Dealing With the World

It's been one of those weeks.  The celebrations are finished, the decorations are boxed and stored.  The house has a curiously empty feeling; it's waiting for Valentines Day to make an appearance.  For now, I'm using up all the half burned candles in the pantry, making a drippy mess on the end table, not worrying that the dark green pillar looks pretty creepy next to the deep purple pillar beside it.

TBG and I are concentrating on getting our lives in order for the next era.  He turned 65 this month.  That means Social Security and Medicare and pension decisions must be made.  These require the computer.  He made an appointment with me, his secretary, to work on the applications.  We spent the morning filling in little boxes, answering security questions, deciding whether to take it all or spread it out, whether to kill trees and get those pieces of paper which warm the cockles of his heart or to have things delivered electronically, through me, to him. 

He made phone calls, following up on applications submitted but not reviewed.  Medicare's website says the turn around is three or four days.  It's been a month.  The woman on the phone told TBG that everything looks fine and that there is nothing else he needs to do and that it's all okay.  There was no mention of the discrepancy between the expectations set up by the website and our actual experience.

There is no further recourse.  His insurance is in the hands of the bureaucracy.  Let's hope he stays healthy until it is resolved.

My pool company seems to be going through a divorce.  I received a poorly constructed letter from the General Manager of the new company informing me that

Due to the difference between the Owner of (my current provider) and some of his employees in the direction he wants to take the Company, I have decided to form a new company that will be totally orientated to providing excellent customer service.

Run-on sentences make me anxious.  Orientated is not a word.  There is only one difference? It must have been a doozy.

I'm curious.  What direction can a pool cleaning company take?  There are chemicals, there is scraping, there is skimming.  The pool doesn't change location. The requirements remain the same.  Customer service is all they provide.  There is rapid turnover in the industry; we rarely have the same technician for more than a month or two.  A quick survey of other pool owners tells the same tale; no one is thrilled.

Do I worry about the random capitalizations in the letter?  Thank You in Advance has the grace to put in in lower case, but there is no comma before the following signature line.  It is our goal to put our customer's first led me down a merry path of wondering what belonged to me which would be put first.... my pool, my wallet, my ease with the person doing the work?

I love the bookkeeper at my current company.  I've left her a message.  I've decided to follow her where ever she goes.  It's the best decision given the paucity of information available at the moment. She's the only one who's been consistent over the last eight years.

No matter how scattered or overwhelmed I am during the Holiday Celebration Tour, there's an underlying joy which carries me through.  Now, though, it's January.  Time to confront real life head on. The mundane..... there's a comfort to it, for sure.  I just miss the frisson of happy I felt last month.