closet.

The tax related bills when pulled in January for the prior year I combine them all in one folder which will generally not be used until towards the end of the following year and put them where I will be putting clients’s tax information.  The remainder of the tax info folders, now empty, go back in the paid bills file. 

Okay, that is the background of my paid bills. 

We have a VERY small RV.  We have a contract from a company for road service for the RV in case it breaks down, has a flat tire, etc.  Sort of like the Automobile Association of America (of Canada, etc.), but for RVs.  (Yes, these companies often also cover one’s cars and AAA will cover some RV problems but one will not have a specialist in RVs come if one calls AAA.)

When paying bills late last Friday (after business hours anywhere in the lower 48) I noticed that I have the renewal for this RV road service policy is due April 25.   I double checked that I did not have the bill and then did what any wife would do - I asked my husband if “we” (meaning he) has an online account for the company.  He did.

He attempted to sign in and was told that since the account was expired more than 90 days ago, he no longer had an account.  He tried to sign in with their alternate method, in case he made a mistake in his sign in info.  This required the RV manufacturer’s name from a list and the RV’s VIN number.  The list of RV manufacturers was rather short and our RV was not on the list.  Husband starts to get upset. 

As usual his first reaction is that I did not do something I should have done - or did it wrong.  “Are you sure you paid the bill last year?”  I told him I did and would get the paid bill for him.  I climbed up and took down the box of last year’s paid bills.  I went through all of the bills - I could not find it.  So - what do we all do?  I went through them again.  No paid bill.

Perhaps it was with the tax related papers?  The RV is not tax related, but our car and van are partially so and I tend to keep the car related bills together.  No, not there - again I checked twice.

I looked the payment up in Quickbooks Yes!  I did pay it  - on March 31 and it cleared the bank on April 7 last year.  I found the copy of the canceled check in with the bank statement.  (This was in the drawer in the file cabinet for personal items - having the info from Quickbooks made it easy and, well, quick to find.)  Proof I paid it and it was not my fault.

But a copy of the bill?  Then I remembered.  Last year I scanned in one of each type of bill to the computer with the idea that if something happened to me, husband could bring up the scanned copy of a bill of that type and see what I did when I paid it.  (The bill is scanned in, and then the items I send - check, stub, envelope - are scanned on the last page of the file.)  So there was a scanned copy of the bill in that file.  I printed out the first page of the bill - showing all the info needed and set it aside to telephone the company on Monday.

Thinking about this over the weekend I decided two things.  First, I would create a separate folder in the paid bills, tax related sections for all car related items.  Second, it was so convenient to pull up the copy of the missing bill that I will scan in all paid bills in the future.  Understand, I will still keep the hard copy as they have the assorted credit card slips and other supporting papers attached to them and I will not scan in all these attachments, but I will scan in the bills themselves for quick and easy reference if needed.  I plan to set up a folder for “paid bills” with 12 folders in it - one for each month - and label the scan of each bill with the check number which paid it.  I hope this will make it easier in the future to quickly find bills for reference.

Oh, in case you are wondering - I telephoned this past Monday and had a terribly odd conversation with an employee of the company.  He first was confused as our plan ended April 25, 2016 - huh?  I told him that I had our canceled check for the year ending April 25, 2017,which cleared our bank on April 7, 2016.  (See how useful the payment info is.)  “Oh, yes.  There is an error, I see the payment.  I’ll update the computer.  I then asked him if this means that we have had no coverage for the past year - despite paying for it.  He, of course said no.  When I pushed him as it what would have happened if we needed service - “Service would have called us and we would have found the error and fixed it.”  What if I needed the help, say last Friday - they keep business hours in the office?  “Oh, you would have just paid for the service call and we would have reimbursed you.”  The fact that I would not have known who to call and would have needed to have money to pay them for the tow, well that did not make sense to him.  He wanted me to renew by credit card over the phone.  “Do you even still deal with my brand of RV, since it is not on your list of RV companies?”  Of course they do, just that if one gets a new policy it has to come through the RV company - which makes no sense as to why the company is not on their alternate ID for sign in list.  I asked him to mail us a bill to pay.

He seemed a little too quick and pat with the answers and husband went looking on the Internet, Yes, this has happened to a number of people.  Our RV company has it’s own road service company now - so they would not be signing us up with them.  In addition they have dropped the inexpensive basic policy we had for one which is more than three times as much cost.  So after all this we are looking for a different company - but at least I will be able to find the paid bills as we go forward as they will be scanned into the computer.

THOUGHT FOR THE WEEK -

I feel odd about this thought it is different than my usual posts for same and it is not intended to be religious or political, although it is a bit of both, but I intend it to be more of a any person to any person idea.


As the Jewish people celebrate Passover and the Christians celebrate Good Friday and Easter this week, please take to heart the idea of all of us being siblings.  Be a little nicer to people in your daily life - strangers as well as those you know. 

Say please and thank you a bit more - even in situations where you might not normally think to do so.  Hold the door open for someone - even if they capable of doing so on their own.  Help a mother who is juggling child, purse and lunch tray as she tries to move a high chair.  Smile at someone who looks a bit upset - it is an amazing feeling when one does this and the other person smiles back and then, at least, seems a little less upset - a bond between two people of only seconds.  (These are all things I have done during the past week - and try to do when I can.)

Let us - even those not of a religion celebrating these holidays - be a bit more neighborly to those we see during the day.  Not only will the other person feel better, it is amazing how long the memory of the smile from a stranger lasts - no matter which of us initiated it. 

Our world is in a state today that I, for one, find scary.  Perhaps the more of us who show small kindnesses to others, the better the world can be.



           








                           

MARCH SEEMS ALMOST AS BAD AS FEBRUARY SO FAR

Well, another week has gone by.  Last Wednesday I was so glad that February was over and hoped for a pleasant March with a chance to catch up on everything - and put away my Christmas Teddy village.  It is not to be.

Last Thursday was pretty good.  We went to the dentist and he had a wax of husband’s new partial.  He fit it in adjusted it and we are to have the finished new partial this coming Friday.

That afternoon we signed husband up for a Medicare part D plan and a supplemental plan as he starts Medicare next month.  (For anyone outside the US - this is the Federal government medical plan for those 65 and over.)  Confusion - but not too bad.  More or less an auspicious start to the month.

Friday we had a fairly normal day.  There was suppose to be snow, but nothing.  At dinner Friday night husband’s partial broke again along the same line and I called the dentist to see if he could fit us in Saturday morning - he could.

We go to a quilt show annually at the same venue in New Jersey as the woodworking show two weeks ago.  We normally go on Thursday - the first day of the show - but due to the dentist appointment we planned to go on Friday.  Due to the snow we changed when we would go to Saturday.  So, again, we went to the dentist and then drove out of state to the quilt show.  (It always amazes me how quiet the quilt show is compared to the woodworking show and all it’s power tools, in the same place.  Another difference is that there are more tables and they are big group tables at the quilt show as well as spare smaller tables in the lobby for the quilt show than they have for the woodworking show.  More women eat lunch there?  Women like to sit with strangers?  Women are more likely to stay longer and eat there?  Who knows.

Saturday night we were both exhausted.  I had 3 hours sleep on Friday night.  Our reenactment unit had its annual party Sunday and neither of us felt like going - let alone dressing in period clothes.  We compromised and went in modern clothes (acceptable for this).  We got home even more exhausted and made a (relatively) early night of it. 

Sounds pretty good so far - right?

Monday we got a call to pick up a prescription renewal I called in.  Cost was $8 instead of $4.50.  We also got a notice from the prescription manager of our insurance company that we could not renew this prescription at the pharmacy unless we called them and told them that we wanted to do so.  Huh?  We have picked up our prescriptions at this pharmacy since before we were on the insurance plan.  I telephoned, of course husband had to get on the phone and tell them I could talk to them, I had to let the employee recite each medication, I had to say we wanted to pick it up locally at retail, and then confirm my response.  She told me to call the pharmacy and have them reprocess the prescription and it would be the former price.  I did so - they did so - it remained the same price!  Could not deal with calling them back right away.  So we moved on to our next problem.  We drove to our car dealer with the printout from the manufacturer about the problem with our car. Of course they cannot just take the car and check it for the problem.  We have to go on Monday and have an oil change at our expense - after just paying to have the car filled with oil.  We then have to come back in 1000 miles for a “oil consumption test”.  Okay, this sounds highly technical, but we guess it means the oil is drained out and measured and compared to the mileage driven - there should be no oil used no matter the mileage.  So we are playing their game. 

Now comes the real “fun” part of the week.  Since husband is leaving our medical plan for Medicare, we have to take him off of our old plan - and leave me on it.  Sounds like something which should be simple and commonly done.  I spent over an hour on the phone with an employee of our state health division which deals with the ACA medical insurance.  (Understand that we love our ACA plan - despite the complaints in the press, we have had a great price for a reasonable cost.)   The woman I spoke with had to figure out what to do - again, I would think that this should be common enough for them to have a protocol for doing this.  When we were all done - after I gave her extensive estimates of our 2016 income to use for the calculations - she told me that I no longer qualified for the insurance and I would have to go on Medcaid (again, for those not in the US, this is the Federal medical plan for poor people).  I pointed out to her that the household income, which is used to determine this, is the same as it was before.  She agreed that it did not make sense and suggested that since I was being asked for proof of income, I send in the paperwork and “I guess it will all work out in the end”. 

We were both sick all night thinking about this.  I worked for 6 hours copying income forms and since we each have our own business - finding receipts for the business expenses as they come directly off of the income before it is counted as income.  Exhausted and ill, we went to sleep.

Husband woke me early the next morning saying he had not been able to sleep and I had to call back.  I did.  I got another employee who found the same information.  She managed to determine the problem.  Since my husband would be over 64 his income would not count and only my income did, and mine was low enough for me to get Medicaid.  I pointed out that this made no sense as it meant a man could earn millions of dollars and his wife who did not work could go on Medicaid - she checked with her supervisor who agreed this was true - does it make ANY sense to you?  She passed me along to a review division to see if they could help me.

The man I spoke to at same told me that I was right and both my and husband’s income would be used to see what I was eligible for.  He also told me that the problem was that, even after providing extensive information the day before, NO income was listed for either of us - since we had no income, I was eligible for Medicaid.  He suggested we go online and enter the income and it should resolve.  I also found out that as of the end of the month I have no insurance as we had a couples policy and one person could not be removed and the other stay - I had to get a single policy.  At each point and person, husband had to give me permission to talk to them about my insurance as the account is in his name.

Now, husband had researched this online as I went through these extensive calls and the work I had done the night before.  From what he found, he checks the principle (him) is leaving the plan as he has other coverage and the dependent (me) stays on the plan.  When we went into our online account to list the income he was checked as not needing insurance.  It also said change of circumstances.  We followed it through step by step - it even let us put in that our income was the same as 2015 (the last year a record exists for) and then let me pick our insurance again as my new policy.  So easy.  I really hope this worked and the matter is resolved.  I have someone that we have been in touch with in the insurance company’s president’s office and will call her and ask her to check what is going on, on their end. 

I then called the pharmacy manager again about the overcharge on the prescription now that it should be resolved. The woman went away for about 10 minutes checking.  When she returned her answer was that the pharmacy raised the price.  I told her that the pharmacy told me that the insurance company decides the price and they raised it.  I could almost hear her shrug.  So today we picked up the prescription and paid the additional - we need it and I will try to resolve it next week and get a refund.           

Today I had to call our state tax department for a form I need for a corporation tax return.  It is the only form not available online as they want us to file all the returns online and when one calls for the form they try to talk one into filing it online.  I was on hold for 14 minutes to speak to someone to get the form.  I had planned on calling for this form a week ago - but the time kept slipping away with all the “stuff” we had to do. 

In addition as an accountant I should be working on clients’ tax returns, but have been caught up in all this.  I need to get the returns done timely for the clients, as well as so I get paid.

We are now expecting snow on Friday - the day husband is suppose to get his new partial.  It varies from a trace to 4 plus inches depending on who is doing the weather report (and that includes, as always, different reports from different weather people at the same station) and from hour to hour.  We plan to run our Friday errands tomorrow (Thursday) as they are banking and post office errands and it is better to do them early and not have needed to, then not be able to do them and have a problem.  I may call the dentist tomorrow to see if the partial came in early and we can come in tomorrow instead. 

We also have a St Patrick’s Parade on Sunday with our reenactment unit - but we have told them that if it is cold (say below 35F) or snowy, we will not be there.

Now, I know that in the scheme of life these are all relatively small things - no one is ill or injured.  The house stands and its systems work. It is just that we go through these periods where the small things go on and on, one after enough and become too much.

THOUGHT FOR TODAY -

In light of what has been going on, I will say that one needs a sense of humor and the idea that “this too will pass”.  As upset as I get, I know we have been lucky to find each other and have each other this long.  Perhaps I will get a chance to deal with the last of Christmas decorations this weekend if we are stuck in due to snow or bad weather or just because we come home between things we are doing.  I have learned that often what seems horrible becomes humorous when it is in the past.

So, remember to keep your sense of humor and sense of scale when things go awry.  You may end up with a good story to tell and laugh at. 

Off to change a load of laundry now.