It’s snowing. First real snow of the winter.
The Lunar Rabbit is doing its best to rip up whatever’s left of my 2023 and early 2024 world, before it’s replaced by the Wood Dragon on February 10. Let’s hope the Dragon is kinder to us than the Rabbit has been, which seems to have grown fangs and long, sharp claws in its old age.
Inside the house, I’m cold. Our 35-year-old woodstove got leaky beyond repair, and the next to last day of 2023, I got up and announced that we were putting our lives, and those of our furries, at risk, and we would not be using the old woodstove any longer, and we would be going woodstove shopping that day. It’s been 35 years since I last bought a woodstove --- it was kind of a shock. What used to cost $500 now costs many thousands of dollars, and that’s for a simple one of about the same size as the old one. And the firebox is shorter, so The Husband has until January 17 – delivery day, weather gods willing – to cut all the logs down by 3 or 4 inches.
You remember: a woodstove will warm you up when you cut up the wood, when you split it, when you stack it, when you haul it in, and when you burn it. And, this year, also when you cut it up and stack it the second time.
In the meantime, we’re using the hot water baseboard heaters, fired by the gas furnace, and we’re not cranking the heat up much, because – money. Especially after buying a woodstove that costs as much as my first brand new car cost.. And the Chapel, where the plants live, including the bay tree and kafir lime tree, have a plug-in radiator on at night and my fingers crossed that they don’t freeze to death in the meantime.
Last last year, The Husband gave me, for Christmas, a polar fleece wrap that I’ve enjoyed a lot. Even in a woodstove-heated house, there are days and rooms in which you need some extra covers. I liked the thing so much, that this year I gave myself for Christmas a similar thing, but this one’s longer and has a hood and you can snap parts together to give yourself sleeves of a sort. I’ve used it a couple times, and sat outside wearing it on one of the warmish days in December.
So I should be warm enough until stove delivery day. As it happens, the Husband has a similar polar fleecy cover-up, as well.
But here I sit, dressed in flannel pants, leg warmers, a polar fleece turtleneck shirt, two sweaters, a scarf, wearing wool clogs and fingerless mitts so I can type with half-frozen hands and fingers stiff with cold and arthritis, with a body warmer attached to my undies for extra warmth on the back, looking longingly at my polar fleece soft fluffy cover-ups --- upon which the cats, who come with full-length whole-body fur coats, are hibernating.
They snuggle in during the day, on the dining room table, next to where I’m typing on my laptop. They snuggle in during the night. In fact, they rarely leave the nice soft pile of polar fleece warmth. If I steal the polar fleece back, one of the cats sits next to me and uses his claws to catch my hair and yank my head over close to his mouth so he can make quite clear his issues about his warm blankie having disappeared; and the other one sits on my keyboard.
Several days later: Outside, the weather is snowy, cold, and blowing, and inside, my brain is tempestuous. And no, I still haven’t gotten my polar fleece wraps back from the furries.
First of all the year-end paperwork is more complicated this year, for EIDL reasons and more. Also, two days after Christmas, I was informed by Social Security that I’d lost my “extra help” for prescriptions because, somehow, in 2022 we earned $2000 too much, and I had ‘til Jan 1 to find new insurance to fund Part D. If you count the days, that left me three work days to do it. And one of those days I couldn’t be home because I had a middle-of-day eye appointment 40 miles away.
I never had insurance prior to Medicaid, which then became Medicare with extra help when I turned 65. I have no idea what all these Parts are, how to choose a new insurance company – literally, I mean I don’t know how even to start – or what makes sense or doesn’t. I just know what I did: after noting that the old extra help insurance co. was going to cost me more money than I have in monthly payments and a huge deductible before they paid anything for me, I aimlessly wandered the internet and eventually, holding my nose, jumped in. I talked to an unknown insurance agent located, it turns out, in Ohio, and took her advice because there wasn’t time to think about it, and now I’m keeping my fingers crossed that it wasn’t a mistake. And trying to let anyone who needs to know, know that they have to bill someone else – which turns out to be more complicated than I could have guessed, especially at the beginning of a new year. And I’ve noted that I need to be sure not to run into any moose on the way home from the office at night, because this new insurance plan won’t pay for the first six days in the hospital.
Secondly, the Husband’s insurance company got changed too, but not for the same reason, for reasons I don’t understand, but some of the same stuff has to be accomplished about this change.
Third, the F’ing FL assisted living place we moved my F’ing FL Friend into last March, unbeknown to us was being sold to an assisted living company out of TX, which took over – and things pretty much fell apart – during the summer. During the summer they sent out one of the worst pieces of trash I’ve ever encountered and called it a new contract, which they wanted us to sign. I sent 50 pages of NO back to them, going over their 80-page mess page by page and making extensive notes, corrections and commentary, which took me most of a week. The exiting Director sent it on to the Corporate people, along with my suggestion that for their next try they actually hire an actual lawyer to write the thing. I should have charged them for my time.
This week we got back their second attempt. It’s shorter, and they took a lot of my suggestions, but not enough of them. It’s still not something anyone in their right minds would actually sign. After I spent twelve hours reading and making notes and writing yet another 6 pages of detailed notes about what’s legally wrong with the 27 pages they sent – I didn’t include the spelling and punctuation and spacing errors this time, though I did point out that they had to use actual English words in a few places where they made some up - they finally sent the 2nd half of the so-called contract this morning, so I have another 13 pages to critique today. It wasn’t signable without the second half, and the second half can’t, because of the nature of the problems in it, correct the fatal issues in the first half. But in order to save (their) time, I’m going to do it anyway, because it looks like I’ll have to eventually. Yes, I started out life as a paralegal, so I’m not just blowing hot air at them.
So – how much time do I have to waste on this before it would be cheaper and easier and actually safer, to move my FFF to another facility? The only eye-witness report I have about what’s going on down there once the original staff quit or were fired, before the new staff was hired - and they’re still making do with temporary med-techs - is from my FFF’s PCP, who says it’s a godawful mess. Not what one wants to hear about a facility where someone I’m partially responsible for is living.
One more day before the new woodstove arrives, weather gods willing.
One more day of long hours before I can send Cousin Paula my legal notes about the second half of the contract, and then she can put it together with my notes about the first half and send the FF Facility another NO. I told her it was ok to remove the part where I called this so-called contract a heap of steaming diarrhea from hell and the morons at Corporate as dumb as a kettle who needed to be slapped upside the head, and threatened to sic my flying monkeys on them. Not sure they’ll get the point without my legally accurate, descriptive language, but they aren’t returning my emails at this point, so, whatever.
One more day before I can get back to my own 6-inch-high pile of paperwork that’s only partially started.
Twenty-four more days before the vile Lunar Rabbit gives way to the more fortunate (I hope) Lunar Dragon.
Three more months before spring.
Which reminds me – I’ve got to order seeds in the next couple of weeks, too.
For the blog: herondragonwrites.blogspot.com
Photos by Deb Marshall
