Driving a Mommy Van

Let me start with a disclaimer that this post is not meant to offend anyone. It is just that I am not a mommy so it is strange for me.

Today, I had to take my car in for minor servicing. The shop provides a free rental car through Enterprise. This morning, Enterprise did not have any cars except a mini-van. I drive a convertible so it is very strange for me driving a mommy car for a day.

In other news, it has been a very busy week for me (again). My affair with the Cable Guy continues. He actually asked my name last Saturday after 4 visits to my house. He was here from 9AM (with 2 of his buddies!) until 3:30PM - 6 1/2 hours! The 2 buddies left after about an hour and another one came. A total of 4 for the day. And, no, I am not having an affair with any of them although it is probably the most time I have spent with any one guy in a while! The resolution this time was to replace the cable all the way back to the signal pole - some 3 houses down the row from me and then from the pole behind my house to my house and down to the box. They said that there was a lot of bleed through because the squirrels had chewed the line up pretty good. After replacing all of the lines, the picture looked good and it was decided to send one more signal to the cable card to re-set everything after the fix. He drove off and sent the signal while he was driving away. The cable immediately went down and I had no picture, sound, anything - right in the middle of the USC game! I called him back since I now have his personal cell phone number. 45 minutes later he was back at my house. After several conversations with tech support, it was decided to run setup on TIVO again and then everything came back up. Whew! I was exhausted by then but my day had only just begun. I ran over to the shelter since there were 5 dogs over there needing attention. I ran them through the fastest walks and yard runs ever so that I could make it over to see my two nieces in their gymnastics performance - it was so cute and their little outfits were so adorable.

I thought that Sunday would be a day to catch up on gardening, finish up accounts, go through the bills, etc. but it was not to be. After many years of not needing the second phone line in my house, I finally took the leap to get DSL on the other line so that I could shut down the unneeded line. Sunday morning found me out at the phone box switching the lines from one phone line peg to the other. I was on the phone with my father just to make sure that I was getting things right. Everything went incredibly smoothly and a short time later, I was up on DSL on the other line. Great! I thought. That was easy. Now on to my other stuff. My euphoria was pretty short-lived. The DSL soon slowed to a crawl. I called tech support and was advised to shut down the modem and router and re-start them. I did that and the router fried. Just blinking lights and no WAN signal. The next step was a trip to my friends at Best Buy to buy a new router. I installed it and everything appeared to be working but still not DSL. I called AT&T back and, miraculously, got a tech on the line that knew what he was doing. He walked me through a number of steps to get the new account set up and the DSL up and working on it. By that time, it was 8PM at night! How time had flown. Everything is up and running well now but I did lose two whole days of the weekend to my friends at the Cable and Phone companies. And, after a talk with TIVO in which they informed me that there was a new upgrade to sign up for that should address the sound dropping on the new HD tv, and receiving the upgrade through the internet 2 days ago, the TV all seems to be working much better. Great picture, nice sound - WHEW! 6 weeks later. What an effort that has been.

Other items. I attended a CAbi fall party and bought some cool new clothes. Some are backordered so I haven't yet received them. I made another visit to the reps house on Wed to return some things that didn't quite fit right and ended up buying even more. They do have some nice, good quality, stylish things.

I helped my friend out with some quick lessons on finding things in QuickBooks as she makes the effort to get the books closed on a non-profit she is helping out.

Painting continues to come along. We are doing a fun project painting the plastic forms that the swimsuits at Costco come on. This is a free form project with everyone painting their own thing out of their heads. It is so cool to see all of the creativity and we are really having fun with it.

My work with FDS and ATW continues with both of those falling within the last week, too. It has been a long few weeks and I cannot believe it is October. Where did Sept go?

I had my followup with my doctor after the last surgery. I am healing well and the scar looks nice. While I was over at the hospital, I decided to drop into the SS office which is right across the street to tell them that I had returned to work and to stop my SS payments. What a horror! I had to wait for an hour to see a rep. When I finally got to the window, I gave her my spreadsheet that I had prepared showing my hours and wages and asking to end my payments. Did I want to cancel my claim?, she asked. No, I said. My illness is real. My treatments were real. My disability exists. I just wanted to suspend payments since I am now working. Ohhhhhh, she said. Okay. Well, we cannot accept this spreadsheet. We have to have copies of all checks. I have them, I said and handed them to her. Oh and you have to fill out these 5 pages of forms. I told her that my work was all on w-2s and should be in their computers. They are social security after all. No, she said. We can't see it. She then proceeded to pull up my file and say that I had worked in 2005. Now how can they see that and not my current work???? Anyway, I had not worked in 2005 after diagnosis. She insisted that I did at which point I had to point out that I would have had a hard time working while going through surgery, another surgery, chemotherapy, another surgery, radiation and biological treatments. She backed off then. At that point, she told me that we couldn't fill out the paperwork because there was too long of a line behind me and that I would have to fill it out at home and then come back again. I about lost it at that point. I have already waited an hour, brought in all of my copies and done what I was told to do and you want me to come back again???? I asked. You want us to work but yet I have to take off to come in here. That is not right. I started to cry - really. I am not kidding. They make me cry every time I go into that office. She relented and filled out the paperwork, gave me a copy and I was on my way.

My question is this. Why did I have to go through all of that to tell the government that I did not want their money? You would think I was asking them for more. Now, they are "reviewing" my claim which makes me nervous because they still have the blanket "right" to come back and ask for money back. It shouldn't happen but nothing they do is reasonable. They told me that their review could take months, even a year and that I would continue to get my checks which I am supposed to just "hold on to" so that they can come collect them back after the review is over. This whole thing is just crazy! How hard would it have been for them to spend the 5 minutes to look at my last year of work history, compare it to the paycheck stubs I had given them, say, yes you are right, you are no longer eligible and put the stop in my file??? 1 year to do that? What do they have to do? Walk to Washington DC or whereever the files are kept and pick them up personally? And this is where our tax dollars go.

Anyway, I am looking forward to some calmer weeks ahead (I hope!). Not that I don't like to be busy but this is just overboard.

ALL IS GOOD!! :)