Things that have gone wrong since we got here

I have been waiting to show you a picture of the truck we drove from Texas. It wouldn’t import into my iPad when I was posting from there. But I finally have internet access.

1. Just to recap, we had to drive a HUGE truck from Texas and my husband hit some poor guy’s car at the gas station. The truck was fine.

   

   One ginormous truck

2. My husband was in the hospital for three days, starting the day we got here. (Tell me why they have designed this style so that the text is indented but the numbers are not. I don’t think I can control this.)
3. I noticed my heart was beating rapidly every night but thought it was because of the stress. It turns out that during the medication fiasco (which I might have forgotten to mention—the packers packed all our daily medication in a box and then didn’t know where it was; I thought that my husband was taking care of it, but he wasn’t), when we had to reorder our medications, one was forgotten, my blood pressure medicine. I didn’t have any for a week. I found out about it the day that my husband got out of the hospital, when I mentioned my problem and he told me. So, after midnight one night, we spent an hour trying to find a 24-hour pharmacy and drove to Vancouver to get my medication refilled.
4. The internet guy took more than two weeks to come and troubleshoot our internet problems. He was finally here today. It took him hours to get things straightened out, so this is going to cost us a fortune. BTW, every single day the internet company told us he was coming. It turns out he only works in our area two days a week.
5. I bought a very expensive leather couch only to find a scratch in it when it arrived. (Believe me, this is a very minor problem.) The guy fixed it today.
6. I bought a dryer with a pedestal. When the dryer came, the pedestal was damaged. I had been waiting two weeks to do my laundry, and I got a choice between sending the dryer back or keeping it BUT NOT USING IT, as the policy was that they would only install a new dryer on the pedestal when it comes. So, tomorrow I’m taking my laundry to my niece’s.
7. The guys who are supposed to help us empty our pods were too late to come tonight. They aren’t coming for three more days, but again, this is very minor compared to some of the other things.
8. My Medicare prescription program turned me down because I didn’t answer some mail I don’t even know if I got. Believe me, things have been chaos around here. So, I got to spend the first three hours of the day on the phone with the prescription program, our retirement agency, and the federal government. Apparently, it’s against the law to move at the same time you retire (just kidding).
9. A small complaint, but my husband’s idea of unpacking is to take everything out of a box and cover some surface with it. This is called “organizing,” and apparently a week later the things are still being organized. I have cleaned off the kitchen counters three times now.

I have probably forgotten a few things, as it seems as if something goes wrong every day. I feel like I have my own personal thundercloud over my head. On the positive side, today was beautiful, sunny, and in the 60’s. Yay for the Pacific Northwest!

 

 

Oregon > Washington

We left the small town in Oregon where we stayed overnight very early on the 17th. It was drizzling, but after a few hours it cleared up and became a beautiful autumn day as we drove along the Columbia River Gorge.

I drove the truck in the morning, but later we split up so that my husband’s brother could be sure to make his flight out of Portland. He had cut it so close that we didn’t even have time to go see our place first.

My husband and I met up in the small city about 10 miles from our new home and drove to the house together. But as soon as we arrived, I advised him to go to a clinic, as his hand was looking bad. We had just enough time to greet my sister, who drove up just as we were leaving.

Well, our bad luck held, because the first thing we did upon arriving at our new home was get sent to the emergency room. With the tempting offer of a dinner of salmon stew waiting, instead we got to sit for several hours waiting to be called.

Finally, my husband was admitted to the hospital so that he could be treated with intravenous antibiotics. I got to drive to my niece’s house in the pouring rain.

 

Not quite at the finish line

---

On October 16, we left Provo in a light rain early in the morning. We were feeling optimistic after our good day, so we thought we might complete our trip that day.

But we soon realized we wouldn’t, as we had to travel over too many hills at too slow a pace.

We ended up in a small town in eastern Oregon, stopping about 8 PM. We had dinner and went to bed in a funky old motel (but clean).

Nothing of note happened except that my cat had taken to hiding in her cat box, which was disgusting. I was also still worried about my husband’s hand.

A fairly smooth day

On October 15 we got started fairly early, taking a route through northwest New Mexico, nipping a corner of Colorado, and continuing in to Utah. The day went pretty well except for the slow speed at which the truck managed the hills, and there were many.

I was worried about my husband’s hand, which was swollen and red, but he insisted on continuing on, doing a lot of the truck driving. His dog was a problem at first, because he would not be separated from my husband but didn’t like getting into the cab of the truck. I suggested my husband get into the truck first and call Hans. That was dismissed as a stupid idea, but was exactly what worked for the rest of the trip (after his brother suggested the same thing).

We made it all the way to Provo and stopped relatively early to get a good rest. That gave us delusions that we could make it to Washington the next day, because that was where we stopped four years ago on our first drive up there.

We finally had real internet for the first time at that hotel, so I found out that my niece didn’t even know that we left yet. The other motels claimed to have internet, but all my messages had gone into the ozone.

 

A slight impact and the wilds of New Mexico

This is my entry of October 14. I am way behind, because I’ve had no internet access for days.

We started out the morning when I went to my husband’s brother’s room and asked him to take my husband to the emergency room. My husband’s dog had to be with either him or me the whole time, which was why I couldn’t go. At the hospital, they gave him an antibiotic and Ibuprofen and made him wait for the animal control officer, who turned out not to be interested, since the cat was in Austin.

We left town around 10, with my husband insisting on driving the truck, even though I had driven it without incident for hours the day before. This turned out to be a mistake, as he drove quite some way through a crowded New Mexican town to get gas instead of driving through town on the freeway and stopping for gas on the other side. At this gas station, he managed to scrape a car. What fun we were having! But the guy was nice, and after exchanging insurance info, we were on our merry way.

My husband and I had mapped out a relatively flat route, but his brother talked us into a more direct one, which is why we found ourselves in the wilds of NW New Mexico late at night. I think he was perhaps a little more concerned with the scenery than we were. We tried to stop for the night in an itty bitty town but decided the motel looked too dicey. So, we drove until almost 2 AM, stopping in a town east of Farmington.

Packing day, almost a week later

Well, we made it here yesterday, but we have had quite a few adventures, so I decided to post one a day each post for a while. This is the post relating the events of Wednesday, October 12.

The first thing that happened was that the moving guys let me know that we had way too much junk for the pod and truck (with one pod already dispatched). He said we needed a 26-foot truck. So, I got on the phone and asked to trade our 16 footer and sent my husband and his brother to pick it up.

When they got back, I learned that because my brother-in law’s Canadian license restricts the size of vehicle he can drive, he felt, because of liability, he could not drive it. That left me and my husband to drive the truck the 2000+ miles ourselves.

The packing guys (Army Ant) were great, but after they left at 8 PM, there were still hours of work to do to pack things they missed and clean up trash. One of the horrible discoveries of the day was the state of my husband’s shed (hoarder, remember?). It was packed to the gills with things like every empty bag of dog food we ever bought. The packers said it would be another four hours to pack it. So, I had my husband get out what he wanted (his tools) and then I got on the phone and arranged for a junk moving company to remove it on Friday. We got to bed finally around midnight on our mattresses on the floor.

A relatively peaceful few days

If any of you are waiting to find out what happened to our money and our moving containers, the last few days have been relatively pain free, except that I’m still working and too tired at night to pack. Our money showed up on Monday, whew!

I stole this image off the internet.

We had more conversations with U/MF about removing our shipping container, and it finally got picked up on Monday. I have to say that the person we’ve been talking to at that company has been very nice and has tried to take care of us. Still, we are understandably not happy with them.

There was a slight bobble with the other shipping container company this morning, but it all worked out all right. They didn’t tell me they were going to call me a day ahead of time to confirm. They just said they would call the day of delivery, and if we didn’t answer the phone, they wouldn’t deliver. So, when I got to work this morning and had a phone call from them on my work phone from the day before (after work) asking to confirm the delivery, I was anticipating problems. But my husband reports that the new shipping container was delivered this morning. Despite my calling them back and changing my work phone to my home phone, they still called me at work to tell me they were coming. This is what comes of not having a real cell phone. I have one of those antique pay per use phones and I keep it turned off most of the time. I am not in the habit of handing out the number, so I don’t know it. I guess I need to start using it. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work in Washington, so I’ll have to get a real phone.

What else could possibly go wrong?

Two important events today. The first was that I had to submit my resignation letter at work and get it signed so that HR would fill out a form for my husband to submit to get Medicare, saying he would no longer be covered by my insurance.

That went okay until I got home, at which time I got an email from my boss saying that HR was alarmed by my resignation date and did I know I wouldn’t get a very big check for October if I left October 5? Well, duh! And let’s not mention that I already changed my resignation date once because of a discussion with HR. They also said that they usually didn’t “allow” people to retire except at the end of the month (our retirement agency said they didn’t care when I retired), even though the HR person I talked to said they did it all the time. They also suggested I use my vacation time up to fill up October, something I had explicitly been told by another HR person was not allowed by the agency (called “terminal leave”). In other words, I have to be there on my last day, and I ain’t flying back for it from Washington. So, after I stopped cursing these people who all tell me different things, we went to close on our house.

This is what we got so far for our house.

That went just dandy until my husband checked our bank accounts. Instead of paying off our mortgage, the money for that got deposited into our checking account. That is easily remedied. My husband just needs to transfer it over. But the other sum, our six-digit profit, is nowhere to be found. We hope it’s not in someone else’s account being spent, but the title company can’t do anything about it until Monday, because the credit union is closed.

And in the meantime, I started wondering about our storage container, which was supposed to be picked up today. You might have read my last post, where I reported that the local franchise for the company went out of business and I was going to have to get my second storage container from another company at a higher cost. Well, that made me worry about the container we already have that is full of half our worldly goods, but yesterday they assured us they would pick it up today.

In the meantime, I scheduled another shipping company to bring a second container on Monday. Well, guess what? Today I heard from the first company that they were looking around for equipment so that they could pick up our container. So, I had to get on the phone to the other company to delay our second container being dropped off, because there is not enough room for two. And although she assured me it would be picked up on Monday, she assured me yesterday that it would be today. I am happy as a lark.

 

 

As if there’s not enough going on

Once we had our house sold (we think), I made my moving plans based on a conversation I had last year with our retirement people. That person said that because my insurance covered me for the entire month, and I was turning 65 in November, I could retire October 1 and be covered until October 31, with Medicare kicking in November 1. Since October 1 is a Saturday, I assumed that meant October 3.

I didn’t go back to the retirement organization until today because we have been up in the air about a retirement date with the house sale not being quite settled. However, this weekend my husband and I decided I should just retire on time, and we would use the money from the sale of our Ft. Davis property to tide us over if the house deal fell through. We think that is unlikely. It is more likely that they will try to renegotiate unless they find something serious wrong with the house, which we don’t expect. Well, we expect them to try to renegotiate, but there is nothing serious that we know of.

So, today I went to the agency that handles our retirement, the same one that told me I could retire October 1, and the first thing they told me was that our insurance that is part of my retirement package would not cover me until December 1, since I turn 65 in November. So, that means I either have to depend on Medicare fully for November or spend more than $600 on Cobra. And Medicare takes several months to kick in. She said it should come through in February.

Be your own retirement counselor? Fat chance!

During that conversation, I was told that the retirement people didn’t care what day in October I retired (which I have to do, since we are supposed to be out of our house by October 15). But when I took a form that my husband needs for Medicare to our HR folks, they told me that our retirement office only retires people the last day of the month, so I can’t retire October 3. It turns out that is not exactly correct. I can resign then and take an itty bitty paycheck, and go on the books as retiring October 31, but I have to wait until I have made enough money during the month to pay for my cut of the insurance, which is not October 3. I explained about the house, and we picked out October 5 as being a better date.

The retirement people had told me I could use vacation until the end of the month if I wanted to, but it turns out that my agency doesn’t allow me to do that. Now I have to go back and see if submitting my retirement letter would disallow me for the week of vacation I already have approved for next week.

It’s not like I don’t have enough to think about, is it?

A fly in the ointment

Since we counter-offered on our house, the buyers changed from just requesting a survey to sending out a series of inspectors. This is obviously an attempt to find something seriously wrong with it so that they can lower the price. As far as we know, there is nothing seriously wrong with it, but because we didn’t fix anything, there are lots of small things wrong with it. But it keeps me on tinterhooks and makes it harder to plan our move and my retirement.

The devil dog himself

To make things worse, my husband has absolutely refused to crate our dog when people want to come over to the house. He used to be crate-trained when we both worked, but shortly after my husband retired, he decided the dog didn’t need his crate anymore, and took it down. Since my husband is home almost all the time, the dog has gotten to be very neurotic and can barely stand for my husband to be out of his sight. This has gotten so bad that the dog was booted out of the kennel where he has stayed on and off since he was a puppy and now the vet won’t take him either. This was a source of serious stress for me after my husband hurt himself, as I wanted to check the dog into the vet for a week so that I would have one less thing to think about. Instead, I had to go right back and pick him up.

What do we do when people come over? Shut him in the bedroom or keep him on a leash. He is a volatile dog at best.

When the realtor asked if another set of inspectors could come over today and not have my husband there, it was difficult to schedule because my husband has appointments almost every day this week with doctors or physical therapists. The idea of crating the dog came up, and he got very angry. I really don’t understand this, but he seems to think that people wanting to get into the house in a normal way during the selling of it are somehow inflicting themselves on us. How he would have handled people coming to view the house, I don’t know. I’m guessing, not.

Yes, our dog needs training. I have suggested this to my husband many, many times.

Sigh.