random thoughts – Day 1,959 – (Monday) – head splitter

The headache came in strong and early, likely due to caffeine deprivation. Instant chai latte tastes nice, but does not have the same invigorating effect as coffee. Fail.

The morning was loaded with hiccups (in addition to the headache, or maybe because of). Trying to log into a bank account resulted in blank screens and not even the benefit of an error message. Logging into the unemployment site was not successful. There was an email from a paralegal about difficulty submitting the mortgage payoff request to the bank-provided fax number. Umm, ok? Should that not be a call to the bank? I ended up signing in to the bank’s online portal for possibly the first time since 2016 to check if requesting a payoff was possible in the portal (nope). I was able to submit a question via chat. 

By 10:15 it felt like an entire day had passed and my head felt like it would crack open. The pod pickup window was 11-2, so there wasn't time to go hunt for coffee. In the midst of trying to sign up for one of the letters of the Medicare alphabet soup bullshit, the truck arrived early to pick up the moving box. I was caught off guard because my phone, which often fails to signal an incoming call, was on strike again today and I missed the call from the driver that he was on the way.

Bye bye stuff, see you in a few days.

The company sent the 40-plus-foot truck to pick up the pod, which was too big for the space between my driveway and the front steps of the house across the street. I told the driver it looked like a bigger truck than had delivered the thing, and the driver of the smaller truck had trouble maneuvering into position. They had to send the 30-something-foot truck that originally delivered the unit “maybe today, definitely tomorrow.” The importance of the box going away today was stressed and it happened. 

I decided to take on something I could control. The headache was raging, but it was too close to noon to hunt down coffee if I wanted any hope of sleeping tonight. I loaded the car and drove over to St. Vincent de Paul with another donation drop off, where I was witness to more parking lot drama as I unloaded things from my car, this time involving two grown males. One guy was walking through the lot and somehow ended up in a yelling match with an older guy sitting in a car, and called the car sitter “a f*cking redneck.” He kept yelling and swearing as he walked away. A worker came out and the car guy said the other guy tried to sell him drugs and got mad when he said no.

When I ran the vacuum, Kiki started yowling like she was being tortured. Usually, she just slinks out to a hiding place, but the place is empty, save for a mattress and box spring leaning on a wall in the living room, the futon, and the litter box cabinet. Yesterday, when the vacuum was on, she yowled and ran around, but all her hiding places had disappeared, which made her even more anxious. She ended up crouched in a corner of the bathroom for several hours. Today she took refuge in her litter box cabinet, then relocated to the top of the stairs where she remained all day. Prior to these two episodes, I had no idea she was so bothered by the vacuum. Poor kitty has been living in turmoil for two months as things disappeared from rooms and strange people came in and out and she's had enough. Unfortunately, it's not over yet.

The smaller truck arrived a couple hours later and the pod was whisked away. I’ll see it again on Saturday. In the meantime, I’ll be praying hard that the securing of the load holds. This pod style had limited opportunities to attach straps compared to the company I used before.

I loaded my car with things to go to Mom’s – random stuff that never made it into the pod. The runners in the porch and bathroom should have gone into the pod, but they were so much a part of the landscape I never even noticed them until the thing had been taken away. There were also items I didn’t want to go into the pod, like the TV. My head hurt the entire trip there and back.

I tried to finish the Medicare alphabet thing again, but ran into another glitch involving the fact that my address will be changing on August 1, the same day the thing is to take effect, and it wouldn’t let me update to the new address. It looks like the fun will continue tomorrow.

As much as I wanted to avoid leaving trash in the barrel, and even added a second “Purple Overflow Trash” bag to the curbside collection this morning, it’s going to happen. With no tv or even books, I kept cleaning things, which kept creating dirty paper towels and more stuff to empty out of the vacuum. The fridge still had items because I still need to eat, which meant empty containers and used paper plates. Hey, I tried. It’s not my fault trash pickup is on Monday and the past two weeks it’s happened five hours earlier than usual.

Ice cream and chips.

Tomorrow, there will be coffee. I’m not going through this head-splitting torture again. For tonight, comfort was sought in black raspberry ice cream with mini chocolate chips and potato chips, straight from the container with a plastic spoon (no bowls, plate seemed dumb).