You CAN go home again…

Thursday, July 30, 2009 at 4:37 pm (Youngest of Seven)
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…and sometimes you must. Even if you really don’t want to.

I’ve been spending a lot of time at my mother’s house these past couple months. It’s also the house I grew up in. The house that’s been our family home for more than 50 years. The house I lived in for more than half of those years. And the house I’ve avoided staying overnight at for many years since.

Why? Partly because many of the memories of living there aren’t that great. Partly because it’s a very inconvenient house to live in — one bathroom (until recently) with no shower (well, there’s a really scary shower in the cellar) and a vanity so low it hits you in the thigh; a 1940s kitchen (all the inconvenience, little of the charm), and an alarming lack of electrical receptacles. It’s also a maintenance nightmare. At nearly 110 years old, it’s always in need of something. I mostly just hold my breath and wait for the next thing to break or leak or fall apart. Since I live in fixer-upperhood at home, it about puts me over the edge to think about it there, too.

More than that, though, it’s just not home anymore, where a homebody like me wants to be, sleeping in her own bed with her husband and the cat (in that order).

I’ve been trying, though, to get over it. To see the house as others might see it. The pretty entrance hall with its big wooden staircase and mantle (the house has 6 lovely tiled fireplaces with wooden mantles — just ignore the asbestos covering, ’kay?) The big stained glass window on the landing. The tall ceilings. The old cast iron kitchen sink and 1940s stove. The fact that it hasn’t been “ruined” by various remodeling efforts over the decades, like so many older homes have (a few light fixtures and c.1972 pink & green flower-power vinyl floor covering in the front room of the attic nothwithstanding). Being non-design and décor inclined over 50 years has its advantages, I suppose.

mantle

hall

It’s all how you look at it, and I’m trying to look at it better. Mike thinks it will make a great home for another family someday. In the meantime, it’s still a big part of ours, and like the rest of us, is merely showing its age. I should give it the same slack I hope others give my aging self — chalking up the various squeaks, cracks, stains, and other imperfections to character rather than calamity. Battle scars earned by a lot of living, with, God willing, lots more to go.

home

Home is where you can say anything you like
’cause nobody listens to you anyway.
~ Author Unknown
(but I’m thinking it was another “youngest”)

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Mornin’, sunshine

Sunday, July 26, 2009 at 6:14 pm (Heavy Clay)
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For weeks we’ve been watching the weed in my pot of petunias get taller and taller. I’ve been tempted to pull it out many times, but Mike wanted to wait and see.

Good thinkin’. Too bad all the weeds in life don’t turn out this way.

sunnysurprise

Be ready to be surprised.
~ Loesje

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Your money or your sanity

Thursday, July 23, 2009 at 11:56 am (Youngest of Seven)
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I’ve been fortunate to have never had to deal with a bill collector before. But there’s been one chasing my 90-year-old mother for over a year now.

What I think happened is that we got a bill from an ambulance company we used last year to transport my mom in her wheelchair about 3 blocks from the hospital to a doctor’s appointment. I submitted the bill to my mom’s insurance company (at everyone’s urging) to see if we could get it covered (I figured it wouldn’t be).

While I waited to hear from the insurance company, the ambulance company sent another bill, which I waited to pay. By the time I heard “no” from the insurance company and actually paid the bill, the ambulance company had already turned us over to a collections agency (a pretty fast trigger-finger, I thought, but I guess they’re used to people not paying).

Let me say again: I paid the bill. Last year (April I think, for a February transport).

Monday morning, at my mom’s, we got a call AGAIN about the darn payment.

This is after I already talked with someone at the collections agency weeks and weeks ago and sent her a fax and a copy of the cancelled check.

And still I got the call, before 9:00 a.m. From someone who wouldn’t tell me why they were calling my mother (“a business matter”) and wouldn’t talk to me unless I put my mother on the phone, which I refused to do (a classic Catch-22, no?).

I finally got through to the woman that I had already taken care of this. She then bothered to check her records on the matter and a few minutes later asked tentatively, “Is this Christine?”

“Yes it is!”

I proceeded to give her an earful about how I’d long ago sent a fax and copy of the cancelled check, and had asked for confirmation (which I’d never received), all in a voice I don’t tend to use on the phone.

Supposedly, she is transferring the matter to the accounts department (or some such) and they will be sending me a receipt within 10 days. She couldn’t actually confirm they got my fax, so I expect this isn’t the end of it.

It might also be that we used the same ambulance company more than once, and I only paid for one transport (because I only got one bill — I pay every darn bill she gets, thank you very much), and I still owe the company money. I’m just waiting for that to be the case.

But I’m sure not sending them any more money until they tell me that is, in fact, the case.

In the meantime, I’m thinking about people for whom wrestling with collections calls is a way of life. I’m sure some are in the same situation as we are — at their mercy, even though they’ve paid (or think they’ve paid).

I’m also thanking my lucky stars I don’t have to dun people for a living.

To give vent now and then to his feelings,
whether of pleasure or discontent, is a great ease to a man’s heart.
~ Francesco Guicciardini

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