2017 Life Logs, Day 25: One of Those Days
Date: Wednesday, January 25, 2017
Weather: Partly Cloudy; High 45, Low 37 degrees F
Location: At Home in The Studio, Falmouth, NH
This was one of those days that I should have skipped. One thing after another went pear-shaped (my favorite British term for things going awry or horribly wrong). And ‘pear-shaped’ definitely defined my day. It really started late last night. I got an email from Justin telling me he has an umbilical hernia and will have surgery in the next week or two. He should be fine, but I am just so sorry that he has to go through this right now when they haven’t even finished their move into their new home. And, of course, a mother worries. Evidently lifting a 10-gallon aquarium full of water and fish was the culprit. Hopefully he won’t try that again.
This morning actually started off great. I went to Heather and Jed’s early to watch the removal of three pine trees in the front yard.
Before the job was completed, I left to take Ollie to school and Heather headed to Boston after delivering Sam and Jonah at school. Jed stayed at home to oversee the tree removal. So far, so good. Then I stopped at the bank to deposit a check made out to ‘The Estate of Mark Handley’. That’s when things started going downhill. I won’t bore you with the details of why my bank send a $1500 check to Phoenix Life Insurance Company by mistake. But they did and Phoenix sent a check back to me, but made out to Mark’s estate which doesn’t exist. If it had been made out just in Mark’s name, there would have been no problem. But the bank refused to deposit it without a letter from Probate Court. I called my lawyer and he explained that the requested letter would cost a few hundred dollars and 6 weeks to process. He gave me the wording to use to get Phoenix Life to reissue the check in my name. I made the call and was told that was not possible. I used “the right words” and was put on hold for a very long time. Finally, I was told they would reissue. But that all took more than hour of my day that I would have preferred to spend some other way. I made granola in the afternoon and that went along okay, but then the evening did not. I picked Ollie up from school and delivered him home. I then went home to eat a quick dinner and headed back out to attend a Falmouth Democratic Town Committee meeting. My friend Olivia White invited me to come to check out the group. I turned the volume down on my phone when I entered the building and it wasn’t until I got home that I saw I had received three text messages. The first one was from Jed and said, “On way to ER. Please call.” That was sent at 7:15 pm and it was 8:35 pm when I read the message after the meeting. I felt terrible that I hadn’t responded. Heather is in Boston tonight, so Jed was all on his own with the three boys. Thankfully he followed up with another email explaining that Jonah had a 1 cm split in this head from hitting a corner in the kitchen and that it was superglued shut and all was okay. I’m assuming Jed had to drag all three boys to the Emergency Room and I feel terrible that I didn’t get the ‘help’ message. But all is well. That’s the important thing.
Now add to all of this our current political situation. The Executive Orders signed yesterday and today have sent me over the edge. I started my teaching career as a high school American History teacher. If I were in that position today, I truly don’t know what I would be able to say to my students. I feel like this President lives in some sort of alternative universe and it is not a universe I want to live in. So I’m going to go to bed and hope that tomorrow is a better day.
