SORTING THROUGH ONE'S HISTORY - WHAT TO DO WITH DECADES OF MY EMBROIDERIES

 I don't intend to post monthly instead of weekly it just has been happening lately.  My apologies.

We had a reenactment event a week or so ago and having not done an event in awhile it took a bit of work to remember what we needed and to get everything we had to bring together to do so.  

We have two other events coming up in October.  For one of the events I need to put together a talk on period (18th century) needlework as we are each being given a set time for our demonstrations – my work is so close that while people can watch – a crowd cannot do so all at once.  So I will be stitching all day as is normal for me at these events and will be able to show work and talk about needlework “back then”.  

In the past at some other events (which were for a later period) I had a bag of various types of embroidery and other stitching to show.  (I finish stitching pieces, but – especially when I did the project primarily to learn the technique – I often do nothing with the piece after the stitching is finished, which makes it easier to take the pieces to demonstrations.) I could not find the bag in our studio.  

In the past the studio was much better organized, but since the start of Covid it – and especially my work table – has become the storage area for excess canned goods and such.  Add into this the fact that we had taken apart my family home when mom moved elsewhere and I have a number of bags – similar to the bag I used to bring to events – with embroidered pieces – finished and unfinished – back to when I was a young girl.  So gathered together all of these bags and took them to the living room.  I sorted through them – finished or unfinished being one of main sorting criteria.  While I never the bag with items I expected to find together I did get to see a history of my (and my husband's) needlework.  

The pieces are now sorted – mine or his, mine by year of work or type of stitching.  Unfortunately they are still taking up much of our living room in stacks.  I will sort through for what is usable for this event and then figure out how to better store them.   I have not really been able to work with them as our living room also serves as husband's “loom room” for his, well, loom which is setup in the room for him to work on a piece.  (Yes, our house has very unusual purposes to many of the rooms.)

THOUGHT OF THE WEEK (OK, MONTH) -
When one has an assortment of old, beloved items to work through it is not easy and will often be put off.  First step is to sort the items in some fashion so one can see what they have and decide what to do with them.  Obviously in this case donating the pieces is not really a viable solution and the pieces will all be kept – and will serve as history of my and in general needlework of the 1950s/60s onward.  

Do you have anything similar – of no value except to you, and possibly posterity?

JULY 4TH - REMINDS ME OF THE ORGANIZING IT TOOK TO RUN A HOUSEHOLD - ALMOST 250 YEARS AGO

 While this post circles around an American colonial event of 1776, it is also a general post. I do hope everyone related to same had a good July 4^{th .}

As 18^th century reenactors the holiday has a second meaning for my husband and myself. When one spends part of their time “living” in a different time period that time period and participating in events related to it, it take on additional meaning.

Communication being what it was in 1776 the Declaration of Independence most people had no idea that the Declaration had been signed for a week or maybe more. Could you imagine something that momentous today not being instantly available – in great detail – to everyone within minutes today? And it took weeks for England to know about it – even longer for other countries.

Most things took longer then. A housewife and anyone helping her cook (including enslaved people, free servants, and family members) would be awake as early as possible to start cooking – possibly before dawn depending on the time of year. In a most cases the kitchen was a separate building. A fire – in all seasons – as it would need to be started so the wood could burn down to charcoal for use. If the housewife was good at what she did the breakfast would be leftovers from the day before. It was common to cook a meal for “dinner” (at about the time we have lunch). Leftovers from dinner would be eaten for supper that evening. And if the housewife had planned correctly – the food still leftover would be reheated and served for breakfast the following morning. Leftover food could not be stored for anywhere near the time we do so today as it would go bad without refrigeration – depending on location winter would help some with keeping food cold in season. Of course there was no running water so someone was carrying water for cooking and washing – people and things.

A good deal of the food was raised by the individual families – animals for meat, planting in the spring, fishing in nearby water – again it all had to planned out in advance how much would be needed, such as how much wheat would the family need to last until next year's wheat was ready to harvest? What if something happened to the crops and they were lost or bad? How much bread to bake at a time so it would last long enough – but none would go bad? We have been thorough periods in the 20^th/21st centuries where we had to go food shopping every day as we had not been planning out what we need for food as the easy and constant availability of same spoiled us. It was much easier for me before husband retired/quit his job a decade or two ago as I could plan my list and plan my time to get shopping done once a week, with an extra run on Friday to fill in if needed – before the weekend and husband was around all day. Since Covid we have been back to figuring out how much food to buy to go out and food shopping the least number of times – and shopping list matching the aisles the items are in to be able to find things as quickly as possible. We tried to keep the food shopping to every 2 months in 2020 – storage of the food a major organizing job on its own. (We are edging back to food shopping much more often as fill in shopping these days.)

When my husband was still working he thought what I did if a bad storm – snow or rain - was mentioned on the news – I would make sure we had a week's food in the house – especially food that did not need to be refrigerated and also food that did not need to be cooked - and all our prescriptions were up to date so we had enough medications for a week or so at the least. I would fill the gas tank in my car. I would do the laundry – even if early – so I knew we would have clean clothing, towels, bedding, etc. Since he has been home all the time and even more so since Covid, he understands what I was doing all along.

THOUGHT OF THE WEEK -

Survival in earlier times depended on the family – especially the wife – planning what foods would be needed when, as well as how to keep the food safely edible and not running out of food. In cold weather the husband and sons would have to make sure there was enough wood to burn for heat and for cooking.

At the start of Covid a bit of all this need for planning came back. As the need for the planning has been disappearing again (though even now, many times food shelves are still partially empty in the supermarket and they are out of foods we planned to buy) we are losing the idea of planning ahead to make sure we are ready for the next emergency – and there will ALWAYS be a next emergency.

Are you planning ahead so that when the next emergency comes – you and your family are prepared? (I am not talking about going to the extent that so called “preppers” do – just that you have food in the house for a short period of time to get started if something happens.)

WELL I THOUGHT MY EMAIL PROBLEMS WOULD BE BEHIND NOW - BUT NO, NOW I HAVE TO DELETE SOMEWHERE AROUND 90% OF WHAT HAS COME INTO MY COMPUTER

 Sorry about missing last week.   My main computer and email are still not completely back up and running from the email software problems I have been having. I really depend on my computer(s) to stay organized.  

What do YOU do with your email to read and keep track of it?

We did have to delete the software and do a clean install of the new software.  By doing this we then had to do a new setup of all my email accounts.  Okay – you have one or two or three email accounts – but as part of my organizing I have somewhere around 15 accounts.  15 accounts – why?  

Well I have my basic account – my family, husband's family and maybe 3 or 4 close friends have this email address – this way I can respond to the most important people in our lives quickly.  

I have an account for my accounting practice for my clients to contact me.  

One of my business clients – a woman in her 80s who still owns, runs and goes to work at her business every day – does not use a computer.  Her alarm company only bills by email.  So I opened up an account for her business to deal with this.  Before the pandemic when I was going in every month I would print out the bills when they came in, bring them with me to her and write the check for her to pay the company.  Since the pandemic I print the bills and mail them to her to pay as I have not being going to her – she mails me copies of the info I need.  

I have an account for the craft business which husband and I have for matters related to the business.

I have an account for my cell phone so it works.

I have an account for my embroidery club – it is used for things related to the club and me.  I have a second account for this club – but this account I have as the treasurer of the club – when I am no longer treasurer the new treasurer will get this account and have records of what the old treasurer (me) sent out, received, and did.  

I have an account for our reenactment unit – it used, for things related to the unit and me.  I also, again, have a second account for the unit as I am, again, treasurer of it.  (When one is an accountant one always ends up being the treasurer.)  This is used for business of the unit and will, again, be passed along to the next treasurer at some point.

I have an email account for this blog – any of you who want to me contact – feel free to do using the blog's email address.

I have 2 email accounts which I use when doing things online – such as various online groups/sites I belong to.  

I have 2 email accounts which were used with other clubs I used to belong to and I have kept for when I send an email and not be known.  

I also have one email account which has a different start to it as when I give the email address by telephone (something I used to do often when making hotel reservations back at the end of 20th century) my normal format has an “f” in it which people hear when talk as “s”, so when I need to give my email address by telephone I use this address as it does not have that problem.

My poor husband sat for 2 days entering all of these accounts into the new software and making sure they work properly.
Biggest problem is that when we talked about wiping out the old program and installing the new I asked him if this would result in just the unread emails being brought into the computer or all of the ones in the accounts.  He assured that only the unread emails would be brought into my computer/the software.  Wrong guess – one email address brought in something like 32,000 emails!!  (And that is one of my junk accounts.) While I might like to have them in my computer I don't NEED emails from 2018 – or more importantly don't even WANT emails from 2008!  

So I spend a good part of every day going through the email accounts in the software and deleting old emails – by the single email or more generally by the page.  I also have to sort some of the ones I am keeping into special folders to be able some emails more easily (such as the emails from USPS telling me what mail was to be delivered to me each day – if you haven't signed up for this service, it is very good to have).  When deleting emails – even single ones – they take quite awhile to be deleted which is annoying and slows the process down.  I figure this could take a month or two or more to finish doing.

I have also found that some – not a lot, but some – emails came through scrambled or unformatted and in at least one case the name in the list does not match the text in the email – it being one of the ones from USPS by title, but not the text in it.  

In addition we made the changeover just before I was due to email out the monthly newsletter for my embroidery club.  I had finished the newsletter just before husband started dealing with all of this – it was written and saved in a text processing program so what I had written was not affected by all of this.  I went to last month's newsletter and copied the list of who it was sent to and pasted that into the email for this newsletter.  Instead of showing the showing the emails it only showed the member's names!  I could not send it out using the information from last month's newsletter.  I hate to push my work off onto someone else – but had to as it serves as the meeting reminder and I wanted it out a month before the meeting – so I sent it the club president (who knew I was having email problems) and asked her to send it out for me.  I send out 2 other copies – one to those who asked about our club and one to certain people in the region management who I am required to send it to.   Those went out a couple of days after I hand copied their information into new address books in the new program.  I have been told that there was problem with this – attached files (including the newsletter) cannot be opened as before – they have to be copied first.  

Throw into all of this – husband set up the program to automatically download emails when I sign on.  At some point I have this changed to wait until I check for emails as if I sign after having checked emails for the day earlier in the day – it will download any new ones when I do not generally want them as if I am back in the account it generally means I need information from something I have already read.  The other problem with this is if I do need to check for email again in ONE account – all of them are downloading any email which has come in.  

THOUGHT OF THE WEEK -
This will be an ongoing project for some time.  There is nothing else I can do to get it all cleaned up.  I am trying to do it logical way – in my case I started with the first email account in the list – not the most important one.  I figure if I have all my emails from the start of 2022 in my computer I can always refer to older ones in my online account if needed.  Only somewhere around 40,000 emails left to sort through!

What do YOU do with your email to read and keep track of it – no really, I am curious what other people do?

ITS THE LITTLE THINGS.... CONTINUED

 Here's another example - 

I had renewed our reenacting unit's insurance - did the paperwork, paid for it and paid dues to a group that unit has to belong to get the insurance.  I was done for the year!

Or was I?  

A couple of weeks ago I realized I had not received the "Certificate of Insurance" which proves we have coverage and what the coverage is.  So, I sent an email to the insurance agent and he emailed back the certificates to me.  We get a certificate for our unit to prove we have the insurance from them and 3 more certificates as 3 different venues require us to have them added to our policy (in case something happens due to us) and we have to send them their certificates (I keep a copy of each).  I mailed out two of these certificates to places where we are actually doing events.  The third place I do not mail their certificate until just before the event or they lose it, so I did not mail that one.  Done with mailing the certificates out until the fall.  Check it off my list - take a breath.

The certificates had the wrong expiration date on them!  The policy expired two months before it started according to the certificates!!   New ones emailed to me with the correct dates on them and a big apology and I received them over the weekend.  I printed out the two which have to go out right away with a cover letter explaining why they were getting a second certificate and I put the envelopes in my outgoing mail basket to go out next Sunday night when we again go out and post outgoing mail.

Well, there is an event this coming weekend and the venue contacted our president - did we get a new certificate for this year?  He contacted my husband.  I explained to husband that it had been mailed to them, but was wrong and corrected one being mailed out with the mail to go out Sunday.  He scanned it into the computer and emailed it to them and we went out late tonight and posted our outgoing mail to date so they would have it sooner (hopefully before the event) - extra trip out and time spent.

 AND - we mailed in the renewal of our van's registration over a month ago and have not received the registration yet - we realized this last weekend. I checked with our bank's computer and the check had not cleared the bank. So Monday I telephoned the DMV, the hold was not as long as I thought it would be.  Now what is strange is a month before we mailed this registration renewal in, we mailed in the renewal of the registration of our RV - which is basically also a van -that came in 2 weeks.  The automated message said that they could not help with registrations mailed in less than 4 weeks ago. Since it was more than 4 weeks I waited put through the computer system to find out what was going on.  Nice woman came on and told me that it had been "processed".  If it was process why hadn't the check cleared our bank?  She did not know.  It was processed on June 21, I should call back if I do not have it 14 days.  I pointed out to her that the registration would expire before then - what should I do if it is not here before the expiration date - can we drive the van - NO!!  So we are waiting to hopefully receive the registration - at least the check is finally clearing the bank as of today.  If we don't get the registration before it expires, hopefully our car will not have problems and we won't need to drive the van.

I then had to call our medical insurance as one of my prescriptions was turned down - as past  6 months, need to go to back to the doctor for new prescription?  Huh, never had this problem before for self or husband - and why did all of other prescriptions go through.  Found out doctor had written the prescription for too long a time and I have to call him to fix it - why did they give the first renewal?  Our state passed a terrible law some years ago.  In an effort to stop the theft of prescription pads, all prescriptions must go directly through a computer system.  In the old days we would get the prescription, make sure they were correct and take whichever ones we needed filled right away to the pharmacy.  Now we have no idea if they are correct and if we don't need a medication renewed as we have, still get it anyway - if it is one of the expensive ones, we tell them to put it back and we call when needed - more work for pharmacy staff and time wasted picking up prescriptions. 

We need to go food shopping and plan to do so tomorrow. So in addition to writing to all of you nice readers and doing our laundry I took inventory of what food we have and what we need.  How nice to do something normal - we may even go out lunch at Wendys first - our third time doing so since mid March 2020. 

 THOUGHT OF THE WEEK - Is it the pandemic which is making everything weird and resulting in all of these stupid small problems one after another after another after...?

Are any of you finding you are having this same problem of one stupidity after another?

 

    

WHAT IS NORMALLY DONE OVER 5 MONTHS ALL HAS TO BE DONE AT ONCE INSTEAD THIS YEAR!

 I have been using up my time finishing up the renewals for two organizations I am in.  Normally our reenactment unit renewals are due at the beginning of the year – our national organization needs (wants?) their renewals to them by March 31st and my embroidery chapter renewals are due to our national organization and our local region by May 31st.  Throw in tax season which normally ends on April 15th and there is a lot – but the various parts of what I need to do is spread over 5 months.

This year the national of our reenactment unit decided it was a good time to update their membership system, so their renewals are due – of course – May 31st.  And as any of you in the USA know – tax season was extended to May 17th.  People being how people are – just about everyone puts off renewing and/or filing taxes until the last minute – so late April and May has been overwhelming.  

The taxes were finished and out on time to the clients – except one client asked for an extension – he always does.  But the dues collection and submission have been running behind.  As of today I have heard from 3 of the last 4 people I needed to speak with (combined from both organizations).   So tomorrow I will be able to do the paperwork for one group and hopefully will hear from the last person, so I can do the paperwork for the other group.  

I am treasurer of both groups, and membership chair of our reenactment unit.  I took on the membership chair position as it is easier for me to collect the dues and paperwork than have someone else do so and get it all to me – as the unit is relative quiet with no meetings or events when normally the renewals are taking place.  My embroidery chapter has a membership chair and normally she would be going after members for renewals and collecting the dues – but this year (and last year) due to the pandemic and no face to face meetings it has been easier for me to collect the dues and have them mailed to me – or she would first have to do that after all was mailed to her.  

When I get all the paperwork for both groups and mail it out – slightly late for both – I will be very happy that it is all finished and take a deep breathe.  The client with the tax extension will contact me about actually doing his taxes in late August to early September – as he does every year.  

Of course life does not stop for all of this – I am still doing the housework, checking and paying bills, cooking, laundry, and so on.  And, as I mentioned  last week – we have been getting our RV ready to go out after sitting for almost 2 years (problems with it stopped us mostly from traveling in 2019 also).  

This Friday we are taking the RV to an authorized shop for its generator.  In addition to needing its normal oil change – they have to figure out why it does not start.  They charge US$160 an hour.  We are hoping it is something simple – such as the fuse is out of place or the fuse needs to be replaced – when we go there the bill always seems to be huge.  (Normally we take our RV to our dealer in another state for the oil change as it is much cheaper and they don't add on other things we didn't need and don't put in too much oil so that it does work right.)

But after posting so late last week – I was bound and determined to post on time this week!

THOUGHT OF THE WEEK -
What needs to get done, somehow gets done.   One must figure out how to do so.  Figure out which needs to be done first and do it, even when everything needs to be first!  Then do everything else.

WHEN EVERYTHING GOES ON AND DOWNHILL AT ONCE...

 OOPS!  Somehow I lost Wednesday - and Thursday - this week.   

I finally finished doing tax returns this week – except for a client who wanted an extension, so I finally had time to devote to my embroidery chapter and our reenactment unit.  

In normal times I would be working with the membership chair of my embroidery chapter on renewals as the national group for same has renewals due by May 31.  

Normally the reenactment unit has its membership renewal period at the start of the year as our national group wants its renewals and dues by March 1 and the unit renewals are done at the same time.   BUT this year – our chapter is rolling over dues from last year as the unit did almost nothing last year due to Covid-19, so that part is easy, but our national group pushed their renewal period back to now – also due in May – as they were redoing their membership records system.  So I have to get the members of both groups to renew at the same time.  I had emailed to members from my embroidery chapter an those members of our reenactment unit who belong to the national group (not all unit members belong to same) to renew.  I have received some renewals from each group and all week have been intending to send a second email to those who still have to renew in each group.  (Yes, personally my dues/our dues have already been paid to both groups.)  

Throw into this mix that week was the monthly Zoom for the embroidery chapter and a last minute Zoom board meeting was called for the reenactment unit.  I was so confused that I thought they were both the same day – embroidery in the morning and the board meeting at night.  I was working at my computer late in the day – long after the embroidery meeting – and suddenly realized that the meeting had already started.  I yelled to my husband to come up and sign in (he is also on the board) as I started my laptop (no camera or microphone on my desktop computer) to quickly sign into the meeting.  Husband yelled back that the board meeting was the next day- phew!!

Now add into this the embroidery chapter has its face to face meetings (when we used to have and will in the future) in a town park's community room.  The one we have been using is much too small to be able to social distance (January 2020 I did not go to the meeting as I had a cold and could not figure where I could sit and not pass along the cold.)  We have been in talks with the town to use a different meeting room for the rest of this year – if and when it is opens up – and we had to change our meeting date to do so.  A vote had been taken by the members as to which day to meet instead.  I suddenly realized the day before the meeting that we had not setup the meeting dates with the town.  I double checked with the chapter President and telephoned the town parks department – call went to voicemail.  I left a message.  Next day I was called back – we took too long, the room was already assigned.  I grabbed the alternative they still had – the same meeting room we had before on a different day – in the interim.  Chapter President said the room was too small even before Covid, and to call again.  

So I have been in a panic most of the week – a large IRS refund due to a client which has not come yet and does not show on IRS records, plus the 2 sets of renewals, plus the two meetings, plus the we lost the meeting room we wanted.  Little by little over the week things started to resolve – the client's refund is finally showing up on the IRS website, the board meeting for the reenactment unit went much better than I thought it would and the unit is not disbanding, and today I received a call from someone else at town parks, that we can have the room we were asking for on the days we wanted it.  (We are hoping that later this year we can meet in person.)  Breathe a big sigh of relief!

Now add into all of this – husband and I have been working on cleaning up in the garage.  Late last week I had been using my leg to measure how tall the small trash pails he uses to hold smaller pieces of wood are, as one broke and we needed to replace it, and I leaned forward to see how tall it was against my leg and smashed my head into the end of husband's lathe – OUCH!  As of now it still hurts if I touch it.  And on Tuesday my right thumb started to hurt.  I don't think it is computer or cell phone related as I tend to use my fingers much more than my thumbs on both.

All of this has been in my head and Wednesday slipped past me and then Thursday slipped past me.  Now I can get back to the renewals for both groups, hopefully my head and thumb will feel better and maybe tonight I will be able to sleep and remember what day it is!


THOUGHT OF THE WEEK -

Even when everything is hitting at once, try to deal with the various problems one at a time with the most urgent one first – and in today's pandemic world – try to remember which day it is – all day!

BOY MY MIND IS FRIED THIS TAX SEASON - WHAT WILL HIT NEXT?

 Okay, as I just added to last week's post which apparently – though I remember posting it – was never posted and has been sitting as draft.  

For some reason I seem to be getting hit a lot lately with crazy things.  As I have mentioned I am an accountant and it is, of course, “tax season”.  As the daughter of two accountants I grew up with tax season so I am accustomed to dealing with same.  I was helping my father making photocopies when same was relatively new in the 1960s – to give an idea of what I mean – First the original and the paper to be copied were run through a slot in the copier where the original was copied onto the paper.  Then the 2 papers came out of the machine.  The copy (and, yes, sometimes we ran the original through by mistake and that was a mess) was then inserted into a different slot in the copier where it was run through the chemicals to make the printing appear on it and fix same to it.  The copies came out wet and had to be hung up to dry – and it all smelled terrible.

I am down to a handful of clients who I prepare individual tax returns for and even less business clients (and two of those are my husband).  The clients I have are mostly my dad's clients, (dad having passed on some decades ago) some started with him in the 1960s or 1970s. The returns are fairly straight forward as they are all retired long ago – nothing to tease my brain.  So while preparing the tax returns takes time and I have to make sure that I have all the info from each client, it is not a brain busting matter to prepare the returns (add instructions, etc.)  

I belong to an embroidery chapter of a national embroidery club.  I serve as Treasurer of same.  The renewals for this organization are due by the end of May, so every year renewals overlap tax season – but I am used to this by now.

So far, so good.

I am also the Treasurer of our reenactment unit. This is not normally any sort of problem or situation during the main part of tax season as dues to our national organization from members,, as well as the dues to our unit, are collected in January and February and the dues to the national organization must be mailed by me to them by March 1.  This year, however, the national organization decided as long as things were quiet due to the pandemic – it was the time to redo their membership records and how they are managed on their end.  As a result they pushed back renewals into later in the year – yes, they are also due the end of May.  But to make things a bit easier, since our unit basically did nothing, the board voted to roll over paid dues from 2020 into 2021.  So only those members who did not renew with unit in 2020 have to renew now with the unit and only those members of the unit who belong to our national organization (and we do not require members to belong, so only about half of our members do) have to renew now.  

I have been working on tax returns – have all done except one friend who always files late (years late) and one client who always asks for an extension – and our return, of course, though our return is actually almost finished – I need the mileage on our car odometer to calculate business use of the car last year and we will get our car back on Friday.  

Forgot to throw that in – our car has been at our mechanic for over 2 months.  He actually gave up early week and husband went looking online and found the same odd problem we have and what people did – so the mechanic was finally able to fix it – but two months ago I did not think to take the mileage off the odometer and will not have it until we get the car back this Friday.  

I went to file extensions for the client who needs them while I was still waiting for information from the other clients last week.  I found out that the tax software I am using has a problem with our state and the forms are not fileable (my practice is too small for me to be able file for clients online).  So, I have had to take the copy of the return as I get it from the software and then fill in the state forms by hand to be able to use them.  This did not happen with a return I had to prepare for a different state so it is related to this state's returns not a general problem.  This was not a big deal, but it did take more time.  

I had to send a couple of weeks ago emails to both organizations for renewals and I am currently waiting for the renewals to trickle in from both groups.  

It doesn't matter how much I have systems for getting things done on time when things go awry elsewhere.  Plus of course – Easter and Passover dinners for husband and myself, as well as husband's birthday.  This is one heck of a spring for me, and I have to work hard to juggle it all this year.  

THOUGHT FOR THE WEEK -

Chances are that whatever one's plans are and how well they are organized something will go wrong.  Hopefully nothing goes wrong in a major way that cannot be adjusted for.  The comedienne Gilda Radner used to say on “Saturday Night Live” - “It's always something.”  

Oh, did I mention that our shower drain is backed up and we cannot use it until we clear the pipes, we still have to figure out what to do about the poison ivy in the backyard that we ignored last year and it grew all the way from the back of the house to the front – including onto the house, and we could not mow the backyard due to same and still have weeds the size of trees back there...

WHEN IT IS TIME TO SAY GOODBYE TO CHRISTMAS?

 Today is January 6 – the last day of Christmas.

No, really, today is the last of the twelve days of Christmas – the day the three kings arrived to see the Baby Jesus.  In earlier centuries Christmas started on Christmas day and ended today – not as today, where Christmas starts at Thanksgiving (a totally unrelated holiday) or earlier in the year and ends on Christmas Day.  I have mentioned that husband and I are 18th century reenactors.  In normal years our unit participates in a Candlelight Nights event at the local restoration village (forgive me if I am repeating myself).  We explain to the public which comes through that Christmas was celebrated for the  entire 12 days – which by the way, does NOT include Christmas Day – which was religious/church day.  Starting December 26 (still called Boxing Day in many countries), which was the first day of Christmas there would be parties every evening.  Family and friends would come to visit (and as I explain to children – family might come from far away and therefore might not come to visit for the day or the week, but for weeks or a month) - it was a common time for weddings as a result.  Each night we are at the event after Christmas Day we mention what night it is – as in “Oh, you are here for the family's first night (second night, third night…) party.  Think of it 12 days of parties and fun for Christmas.  

One advantage to there being 12 specific days of Christmas with a definite day – today – to end the holiday is that one knew when the holiday was over.  I hate it when people run to take down their Christmas Decorations or toss their tree out the day after Christmas.  

I sort of mix it all together.  Today we used/are using our Christmas dishes (inexpensive Corelle) for the last time for a year.  I have put the Christmas dishes we did not use today (and will not use for late night snack tonight) on the table runner on our dining room table.  The dinner dishes are washed.  When I take out them out of the drying rack, they will join the others on the dining room table.  Tomorrow I will add the dishes we use for late snack -which will be washed and left to air dry before we go to bed tonight, box them up, and store them in the basement closet until next year.  The same with our Christmas glasses.  

But as good as I am about the dishes – I hate to take down the decorations.  The outdoor lights will have the timer in our basement which controls them shut off.  The wreath on the door will have it's timer shut off also (it runs on batteries).  I will leave the window candles (also battery and timer) up a little longer.  But the outside decorations – lights, flag on holder and decorations on our solar lamps' holders – will remain up until the weather is warm enough to take them down comfortably or the weather coming is bad enough that we better get them down – freezing weather or not.  

But in the house – generally the decorations – including the trees – will stay up a bit longer (no one sees inside the house to see that they are still up).  Several years ago we realized that we needed a definite point in time to take down the inside the house decorations.  When January started it was too soon. By the last week in January I was walking around thinking - “oh no, I guess I should start taking it all down soon, but who wants to now that the holiday is over”.  I figured out a definite point to signal to start taking them down – Martin Luther King Jr's birthday.  (For those not in the U.S. this holiday is on the 3rd Monday in January and honors the Reverend King.)  The holiday is of no significance to taking down the decorations – other than it is a set point to do so – well, at least to start doing so.  

Our dining room is already back to normal other than the decorations.  The board I added to the table is back in the board holder in the back of our front closet.  The tablecloths and napkins long washed and put away.  The foam table protector is also long rolled up and stored in the front closet.  The good china and silver tableware was put away after New Year's Day.   (This is not the same as my Christmas dishes.)

The rest of the decorations inside may stay out a bit longer this year – basically it a bit of “we need a little Christmas” so I will not rush to pack them all away.  Something to cheer the house while staying in to avoid the corona virus is needed, so it may stay a little longer.  My infamous teddy bear village stopped having a “Christmas Festival” some years ago – as the same setup called a “Winter Festival” can stay out longer- until February when, of course, the “Valentine Festival” happens.  

When we take down the decorations – outside and inside – I will note anything which needs to be replaced next year and list it in the shopping list in my cell phone under “Xmas” so we remember to buy what is needed and have it when we need it next year.  

THOUGHT OF THE WEEK -

When there is a task to do which does not have a specific time it needs to be done or completed by – set a fixed time it needs to be done for yourself.  If it is an annual task – use the same fixed time point each year.  

I hope all have a good new year and stay well and safe.

COVID 19 #20 - DEALING WITH COMPANIES AND TRYING TO CHANGE ONE'S MAILING ADDRESS WITHOUT GOING OUT

 Do you find days and weeks are flying by since the start of the pandemic – or inching their way along?  I tend towards the former.  When I realized we would be stuck in for quite a while, I figured I would finally get a chance to catch up on organizing and cleaning.  Have I?  Well, it inches along.

When my family home was cleared out (I admit to doing much less than my sisters and their families in this process) I ended up with the assorted family papers – my parents' old income tax returns (back to the 1950s), the papers related to the original purchase and building of the house, my dad's military papers, plus papers of mine – what was left after what I had taken when we were married – from the 25 years plus that I lived in the house.  I have a cardboard file box of the papers in our office, next to my desk blocking easy access to our office supply closet.  On top of the box is 2 old photo/scrap books of mine and several old shoe boxes of childhood correspondence with friends and cousins who had gone to summer camp and others – and shortly after this all came here, the least of the papers were pulled out on a quick go through and shredded (lots of greeting cards – kept those from certain family members, close friends from back then and husband).  

I finally got started on dealing with the papers.  Combined with the fact that one of my fingers has started to hurt – I think from overuse of computer keyboards, husband thinks arthritis – I have been trying to use the computer less this past week than usual.  But scanning, I can do with little typing on the keyboard and using a different finger for the thumb pad I use (instead of a mouse) so I started going through my parents' income tax returns and scanning them.  Why am I scanning them instead of tossing them?  Well I was going to toss them out, but in the back of my head was my dad, the accountant who trained to me to be one - “Always keep copies of clients' income tax returns for the time they are clients plus 10 years.”  Mom is still alive and I guess sort of a client.  But that it a lot of paper to keep.  So, scanning was the way to go. I have scanned in all of clients (and our) old tax returns – keep them and they take up no physical space.  (I now scan the clients returns as soon as the return is done, but keep the most recent year on paper to make it easier to refer to them when doing the next year's return.  As soon as the next year's return is done, the older year is shredded.)  

I have basically always known (well back to at least my early teens) that one's tax returns is a record of one's life.  Marriage, children, divorce, death, buying a house, college for family members, losing a job, getting a new job, etc. all show up on one's income tax returns.  I am seeing it now as I go through and scan my parents return.  I was confused when I noticed that on one of the returns my 2 younger sisters were showing as dependents and I was not.  The middle sister of the 3 of us married before I did – shouldn't there be returns with me as dependent and her not there?  Oh, wait, I had started my full time job that year and was no longer a dependent even though all 3 of us were still living at home.  The returns in the years shortly before my dad died are filed on extended extension with the notation that “taxpayer has a major illness which is delaying him from filing the returns”.  (Extensions were granted of course.)  I know that as I go back further I will see each of the three of us daughters show up on the returns.  Going forward (unless my sister kept the more recent returns) I will see the return change from joint to just mom when I reach the year after he died.  

Also in the file box is various papers I wrote in high school and college.  For some of them I find multiple copies – not sure why.  I have learned that as bad as my hand is, it used to be a LOT better as was my typing  I also seemed to write doom and gloom a lot more.  I will scan in the best copy of each of these papers after I am done with my parents' income tax returns.  

I find that I can scan 2 -3 years of tax returns in an afternoon (while also checking email and other things which have to be done in the office in the closet).  I will keep doing so for now.  If nothing else, the shoe boxes will be fit into the file box at some point.  At least I feel like I am getting something done by doing this.

The other project I have been working on is changing the mailing address for us, our business, our reenactment unit, and my embroidery chapter.  I am guessing I have mentioned that we have a Post Office Box that we use as a mailing address due to problems with mail delivery at our house that developed 10 or so years ago.  This PO Box is at a different Post Office than the one which serves our house – as this Post Office is much closer to our house (as is a third one) than the one which serves our house.  There have been problems with mail forwarded to the house – not sure if problem is the Box Post Office, the house Post Office or something in between.  (These problems predate what is currently going on with cutbacks etc at the Post Office and are not related to same.)

Most of the problem at this time involves statements from the two credit unions we and/or the two clubs I am treasurer of have their bank accounts at.  Last week I telephoned the two credit unions and changed the mailing addresses to our house.  Well, almost all.  For some reason one of the credit unions could change the mailing address on our personal accounts – but I was told not the mailing address for the embroidery chapter – it is a “business”.  I have to go there in person to do so – ummm, there is the Corona virus pandemic going on and we are still are suppose to stay home?  I am missing 3 months 3 months of statements for each account – the other credit union is mailing me copies – free.  This credit unions wants $5 a statements – though there would be no charge if I – yes – came in and asked for them.  The alternative I was told was to open an online account for the chapter – so easy and convenient to do.  I discussed with husband and president of the chapter and went to set up the online account.  First problem I had was that the online form rejected the chapter's Federal ID number (same as a Social Security number for people, this is for businesses).  I tried putting it in the format IRS uses. I tried putting in the numbers with no format.  I even tried putting in the numbers in the format used for Social Security numbers – each several times – and it did not work.  The next day I telephoned the credit union and was told to put the number in with no format – somehow this time (as opposed to the 5 times before) it worked.  I finished the form and “signed” it and sent it off.  Hmmm, now what do I do? No way to sign into the account.  I sent an email – answer was that it would take several days for it to be “approved”.  Okay, why didn't it just say that on the form and I would have known!  Last Saturday when I checked email I had two emails that the online account was approved – yippee.  I copied the username from the first email and then went to copy the password from the second…. Ummm. They sent an email at 8:15 pm on a Friday night which was only good for 30 minutes!!!  Okay, it said I could get a replacement email.  I fill in the form – needs the telephone number associated with the account – I put in my telephone number.  Rejected – not the right phone number.  Try again several times.  I opened this account before cell phones were common and I did not have mine then, also there were no google phone numbers (have one now for the chapter), so what the heck other number could it be?  I tried all of these numbers anyway – also a google phone number we have for ourselves and a VoIP number has for his counseling practice – none of them worked.  I called and left a phone message at the credit union asking for help.  I also sent an email.  Monday – no one called – I called again and sent an email again. The idea started to mill around in my head that I used to have another landline phone number that I used for my accounting practice, but got rid of about 10 years ago – I looked back in my computer files to find something with the number – old letters with number in the letterhead. I tried same – no good.  I understand that businesses are shorthanded – but it has been 3 business days.  Late yesterday I called the credit union for a regular person not someone related to online help.  The man who answered was able to change the mailing account for the credit union when the other employee could not.  He had to verify me and told me that the other employee probably did not want to bother (took all of 5 minutes maximum).  He verified that the phone number on file is our home number – which was rejected.  Today I had an email from the bank finally – giving me the phone number for the account – again, our home number which was the first tried and rejected multiple times.  I do have to wonder if they wanted the phone number to prove who I am – why they would email it me.  This credit union used to be great.  They have been changing since the end of last year and not sure that any of the accounts will be staying there after Covid-19 is dealt with and we can safely and easily go out.  They changed their bank statements.  As an accountant I have dealt with thousands of bank statements from banks in about dozen US states plus from 3 other countries – and have never had a problem figuring out something as simple as their bank statements.  

So little by little I am trying to get things done which have been sitting or have arisen from the current situation – I did manage to rearrange my empty plastic containers which are out to use right now and stored some in my kitchen closet on a shelf in case they are needed.  (So much work to pull out the plastic boxes the spares are kept in, in the bottom of the same closet.)

THOUGHT OF THE WEEK -

One has to deal with emergencies first.  Then one can slowly work at other problems.  Scanning and shredding 2 or 3 years' worth of maybe 50 years worth of income tax returns is not much – but that is 2 or 3 less to deal with.  One step at a time – same applies to calling up and changing the mailing address on everything that has our Post Office box address on it to our home address.

PREPARING FOR HURRICANE ISAIAS AND THE AFTERMATH

Well, like those of you along the east coast of North America we had an add on to our Corona virus fun yesterday – a visit from Hurricane Isaias.  I hope any of you affected by it are okay – personally, your home intact and have electricity, etc again.

We were each about to run out of one medication – husband's last pill of same would be Thursday.  Sunday night I called our pharmacy (at a local regular Walmart) and reordered what we needed on their computer.  We did not need refills of everything as husband is taking less of his medications due to our eating less to stretch our trips out for food and I stop taking one pill in summer as my blood pressure drops too low in summer otherwise, but there was a good number of pills. 

We also had to call and change our RV park reservation – due to the Covid - 19 situation we do not feel comfortable going – and add on not knowing what would happen from Isaias, we decided best to postpone as it had to be done by yesterday – the day of Isaias here.  I left a message Sunday night for them to call us Monday.  We have changed the reservation to be our July 4th trip next July – we hope.

Saturday we went out and took in the loose items.  We have two small solar lanterns which hang from iron posts – took down the lanterns and posts.  Our “Betsy Ross” flag is also on an iron stand – took that down also.  We have 3 iron stands that hold pots of flowers – normally we buy 3 pots of geraniums in spring and they through the fall (and for Christmas we put artificial poinsettias, which we potted and we reuse annually in them) – they came in also.  Also our garbage pail – all went into the garage. 

Monday night I put 2 ice cubes in each of 2 small plastic bags and put one bag of cubes in each freezer – if one loses their electricity and the ice is still frozen, then the food is okay to use.  We charged our electric lantern and took out candles in holders.  We plugged in our cell phones (even the old ones with no service – they can still call 911 in an emergency) and our laptops – normally our cable company's wifi which runs through the wires in the street will work when electric out and we can use the laptops with it.  I also dropped a very small flashlight in my jeans pocket – during and after Hurricanes Irene and Sandy they were of great help.  (The ones that Harbor Freight used to give out free with coupons before they switched to the blue plastic lights they give out now free with coupons.)  We went to bed Monday night, hoping we would not need any of our preparations. I also cleared the walkways in the house -  so that we could around without tripping on anything.  In the 18th century rooms were used for multiple purposes.  Furniture was kept against the walls and what was needed for the purpose at a time was moved to the center of the room and used – then put back against the walls.  In semi-darkness to darkness one could walk through the room without needing a light.  I work with this idea making sure that one can walk from room to room and around the room where one needs to be without a light when there is a possible blackout coming.

Isaias came in overnight – sounded terrible.  News and weather reports had said it should be out of our area by around 3 pm and headed further north.  So when we were getting ready to make lunch at 2 pm, we felt better as there was only an hour or so left before it was gone.  Then the lights went out and the TV went off.  I called our electric company and gave our information.  (Our electricity poles, generating facilities, etc are owned by a non-profit which contracts with a regular utility company to run the system.  The company that was doing so, and had been doing so for a long time before, when we were hit Hurricane Sandy did a terrible job of not getting everything going again, but also there was a major lack of communication and a new company was brought in to do run everything for the non-profit – following I will be talking about the  new for profit company which runs it all for them.) 

We expected to hear back from them at some or several points as the message had asked what phone number to call us back with updates – which I had figured would be recorded messages.  For lunch we had peanut butter sandwiches – from an unopened jar as the opened jar was in the fridge, while I eat mine plain, husband likes jelly on his – he put some honey on it instead and I used disposable plates so I only had to wash the utensils (we leave the drinking glasses out on the table from lunch through our prebed snack).  We found one of our battery operated radios and put in batteries.  Not knowing how long the outage would be, we turned off our cell phones and did not turn on any of our laptops (old ones were also charged).  We opened the front door (left the glass storm door locked) and husband sat on a chair to read on his tablet while I read BBC History magazine sitting on the staircase.  After awhile I went upstairs to open the mail which had been sitting for 4 days (to kill any Covid-19 virus on it) – I opened the curtains and put up the shade to see what I was doing. I then went back to my reading on the stairs.  It was bright and sunny, but still a bit windy outside at this point.  The NYC (am)news radio stations would occasionally mention out here on Long Island, but not much info.  The few Long Island radio stations (also am – radio does not have FM) just kept playing music.  So no info.  No calls from electric utility.  Internet in street was not working.  This was extremely annoying and frustrating.

One of our next door neighbors came walking on our driveway.  We opened the front door and yelled back and forth as we socially distanced.  She has a friend at the electric utility.  A tree was down on a wire.  It was affecting 2000 customers on the circuit (in my mind – good thing – more customers affected, the sooner they repair – fix a one house outage and the number of customers restored goes up 1, fix an outage affecting 2000 customers and that one repair makes the number of customers restored go up 2000.  But she was told by her friend that we would be back on – Thursday PM!  She was walking the street making sure that everyone had called in their outage so the utility would be aware how many were out on this circuit. I told we had – and she shared the info above about the outage.  Her young daughter was with her – we both said hello to her also .  Then they went on their way to talk to the other neighbors. (We have no children, when one has children one knows other people on the street with children, due to the nature of living on a main road, it is not a small street where everyone knows everyone else.)  I thought husband was going to break down and cry or pass out when he heard Thursday pm – I managed to talk him out of either.  Just because we are 18th century reenactors, does not mean that we like to live in the dark and without air conditioning on a hot day.

Dinner time was approaching and I knew we needed more than sandwiches.  I went looking through our supplies - lots of cans of soup.  I should mention that our stove is electric – no electricity, no stove.  But we do have our other stove – in our RV.  We have used it before during Hurricanes Irene and Sandy and some other electric outages.  It is small, but it does have a 2 burner propane stove.  I have actually only used it for situations like this – when we travel in it, we eat out.  I had another thought – see if the Chinese take out place we use was open and take out dinner, but figured that husband would be upset at going out.  I mentioned cooking the soup to him.  He brought up the Chinese takeout, so we went with that.  The place has only been taking orders online or in person – no telephone orders, but I called, explained and asked (and they know us) and they took the order and our credit card info by phone.  As we were about to walk out to pick up the order, our telephone rang.  Since the answering machine is not working and being concerned that there might be a problem with our order, I answered it.  (We answered the telephone several times during the day – we now know who the hangup calls when they get our answering machine are from – all spam calls.)  This call was not spam nor the take out place – it was my mother – who I have been trying to reach by telephone for a week!  I explained that I had to talk very quickly and what we were about to do – she was surprised – she had known that we had a hurricane go through – and she lives where it is was the worst!  Mom is in an assisted living so they always have electricity due to a generator (something we really need to get, a house generator which comes on automatically, but the price scares us) but I would have thought she would have heard the winds or seen something about it on TV?! 

We picked up dinner and came home to eat it.  I was using real dishes for dinner as did not want to deal with smaller paper tableware.  I had tap water.  Husband was drinking iced tea from mix and tap water (he hates drinking “warm water”).  We had our soup and had started our main courses. I was figuring out in my head how I was going to see to wash the dishes – I had figured to bring over the battery lantern to the sink and leave husband with the candles.  Mid first plate of food – the electricity came back on!  How wonderful and lucky.  We could use the air conditioning again – husband had been terribly warm – and lights – and TV!  We did not open the fridge for cold drinks or the freezer for ice and left them closed until we had our nighttime snack, as we wanted them to get colder inside again.
The house has been put back together again.  Seemed it was all behind us.  Tonight shortly before I sat down to write this post however, the electricity went out again.  I heard husband heading towards crying and wailing.  As I calmed him down, I started calling the electric utility again – but in less than time than it took me to find, pick up, and memory dial them – it came back on again.  I am figuring that they gerry rigged something yesterday to get our circuit back up and this was our transfer to the normal system we are on as it was so brief – as if it was turned off and then back on. 

I should mention that we were lucky to reach the utility yesterday morning when we lost our electricity.  Per the local newspaper people could not reach them by phone (apparently their phone carrier was having problems in addition to their own problems) or by their app.  So now they are in the same problem as the former company. 


 THOUGHT OF THE WEEK -

Problems like this will happen.  Plan ahead so when it does YOU know what you need to do.  Know where your candles, electric lanterns, flashlights (last two being safer than the first) are.  Charge your cell phones (and remember, as I mentioned, old cell phones with no service can still call 911 in an emergency so charge them also and leave them charging as long as you have electricity.  Charge your laptops or tablets (even if you have no wifi available as we did not this time, they still can serve as a diversion) – but use your cell phones and laptops as little as possible in case you need them later.  If there are children who are old enough – have a flashlight for each of them, it will help keep them from being frightened.  Obviously have spare batteries for everything.  A battery operated radio is a good idea for information. 

I have an “accordion folder” (one of those large folders with sections) as my “grab and go”.  When I reconcile a bank account the statement goes in it – and the last matching statement comes out and gets filed.  I have copies of my computer data on DVD in it and update it monthly.  Most recent paid bills for all our insurances.  Copies of our small amount of stock info.  Copies of house deed and car titles.  Copy of marriage license.  If we had to leave home in an emergency, I just grab this and go. 

Water is rarely a problem here as our water comes from municipal water towers here.  Having said that  - we used to keep 3 gallon bottles of water in the basement and also some cans set aside for emergencies (apparently they were last changed before 2005 as we came across them in the early days of stay in place and that was the use by date on them, we are not using them, but husband made me keep them  for now - “just in case”.  When Hurricanes and Irene and Sandy were coming, we filled our RV water tanks (30 gallons of water) just in case.  We did not do so this time. 

Where my family lived we were relatively near the ocean and needing to live home in a large storm, in case of flooding in the area,  became more and more common after I left home.  If you live in an area where this might happen make sure you have a plan for what to take and who will drive what and know where to evacuate.  (We live near the evacuation center so we are far enough inland on the Island not to need to do so.  My mom did need to do so during many storms in more recent years (did not need to do so other than one time when I was still living there 40 years ago).  I would tell her to come here, but she liked going to the evacuation center – “I see everyone I haven't seen since the last evacuation”.   Make sure in advance that you have enough of your medications (as we picked up ours on Monday to be sure).    If you have a pet, find out where you can go with them and have their things also. 

Yeah, I know we have all heard this so many times – but DO you have a plan and know what to do?  If not, start planning now – when you need to do so, it is too late.

Stay safe from storms and stay well from Covid- 19 all!

COVID 19 #14 - GETTING OUR MAIL DELIVERED TO US

I think I got our mail straightened out – finally. 

Back in the early 1990s (maybe even the late 1980s) my husband and I opened a USPS Post Office Mail Box at a local Post Office.  At the time we lived in an apartment and did not want the mail for our craft business to come to our apartment lest the landlord think we were running a big time business in our apartment. The Post Office which was in walking distance of our apartment did not have any available boxes, so we went to the next nearest Post Office and opened the box there.  When we we bought this house it was in a third local community so we kept the box where it was to avoid having to change addresses on various items.  The Post Office that our house mail goes to is actually much further away from where we live than either of the two mentioned and is not in a direction we go to often.  So we left our craft business mail going to its PO Box.  Originally I would go to this Box and pick up the mail daily Monday to Friday and mail out any outgoing mail we had.  When husband retired it became something we both did together. 

About 7, maybe 10 years ago, we started having problems with mail deliveries to our house – we had several pieces of mail that we should have received and did not  - and that was just the mail we were expecting – we did not know what other mail might have never have made it to us.  We also received pieces of mail that had been opened and taped closed again.  Having done this myself once or twice – I knew it probably meant that someone else had received these pieces of mail, opened it without looking at the name it was addresses to, and then when the error was realized, taped it closed again and dropped into the mail for delivery.  We also received mail for people that not only had we never heard of, we had never heard of the streets which they lived on – and husband has lived in this area since he was 7 (and I for 30+ years when this happened) so the streets were not anywhere near us  - so they were probably not just misdelivered by the local mail carrier.  We decided we need to have our mail not go through our home post office for security and safety.   Rather than open up a second Post Office box, we just changed our mailing address for almost all of our mail to our business box.  This has worked very well – until now. 

Back in mid March husband decided we should not be going into a Post Office in general and this one in particular (the local community has a much higher number of Covid-19 cases than ours and others in the area do).  I came up with the idea of making a once weekly run to this Post Office on late Sunday nights – on the logic that since it closed at 1pm on Saturday and was closed on Sunday – it would mean that  than the few people who went in to pick up mail from boxes or to mail something out with the computer setup in the lobby, Sunday night , it would have had the fewest people in it, for the longest time.  So on the last two Sundays in March we picked up mail at 11 pm – using a credit card to activate the door unlock.  After that, though, husband thought it too unsafe to go at all.

Thinking quickly the last Sunday night we went, I went online and put in a “temporary change of address” for 2 months for the mail in the box to be forwarded to our house. I had to do it in the name of our business as that is all that the USPS website would let me do.  Since it said that the mail could only be forwarded to the business name in which the box was held and that the business would be responsible for all forwarding all mail to anyone receiving mail in the Box.  Sounds like we would be getting all the mail  - right? 

No, only mail with the name of our business could be forwarded.  I found this out when I called after 2 weeks had passed and we had not received any mail forwarded.  Our business generally receives only it's bank statement and credit card statement – and we have not used the credit card since maybe mid March.  This is not much of a help.  The very nice female Postal employee I spoke with offered to mail us the accumulated mail to give us some time to figure it out.  I thanked  her and she put the mail in an envelope and mailed it to our house.  Two weeks later I called again and apologized and asked if I could pay the postage for her to again send mail to us – she said she just could just mail it the same way again.  Three weeks later I called her and – well, you can see where this is going.

Luckily I use Quicken for our accounting and had an ongoing, constantly updated list of when our bills would be due.  I would call up each credit card – even ones I was sure we had not used – to make sure of the amount due and when or that no amount was due. I did the same with the utilities and any other bills – such as insurance.  I write a cover letter and send the check with it, except for the few bills that I have received in time to pay normally. 

Last time I called to have the mail sent to us, I asked if there was way to close the box in the name of the business and immediately reopen it in one of our names as a personal box – I even offered to pay the annual fee again.  This started a discussion among several employees at this Post Office and myself – they did not know about a difference between “business” and “personal” boxes and did not have any record of same – though the main computer did.  Apparently one has to come into the Post Office to close a box – so  that would not work. One employee spoke with the employee in charge of the boxes and they worked it out so that he would change the name and status of the box for us.  I did go online and change the mailing address for my 2 magazines. 

This was finally done!!  While we have not received any forwarded mail as of yet (well, I only check it on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday and it is Wednesday so there may be mail sitting out there in the box from today's delivery that I will get tomorrow), it is done. I went online and was able to put in similar temporary changes of address for my maiden name, our craft business (since the original one has ended), our reenactment unit and my embroidery chapter – the latter two do not have their own mailing address and I receive the business mail for them as I am the treasurer of each. 

Hopefully we will start receiving our mail from the box here at our house. 

THOUGHT OF THE WEEK -

What works well for one in normal times, might not work well when one should stay home.  There is always some way to deal with problems and people are very understanding and nice right now due to the pandemic.  Be sure to thank those who help you and let their bosses know how helpful they have been (as I am going to do) so that they know that their help is appreciated so they will go out of their way to help others in the future when they need help. 

COVID-19 #12 - DEALING WITH INCOMING MAIL WHEN ONE CAN'T GO TO POST OFFICE TO GET IT

So how is everyone holding up?  Is your area coming out of having to stay home?  Stores, parks, beaches, barber shops, beauty parlors, restaurants starting to open where you are? 

If your area is opening up – are you going to be running out to go everywhere?  Or do you feel it is not safe enough yet and maybe you should stay home awhile longer? 

We tend towards the second choice.  Since he bought all the food we have plenty to eat in the house – maybe for the rest of the year or longer.  Okay, we have been thinking of looking for sales on Diet Coke 2 liter – presuming the store actually has some when they advertise it – as we are down to 3 full bottles and one almost empty one and have been drinking diet orange drink and diet grape drink alternating which one I mix – and he has iced tea for lunch.  He likes the orange better and I like the grape better.  Yes, we have lots of good water from our tap and drank water only for the first month – I finally had the idea to fill 2 quart plastic bottles and keep them in our refrigerator to keep the water cold for drinking(which are used for same in our RV when traveling so water cold on a hot day and water to drink is from home – as is the water in our water tanks in the RV).  We have been drinking the Diet Coke very sparingly – not at all until I pointed out to him in early May that the best by date was May 18 – so we would not drink it so we did not finish it off – or we could drink it slowly before it got too old and the taste is gone. 

One big problem we have had is mail – coming in and going out.  In the late 1980s or early 1990s we opened up a box at a USPS office for our craft business.  We lived in an apartment back then and did not want mail addressed to a business coming to our apartment.  There was a Post Office about a block and a half from our apartment – but no boxes were available, so we went to the next nearest Post Office and opened the box there – where it still is.  Our home is in close to where our apartment was, but is in a third community which shares a Post Office (and zip code) a different community and that Post Office is far from our house – further than the one near our old apartment (which is in fairly easy walking distance) and than the one where our businesses' box was.  We started having problems with mail delivery to our house maybe 7 or 10 years ago and have changed  the address on most of our personal mail which used to come to our house to the box, as well as the mail that I receive as Treasurer of both my embroidery club and our reenactment unit.  In normal times we basically went to the Post Office where our box is every day Monday to Friday to check for incoming mail and mail outgoing mail.  If we went on a trip we could put a hold on the mail in the box.  If we needed something delivered – it has been sent to the box and was inside the Post Office and safe.  This system worked great.  Today I am talking about the problem with the mail coming in to us.

The last two Sundays in March we went to the Post Office late Sunday night (forgive me if I repeating myself here) and picked up the mail for the entire week and mailed the outgoing mail for the week.  I had figured out that since this Post Office closed on Saturdays at 1pm and was not open on Sundays – there were the fewest people in it for the longest time at that point and would have the least chance of us catching the corona virus then.  Unfortunately our local paper started publishing the number of people who were ill by community and the community that Post Office and the Wendys we normally went to for daily lunch – are in had rather a high count of people who were ill and husband decided we should not go there for some time.

So – all our mail was nice and safe in our Post Office box – but we had no access to it!  Aha!!  Have the mail what I called forwarded and the Post Office calls “Temporary change of address”.  I went online and set the mail up to be sent to us – since I did it online it cost $1.05 by credit card for verification that we are the box owners.  We were only able to enter the name of our craft business – the name the box is in - as it is a “business” box.  The wording implied that all mail would be sent to us and we were then responsible to forward it to those who it was addressed to  - great, they are all us. 

We waited for the forwarded mail to come.  I had called and checked the second day of the forwarding to make sure that the Post Office had received the paperwork and they had.  We kept waiting – it should take 7-10 days for each item to reach us from the Post Office – after 2 weeks of no mail I called.  Since it is a “business” box only mail in the name of the business can be forwarded (okay, most months a bank statement and a credit card statement – and we are not currently using the latter).  The woman I spoke with was very nice and offered to mail the accumulated mail in an envelope to us to give us a chance to figure it out.  I had hoped we would be going again in a week or two and thanked her profusely.  I did go online and change the mailing address for the two main magazines I get to come straight here.  I also emailed the members of my embroidery group and told them to only mail things – such as the dues I was collecting in April and May for end of May annual renewal – to me at home and not at the box and did the same with my accounting clients for anything they would need to mail to me.  Husband did the same with the members of our reenacting unit. 

Two weeks later – same problem. I called again and offered to pay for the mail be mailed to us again – she said she would do so at no charge.  I made a third call – this time waiting over 3 weeks and again she was able to mail us the mail.  Then it was 3 weeks again – this time I asked her if there was some way to  - without having to go into the Post Office – there was some way to close the box in the business name and reopen it immediately in one of our names – even if we had pay the annual fee again.  This started a multi-day discussion involving her, two other employees at the Post Office and the Postmaster.  What they finally worked out is for them to change the name on the box and change it from business to personal.  It would take a couple of weeks – at that point – 2 weeks no problem.  They have mailed us our mail twice since then.  I was suppose to call yesterday and check how it was coming – but ran out of time.  Today I was going to call – but I was called and it suppose to all be changed and all the mail set up to be forwarded – we will know for sure in about in a week – and the accumulated mail is again being mailed to us.


Since I use a Quicken to keep track of our finances I had the advantage of having all the bills we pay being memorized with the day of the month I normally sent out the payment (such as a bill due 30th of the month – would be dated to be written on 23rd of the month) and it repeats monthly, quarterly, or annually – bi-monthly I have to adjust myself and have bills due same set as monthly as change the date due – I knew I would not miss paying any bills.  I also figured that bank statements can always be reconciled after the fact.  It was the unexpected item that I was concerned about – luckily there have not been any surprises.  When a bill will be do I call and, generally by computer on their end, check the balance due – if any – and due date.  If I do not have the bill I write a cover letter giving the name on the account, account number, amount I am paying and the check number and letting them know that I am doing this as I can't get to the Post Office to pick up mail. 

Hopefully we will be getting the mail forwarded and all will even off – of course we are depending on the same Post Office that we were having trouble with to deliver the mail from the box to us when it is forwarded, but the mail carrier has been doing well so far with the mail when it comes from the the Box, as well mail which does come here.

THOUGHT OF THE WEEK -

Sometimes what seems like the perfect thing to do – is no longer good at all when the situation changes.  One has to figure out what to do, to make things work as needed.  It sometimes takes a bit of creative thinking to do this. 

Plus – we should be grateful for our Post Office employees who are doing their best to help us keep getting our mail despite the health risks to them (next time you lick an envelope to seal it – remembering people will be touching that envelope and many others and risk getting ill from them.  They are making sure we have bills so we can timely pay them, checks so we have the money to pay the bills, plus the cards, photos and letters (yes, people still mail send same) that are sent to us by loved ones and friends.  (I just found out that my mom does not have to go out of her apartment and downstairs to the mail boxes to get her mail – it is being brought to her – I am going to mail her some “cute” photos of my Teddy bear village under the stay home at order – the summer setup also when I get it set up later this month – I hope the photos make her smile.)

Please all stay well and return next week for the problems sending mail out we have had.

CLEARING OUT THE SPICE CABINET AND MOM'S HOUSE IS NOW CLEARED OUT

Well, mom's house is cleared out according to my sister.  The furniture people did not take much of the furniture as the pieces were “too large”.  Okay, I understand the living room sofa was custom made for the room and is a bit large – it is two or three pieces and goes along two walls, and turns in the corner.  (Let's see, my parents gave me y 6th grade graduation gift -a small portable typewriter – while we were getting the sofa so it is over 50 years old.)  I am not sure, but I would have removed the boards from the dining room table and set them either on it or next to it as with the boards it holds at least a dozen people comfortably and may have looked intimidatingly large with them in – and the boards were in to display stuff for the tag sales.   My dresser was a long one, but the other dresser that was my sister's and her desk were small.  The first fellow took the 3 night stands in the house and the chairs to the kitchen table, but the kitchen table was left and seats 4-5 people so it was not huge.  The dresser in the other small bedroom was smaller than mine, but larger than the small one that my other sister had and my mom's desk in her bedroom was a regular student desk so not large.  Gee, I wonder if they realized (my sister might not have known) that the long server in the dining in front of the window is 3 pieces – two cabinets and the center is a matching section that is empty with fabric on the doors – the radiator was there and this way the heat came through the fabric or the doors could be opened to let more heat into the room – someone might have liked either or both of the actual cabinets- 2 drawers and 2 shelves below – then again they would need to either take half of the large counter top or get new tops for them.  My dad had a lovely old, large desk – also rejected as too large – okay, if it hadn't been I would have taken it, but all I have room for is my old child's desk from when I was in second grade.  (Yes, I am that short – able to use my desk from second grade – still hit my knee on the same spot on the leg of the desk.) 

It bothers me that it does not bother me to have the house emptied and sold.  Will the actual sale make me breakdown wailing?  Has anyone else been through this and not gotten at least a bit upset?

We took my mom to the doctor with the office from h*ll last Friday so he could tell us what we knew from reading the report that was faxed to us instead of to her other doctor.  So all is well with that.  The doctor is very nice – no problem with him, just his office which is not run by him, but by the hospital group he is associate with.  While talking with him I mentioned a little about the problems (4 pm appointment, take in at 5:30,saw doctor at 6 pm) we have had.  Mostly asked if there is way to speak to him by phone as the phone number on the card goes to an office in a different state for making appointments.  He gave us a different number  - but only for questions, not emergencies as only answered during their open hours.  I also managed to, politely, mention that when we came in for the scan the office was closed, lights out, and no one in the building knew about the scan tech being there – he was surprised and said that someone should have been at the reception desk for his office and he would check on this. 

When first married we lived in an apartment.  Husband saw in one of my “ladies magazines”  a project to make a spice cabinet.  He took it and changed it and we made it.  It stands on the floor is about the depth of a cabinet across (used to sit next to the end of the cabinet in the apartment, now next to a small wall about the same depth next to our cabinet (behind the wall is the heat duct for the bathroom above the kitchen).  The original had shelves in the door with holes for test tubes to put spices in.  The one he made us has one shelf on each door with same – and knife blocks below them for our cooking knifes.  We actually put smaller of same in the holes instead of test tubes.  Against the back of the cabinet are thin shelves (cabinet is about 6 inches deep and the shelves are 3 inches deep.  The shelves hold spice bottles and such very well.  The cabinet is just short of 3 feet tall. 

I have the spices arranged so that the ones I use often are in a grabable spot.  But since husband has been cooking for the past 2-3 weeks as I was “covered in germs” - yes, he is that afraid of catching a cold – I had to look into the cabinet to tell him where spices he needed were located.  When I did so my eye fell on a bottle of something called Mrs. Dash.  I have no memory of buying it (well, I don't actually remember buying much of what is in the cabinet) or what the heck we used it for and made a mental note to clear out the cabinet as much as possible  and in my dreams of how much space I would have, dreamed of lining up cans of soup on the shelves where they could easily be seen.

Last weekend (we had reached the point where I was told that I would be “allowed” to start cooking again) and I decided to go through the cabinet.  Mrs. Dash, dill from when I made sour pickles, popcorn flavored saltt, spices that I don't remember using, and a variety of other items – OUT!  I checked a few spices to see what they were used for  - OUT!  Old Bay Seasoning (used on seafood, especially shrimp in the Baltimore, MD area and husband used to use it – not out, he thought maybe we might have shrimp and he would put it on same again or maybe even chicken  - I know it will be too spicy for him, I barely could eat it back then, but I kept it. 

Kept the basics – salt, pepper, lo salt salt.  Ground cinnamon (which I think I have used for some holiday dish I made) and sugar cinnamon (well, it tastes nice on pancakes or French toast) I kept – cinnamon sticks – out.  Nutmeg - used at Thanksgiving – kept.  Cream of tartar – useful for stuff – kept.  Minced onion, minced  garlic and basil -used for tomato “gravy' (sauce).  Bay leaves – used in a beef stew I used to make and plan to make again.  Allspice, ginger, thyme, tarragon, rosemary, marjoram, parsley, oregano – all kept, despite not knowing what we will use them for.  Kept a small jar of sesame seeds – not sure why, just seemed like something to keep.

Also we store in this cabinet wooden toothpicks – used mostly for crafts, but also for food related purposes. 

When I was done I had a half a kitchen garbage bag of bottles – but somehow I hardly picked up room in the cabinet – certainly not enough for the lines of soup cans I had thought I would I store there.  So, what to use the space for?  Well, we take at doctor's “suggestion” a number of OTC vitamins.  The small bottles of them (refilled from larger bottles kept in the kitchen pantry closet) sat on top of the cabinet – along with a candle lamp (looks nice and used in black outs), table salt and pepper shakers, napkin holder with paper napkins, a shop tape measure (meaning not a sewing one), 3 day of the week pill boxes (two his, one mine) and some “dropped there because it is convenient “ paper clips and other similar sized items.  It was actually rather crowded and some things would fall off the top when one walked past.  I put the OTC vitamins in the cabinet on the top shelf.  Now our day of the week boxes on top are no longer sitting between the napkin holder and front of the cabinet – subject to getting knocked off.

So in the end the work did not result in a lot of usable space, but it is better than before and the doors to it do close better than they have in awhile.  As I go along I will think about some of what I kept and if it can go also.

THOUGHT OF THE WEEK -

Doing a small task might be what it is needed to get one started  - or started again – on working on clearing out things no longer needed.  If you find something small and think “well, dealing with that won't do much” if you do it, it might get you started on doing more – since the spice cabinet, I cleared off most of the stuff piled on my dresser.   It was primarily reenacting stuff left after our December event- small items put away where they belong and the clothes I wore (that reek of smoke) are in the basement laundry sorter – to be washed and stored away.  We have 3 plastic boxes in which we keep things such as OTC meds, sickness thermometer and such.  These items are kept in these boxes as the boxes fit in the bag we take when we travel in our RV with all of this – and our prescription meds fit in one of the boxes also.  By keeping the OTC and such in these boxes we don't need one set for home and one set for travel.  In the summer the boxes end up on my dresser (the bag they go in goes under our bedroom TV) and in the cold weather, when we are less apt to travel I put them in the upper shelf of plastic storage piece next to my dresser (in hot weather the spare blanket goes in this space).  So now they are where they belong for the winter and the bag is where it belongs.  I found more socks that were on top of the dresser for darning and now they have joined their need to be darned friends. 

So try one small task that you need to do and see where it leads.  (Now sorting through and storing what I brought from the family house – that is another story – what does one do with the proofs of the yearbook of which one was editor?)

HOW WAS YOUR FIRST WEEK OF THE NEW YEAR - I CAUGHT A COLD

So here we are, a week into a new year.  Hard to believe.

First, something I heard on TV, that is very true.  Many of us date things in this format – 01/01/20 for January 1, 2020.  Do not use the 20 on it's own for the year.  Why, when you have always done this?    Well, if you write 01/01/20, the year part of the date can be changed in the future to any year in this year in this decade – such as 01/01/2021  or 01/01/2029 – see what I mean – in theory the date would not run out for 10 years on say a blank check or memo note, etc.  So instead date things as 01/01/2020 to avoid problems.

So how has your organizing, cleaning, etc. been going this year?  Mine not so much.  I managed to come down with a cold last week – not anything major, just enough to make me miserable.  Husband is  a hypochondriac.  So when I get sick he does not want me to touch anything – I even get my 2 liter soda bottle with an X on it so he does not touch it.  Biggest problem is cooking and dishes. 

We normally eat lunch out so that is easy.  But he does not want me to cook dinner with my germ covered hands.  When we were younger, had more money and there were more places at which we could afford to eat dinner, we would go out for dinner or bring stuff in.  Not really a choice any more other than the weekly dinner at Ikea, at Wendys and at the Asian buffet.  One night in a week we can deal with deli turkey (even though we ate same 5 times in 2 weeks while doing the event with our reenactment unit in the last 2 weeks).  But night after night?   We brought in Chinese food one night  - husband looked around for the paper goods – something new for us, we never used to have paper plates, bowls, cups, etc. as we considered it wasteful – last year he bought all of these for use in our RV and we had used them last time I had a “bug”, but when I finally was able to clear out the dining room – it all went out to the RV.  He found plastic plates in the basement – intended for craft use – and there is plastic tablewear in the secretary in the living room.  But as he unpacked the Chinese soup he was upset about not having a paper bowl for the soup – my suggestion - “there” is a stack of previous soup containers brought in – all washed and ready for use – he was not happy, but it did the trick.  He keeps saying that we need to replace the (non-working) dishwasher if just for when I am sick.  (I had figured out that it took me the same time to wash the dishes, etc as it did to load the machine and then rewash what did not wash – plus reading about the new machines they seemed too much work with the need to clean filters and other things.  (Our original dishwasher came with the house or we never would have had one – though we did replace that one once.)  My solution is to put on disposable plastic gloves when I wash the dishes.

We were not sure if we were to have snow today (report changed constantly and TV news did not agree channel to channel) so we made sure that we had lunch for today and dinner when we shopped yesterday.  (I used to be organized – read the store circulars, had a shopping list, bought stuff on sale and used the saved coupons – but now with him along – we food shop just about day by day and due to changes in the coupons available and what we can eat and use – coupons that match what we buy are rare.  I still have a shopping list, instead of being a paper on the fridge (if we need more – add it or we won't have it) it is in my cell phone – the other day I tried to remove an item as bought it – and the entire list erased itself and since it can only synced automatically – the computer version was pffft also.  Luckily husband managed to bring up a list from the day before for me.  Some things really are better on paper.

It did not snow enough to matter, went out for lunch and tonight we were having turkey sausages with macaroni (pasta – he is Italian by background all types of pasta are called macaroni).  He is cooking as I am sick.  Despite my hinting “am I cooking tonight or you?” about an hour before dinner, we did not get downstairs to cook until about 20 minutes before we would normally eat dinner.  I was out of tomato “gravy” (sauce to you and me).  I had mentioned this when we picked this dinner and he said “no problem”.  So we are very late starting to make dinner and he has to make “the gravy” - something he actually taught me how to do from his mom's recipe (which for some reason is simpler and quicker by about 5 and a half hours than the recipe his sister makes which she says is how their mom made it.)  He should know what he is doing since he taught me – right?

“What do I start first, the gravy or the water for the macaroni?” he asked.  “Heating the pan for the sausages” - my reply.  I tell him which (cast iron) pan to take out - “you need the one without the ridges.”  He starts to take the one with the ridges – the one that last time I used it, filled our kitchen with smoke and the smoke detector would not go off for hours and I have still had not had a chance to clean it http://wheredidileavethat.blogspot.com/2018/07/not-in-pennsylvania.html  He took out the correct pan and put it on the stove – turned on the burner for it to heat.  Then I had him start the water to boil – I have to tell him which pot for which food.  Then we started making the gravy.  I make 2 large cans of tomatoes with 2 small cans of tomato sauce.  Lately I have been using one large can of petite diced tomatoes and one of puree – gives him the pieces of tomatoes and also a thicker liquid than if I just used the tomatoes.  “What do I add to it?” - Sheesh – he taught me – and I point him to the spice cabinet (built by him to fit our apartment kitchen, but fit perfectly here also – noticed that I need to clear it out as there is a lot of stuff that we have not used in decades and will not use again, such as “Mrs. Dash” - I mostly just stick my hand in and pull out what I need – showing him where, made me notice this – new job to do.  Macaroni added to the boiling (no salt no oil) water.  “What now” -he said exasperated.  I told him to take some water on his finger and drop in the pan - “If it dances it is ready”.  It did and he added the sausages.  Now, it took him longer to add the items to the gravy than it would take me to cook the gravy, so we are even further behind.  Next though, was to heat the leftover half can of soup for him to have soup before dinner. 

So eventually we had dinner.  I got sick – I won't say it was his cooking… Then to wash the dished I put on disposable gloves and washed them – they are air drying now. 

My embroidery group met today.  I did not go.  I thought and thought about where I could sit in the relatively small room we meet in and not infect all of the other members, then realized that the proper thing to do was not to go.  So last night I telephoned the group president and told her and that I would email the treasurer's report to her and to the secretary.  I wrote it and emailed it.  This afternoon I checked my email – I had sent them both the January 2019 minutes instead of the treasurer's report – so now I will email to the chapter members. I have to stop messing up and needing to do things over and over. 

I had planned on running errands today that are easier to run without husband, but since I did not go to the meeting – we were together – he actually did not complain about the errands, some of which annoy him.   We went to our reenactment unit's bank and I redeposited some cash as I had needed to take out some cash and we needed less than we thought.  I also got a copy of the cash check as we have a grant and the cash was for part of the costs of same and we need to submit all copies of all checks, deposits and a lot of other paperwork – with a check sending back the excess of the grant money to the non- profit which gave us the grant and when I got home later I emailed copies of everything I had to the member who got us the grant and is handling the paperwork. Hopefully something done on the first try.   

We went to our bank vault – I keep my “offsite data backup” in it.  I used to make a data backup once a month and send to work with husband and he would bring home the one I sent with him the month before.  When he quit his job, I needed an alternative – our bank vault became the alternate.  (I use 2 USB flash drives – one is at the bank, other is here to update the next month.)  We got one of the “platform” employees that is good and I figured, okay husband won't be getting upset. But when we went to go into the vault area with the employee – we had to wait as other employees were in there on bank business – that annoyed him. 

Not doing laundry tonight (I start on Wednesday nights and continue into Thursday – Friday if needed) due to my cold – I figure to give it another day of recovery before I start.  Since the washer and dryer were not being used, husband washed a scarf he finished weaving  ( just a minute – I have to double check that he shut off the water to the washer – afraid if the hose breaks it will make a mess in basement, so we keep the water to the hose shut off when not in use. …… He did shut the water off, but did not push in control of the washer to make sure it was off. 

So how was your first week of the new year?

THOUGHT OF THE WEEK -
Treat the new year as a new opportunity for a clean slate – but don't go crazy trying to change everything at once – change one small thing and keep at it – then when that is going well – change another and continue and so on.