khatru

Sunday afternoon, Younger Child came up to help me do some looking for a box with 2 games in it that Fedex says they delivered in September and we've not been able to find. This was the "actually pick up all the packing boxes and look in them (and maybe label them)". Still can't find it. Which sucks, because it was going to be a gift. (What I can't find actually are 2 copies of an expansion, to a game which I got 2 copies of previously (because it was made already) and one of the initial and one of the expansion was intended as the gift.)

So now I have to go back to the company and say "Apparently it disappeared, because I don't have it at all" and see what they say. Every so often I've had things go walkabout and this is one reason why I'm so PEEVED that the kids don't AT LEAST tell me when something comes in, so I can record it. they just pile the boxes up until I think to ask for them. To be fair, I HAVE a pile of boxes up here I haven't done anything mroe than 'ok, that's that, put it there' but AT LEAST I KNOW THEY'RE HERE.

argh.

Things that need to be done, in no order:
kickstarter email kept up with. (There's info there that I lose cause I just put it in folders to get it out of inbox and then lose mental energy)
various dice purchases recorded and put away
various game purchases recorded and put away.
Books I've read taken out of my room and put ... somewhere.
The year's bills sorted and packed up. (with 'bank records' marked out separately for ease of finding)

Things I *want* to do:
play wow
read books
read pleasant things on kickstarter and make sensible decisions
play games with people
maybe get back on second life

Things I actually do:
be aggravated about email
talk to folks on discord, sometimes
watch youtube (usually simon whistler channels, recently some others) when I can't focus on anything, while I play solitaire of some sort with my fingers.
sleep
get upset that I've forgotten what I intended to do. (frex calling the zoning department)
go to doctors
get upset that I've forgotten to do maintenance stuff in ingress

*sigh*
the last quarter of the year is particularly bad, but the rest of the year isn't much better. I think I have maybe 6 months of *potential* actually functioning adult.

Current Mood: blah
Current Location: Home-Den
Current Music: vague noises from the ground floor
Crossposts: https://khatru.livejournal.com/35182.html

So the next day I tried using the voice to text on my phone keyboard. This is what I got - I've broken it up with punctuation, because apparently I don't talk with any. (As this is the first time I've used it, I don't know how to put punctuation in while talking.)

So this is an attempt to use voice to text: I was up at 5:00. I was up at 6:00. I was up at 7:00. I was up at 8:00. All of these were too early to call the dentist. Well, 8 probably wasn't, but since I was hoping for an appointment in the afternoon when people woke up, I didn't call. I wasn't up again till 10:00, and finally I called the dentist. (for the filling that fell out the day before). Surprise, they could take me right away! ("Can you be here in 25 minutes?") Fortunately, I could hear the Elder Child moving around downstairs, starting to get ready for work at noon, and when I called down he said ok. I had him drop me off at the dentist, and told him to go get food, because I expected it to take at least an hour. Sure enough, almost exactly an hour later, I was ready to get picked up. The dentist saw no decay, and just did a bit of scraping to get off some plaque that had gotten under the filling. (For a while now, I've been ignoring (due to covid and immune diseases) the fact that it felt like that tooth had had some enamel break off. It's the largest filling in my mouth. (And, apparently, it's multiple fillings in different parts of the same tooth. Apparently, what actually happened is that the filling had shifted, and what I thought was the tooth having departed, was the filling sticking out toward the inside of my mouth.) But apparently it wasn't awful, and the main reason he gave me some novocaine is that I'm REALLY REACTIVE to the sound and smell and sensation of drilling.

(note: the last half of that para is me typing while here, not that I talked all that in.)

He put a new filling in. Now, this is the tooth that, a few years ago, it took like 8 tries over 9 months ish, to get a filling to *stay* in. Unfortunately, as it's the very last tooth on that side, it's incredibly difficult to do the work for a crown or a root canal. Thus, if we can't get it to stick, he recommends taking the tooth out. So after I got to the ground floor of the office building I poked in discord, and about 15 minutes later the Younger Child said "Let me know when you're done" via sms. (Apparently, my discord message came through while Elder Child was quickly eating and waking Younger Child up, and thus wasn't seen.) Younger Child came and fetched me home and FINALLY I had some food (thank God I could have food it was peanut butter and jelly I ate two of them).

When my mom died, in going through her stuff, I found a record of an account that she'd made, at the time I believe it was called 'in care of' or something, for a minor child. I think I might have started the process of getting it in my name - which should have happened when I was 18! - and then it fell off my radar. They'd send 'this is how your account is doing' updates to that address, and since I have friends as tenants in that house they'd periodically deliver it to me and I'd toss it in a box. A few weeks ago there was a company name I didn't recognize, and I opened the mail this time, and it was a 'btw, the minor is certainly an adult by now and should really resolve this." So I called the company, and found out that they'd have to send me paperwork which would have to be stamped by a bank ("Medallion Guaranty"). Since I was downstairs, I opened the Very Large envelope, and saw forms that I couldn't immediately tell how to fill out. So I called the company, and someone helpfully went over it on the phone with me. Our local bank didn't require a appointment to walk in! Got there around 2:30 pm, and went in with the scooter so the Younger Child could take the 'check engine light is on' car to see what that meant. I also had 2 checks from my house/car insurance company that they claimed I had sent me because they said I hadn't actually cashed the previous ones. (Which I thought I had, but I don't have records of it and I decided not to argue) so that was another $1100 into the bank. However, the mechanic was too busy, and Younger Child came back while I was still getting things signed. I wasn a little disappointed, as this meant that I didn't get to have a minor adventure of driving the scooter home, but not awful - I'll note that I could have sent him home and taken the scooter home anyway.

But we stopped at the local chain convenience store and got sandwiches. Upon arriving home, I found a letter from the town's zoning department, which has decided that my grass is too long and that one of the cars in the driveway is "unregistered, uninspected, and disabled" which is only partly true. This is minor aggravation at best, but the letter was dated the 23rd, sent on the 26th, and I received it on the 28th, and it claims I have 3 days from the date of the letter to respond or else it's considered final, with upwards of $1000 fine. I called them up and got a person that was the wrong department and they forwarded me to the correct department which, of course, sent me to voicemail. I found out on Saturday that they had called back within a half hour, but my phone never rang. (This is one reason I really do NOT like the 'notched' top of the phone, because it hides half the notification icons. Yeah, it has a little dot that shows there are more, but seriously, that little dot is really not obtrusive enough.

And I just remembered that last bit now, at 7pm. So I guess I call tomorrow.

-----

The rest of last week was mostly boring. I got very cranky about having my query for dinner be unnnoticed for 45 minutes on Friday, so I ordered myself some sushi and let the kids fend for themselves. Friday would have been the 32nd Wedding anniversary, so that's a thing. Saturday, spent a few hours playing D&D on zoom, Sunday played WoW, and then tried to recover my Second Life account, as someone on one of the wow discord servers I'm on is a maker there, and offered to fund me some new infrastructure stuff that I didn't want to deal with when I found out a few years ago when I last thought about showing up there again. While I had accurately remembered the password for the email account I was using for Second Life, I didn't remember the password for the SL account itself. Their password recovery offered "Give us the first names of these three friends of yours." and I'm like bwahahaha I have no clue - and "What is the amount in USD that we last charged to your paypal or credit card." That was, at best, early 2017 (which is when I logged in last) and more likely back in 2014, and paypal doesn't keep the records that far back. (I might have them. SOmewhere. On a hard drive. That I was using in 2015. ....) I put in a ticket (at 3am my time) and haven't heard back yet. :(

Today I did... not much. Talked the kids into dealing with taking the fan out of the roof and closing that up, and closing, in turn, the hatch from the bathroom to the attic. We never did get the roof fan functioning. *sigh* Made sure all the storm windows were down (the ones that exist), and Younger Child did a bit of cleaning around the small ceramic heater I have in my room so I can use it. Unfortunately, the tiny fan heaters I got for the hobby room are making unhappy-fan noises, so I need to figure out if that's Disaster!don't!use! or 'yawn, i need to wake up'.

I also FINALLY found a useful contact point for the maker of my keyboard, to find out what its equivalent in mechanical switches would be, because i have a mechanical keyboard on KS that I get to choose the switches for, and I wanted to have it as close to this as possible because I like this keyboard. (I intend the KS one to be for the laptop that I hate the keyboard on, so I don't have the use the folding keyboard I got very happily last year that has started doublebouncing keys. I'll probably still use the folding one for travel, because space, but I'd like a better one for home.) And then, having found out what "mechanical-like switches" were, and that the newer term is "mem-chanical", I spent an hour or so poking around the net finding out wtf memchanical is, and figuring out what the equivalent in actual-mechanical is likely to be, so I can finally fill out the form (that's due tomorrow) to tell the KS campaign folks what switches I want.

And then I wrote this. We haven't gotten the car checked yet, and some friends in Massachussetts have been mentioning, on the discord server, various news items about states prepping for problems with the elections, so that's a thing. :/

Yee. Haw. Onward.

Current Mood: hungry
Current Location: Home-Den
Current Music: vague noises from the ground floor
Crossposts: https://khatru.livejournal.com/34877.html

So I started this on Tuesday, and fell asleep in the middle. Completed it today, with a sucktastic ending. I'd say my life is a farce, but this entire fucking year is a farce. If only it will end.

So, Tuesday, I:

Woke up at 5am. Realized I was hungry. Didn't want to get up, ate some sunflower seeds I keep on the bedside table for that purpose.
Pill alarm woke me at 8. Realized I was hungry and that, despite how tired I felt, was unlikely to fall asleep again.
Stood up (knees ok), went into hobby room and grabbed an eggroll from the fridge, and while eating it
turned on kettle
went to get my morning pills and my mug from my room
went back to the hobby room to put my mug by the tea and
realized i was still carrying bag with the other 2 egg rolls in it. Put it back in fridge.
squeezed yesterday's teabags into rest of yesterday's tea (gasp! Sacrilege! STALE TEA!), put teabags
into compost bowl, tea into mug.
Realized still had some gypsy cold care tea left from yesterday, drank it all.
got out vita tea (last bag - oh right, i ordered more yesterday), gypsy cold care teabag, and stared
at tea selection. No, don't want more scotch breakfast, no cinnmon stick box, don't want china breakfast, plain no, golden chai no. guess it's constant comment.
set up the teabags, kettle says 175, my knees aren't going to stand here and stare at it.
I'm out of egg roll. Stare into fridge, nope, no brain, grab second eggroll.
Sat down, eating eggroll. Opened 2 bills, notated envelopes, tea kettle goes beep.
Stood up (knees ok...) Water into teapot, gcc mug, vita mug... no water to warm up tea from yesterday. Nope, no patience for doing the walk into bathroom, get brita, walk into hobby room, fill kettle, walk into bathroom, refill brita, dance. Cold tea it is.
Sit back down, solitaire while I finished egg roll
Then thought of writing this down. yay? something vaguely more ?useful?productive?acceptable? than solitaire.
oh. i oculd have nuked my tea warm. doh.
right, take pills.
fuss with email a bit. oh gods, even traditional medicinals is on the pumpkin spice kick.
(a moment for facepalm. sigh. discord beeps, check it out. bicker about politics for a few sentences)
finished opening all the mail, sorted bills into 'due by' date.
Finally, opened ledger (that I had actually brought over to the table, along with the checkbook, yesterday), grabbed the envelopes of coupon pays from tucked into front cover, and make sure I have everything.
..... looked at it all, decided I didn't want to stand up again and go find another check register right now. Spent about 2 hours watching Overly Sarcastic Productions videos (dionysus, hermes, don quixote, The Lancer) while playing solitaire. (2 hours ish)
Took a deep breath and turned back to the bills. Stood up (knees ok?), found a check register in hte bill box in the storage room, grabbed 2 aspirin from my room, Grabbed a different mug of tea.
Walked around the table to put my tea down after swallowing the aspirin, realize I need the toilet.
Spent some time in the bathroom playing sudoku while my body did its thing
did the refill the kettle dance
killed what might have been a roach on my countertop (FUCK)
grabbed 2 plums from the fridge and 3 chocolate bars (Nibmor brand,17g bars, one plain dark, one with cherries, one with blueberries) andsat down again to do bills.

-----
This was written Wednesday:

So then I actually did the bills, with various thigns on youtube, mostly stuff from Britain about the royalty (Real Royalty, I think, is the name of the channel. It has interesting things, but also very boring things.) I finished all the house bills around 5pm, and then by 7 I felt like I was falling asleep. I told the kids to just bring up dinner when it was ready, and I'd eat it when I woke. I went and laid down, but the activity of dinner being delivered to me didn't wake me. I woke up around 3am, just long enough to see the time. I woke at 4:30ish, ate the food left to me, and don't rememeber falling asleep again but woke at 6:45 for the toilet. Realized I'd never taken my midnight pills, figured the way I was going, the 8am pill alarm would wake me and I'd just take morning pills. I woke up at 11:45am with a headache.

I've now eaten the last eggroll, 2 plums, 2 cheese sticks. and most of my morning pills. I"ve found more evidence of the squirrel visiting the bathroom (that is apparently no longer visiting the rest of the house, unless it's pushing the door closed again behind it (which doesn't latch, alas)), and even tho I'm sitting in direct sunlight in the hobby room, I can't get warm. So I'm off to my bedroomden again, to wrap up in sweaterrobe and sit in the cradle office chair. maybe it will help alleviate the too-cool+headache and I might even wake up.

-----

To end: I didn't fall asleep. I think I took a migraine pill at some point earlier, tho I don't recall. Younger Kid showed up about 2:30 pm, to grab the bills and mail them. I couldn't think of anything I wanted to ask for for 4pm food, so I let him go off to do that. I also took the other migraine med about this time. Shortly after, I finally thought of something from the convenience store, called his phone, but he was home already (and hadn't told me. :( ) So I asked for 1 grilled cheeze sandwich and some tomato soup, in which I had Too Many Crackers. And took my pills.

I don't even know what I've done this evening. I've poked at mail a bit, I read twitter a little, I watched a couple of Overly Sarcastic vids, Dinner was brought up around 9pm. Ate half of it, put the rest in the fridge, and shortly after 11pm I was using a plastic toothpick around the base of my teeth and popped a filling out.

So now I shouldn't eat anything before seeing a dentist, which means tomorrow is going to be LOVELY. I also need to make an appointment to go to a bank and get a form ?authorized? not notarized, it has to be a bank thing, I don't get it, but it's what I was told was needed by some ?investment? thing that my (deceased in 2004) mother had money in my name in, and I thought I had put it in my name but maybe this is another? The person on the phone (last week or so) told me they couldn't tell me how much it was, but that it was under the limit of having the bank do the thing with it, which is 100k. Which is useful knowledge, and also slightly disappointing. I mean, one frequently imagines that suddenly found accounts are worth bajillions of cash, right?

Sending this off, might record my adventures tomorrow. Whee.

I must say, the ambient election dread is not playing well with my 'the last quarter of the year is shit'.

Current Mood: apathetic
Current Location: Home-Den
Current Music: fan white noise
Crossposts: https://khatru.livejournal.com/34812.html

I write this about 6:15 pm my time, trying to figure out what I'd done all day.

I sat down in my hobby room this morning, with 'I should do bills' as my concept. So far I have

Fetched my smaller-box-of-pills-I'm-taking from the storage room
Fetched the brita pitcher from the bathroom
Filled the kettle and turned it on
Refilled the brita pitcher
set up the mugs with gypsy cold care, vita 'genius', and teapot with 'scottish breakfast'
set up the soup mug with canned veggie soup to mix boiling water into
made 3 ham&cheese roll-ups (1 slice ham, 1 slice swiss, 1 line mustard on an angle, roll)
poured boiling water into 2 mugs and teapot
realized i didn't have enough water left for soup
refilled kettle and turned it on
Refilled brita pitcher
eaten protein rolls
Poured water into soup
set up my pills for the week
taken my morning pills
ate soup, while I
fussed with email (triaging 'don't need to read', 'should read but later', and 'just delete')
put my fill-pillpods-from-this-box away
noticed the bag of refilled meds on the table in the storage room, and fussed with putting my cache of pills in order again (trying to have oldest most grabbable, and have small space for it, so had to reset a few times as I knocked things over, fortunately not to the floor)
Brought the containers of one set of migraine meds (maxalt), into the hobby room (some of which were ziploc baggies of 9 pills (what I can get a month), some of which are in small boxes labeled for 9 pills)
Spent time writing the filled-dates in large marker on the baggies, and the boxes
Belatedly realized that there were actually only 2 expiry dates
re-ordered them by expiry date rather than prescription-filled date (all the ones in baggies were the same date, so they all went into one baggie with the expiry date on it, and all the boxes got individually dated because they are too tight a fit to be combined)
fussed with email and read some patreon-sent comics
Remembered I wanted to look up the stuff the orthopedist put into my knee and looked up knee gel injections
Realized I was clearly not remembering the name of the stuff correctly.
Remembered, halfway through writing a patient portal message to the doc office asking about it, that I had recorded the session (because they wouldn't let me have anyone else there to help me remember)
Spent 10 minutes listening to it, to get the name and the bit of convo with my questions after
Found it online and read around for a bit
Stumbled across Psoriatic Arthritis references, and fell into that rabbit hole for a bit (apparently it correllates with everything else I have, and no one's figured out if there's any cause or all just correlation
remembered bills!
opened a bunch of snail mail, one of which was from the 529 account we never touched for Younger Child
looked up what to do if you don't use the 529 moneys that were saved, took a while to find anything useful, and read around a little
Found a package of a Kickstarter reward in the mail. Opened it, found d&d miniatures.
Found no indication who it was from. Looked in email for what it likely was. Checked them over to make sure they survived the trip across the pond, and that I got them all.
Re-read some of the updates
Decided the tummy weirdness was maybe hungry
Pulled bread from freezer, put in toaster
Found a sweater, cause maybe the fidgets are thermal discomfort
Asked for butter to be brought upstairs cause I was out
Commented on the campaign that I received them
fussed with email, sorting emails relating to that campaign into the 'Completely Done' folder
Finally butter was delivered, ate lukewarm toast
opened some more mail, some of which were bills that I noted and set into the pile to deal with
3 of which were bank statements, of which 1 was long (brokerage) and I tried to read, 1 that confused me (previously dormant savings account suddenly sending reports again), 1 useful.
One of which was another Kickstarter package, of a gmless one-shot rpg that was much easier to find in my mail
Commented that i received it, thank you
fussed with email, sorting emails relating to that campaign into the 'Completely Done' folder
20 minutes after I ate toast I was EVEN HUNGRIER, so asked for and got hot dogs, eventually by 4:30pm
took my 4pm pills
Opened up a letter from my cobra company, looked up what to do when cobra ends
Remembered bills BEFORE going down that rabbit hole!
Opened a bunch of snail mail and realized I wasn't finding some that I was pretty sure were already put on the hobby room table
talked on discord about a house in new hampshire
realized Elder Child was probably asleep
talked to Younger Child about dinner
ordered chinese
Found the rest of the bills under a box as I was talking to YC
And then it was 6:30 and I needed to go set up to play wow.

No bills were dealt with.

Remember I said it was morning when I sat down? It was 7:30 am when I sat down at the table, figuring to do bills. ("Do" in this sense is: open mail, note moneys due and when on envelope, note same in ledger book, write check, note moneys sent and when check written in ledger book, address/return address envelope, reconcile checkbook, put it all away.) I wanted to have the bills mailed today.

And yes, I've broken it down that finely because it really really felt like each of those was an actual step. As in, I have to think about it to do it. I am so. Tired. Of. Brain. Fog.

I played 3.5 hours of WoW, realized I was brainfried, thought about going to bed, and noticed as I stared at my screen that I'd sent the above writing to myself to post here from my desktop, cause I can't recall my password to login to DW on my laptop, which is what's in the hobby room. It's now 1:45 am. I actually *woke up* around 5am, after restless sleep all night.

It's getting to the nonfunctional time of year. Otter's Mom died Oct 28; Otter and my anniversary is Oct 30; no family around to celebrate my birthday on Nov 19, or do thanksgiving with. Can't even go visit folks for post-thanksgiving weekend. Otter died on Dec 8, My dad died on Dec 23, and I am somehow to make sure I have new insurance post-december 31, when I don't even know exactly what I'm getting from Social Security yet - I was 'approved medically' but 'still deciding non-medically' and what the fuck is even that. Do I get money or not? WHEN?

I swear, I need a personal assistant. Someoen I can say, "this needs to happen" and it will.

Fuck, I forgot to take my foodless pills. And midnight pills.

Current Mood: blank
Current Location: Home-Den
Current Music: fan white noise
Crossposts: https://khatru.livejournal.com/34367.html

I've been doing a lot of stuff that doesn't look like much.

Conversed with R about $THINGS. The primary thing coming from that is that we're moving up the timeline on househunting. Since I want to have overlap between getting a new house and selling this one so that I'm not frantically trying to pack, and the main reason I was setting it off 1-2 years was so that C would have a geopolitically appropriate address for his school, we can disconnect looking/moving and C's address need, and just leave him in the house on his own for a bit. So now I'm actually looking at the not-quite-spam mail that I'm getting from the three websites, and have brought R in to the ONE that lets you connect someone in (WHY IS THIS NOT A GENERAL THING???) and we're leaving comments for each other on houses.
Three of us went to a set of 3 open houses this past Sunday. First one was a house I wouldn't offer on, because it doesn't have the minimum accessibility I would need, but it was very local and a good learning experience. I also proceeded to inform the people manning the open house exactly why I wouldn't offer for it (there was much more than just the lack of accessibility, such as the complete lack of insulation in the attic, with sunlight visible in multiple places under the eaves). Second one, the people who were opening the house failed to show, it being after 2pm on a 1-4pm open house. We left. Third house was up in Bloomfield, move in ready, with some oddments that all older houses have (like, why was there a deadbolt on the door between the kitchen and the basement?) and all the accessibility I'd need. However, parking is minimal, and there are things (like one of the sets of steps from the house to the back yard is in the way of getting anything large *to* the hatch to the basement) that means that it's probably not actually the right house for us.
I had a week+ of doctor visits, that ended up with a small twinge in my back that I've had since about 2 weeks after Otter died flaring wildly. Paindoc thinks I might have gotten another compressed nerve, wants to MRI, and agreed to wait till I got insurance. That pain hasn't quite settled down, and is affecting my ability to do much. I've also felt lower energy since Sunday and the three open houses where I was walking around on uneven ground (looking around the houses) and doing stairs.
I came downstairs this past Monday to do bills and stuff, and was so out of it that I didn't even realize it was after 7 before I actually got moving on paper/mail intake until I was suddenly handed dinner. I meant to come down yesterday, and failed, ending up taking migraine meds, and extra pain meds. Today I woke up at midnight (top fo the day) and fell asleep again at 7, barely managing to eat food and take morning pills; ended up taking an extra pain med some time later; woke up just before 4pm pills, and dragged myself down here to at least do bills if not the phone calls, only to find that the fucking ATT bill is not here yet. *sigh*
Exiting Housemate has slowed down her exiting, due to her own health issues. Completely reasonable, but I'm getting antsy to have stuff gone. It's at the point where it's mostly just stuff to be put in trash and recycling, and I'm beating my head against C to do that, because R is doing EVERYTHING ELSE and we're really done.
To the point where R caught a cold (or something, it apparently came on faster than usual) and was sleeping a *lot*. A bunch of takeout later, a bunch of barely-touch-into-the-oven later, a few Inform-C-he-was-cooking-and-could-just-be-pissy-if-he-wanted-but-that's-it meals, and R took some money and slept in a nearby hotel for a few nights so that the allergen load would be less/different. Also, finally went to doc even tho temp never got over 101, and was given antibiotics anyway cause former smoker.
The kids, finally, after literally 2 weeks of nagging, moved the Forester out from underneath the dangling slate.
Finding a roofer to take on our roof has, again, been special, with 1 ghost on an estimate, 1 'you'll hear from us in a couple of days' that turned into two phone calls and a voice message later saying, "yeah, we do slate but not jobs that big" (WTF?), 1 semi-reasonable estimate, and 1 that said 'you need a whole new roof'. We have the lower estimate for the small roof that was damaged by the tree set to happen next week, and then we work from there, I guess.
May is the first month that I'm paying bills out of the account made with the life insurance money. Of course, the car insurance 6month is due this month, and the house insurance is due June 1, so there's going to be a huge dip to start with. Hopefully financial guy won't get nervous. :D
The car insurance customer service guy actually called late last week - later than he had said, but he *did* call back. Apparently C's good student discount is valid for, at least, this cycle of insurance payment. Yay! $2900 for 6 months is annoying as fuck.
I think that's all.

Contemplate agitating at ATT to change billing date.
Try to take Skitty to the vet for checkup when C is home.
Do more of the stuff that needs to be kept up with.
Find out when annual taxes are due
Arrange to actually get the roof fixed. IN PROCESS
call tax assessor office 9a-3p Barbara 9087692906 AFTER 12:30 WEDNESDAY as of 20180208
Decide day of month I need to pay bills. (2 days before end of month is not enough time)
Clear out envelope of Bills Since Death and sort into records, bills, whatever.
Figure out what to do about cpap machines (company emailed back, saying donate or whatever) (in process)

Talk to R about:

Container specifically for estate stuff. - Catbag?
Container for my paper notes on phone calls.
Container for medical records current year, bills and other
Container for keeping records, current year (currently back half of step sorter that R got from Staples, and repurposed wire mesh phone stand)
Container for medical records specifically for past years.
Containers for keeping records for past years, to hold paid bills and record keeping.
Container for tax info papers bundled by year for past years.
Container for my frustration and sanity. (Research ongoing. Last marble was found in dice bag, perhaps something similar?)

Crossposts: https://khatru.livejournal.com/28195.html

Woke up at midnight for my midnight food/pills, from a dream where I was trying to solve an epic quest, possibly with other people, and all the NPC ish people were no longer able to help us. We had to remove some bodies ?alive? from laying over other things protectively, and they were large and heavy and resisting, and we were down to the last one and I realized my cat was sleeping on my arm and I had to go to the bathroom. *sigh*
Woke up again about 10am after about 6 hours of sleep, and realized I was actually awake. So I texted R that I wanted to go out Notary Public hunting today, to be able to mail off the form for TIAA to give me Otter's pension. There were more dreams, but I didn't retain them.
Called TIAACREF to ask how long it will take to get the money once they get the forms. "5-7 business days." I'll believe it when it happens.
Called the person who had called me about owing money to the doctor group that Otter had apparently been paying $200/month to that I had no clue about until she called me as another phone number available to bug. I got the payoff number from her, made that check out and stuffed it in an envelope to mail while we were out.
Looked for the paperwork to turn the Merrill Edge account over, and couldn't find it. Sent the contact person an email owning my flakiness and asking for a new set of paperwork.
Went to the bank we started up the account with in December, and asked if they had a notary. They did, the guy who did the paperwork to start the account, who was happy to see us and just did his notary thing.
Went to the post office and sent the thing off for that pension fund certified mail, to get a return receipt.
Came home and did bookkeeping reconciling banking and making sure my checkbook was up to date.
Called the 401k plan company to find out how long it would take to get their money. After a bit of circling around with her trying to get her system to agree that I was me, ended up finding out that they have the two checks - one money for me, one money for the IRA I'm starting up, in the mail today. Wooo!
Culled through the things that have accumulated under the cut, and I've basically finished all of them. I'll include them above the cut this time. Go me!
Checked the mail, and nothing important was there. The most convenient branch of the bank that my mom's house account is with is closing, which is annoying, but no bills or anything else.
Received a phone call from the lawyer in Florida who is dealing with my aunt's estate. We started talking and then he sounded like he couldn't hear me, and then hung up, and rejected my callback. WTF-ever.
Went Upstairs To Play WoW!

Arrange to actually get the roof fixed.
call tax assessor office 9a-3p Barbara 9087692906 AFTER 12:30 WEDNESDAY as of 20180208
Decide day of month I need to pay bills. (2 days before end of month is not enough time)
Clear out envelope of Bills Since Death and sort into records, bills, whatever.
Figure out what to do about cpap machines (company emailed back, saying donate or whatever) (in process)

Talk to R about:

Container specifically for estate stuff. - Catbag?
Container for my paper notes on phone calls.
Container for medical records current year, bills and other
Container for keeping records, current year (currently back half of step sorter that R got from Staples, and repurposed wire mesh phone stand)
Container for medical records specifically for past years.
Containers for keeping records for past years, to hold paid bills and record keeping.
Container for tax info papers bundled by year for past years.
Container for my frustration and sanity. (Research ongoing. Last marble was found in dice bag, perhaps something similar?)

Crossposts: https://khatru.livejournal.com/27493.html

Called COBRA Management company, to get my account details since I had misplaced the piece of paper I had written them on. I was told that the only record of me in the system was as his dependent, that he is listed as 'terminated' and not 'deceased', and this is incorrect and must be dealt with. I took a case number, and left them to deal.
Emailed Otter's HR to tell them of this, and that something is very confused.
Was told by R what the details of the account were, and successfully got into the COBRA management company's benefits account to continue to elect COBRA for my health insurance. Only to find that, having listed Spouse&Child as needing insurance, I *must* include the Primary Plan Participant in the insurance, and that doing so has the wrong number of people being insured. Apparently because Otter is NOT listed as deceased, things are SERIOUSLY upgefukt.
Called COBRA management company again and confirmed that yes, this is the reason it is all upgefukt, and they need to talk to Otter's employer and get things straightened out, and that it will take 3-5 business days, as it always does. Oh, and that another company will be the COBRA management company on April 2nd. Yes, I know, I called them 2 days ago and they said to complete the coverage with you folks.
Screamed for about 2 minutes straight, and then took many deep breaths.
Spent time trying to figure out who has our tax info from the cryptic note left by Otter on his computer for me. Even accounting for his atrocious spelling, I can't find anyone with any name anything like the names he wrote down that has ever heard of him, or our 6+ years of unfiled taxes.
Spoke with R about the various research projects I'd given her: our food spending is consistent on a monthly basis so we can work on that number as our budget; the post card from our local mazda dealer talking about a recall doesn't have one that is dangerous that we seem to be affected by; the insurance company that was dealing with the tree that came down on our roof had gotten back to her about when the check was cashed, cleared, and other identifying information, and that information was not found in our records.
So I Called up his bank and asked if they could find that information for us, to confirm that it was cashed by him. They said yes, but we'd have to come in person to talk about it.
Went to Otter's bank (where I now have a couple of accounts) and talked to them, and yes, indeed, that check was deposited into his account. Yay. So much for that 2k.
Did some Ingressing while driving around.
Went to BJs with R, doing some price comparing and picking up some pens that I love that are really inconsistent as to where I can find them, and these were 10packs of the matching pen and pencils. In addition to the groceries.
Had pizza for my 4pm food next to Stop & Shop.
Sat in the car while R went into Stop & Shop, because she wasn't going to be long enough for me to get in any cruising for interesting things, and she doesn't like the scent of lilies.
Came home and Called the lawyer in Florida who's taking care of my father's sister's estate. Talked to a person this time!!! But not the lawyer. He's out. But now he's it!
pored over the TIAACREF pension beneficiary form, and grepped through papers failing to find the information for the new IRA for me.
Got called into the kitchen to help R butcher a chicken. (I'd given verbal directions before, but this was eyes on while she wielded the knife.)
Found another set of papers with the account number of the new IRA for me, and used that to fill out the TIAACREF paperwork.
Called TIAACREF help line to figure out some confusing back-and-forthing in the form to fill out. (Mostly my confusion, less their writing, and making sure I understood that really, I didn't have to write anything on 4 pages of this.) (I wrote "DO NOT NEED" on them just to be clear.)
Proudly signed it only to realize that I should not have signed it because it needs a notary and I'm supposed to sign in front of the notary. Fuck.
Put it down to deal with tomorrow because I've been up for 19 hours and I'm done.

Not including the other stuff. Done.

Crossposts: https://khatru.livejournal.com/27212.html

The COBRA management company claims that Otter is listed as eligible for COBRA because he was terminated, not deceased. This is causing bloody hell with me trying to elect COBRA.

Furthermore, there will be a new COBRA management company as of next week. I had called them on Monday to ask if it made more sense for me to wait to elect COBRA until they are the company or if I should do it now and the person I spoke to seemed rather flustered and said I should definitely elect it before it got to them and let the system pull things over.

Current COBRA management company has '3-5 business days' for their resolution of issues.

*headdesk**headdesk**headdesk*

Crossposts: https://khatru.livejournal.com/27109.html

Beginning of boring stuff I did post.

- There were, indeed, things I needed to sign inside the envelope I got that I opened, identified was paperwork about the IRA they're setting up, labeled IRA STUFF and put aside for later. Oops.
- The 401k hasn't shown up yet for them, and in fact is most likely going to show up in my mail as a check made out to the IRA fund. So I should be looking for that Real Soon Now.
- Astonishingly enough, he agrees with my intention for the money, that I should clear all bills before putting things away. Woot!
He's going to be at my FIL's 90th birthday party this upcoming Saturday. He'll have paperwork for me to sign and I need to be ready to give him a check for however much I'm not using to pay off stuff. This is going to be the *liquid* ish portion of my funds. I've never had this much money before. I don't think my family (parents and up) had equivalent-this much money before.
Called Wells Fargo Mortgage: The Deceased Processing Unit (is this anything like food processing?) had to give me to Customer Service (which I had actually dialed originally, and killed it and called the Deceased Processing Unit instead...) and gave me a number that's good till the 30th. And it's $4+ interest for every day past that. This is not a legally binding number; they can mail, fax, or email a number that would be legally binding. No, they cannot guarantee that if I give them my email they won't use it for advertising purposes. So I have to get a certified check, and send it overnight to a really whacky address to get this done.
While I was waiting on hold, I emailed Otter's HR person to let them know I'd gotten the life insurance check, and ask she had any idea of when I could expect to get anything from the 401k folks.
Called the Credit Union about the home equity loan: They're ok with a personal check. I have the number to be paid off by Friday, and I can walk it in (or spend the money to get it there by Friday).
Called the House Insurance to find out how/what to pay/do now that mortgage is being payed off. It's paid through May, renews June 1. I have #OPTIONS about how to pay, and time to think about it. Yay!
I sent email to the lovely friends who loaned me money for mortgage, and asked them for their accounting of how much I owe them.
I called what will be the new cobra management company (yes, for the insurance I haven't finished filling out the applications for) and found out that they aren't doing any intake, I have to finish the filling out with the current company and let it flow over with the transfer.
And I made out a couple of checks for bills while on hold with all of those, and then R and I went out to do EXTREME BANKING!
Went to local bank and got a certified check (aka cashier's check, aka treasury check) in the amount of "I don't think I've ever sent this much money before" (plus $10 for the service)
Went to local post office and followed the directions of the Lady In Charge to send it overnight. It should be there by noon on the 27th. That will be $24.07, thank you very much.
On a roll, we drove over to Busch Campus to pay off the home equity loan we had at the credit union. This took a while, since it was about 2:30-3pm as we went, and school was letting out all over the place.
To celebrate the hemorrhage of "I haven't ever spent this much money in one day" we ... spent more money, and had a treat at Thomas Sweet's (excellent store-made ice cream).
We discussed dinner on the way home, and decided that sushi was far more interesting than leftovers, and that it was the better part of valor to order in than eat at a restaurant. I had another errand vaguely in mind, but decided to let it slip.
Called the oil company to find out why they were trying to charge the oil delivery to our credit card when I had arranged in January that they would no longer do that. Apparently that information never made it into our file, and hopefull will now be in our file.
Between getting home and ordering dinner, I wrote out more checks for bills for normal amounts of money, and succumbed to the demands of the cat so lonely because no one ever pets her to be a mattress.
After we ordered dinner, I called Otter's insurance company, following up on the call I made on March 5th about getting the claims adjustment check re-issued in my name. Turns out there's a note, saying they called on 3/6 and left a message. Apparently they called the house phone, and I don't know who they left a message with. I found out that I need to send them a copy of the surrogate's affidavit naming me It, and got the address to send it to. Again, this took a while of me being on hold for this to be figured out.
Ate delicious sashimi from a new place. I'm not sure it was any less expensive than going to a restaurant would have been. :/
Called the insurance company from 5 years ago to talk to them about getting another check reissued (that we'd just found this past weekend, which had been reissued Sept 28, 2017 and was good for 6 months, with no indication of when the original check had been inssued). This took over an hour of talking with someone (who at first couldn't find a record of the check in their system...) and being on hold, and talking to them, and being on hold... and eventually they decided that I could sign a HIPAA release that would give me the right to see his information, and that would give me the right to get the check in my name. (Does anyone else see the circularity of the logic here?) They emailed me the form, I printed it out, filled it out, and in the process found that I needed to give them ... a copy of the death cert and the surrogate's affidavit. *headdesk* Soooo, I included those also.
There was something else I did, but I forgot.

( all the stuff for the future that's nearly the same in every post )

Crossposts: https://khatru.livejournal.com/26770.html

And... now that I have that, my feelings of stasis have lifted. Now I just have to get up during the day.

The *really* boring posts will restart, now.

I've *already* mailed the check to almost-kill the credit card. I left some loose, cause I've been told credit reports get really weird if you don't have any credit floating about.

Next day I'm awake, I need to:
a) call the mortgage company and find out how much it will cost to kill the mortgage.
b) Call the home equity loan folks and find out how much it will cost to kill the HEL
c) call united healthcare and find out what happened to the check they were going to try to send me in some
form of my name instead of Otter's, so I can actually cash it.
d) call the Other Older Insurance company, about the check I just found from back in September, to get it
made out in some form of my name instead of Otter's, so I can actually cash it.
e) Call the FinanceGuy to see what *he* thinks I should do with the rest of the money, given my desires of
1) having a checking account dedicated to bills (so we don't end up bouncing bill checks due to buying
groceries)
2) having 2-3 years of taxes, and general bills available to me without having to worry where it's coming
from (monthly house bills, car insurance, house insurance, sewer (twice yearly), DMV moneys)
3) Get something more than generic savings account interest accumulating from it.
4) Oh, and did the money from the 401k plan ever show up?
f) Email HR person at Otter's company and tell them the life insurance showed up, now what about the 401k?

I also need to pay back the lovely friends who loaned me the money for the mortgage these four months. And then figure out how to buy groceries and gas in the meantime (That should be solved by FinanceGuy)

Yee. Haw. Oh, and get the roof fixed from LAST AUGUST's TREE that the insurance company claims we CASHED THE CHECK FOR and we have no record of it. Fucking shit, Otter, just DEAL WITH MONEY.

Crossposts: https://khatru.livejournal.com/26384.html

This week I've been cold, spacy, sleeping, and feeling like I'm braining at 1/4 speed.

R, after trying and failing to get me to deal with the pharmacy to renew my meds, went to do that, with me giving her money from my stash to pay for them. Unfortunately, I need the actual brand name synthroid, which cost, by itself, more money than I gave her. She put the overage onto the debit card for the bank account, and got some more groceries.

I paid the last bill I was waiting for to come in, and gave C a check for one-time dues for some organization he was told would "look good on his resume". $60 was annoying, but small enough in the long run.

After the sticker shock at the pharmacy, R took the Cobra-Management-Company mail that finally showed up and tried to sign me up. Unfortunately, the second page of the form, instead of listing the dependents of the deceased (as the text of the form said it would), only listed Otter's information. She put in an email to their support desk, and got a reply 2 days later saying that they wouldn't talk to her cause of HIPAA. (Which is bullshit, but w'ever.) So she brought up the envelope, gave me the username/password she'd set up, and I dragged my ass to the computer. Only to find that they'd fixed it, and that page now had my and C's name on it. 2 pages later, I came to a screeching halt from the information that it would cost $1500+ for C and I, or 825+ for just me, per month, and would have to be paid up front to date before anything would be covered. Since that's more money than I currently have in the bank, I didn't go any further.

R found for me, on the healthcare.gov website, a link to "people to help you decide what to do". I called the first name on the list (that I got from putting my zip code in) and after playing phone tag for a day or so, talked to him today. It turns out that there is no single place to find out how much meds would cost on medicaid vs private insurance; this kind of comparison (other than "private insurance is always better than medicaid") needs to be done by going from doctor to doctor, pharmacy to pharmacy about drug by drug to compare prices. "I just go to the costco website cause it's useful, and get an idea of the prices from there." After listening to me rant a bit, he also strongly suggested I call the insurance commission and tell them the runaround I've been getting, cause apparently it *is* as fucked up as it sounds, and he's sure they would love to hear about it.

Today, I didn't take a call that turned out to be the Cobra Management Company calling to talk to me. No information as to why on the message they left. I didn't take a call that turned out to be the life insurance place, which tells me that they're FINALLY through doing their determination, and that the check will be sent out Monday, second day air, and if I have any questions to call. So I called, to find out *which* second day air thing, and did we have to be home for it, and got the 'i'm not in my office right now' message. So I called the generic customer service, and they said second day air is UPS, and they don't send it requiring a signature. They also said that I can call Monday afternoon and get a tracking number.

So I think I'm going to leave all this bullshit alone till Wednesday, when I will theoretically have a check in hand and be able to have a clue if I can afford ANYTHING AT ALL.

fmh.

Crossposts: https://khatru.livejournal.com/26097.html

I've been up and down out of bed since my last post, but only for a few hours at a time. Today, my head is still just as stuffed up and drippy, but for the first time in a week I don't feel completely miserable and bogged down with it.

Among hte mail I got last month that I don't recall if I mentioned here was one from what's claiming to be an attorney for my (deceased) father's youngest sister. It says she deceased in August, and there's some property she held title to with my grandmother. They'd like to sell it, but they need permission from everyone who might have interest. I would inherit 1/10th of the value of the piece of property. (1/2 was my grandmother, who had 5 children; as the only inheritor of one of her children, I would get the 1/5 that was my dad's part, which is 1/10 of the whole). No clue who my aunt's primary beneficiary is. Lucky them. I had called and given them my phone number and email; they called once and left a message, and back and left one. Today, they called and when I picked up I couldn't hear anyone. So I said that, and hung up.

I came downstairs and stared at the pile of stuff in front of my seat. Some mail (one bill), mostly bullshit. One letter from the old health insurance company, saying that there's Yet Another Check that didn't get cashed. So I called the Dead Aunt's Lawyers and left another message, and then called the health insurance. Now, the last check I recieved was made out to Otter, and the bank cashed it for me into the Estate account with the comment that they REALLY want any more checks made out to me somehow.

So when I got someone on the phone (after a surprisingly short wait), I said that. And the person put me on hold while they went and checked with their manager. And came back eventually, and said they were sorry, manager was trying to find out how to do this, and I said ok, put me on hold again.

This went on, checking on me, asking a question, putting me on hold, for 52 minutes before they decided they couldn't deal with it now, could they please have a callback number. Just... shaking my head. I *can't* be the only person that's ever had this problem. It's really that difficult? Ask me for paperwork, or make it out to the estate of. That's what that account is for.

So now I'm back to trying to figure out what days to do the work of paying bills, given when they come in and when they're due, and filling out the forms for the TIAA-CREF pension plan.

Still no sign of life insurance money. R sold some old pokemon cards, got a shitload of money, which helped the bank account. Otherwise nothing. I have her on the task of trying to sell my old magic cards, but that's relatively low priority.

wheee.

Crossposts: https://khatru.livejournal.com/25747.html

I did indeed get in contact with John, my FIL Finance Guy, who I guess is my finance guy now. He and his assistant "Who is the expert with paperwork" called back. The upshot is I have advice on how much to ask to take out before rollover of the 401k, and an account (with wells fargo, meh) to roll it over into. I have the 401k form filled out except for one page that I made massive mistakes on, which I can print out again as soon as I can get a printer set up that is functional and I can use. And then I can include the Death Cert in with it and send that out, yay. They recommended that I call the plan and find out how long it will take to get this money, and to get into the account, but the information I have doesn't indicate who to contact for information on the 401k, so I sent YET ANOTHER EMAIL to the long suffering HR person who is my email contact asking for that.

On to today!

Hopefully fully functional!

Woke up around 7am
Ate more of the yummy steak that R made for me 2 nights ago. Still more left! Hyooooge london broil steak...
Realized that, while R had brought up my pillset for yesterday from where I'd left it down in the dining room, the *rest* of the pills were still down here from being refilled. So came down circa 9am to take/get more pills, and oh hai, be productive.
Read email, which isn't bolded as being productive cause it was all silly stuff.
Remembered to take pills, dammit.
Read over the information/instruction booklets from TIAACREF and made a list of questions.
Called the specific person given in the letter from TIAACREF, left message. Answer message indicates 48 hours before callback, requests good times. Left my name, Otter's name, associated # for the claim, my phone number, and pile of times through monday.
Resisted urge to call basic number and make sure that that person is still the right one to call.
Called SocSecDisability law office to see if lawyer had any reason to meet with me or anything. Apparently the person who I thought was going to be the lawyer isn't, her name is on things cause she's the lead lawyer in the partnership. I am SO FFUCKING TIRED of this switching things out crap! So I told the staff person that I was told by the SocSec person I saw when I talked to SocSec about Otter's death that they would be trying to expedite it. And anyway, after ranting a bit about yes, I'm low on cash, yes I'm likely to be having things shut off, yes I'm getting screwed by the cobra company and the life insurance company, and yes I think it might be possible to expedite this, that the actual lawyer who will actually be taking on my case wasn't in the office today, but he'll be in tomorrow afternoon and will see my message and hopefully call me to converse and stuff. *headdesk*
Called tax assessor's office about trying to get Otter's name removed from the title/deed/whatever. I finally got a firm reply about when the assessor is in the office, and WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON is one of the times WOOT CALL WEDNESDAY AFTER 12:30!!!!!
VICTORY!!!! The last Verizon bill in Otter's name was all credits. I called, and those credits should be applied to the new account as of tomorrow. I have a ticket number and everything!!!!!
Called Merrill Lynch Pierce Fenner Smith Sacco Vanzetti Reeves Taylor Smith Edge investment thingie (sorry, old in joke between me and a long lost boyfriend) and found out that no, I never did call them to tell them Angus was dead, and started that process, talking to Mark, who is a Relationship Consultant in their Life Services Department. I suppose that's better than Wells Fargo's Deceased Processing Unit.
Emailed Mike the Lawyer about contacting again, as we've not been able to connect when he's tried to call me.
Went on healthcare.gov to put in an application to apply, to at least see how it works. Apparently I'm eligible for medicaid, cause I have no income. quel surprise. They're gonna send me forms.
Got email from Mike the Lawyer saying today is a good time to call. So I did.

( all the stuff for the future that's nearly the same in every post )

Crossposts: https://khatru.livejournal.com/25173.html

So I was writing this on Monday, Feb 5th. Apparently, I never posted it. (sigh). I'm leaving it as is, the top part at least, with minor changes.

Monday, Feb 5th, I:

Woke up in time to take pills, but didn't eat anything (and thus didn't take the metformin) because what I had available to eat in sufficient quantity really really needed to be heated up, and I don't have a convenient way to do that upstairs.
Came down around 10ish, convinced C to make me cheese flat and tea
C left right after that, so I puttered till R came down and had food and then we
Went to the bank and paid the mortgage thank you very much to the friends who gave me the money.
Came home to get me something to drink that wasn't sit-in-the-car-in-winter-too-cold.
Went to the eyeglass place to have them fidget with my glasses. Turns out the computer glasses had not had the anti-glare coating, which I had finally figured out was part of my problem with them. Once you get used to that, man it sucks not having it.
Did a very minor amount of ingress as we drove around.
R went out and deposited a check that I had gotten in snail mail from someone who wanted to help but didn't want to do paypal
Organized myself to do next things.
Texted John, my FIL Finance Guy, saying I wanted to ask him something, and would it be better to text, to call, or did he have an email? I got a call back within moments, where he told me that he didn't have time to talk. (o.O) And that I should call him tomorrow.

Tuesday I had a lovely day, where I spent the entire time playing WoW. I had started it cause I was awake at 8am, and didn't think I had anything important to do till I would call John, my FIL Finance Guy. And, somehow, I went from "noon, I have time to finish this thing" to "5pm, wtf?" and didn't call. And then had a humongous steak that was exceedingly nicely cooked, of which I put 3/4 into a container and in the fridge for future meals and fell asleep about 8:30 pm.

This morning I was awake by 5am, and was going to get on WoW again and continue my streak with an alarm set for noon, but I got distracted by all the things that the people I follow on twitter linked to over the weekend. And now I'm downstairs, dammit, and about to text John my FIL Finance Guy if today is good to call or not.

And then, hopefully, I'll get forms filled out.
( all the stuff for the future that's nearly the same in every post )

Crossposts: https://khatru.livejournal.com/24858.html

Wednesda - wednesday? - I had that lovely phone call with the life insurance company. The subsequent phone call with the mortgage company went even less well, as apparently they don't have any means within their system to account for the concept of 'partial payment'. All they do is hold the money until/unless they have enough to count as a payment. If this happens before their system instigates foreclosure, all well and good. Otherwise, they send the money back and it's in foreclosure. I had a small bout of hysterics, and have been hiding in bed (somewhat literally) ever since.

This morning I was actually awake at 7am ish. Took my pills, sat up poking at phone games till C came up to tell me it was 11am or so. I actually lay back down cause I was feeling tired-ish, and after a half hour gave up and came downstairs so I wouldn't be alone. I've done some useful things:

Detailed list so I feel better about it

ate late lunch
record bank activity into my ledger book so I can correlate more information
wrote out checks for att, oil, allergy shot copay,
asked R to take care of bullshit forms for the day
Signed forms for life insurance, Otter's ashes to be returned (sooner than anticipated)
recorded new bill/payment info into ledger
Consulted with R regarding dinner, pulling a recipe from my childhood that was tagged interesting
Fell asleep while R made dinner
Eventually woke up and ate delicious dinner, discussed/evaluated with R, deemed a success by both. Even C went back for seconds.
Gave up being downstairs and came upstairs.

Failed on:
currently trying to get the impetus for
filling out forms for 401k
filling out forms for TIAA pension

Now to see if I can manage to play wow today. If not, Diablo.

Crossposts: https://khatru.livejournal.com/24635.html

So far today:

Called life insurance person direct, left message with my name, Otter's name, claim number, my cellphone number, and the fact that I called a couple of weeks ago and haven't ever heard back.
Called Abby and made arrangements about the chocolate party
Called Specialty Pharmacy, returning their fucking annoying automated call. And, just like on the 9th (which they have records of me calling), I *again* had to give them permission to send the med, and apparently the $60 copay is *every month* until max out of pocket. Which I don't recall it being, but Otter handled it cause it was his insurance etc, and I just don't know for sure.
Called PSEG wrt lack of return envelope. Customer Service Rep has no clue why there was no envelope, as far as they know there's no program about asking to not get envelopes, and they made a note to make sure for my bill to have envelopes again. Would that everything were this easy.
Called Oil Company - overage mentioned on receipt received 20180119 is actually all paid up.
Called Verizon and fought my way through the voice menu to a person, where I talked about how the person who moved the account over from my deceased husband's name had said that I should call and ask to be put back on the 2 year plan to get the lower rates. I was told, this time, that my *discounts* were locked in till 2020, but that I would still be subject to any basic rate increases. They also said that, should that happen, I should call again to find out if I had the lowest prices available, which apparently I currently have.
I had also tried to create a myverizon account, first, to see if I could do it myself without poking the phone monster. It got all the way through the setup process till I got to the 'create account' button, and then failed to react at all. No spinny things, no visible aspect on the browser frame to indicate any sort of processing or transaction. It was like I wasn't clicking the button at all. I turned off my adblockers, and tried again, same effect. So that's when I called the phone menu system to beat it into submission. I mentioned this to the person I got on the line, and they connected me to what I think was called the 'e-troubleshooter'. Who walked me through it twice more, including clearing cache and cookies, to the same result. I actually have a trouble ticket in to the 'devs' to figure it out. I'm betting some combo of linux and firefox and blockers, but we'll see.
Called Water Company to ask about the charges that weren't on the previous bill. I'm wrong, it was on the older bill. Also, account wasn't name-changed, it was complete new account. Person on phone looked at Otter's bill history, and said that most often it was about $55 or less. So whee, I guess I budget 60 for months we go over.
Called life insurance basic help line. Oh, this was special. First, my Claims Consultant is not the person listed on the letter, it's someone else. I now have their first name and their extension. Second, they don't know how much the insurance is for. Apparently it depends on Otter's earnings, and his cause of death. Sometimes that REDUCES IT. FMH. Third, of COURSE they don't put the interest information on the brochure about the "security account" that I can put that money into, cause obviously it's going to change on a fucking whim. Now I'm *really* pissed off.
Sent email to Otter's HR person detailing the info in the phone call, and asking them to please clear up whatever issue they are having. Stupid fucking shit.
tbd

Call SocSec lawyer and see if she wants to meet (partner of no longer eligible lawyer)
call tax assessor office 9a-3p Barbara 9087692906

Call mike the lawyer about the north bergen house deed.
Find out if I called Meryll Lynch about angus gone, account come to me?
Decide day of month I need to pay bills. (2 days before end of month is not enough time)
Contact EZPass and find out how it was being paid and figure out if I need to do anything with it.

To Do Soon

Cannot do until make payment! Waiting on Life Insurance. Call Mortgage, ask for late fee to be removed.
Fill out forms for 401k
read in detail, evaluate, car/home insurance offer from AAA
Get onto Otter's computer and look for the file he left me.
Deposit checks received (2017-12-22: 1 to date.)
Clear out envelope of Bills Since Death and sort into records, bills, whatever.
Figure out what to do about cpap machines (company emailed back, saying donate or whatever) (in process)
Find out wtf to do about the argument with the insurance and the roof
DO NOT LOSE PRINTED FILLED OUT FORMS BEFORE DEATH CERT SHOWS UP!!!!!

Talk to R about:

Container specifically for estate stuff. - Catbag?
Container for my paper notes on phone calls.
Container for medical records current year, bills and other
Container for keeping records, current year (current back half of step sorter that R got from Staples)
Container for medical records specifically for past years.
Containers for keeping records for past years, to hold paid bills and record keeping.
Container for tax info papers bundled by year for past years.
Container for my frustration and sanity. (Research ongoing. Last marble was found in dice bag, perhaps something similar?)

Actually did something.

The last few days I've been .... Ok, more like the last week, I've been doing nothing. My sleep cycle has cycled around to me being awake from anywhere from 6-10pm, to 6-8am. C has been poking me both at 11:30 am ish and at 1:30 pm -ish, and even when I sit up and try to get up, I'm falling back asleep. Last night I didn't wake up at all till about 10:30 pm. Tonight I managed to get up around 6pm, and come downstairs cause bills, goddammit. I had asked C to tell me what bills there were, and he did. Yay. There were also some letters from Social Security back on the 25th (yay for inculcating "write teh date received on the envelope, dammit"), one of which was acknowledgement that I was getting the widow's benefit of $255 (which hit my bank account on the 19th, iirc, after the meeting on the 16th), and the other acknowledging upcoming hearing (tho no date set yet.) That was cc'ed to lawyer, too. So yay.

I *have* been getting online and doing wow things overnight, tho, which at least forwards my nominal mindless pleasure.

Realized my checkbook and the bank readout were hundreds of dollars off, and so did the arithmetic to resolve my checkbook, finding an egregious error that should never have happened at all. So yeah, $200 off where my checkbook says low, ok. where my checkbook says high, bad.
Looked on the life insurance letter for the general customer service number.
Paid bills. Still working on tracking what's needed, so can't tell what budget should be yet.
Organized what should be done next.

Now, to play wow.

Call Abby re chocolate party
Call PSEG wrt lack of return envelope, was this asked for, can it be changed?
Dig out previous water bill and find out what the difference is for, and call for explanation.
Call Verizon and ask for discounts again. 2 yr contract?
Call Oil Company - overage mentioned on receipt received 20180119
Call SocSec lawyer and see if she wants to meet (partner of no longer eligible lawyer)
call tax assessor office 9a-3p Barbara 9087692906
Call life insurance folks again. And again.
Call xolair pharmacy about bill, thought it was going on credit card.

Call mike the lawyer about the north bergen house deed.
Find out if I called Meryll Lynch about angus gone, account come to me?
Decide day of month I need to pay bills. (2 days before end of month is not enough time)
Contact EZPass and find out how it was being paid and figure out if I need to do anything with it.

To Do Soon

Cannot do until make payment! Waiting on Life Insurance. Call Mortgage, ask for late fee to be removed.
Fill out forms for 401k
read in detail, evaluate, car/home insurance offer from AAA
Get onto Otter's computer and look for the file he left me.
Deposit checks received (2017-12-22: 1 to date.)
Clear out envelope of Bills Since Death and sort into records, bills, whatever.
Figure out what to do about cpap machines (company emailed back, saying donate or whatever) (in process)
Find out wtf to do about the argument with the insurance and the roof
DO NOT LOSE PRINTED FILLED OUT FORMS BEFORE DEATH CERT SHOWS UP!!!!!

Talk to R about:

Container specifically for estate stuff. - Catbag?
Container for my paper notes on phone calls.
Container for medical records current year, bills and other
Container for keeping records, current year (current back half of step sorter that R got from Staples)
Container for medical records specifically for past years.
Containers for keeping records for past years, to hold paid bills and record keeping.
Container for tax info papers bundled by year for past years.
Container for my frustration and sanity. (Research ongoing. Last marble was found in dice bag, perhaps something similar?)

Crossposts: https://khatru.livejournal.com/24438.html

Spent 27 minutes on hold, in order to speak to a representative, in order to cancel the account with the trash pickup people who pissed me off. However, apparently the call answering person needs to talk to Someone Else (tm) in order to do so. *They* get off work at 7pm, but she was on hold to them from 6:50 onward, and finally came back to me at 7:05.

So NOW I'm going to get called back tomorrow at my convenience (it's never fucking convenient, but I picked 1pm cause I'm most often awake then these days) in order to cancel the account.

Fuckin' a.

Oh, and I also went to the endocrinologist. My blood sugar is up, A1c at 9.6 (quel surprise); my free t4 is 1.03, in range; TSH (reflex to FT4) is 7.49; my cholesterol overall is high, but it's the good cholesterol that is high, and the bad stuff is low, and it's borderline. I have another appointment in 3 months.

And the drugstore insists that I have insurance, and only charged me about 1/4 the full price for the expensive drugs. Whee?

Otherwise, the fucking knot in my shoulder is still there, and I've been sleeping shitty because of it. But that means I remembered a dream: we were going to a convention, and driving past where Einstein lived, which was notable because I'd found a game that he designed, so I decided to stop at his address and see if he would speak to randoms. The address was an apartment building, 3-4 stories tall, and I was let in, and invited up. He took my compliments and praise for the game delightedly,, speaking to me over his shoulder from where he sat on a couch watching TV. When he got up, i saw he was only wearing underwear, and he led me across the hall to another apartment, from which I got the impression that he leased/owned/whatever something gave him access to all the apartments. In this other apartment he got out a development copy of the game to give to me as a gift, and then gave me a kiss from an old man to a young girl (no, i wasn't any younger than I usually am) in thanks, and went back to teh tv. On the way out, I couldn't find my friends in the car waiting for me, so I went back in, and got lost, adn started running away from Ingress players who were trying to catch me for some reason, and managed to finally exit the building 3 blocks away, and was cautiously making my way around the building to find the door I'd gone in by, and then I woke up.

Current Location: Home-DR
Current Music: People moving in the house
Crossposts: https://khatru.livejournal.com/23549.html

Today, I:

Woke at 7:43; ate some leftover food in my room, took my 8am pills, went downstairs carrying pills, phone, and more leftover food from my room.
Drained the teapot into a cup, and made fresh tea.
Moved things around in the kitchen - not so much cleaning as arranging things to be cleaned.
Nibbled on more leftover food, while neatening the table so I could use it. This involved frequent walking back and forth into the kitchen to throw handfuls of things away.
Went through some of the piles, creating ... heaps. (note, this is a computer science data structure conceptual difference.)
Called Life Insurance Company Again. Left another message, mentioning that this was the second call, when I had called before, and my phone number.
Called the town tax assessors office to see about appointment to change things in to my name. Talked to (didn't get name). Assessor left early today, will be in 9a-3p next two days. Interesting convo, person who answered got a non-answer when she asked about same thing.
Gave up on trying to use the second monitor for dinign room machine. Wrote a note to be taped to it, had C remove it to computer part storage in basement.
Called PSEG, confirmed up to date.
Called RUFCU branch manager Heather, left message about making an appointment to come down with paperwork about accounts. FIND L8 FORM!!!!! (note: Can be downloaded from http://www.sussex.nj.us/documents/surrogate/itl8.pdf )
Called Bank America card to check that payment cleared. It did, next due March 1st (because the one I paid counted against the bill I got in January, that was due Feb 1st.) Doh. Called back cause I forgot to ask for the late fee to be removed, which they did. Only $27, but hey, every little bit counts.
Called back PSEG to ask to remove late fee. CSR claimed they don't charge late fees on residential accounts. o.O I never noticed.
Called Verizon, confirmed up to date, got late fees removed, and moved it all over into my name. (still need to fuss with setting up the account, but can't do that till it all finishes processing through the system, which apparently takes 48 hours wtf.) This was a relatively long call, with a very patient person named Michael, who figured out a way to go back and find something he had read to me at the start of changing things over, so that I could take notes and be sure to understand about pin and password adn hard reset and etc.
Made the appointment with the RUFCU person to deal with those accounts, after a bit of phone tag where each barely missed picking up the phone for the other.
Also, sometime after Noon, talked to R about the various containers needed, ref below.

After the long call to Verizon it was my 4pm pill time, so I ate some absolutely nummy veggie soup that R made. And then I lost all interest in continuing further, and so went back up to my room to do more pleasant activities. Which may end up being sleep.

I'll note that I went to bed almost immediately after going up to my room after dealing with DMV yesterday, so yeah, 12 freaking hours of sleep.

call tax assessor office 9a-3p Barbara 9087692906
Call mike the lawyer about the north bergen house deed.
Find out if I called Meryll Lynch about angus gone, come to me?

To Do SOON!

Cannot do until make payment! Waiting on Life Insurance. Call Mortgage, ask for late fee to be removed.
Fill out forms for 401k

To Do Later

Read in detail, and evaluate, life insurance mail from credit union BY JAN 25
read in detail, evaluate, car/home insurance offer from AAA
JANUARY 23rd: Call old trash service AGAIN adn make sure account is CANCELLED.
Get onto Otter's computer and look for the file he left me.
Deposit checks received (2017-12-22: 1 to date.)
Figure out what to do about cpap machines (company emailed back, saying donate or whatever) (in process)
Find out wtf to do about the argument with the insurance and the roof
DO NOT LOSE PRINTED FILLED OUT FORMS BEFORE DEATH CERT SHOWS UP!!!!!

Talk to R about:

~~Container for current month bills before they are paid.~~ R picked up a mail sorter thingie.
Container for medical records current year, bills and other
Container for paid bills, current year.
Container for record keeping, current year
Container for medical records specifically for past years.
Containers for record-keeping for past years, to hold paid bills and record keeping.
Container for tax info papers for current year
Container for tax info papers bundled by year for past years.
Container for my frustration and sanity.

Crossposts: https://khatru.livejournal.com/22847.html

I don't recall doing anything yesterday. I came downstairs cause I didn't want to sit alone in my room, but that's it.

Had brunch at Panera with C, who was my driver today.
Went to SocSec office and talked to someone, giving them information to fill in a form. I will be getting $255 lump sum payout as immediate death benefit, in a couple of weeks, direct deposit. He also filled out a form to go with the disability hearing that is pending, to hurry it up and to have everything decided at once; if I am declared disabled, I get socsec payments immediately. Otherwise, I have to wait 4 years.
Stopped by the Paindoc building and had C go up to the office and pick up the forms for handicapped parking placards.
Went to DMV with two titles in hand, and the form to fill out for the missing title we've given up on finding. Got distressed and flummoxed by the forms, looking for information I didn't have and didn't realize I needed. Gave up and went home.
Got C and R to get me the odometer readings adn VINs and such, which involved jump-starting one car that had run out its battery somehow. (Because with new cars, there is no dial, you have to have the car on to see the odometer. *headdesk*. Filled out ALL THE FORMS.
During this, had a small snack, cause it was pill time.
Went BACK to DMV and waited on line for a bit; someone came through checking forms and said I was ok, and that it was ok to sit on this chair near the front and leave C on line for me. Ended up having to go through the line twice: the first two titles were put into my name, and the new duplicate title was done, and the handicapped parking placards, for $189. And then I had to fill out the new title to put it into my name, for another $64.50. (4.50 to move the registrations along with them, on each car.)

I believe it was about an hour or so total, it just felt like forever. I'm fried, aching, and going to bed soon.

Find notes re: calling credit union branch manager directly about making an appointment to close/change accounts
Call Credit Union, make appointment for showing them stuff. FIND L8 FORM!!!!! fuck. (note: Can be downloaded from http://www.sussex.nj.us/documents/surrogate/itl8.pdf )
Find notes re: talking to various companies/entities about adjusting late fees etc wrt extensions.
Call PSEG, ask for late fee to be removed? Check what needs to happen to be considered up to date?
dammit, there was something else and it just fled my mind. Had to do with other things on those notes.

To Do SOON!

Cannot do until make payment! Waiting on Life Insurance. Call Mortgage, ask for late fee to be removed.
Fill out forms for 401k
Call number at town hall about making appt to talk to folks about putting house/bills in my name only. (look for business card. Catbag? DeathCertEnvelope?

To Do Later

Read in detail, and evaluate, life insurance mail from credit union BY JAN 25
read in detail, evaluate, car/home insurance offer from AAA
JANUARY 23rd: Call old trash service AGAIN adn make sure account is CANCELLED.
Get onto Otter's computer and look for the file he left me.
Deposit checks received (2017-12-22: 1 to date.)
Figure out what to do about cpap machines (company emailed back, saying donate or whatever) (in process)
Find out wtf to do about the argument with the insurance and the roof
DO NOT LOSE PRINTED FILLED OUT FORMS BEFORE DEATH CERT SHOWS UP!!!!!

~~Container for current month bills before they are paid.~~ R picked up a mail sorter thingie.
Container for medical records current year, bills and other
Container for paid bills, current year.
Container for record keeping, current year
Container for medical records specifically for past years.
Containers for record-keeping for past years, to hold paid bills and record keeping.
Container for tax info papers for current year
Container for tax info papers bundled by year for past years.
Container for my frustration and sanity.

Crossposts: https://khatru.livejournal.com/22713.html

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Page generated Jul. 3rd, 2025 09:58 am

Entries tagged with adulting

oh, i forgot

a few days

Another day. Actually, two, and some anticipation.

My day

Last month, I:

Today, I:

Today, I:

I shouldn't have been so optimistic.

Today, I:

stasis solved. Life insurance check arrived.

blargh

snorkBRIzzzzzzhonkshnrrrrk*

Today, I:

Today, I:

sigh

Today, I

Today, I:

Today, I:

Today, I:

Today, I:

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