Memoirs

 Rarely do I read an autobiography or a memoir about a celebrity and discover that I disklike the person.  This happened once with Matthew Mc.  At the beginning of Christina's story I didn't really like her persona.  I loathed/loathe the TV sitcom "Married....with Children".  Not my humor.  

As Christina matured I liked her character more.  A little bit more.  I do not like "In your face" people.  I prefer my acquaintances to be more polite until we get to know each other better.  She seems to come off as bawdy and ostentatious.  However, that could be due to her tv character.  Perhaps time diluted her character in real life as she moved away from that sitcom.

I like her honesty with her disease and I hope she is not finished with her craft as I enjoyed the TV show "Dead to Me".  I wish for her pain to dissipate so she can return to dancing and acting.  It may be a stretch, but medicine is advancing by leaps and bounds.  I was thinking she could possibly provide voice work for characters but maybe that doesn't appeal to her at all.  I would enjoy hearing her narrate nature or animal documentaries.  I enjoy watching Laurence Fishburne narrate "History's Greatest Mysteries".  That doesn't require any physical activity on his part.  I think she would be fantastic as a talk show host but perhaps I am naive about the actual pain she endures on a day to day basis.  I need to remember that working is not just the actual job, but she has to get out of bed, get ready and travel to the job site.  That may be the part that is the obstacle.

As her disease progressed she talked of her pain and how she is mostly bed ridden but really lights up and looks forward to anything to do with her daughter.  I relate very well to this.  She does not mention her husband in the latter part of the book.  I looked her up on IMDB and it states that she is still presently married.  None of my business but just a circumstance I noticed.  And, I may have missed a part where she explained where he is and what he is doing.

As for myself, arthritis has started it's invasion of my body.  It is genetic and I've known quite a few of my  maternal ancestors who's life was devastated by the disease.  They were bedridden and one kept a bottle of whiskey under her bed.  She lay in bed seven years with the dreadful disease.  I talked to my doctor about it years ago and told her I didn't want pain killers. She said there is medication for arthritis.  But she retired.  Now to get my new PA to agree to medication.  Because, it's time.

Remember these?

 Growing up in the 60s and 70s my Mom had a drawer full of silky scarves.  When I was younger, my girlfriends and I would wear them and pretend we were older, sophisticated ladies about town.  I don't recall wearing them in my teens.  I've heard they are making a comeback.  

When I lost all my hair, I wore the gypsy-style ones.  I knew I was not going to wear a wig.  I despise wearing a wig.  

The head scarf protected your hair from the wind and the rain.  There were the thinner ones - maybe a nylon fabric?  

First laying of robins eggs

 We normally get two sets of eggs a year in a bush outside my kitchen back porch.  I didn't even know that robins lay eggs twice a season.  Last year we had a baby bird that was having difficulty flying and my daughter was able to put him back in the nest.  I'm not sure what happened to him after that but we didn't see or hear him any more after that.

My bank.  Sigh.  I called yesterday to ask them why the charges remained on my account after I called about this on Monday the 13th.  I told her on Monday the rep told me they could not do anything when the charges were in the pending stage. I knew that because this happened a year ago.  A year ago I never had to follow up.  PNC removed the three charges on my account and we all went on our merry way.  When I called yesterday the rep told me that no, it was not being contested, that it was up to me to call in and refute them.  I said I thought I did that on Monday!  No, I guess not.  Then she kept asking me all kinds of questions trying to trip me up I guess and admit that I made those charges.  Maybe they have to do that.  Well, maybe their policy changed since last year but this was too much for me.  I opened an account with a new bank online yesterday and am beginning the move over.  What a wonderful world we live in that it has come to this.

Then I checked the infamous store that sells hand soap.  I have been waiting to late April for the sale to begin.  I always make a large purchase when they are on sale.  I never pay more than $3 for a bottle of their hand soap.  Their max limit was 24 and I did not have a debit card!  Arrgghh!  The sale will be over by the time I get my card.  Oh wait.  I saw the Venmo was an option and Venmo uses my bank account number.  I chose Venmo and it brought up a bar code, I got my phone out, opened Venmo and scanned the bar code on the screen.  My phone accepted it and I got the sit and spin.  All night. The app just showed a spinning arrow going around in a circle for  hours.  I kept checking my cart and the sale was not completed but it said the payment method was Venmo.  It did not let me move forward and I was unable to try and re-choose Venmo option now.

I called their customer support this morning.  Germaine was wonderful.  He created a ticket and he told me when I got my card to call back and give them that ticket number and use my new card and if the sale is over they will honor the sale price for me.  He was just wonderful.  Now, it might be an entirely different story when I call them back in a few days but at least as of now it is promising.

But, I can rarely get anything done without connecting to a human being.  I always run into some sort of snag that cannot be handled by the automation process.  And it takes so damn long.  My head starts hurting and my blood pressure begins to rise.  

My great nephew was injured in a school sport activity Friday evening.  My sister (his grandmother) said she was hoping he would stop football due to all the head injuries that these young people receive during this contact sport.  This injury happened while he was playing La Crosse.  The hospital sent him on to another hospital and they monitored him overnight.  They said that two vertebrae were affected and he was released the next day.

Today was the day

 After a long day of taking my sister for her second cataract surgery yesterday, I researched various banks in my state to see which one might benefit me the most since I was about to end my relationship with the bank I'd used for 31 years. 

I was going to start the procedures today.  I would start with my pension check directly deposited to the new bank.  My Social Security could continue to come to the current bank and would cover most of my utilities that were dependent online to that routing and account number.

Once I established the new bank with my pension check, I would go online and begin setting up all utilities to be drawn from the new account.  Then I would order checks and begin changing all my vendors online that used my bank card to the new bank.

Well, lo and behold guess who gets their notifications of my balance via e-mail (and text I edited to add on Wednesday).  The notification came to both.  Hmmm...I may still open an account with the new bank.  Just because.  I've been wanting to anyway, long before this hassle began.

Now, since I discovered my card was compromised on Monday morning (3 cash advances were pulled from my account adding up to over $100) I checked to see that they had been removed.  On Monday they were still pending, the bank has to wait until they are out of pending to remove them.  They have not been removed.  The last time my card was compromised (about a year or so ago) the charges were immediately removed.

So, now I need to call the bank (after 9 a.m. or whenever they open) to make sure they are going to follow through and add those amounts back into my account.  If I get anything other than stellar customer service about this issue, I will be thrown right back into an irate mental attitude.  The notification debacle began March 25th.  I understand that I was not losing money due to this glitch, but I feel that I had been extremely patient as support created three separate tickets regarding this matter and I had to remain vigilant for this issue to be resolved. In other words, I had to keep calling them to check on the progress only to find that nothing was being done about it.  After calling them, they would create a new ticket.  That continued until I blew up on poor Alice after she said "I will create a ticket...."

 By getting notifications via email, I would check it with my running register every morning to make sure both balanced.  As it was, I was not checking this on a daily basis between March 25th and April 13th.  On the 13th I logged into my account to find the three cash withdraws not performed by me.  Had I been receiving my daily notifications, I would have caught this on Friday the 10th.  Again, no money lost but since they offer this feature (I told them I liked this feature and thanked them for offering it) I had become used to it and I had relied on it for  years, I suddenly had to change my habit of checking my balance.  I even went so far as to investigate my google email account to ensure there was no filter or block that had inadvertently been created that would block the notifications or move them to trash or another folder in my email account.  No such filter existed.  It was then I thought - well, turn on the text notifications and if you receive them you will know that it is an email issue.  As it was, I did not receive any notifications on my phone text (until this morning) so that confirmed it was probably an issue with the bank.

Being out of town with my sister yesterday, I needed to go into a branch of my bank to withdraw cash so that I could pay for things since I did not have my card.  I had my checkbook with me and my drivers license, I was ready for them because I was a stranger to them and was out of town.  They were absolutely wonderful and especially thought it was funny when after telling them I opted for the bank sending me a new card in the US Mail that might take 7 to 10 days and I panicked when I realized I was unable to order anything off of Amazon.  Oh, the humanity! Or, would that be inhumanity?  LOL!  Amazon Prime does not give me the option for paying with my bank account and routing information, you have to use a bank card.

 BTW Amazon - get with it.  You may be losing orders as several people get their bank cards compromised and we may have to wait a week or so without being able to order from you. After 7 to 10 days we may not feel like purchasing it, or forget, or we actually left the house and purchased it elsewhere.

Okay, I'm off to mentally prepare myself to deal with a tortuous phone call to my bank to get the criminal charges removed from my account.  Just a side note...when I was younger (and I think this happens to a lot of folks) I would not have had the resources to cover an issue such as this. Especially, since I had to pay the IRS on Tuesday when I had never had to before in all my 50 years of working.  Although, I do believe only 47 of those years actually had federal income tax taken.  2025 was the first full year I was retired for all 12 months.  I received a refund in 2024 since I worked 6 months and was retired 6 months.  And before I was 15,  I had a paper route, so I guess I worked from 1973 until 2024.

Then again, I have to remember a lot of Seniors do not have the resources for issues such as this.  I am cognizant of the fact I am in a position where I can  tolerate the surprise monetary hits.  By no means could I cover large hits, but I am very grateful that I was able to for the current hits.  

How many tickets do you have to create ?

I lost it on a poor helpdesk lady today.  We'd been playing phone tag back and forth.  I used to get my checking account bank balance sent to me in my e-mail every day and I would check it and look at my running register to make sure all was kosher.  This helped me out when my card was compromised a little over a year ago, I caught it right away and called the bank and got it taken care of.

For some reason my notifications stopped on March 25th.  I have been back and forth with my bank since then.  I have written down every day of correspondence between me and them.  I spoke to Ernest (I wonder if they get to pick their names) last week and I thought for sure when Alice called me today it was going to get fixed.  About the time Alice said she needed to create a ticket, I lost it.  This was the third time they were creating a ticket.  My other tickets never got picked up and I had to keep calling back and they would start all over and create a ticket, etc...  I went off on poor Alice.  It could have been because I had just completed my taxes. I retired last year and I have never (in my 50 years of working) owed anything to the IRS at the end of the year.  I did this year.  Yuck.  Sigh.  I'm sorry, Alice. You got the brunt of it.  She took it well.

Had my notifications been working properly I would have noticed on Friday the 10th that my balance was hinky.  As it is, on Monday I thought I better log into my bank and check things since I am no longer getting updates.  Sure enough.  My card had been compromised - AGAIN.  Now, I am going through the hassle of checking to see where I need to enter my new card number online.  I was able to pay the IRS using my bank account and did not need a card.  My daughter said I could user hers, but I did not need to.  I could have easily sent the money right back to her from my bank account using Venmo.  Kind of a pain when you don't have a bank card.  When I called them Monday morning, they offered to let me get a card immediately by going to a bank in town; but not thinking, I said nah - just mail it to me (7 to 10 days).  What was I thinking?!  I have things coming up. I'll have to get cash out.

And I am going through an Internet upgrade - and even though the provider said the job was complete, we were not seeing the faster speed.   Online chats, and more phone calls back and forth with their tech support.  And there was a medical issue that I was trying to straighten out to get them to change my insurance to Aetna Medicare.  More time spent dealing with an automated answering device until I could speak to a real person.  My tolerance was dissipating fast.

So.  By the time I got poor Alice this morning and when she said "create another ticket" that was the straw that broke the camel's back.  Sometimes I don't remember everything when I get angry.  It comes back in snatches.  I do recall saying  "I have been with this bank for 31 years..."  and "I want this fixed" and "I have been patient".   Sigh.  Well, Alice if it makes you feel any better I feel like a heel.  

I will not call them again.  If they call back and get it fixed, fine.  I'll move on.  If they do not call back, I will be going to my bank and withdrawing my money and moving it to another.  Wait...all that updating !!  I'll have to think hard on this.  Oh, I didn't relay this part.  I could not understand why I would see where the bank was trying to call me but I never heard my phone ring.  (I rarely get phone calls, my friends and family all text).  Come to find out my ringer was turned off.  This has happened before and I don't know how in the hell it is happening.  And I am much too tired and fried to figure it out.  And my daughter's bank card expires this month and she said she must have thrown the new card away as she doesn't have it and they said they sent it.  Fortunately her card is good until the end of the month and I can reach out to her if I need to.  

This is driving me crazy.  Perhaps it is driving us all crazy.  Things are not simple any longer.  With all this security - I won't even go there!  And I worked in technology so I understand why we need this security but I was saying it takes so long to log in anywhere anymore we spend more time on fixing and resubmitting and updating our security information than we do on the actual work or tasks we are trying to do.
 

Progress

A day spent fighting with the telephone system, receptionists, correspondents, banking issues, card getting compromised (AGAIN!), scheduling vet appointments, hair appointments, medical issues.  I told my daughter I think there would be a market for people who went around as assistants and did a family's phone business for them.  Vehicles, insurance, medical appointments, banking hassles.  To wait and wait until somebody is able to take your call and when they do get a live human, their foreign accent is so thick you have to ask them over and over again what they said or asked and finally I just say "spell it!"

I have a feeling it isn't going to get much better.

A friend told me I should start a business up for that.  Ha!  I have no patience for this crap any more.  I put this kind of thing off for so long (making phone calls and getting things straightened out).  It is such a pain and a headache!  It ruins my day.  Besides, I'm fairly sure there would be a privacy issue.

I have to laugh.  I have worked with computers since 1980.  I retired last year.  We upgraded our Internet speed and the two new routers came.  I opened both boxes, took them out, set everything on a table and told my daughter to deal with it when she got home.  I HATE technology so much now. I can barely keep my own computer running.  That is how sick and tired I am of technology.  I was setting up Microsoft DOS long before Windows.  Before that I was using dumb terminals with a main frame.  I was there when you couldn't have a hard drive over 32 MB.  I hated Windows when it came out.  I am a command line operator.  Or, was.

I really, really have to psyche myself up to deal with calling places and working with representatives, now.  Torture!

Does it happen to you, too?

 

You find that perfect product.  You get used to it.  They stop making it.  This has happened in make up so often for me.  It also happens at fast food places.  They will have a sandwich I love and before I know it, sorry, we don't make that any longer.  Grr...

Ugh. I just checked the weather map.  ventura.com  I chose the Air pressure. Yuck.  My state is solid red/orange.  My headache just came on the past hour.  30.4 inHg.  I'd read up on it but my head hurts too much to think.  Two ibuprofen down the hatch.  After years of suffering, it is so nice to have two tablets take my pain away.  I used to take up to four at a time and still the pain persisted.  I understand the rebound headaches and I'm not ruling that out; that condition may have been part of it.

Drink more water.  I drink two cups of coffee in the morning and water the rest of the day.  I do not recall the last time I had soda pop, iced tea, kool-aid, juice etc...  I drink water all day long.  Have for years.

A couple of years back I had a restaurant charge our table .50 cents for water.  It wasn't bottled water. Not that I am aware of.  It was during the time restaurants began charging those extra service fees.  Saying it was for administration fees,  help waitresses pay for health insurance,  cost of menu update fees, take your pick.  I make sure I always have cash with me as they charge 3 - 5% for using plastic.  Even using my bank card as a debit purchase, they charge.  I smile and pay cash.  

Re-reading an oldie but a goodie.  Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh.  My Mom and I watched the 1981 version of the series.  Before we had cable TV and we only had 2 channels plus PBS.  We started watching it because the English scenery was so beautiful. I learned a lot during that time with my Mom.  She explained to me several things about the English customs.  I was 21.  She never left the house but she read a lot.  Well, she would leave about once a week when somebody took her grocery shopping and if it was summertime to any yard/garage sales.  She did go on a trip/vacation once in a while when somebody offered to take her.  I just fell in love with Jeremy Irons.

Oh, speaking of JI.  I watched The Lion King 1994 version.  I don't think I've watched that movie in 30 years.  JI provides the voice for Scar.  And that Nathan Lane.  Loved him in The Birdcage.  I am also reading The House of My Mother by Shari Franke.  A memoir about a girl raised in a strict LDS home where her Mother posted her children's lives as they were growing up on Youtube and how it affected her.

I was brought up in Ohio and went to Sunday School/Church in a Methodist church.  I went to school with a lot of Catholics.  I worked with some folks whose faith was Judaism.  When I moved to Virginia it was the Southern Baptist.  Women were not permitted to wear pants. (Some followed this religion.)  I never thought to ask if men could wear dresses.  I guess it never occurred to me that some men DID indeed wear dresses.  Sister 1944 and I joined a genealogy group run by a lady brought up as LDS (Latter Day Saints).  My sister became Treasurer and I stopped going (too far to drive after I hit a deer on the way to a meeting) and she had a lot of stories to tell me about that lady.  Hmmm...what other religions have I run across...I think that may be all.  I've known people who attend Church of the Nazarene, oh ...I had a good friend in school who was Russian Orthodox.  In my area it did not matter what religion you were.  I think up until fifth grade we said the Pledge of Allegiance before school began.  I don't recall saying it after that. I do not recall ever praying in school.  Well, maybe to myself before a test, but not as a group.  I stand when I sing the National Anthem.  

What an awful mess things are in the world.  Maybe it was a mess back then too, I was just too young to be aware of it.  My Mom didn't vote because she said "they were ALL crooks."  I do try hard not to say off-color jokes (we used to just let them fly back then, picking on all religions, races and hair color).  My jokes were in jest, I never meant any harm.  I like everybody until they give me a reason not to.

A bit of a bite

 When I make potato soup it more or less becomes cheese soup.  I will grab whatever cheese I have available and add to it.  This time I grabbed a jar of Velveeta's Queso blanco I had in the cupboard.  Along with a can of white cheddar soup from Campbell's. I also added a cube of Velveeta (I purchased a small box of three foil-packed cubes of the cheese just like the kind you get when you buy the big block).  It was nice, this way you don't have to worry about wrapping the rest of the block to ensure it doesn't dry out in the fridge.

This jar of queso blanco gave the soup a tiny little bit which I rather enjoyed.  Sometimes I follow my recipe, sometimes I stray from it.  I totally forgot to add any butter to this and I liked it just fine.  

And, I HAD to make cornbread.  A box of Krusteaz honey cornbread.  Delicious.  And then to top it all off, I was worried about a bag of left over apples, so I whipped up a new recipe of apple crisp.  This recipe had me create a gel-like syrup made of water, sugar, vanilla and cornstarch.  I must remember to stir the cornstarch in the water so that it dissolves.  As it was, I just dropped it in and it clumped up.  

I looked back on my recipe from  years ago.  Back then I added a jar of alfredo sauce, butter, half and half, cream of celery soup and thinly sliced onion.  I never add carrots.  Not yet, anyway.  I do keep the water I used to boil the potatoes so I can add it to the cans and jars of soup and cheese and add that to the soup. This uses the last bits left in the cans and jars.  Of course I chop up celery.  I try to always have a bunch of celery in the fridge.  I found that wrapping it in foil keeps it fresh the longest.  I have frozen celery before, it doesn't look the best but it can be added to soups and pot roast for the flavor. Usually if I add frozen celery to a recipe, I remove it before eating it because it is soft and mushy.

Before retirement I was quite fond of cooking on top of the stove.  Hated baking.  Since I retired I did a bit of baking but had to stop because I was the only one eating my results.  A lot was thrown out. Nobody else will eat the soup but they may try some of the crisp.  I added a handful of dried craisins to it.

With a heart in the room

 Sister 1954 was trying to perform an AI task (her daughter had used AI to show her pics of what her house could look like) and she ended up with a room with a big heart in the middle of it.

She had typed in "room with a hearth".   LOL!

What I am reading these days

 I don't recall why I chose to read Liza Minelli's autobiography "Kids Wait Till You Hear This". I will probably finish it this week.  I watched Cabaret 1972. I had never seen it. In fact the only exposure I've had to Liza was from the 1981 movie "Arthur".  Not a fan.  I don't dislike her.  Just not my genre.  I DO admire her.

I just recently read Kitty Kelley's "Oprah",  a Tim Curry memoir and another from Priscilla Presley.  And one by Jean Kennedy Smith of her growing up a Kennedy.

Sister 1944 asked me if anybody got sick after our family party on March 21st.  Our oldest brother 1942 has Covid.  I said "I did".  But, my symptoms sounded like the flu.  Then I read the Covid symptoms. I hit 7 out of 8.  I guess I'll have to scrounge up a Covid test somewhere.  I used to get them free from USPS but the government put a stop to that.  

It's funny.  I never even think of or consider Covid until I hear somebody mention it.