Petunia rambles on and on….

I am still alive, and have no bona fide reason for such a lack of posts.  I could come up with some thoughts that might be reasonable and understandable by other people with lives, and things to do other than sit with a laptop on their lap. But why bother? And I’m not going to make promises that the dry spell is over and posts will come regularly from now on. That’s just setting myself up on the edge of a high cliff, ready for the fall. (I also don’t do New Year’s resolutions, for the same reason!)

But the lack of of blogging has been bugging me lately, and maybe the main reason is simply that I’m paying for server space and not dependably using it!

In the interim, I have gotten older, torn my rotator cuff (didn’t know I had one til it started to hurt like hell!) (For those that still don’t know, it’s a muscle or tendon or something in your shoulder, and tearing it severely impacts movement  After 4 months of physical therapy 3 times a week, I have just about regained normal movement, except that I will never again hook a brassiere behind my back. I can live with that) Have welcomed a new granddaughter, after a 20-year dry spell on grandDAUGHTERS. I’m still working full time, but getting near the age where thoughts of retirement are in the air, or at least a reduction of hours per week. Not sure what I’m going to do about that yet, and the decision will probably be based on numbers, of monthly income and necessary outgo!   (I’d be willing to give up all the cable TV expense; husband would rather give up breathing)

My current “kick” is clutter reduction. This has always been an issue for me; however, the clutter still grows and parting with things is difficult for me. I’m not sure why.

I didn’t intend on working on that project yesterday. My thought was just to bake a damn cake. I remembered a trick my mom used to use, to save waste during all the years she lived alone. Making a full, 2-layer cake was just too much for her lifestyle, unless it was made for some occasion where guests were invited. Otherwise, she found herself eating cake every day, long after she was tired of it, just to avoid tossing it out, hard as a rock. Using a mix, she baked the 2 layers and immediately wrapped and froze one of them. Cut the other layer in half, frost one side, place the other half on top and finish with the icing. Half a cake, able to be eaten and finished while you’re still interested. A week or two later, she did the same with the frozen layer. As it’s just husband and me here now, this is the way to go.

HOWEVER, I haven’t baked a layer cake in years – mainly using a 9 x 13″ dish for most things. This meant digging to the back of the cupboard where baking paraphernalia is stored, to where the round cake pans had been shoved. And about 12,000 other things. As bending over doesn’t work well for any length of time at my age, I ended up sitting on the kitchen floor, pulling everything out, and trying to sort things. I found an unimaginable amount of Tupperware/storage containers – or, well, really, I found a lot of containers and a lot of lids; this gave me a good reason to toss many items. Clearly, I have more containers than space in the refrigerator and pantry to ever use them all at once. No reason to keep this many. I found 9 bread pans – some are metal, some glass, some are the “mini” size. And 8 springform pans for cheesecakes. They, too, are different sizes, from 12″ diameter down to tiny 4″ ones. (Daughter Kate, also known as The Cheesecake Queen, made a point of telling me that she has 2 9″ pans, that’s it. That’s all). While I probably don’t need that many pans, at least they “nest” together nicely and don’t take up any more storage space than the one large pan. I have 4 rolling pins and make lousy pie crust. Maybe I thought that buying a newer rolling pin would improve my skills??? I replaced my cookie press years ago with one that is much easier to use – why is the old still here?

End result was a very large trash bag full of stuff I don’t need to keep, and a much neater cupboard. And eventually, half a cake.

While reading the grocery sales this week, I noticed that a store I particularly like had chicken breasts on sale with a “quantity buy” and suggested to Himself that perhaps we should run down there and pick up a 10-pound bag. His response referred to the amount of goods already “cooling their heels” in my freezer and I think he suggested something about “using up some of the shit that’s already in there” or something equally crass. When I looked inside, I realized that I couldn’t get a marshmallow in there unless I shot it in with a cannon – and that would probably cause 2 tons of stuff to fall to the floor. On occasion, he makes a good point.

So today, being the good and obedient wife that I am, I went burrowing into the frozen wasteland to see what actually is inside and look for stuff that could or should be tossed. Found that I already had chicken breasts (!!), 5 pounds of bacon, a hell of a lot of dinner rolls, a hell of a lot of Lean Cuisine meals in there for someone who ISN’T losing weight. Perhaps if I actually ate them, this would change?? Found several pounds of ground beef, some pork chops, and a bag of what the kids would call “Mystery Meat” – a term coined back when they still would eat school lunches. It didn’t have freezer burn on it, but if let go, would soon acquire it. It definitely wasn’t chicken. Hmmmm. I hadn’t a clue and didn’t remember buying it. As far back as it was in the freezer, might it be from the last century? I’m thinking it’s a small chuck roast, and I found a container of home-made French Onion Soup in there. Took them both out, defrosted them in the microwave, tossed them into a crock pot, added some frozen carrots that I found in there that might go back to the Revolutionary War. Not sure how it’s going to taste, but at the end of the day, we shall call it “DINNER.”

The dog has been barking to go out so many times today. Not too unusual, but it’s probably one of the coldest and windiest days of the year so far, and the household heat is going out in gusts each time I let her out or bring her back in. If she had any sense, she would hold whatever she has to do until April.

With good intentions, I bought myself a back pack, something I’ve never owned before. I’ve bought my share over the years for school children, and after making several purchases, repeat purchases, I stopped shopping at the local stores and ordered them from L.L. Bean. They make the best ones, they last the longest, and they replace them if they break/tear/self-destruct. (And Thank You to son, Jim, who got me a gift certificate at Christmas!) It was several days longer in being shipped, as I had it monogrammed, but arrived yesterday.

It has a gazillion pockets in it, and side-pockets to carry water bottles which would also carry beer cans. Several interior pockets are secured with Velcro or zippers. It has a grommet-hole to allow for the earbud cord, directly over a secure pocket large enough to carry an iPod. It’s big enough to carry the 15” laptop. And it’s RED.

Still having issues with the new online software from my bank. After two weeks passed and my car insurance payment made through their Bill Pay system still was not showing as having ever been sent, I was getting nervous. I still was 10 days from the due date, and the office where it needs to go is local, but I was concerned, and called them. When connected to their Tech Support, I was told that I couldn’t access my account information because I hadn’t supplied them with an e-mail address. Huh???  I was sure that I had, and if that was required to use their system, why the hell was I getting into my account information for the last 2 weeks AND why wasn’t I alerted to this during the sign-up process. I mean, try ordering something online and NOT putting in payment information!!  These systems are designed to balk if all the necessary information isn’t provided. If their system doesn’t have that provision, it’s damn lousy programming. So I was pissed, and sent Himself down to the insurance agency yesterday with the checkbook – I can’t afford to mess around with that bill! (The only good thing about their Tech Support was that the person spoke understandable English)

As an aside, I must note that on his way down to the insurance agent, Himself notices a State Police vehicle behind him with lights on (no siren) and being an old fart driver, he pulled to the right to allow the vehicle to pass by him. Sadly, the Trooper also pulled over, right behind him. This is never good. With a surprised but respectful look on his face, he politely greeted the officer and inquired as to the problem, while shuffling through the glove box for registration, and wallet for driver’s license. Even though he distinctly remembers going through the inspection lines and paying the registration fees, he was driving a truck with an expired registration. In fact, it was 6 months expired. Feeling like an ass, he then remembers that it was MY car that he took in! Fortunately, the trooper was a good sport, and did not ticket him. As the old truck had been in for some major servicing just a few weeks ago, he was able to change directions, head directly down to the Dept of Motor Vehicles, whiz through the inspection lanes, wait patiently to pay the necessary fees and get a new sticker for HIS vehicle, and then continue on to pay his insurance bill. He got banged for an extra $10 in late fees, which isn’t bad for 6 months of registration!

Still on my sock knitting kick – due in part to the damn cold weather we’ve been having. The other reason is my inability to concentrate on any one large item long enough to finish it! Socks are quicker and the gratification of finishing them and wearing them is more easily attainable!

Dinner smells good, whatever it is.

I have a new mouse. It matches the new laptop. I’m having more luck with the mouse than the new Windows 8 so far, but must admit that things are getting better. I miss the Start button!!! I knew where I was on the old one, and could find things without excessive swearing, but those days are over.

As if getting used to a new operating system, transferring 40GBs of files, realizing 300000000 times that what I want is on the other laptop, reloading programs, trying to find the disks to reload the damn programs, where’s the program that sync’s my phone with GMail, ad nauseum, my bank changed its website this week. Everyone that knows me knows that I am anal about finances/accounting/tracking money and am a fanatic Quicken user. I’ve always been able to download transactions from my bank right into my checkbook account on Quicken and keep things up-to-date and balanced. And it’s a handy tool since we all use debit cards so much. I’m strict about adding in receipts as soon as I get home from a shopping trip, but once in a while, my brain cells seize up and stop working things go awry. If I’m in the mall and use the debit card several times (or write checks), and miss entering one, the download will show up that extra debit, alerting me that something’s missing before it becomes a major screw-up or checks bounce or I’m in the grocery store with a full cart and not enough in the account to cover the total. So, yeah, I’m pretty dedicated to using Quicken.

WELL, the bank updated their site this week, which I thought KNEW which transactions had already been downloaded; it only brings in new ones. And I was wrong. I just bought a new version of Quicken, the 2013 one, loaded it onto the new laptop, and thought all would be well. I was wrong again. Knew I was in trouble when I tried it for the first time. The site asks for user account number and a series of dumb questions to gain access and I got through that, then it switches over to the “Q” program and asks which account to download the information TO.  A drop-down box appears giving me 4 choices that are apparently arbitrarily chosen by someone who hasn’t a clue random numbers??  Again, anal me has 20+ different accounts that I keep track of. Now I know that sounds freaky, but today, there’s more to track. Husband and I have a joint checking and savings account. We each have separate savings accounts in our own names. I have 2 bank cards, 2 store cards, several IRA accounts, a few CDs, a 401k account, a car loan, a mortgage, a Medical Flexible Spending account. This is not unusual in this day and age, and as it will also track stocks, the list could go much further down.  SO the 4 choices I get in the drop-down box, determining where these new spending amounts will go is into my 401k, into his savings account that has about $8 in it, against my car loan, or against the utility company that provides my fuel for heat on an annual budget plan.  DUH!!!   I tried it about 82 more times, and was enraged. And sweating. And swearing. It also gives you the option of making a new account, and I thought maybe I could do that and just cut/paste over the relevant data. That causes havoc and I deleted it. Never was it willing to place my transactions in the account called, oddly enough, Joint Checking.

So, finally, desperate, I called the bank and asked if there was someone there who could help me do what I’d been doing for the last 10 years, 3-5 times a week, flawlessly, easily and now was pulling my hair out in clumps over it. When their tech support wasn’t up to helping me, this being only the second day that the new system was in place and no one on their staff was really that familiar with Quicken, they got Intuit/Quicken tech support on line and we entered in a very lengthy conference call. Actually, they were very responsive to the issues I was having, and my upset with their program choosing only 4 accounts as potential homes for the new info. As I ticked off on my fingers the types of accounts that I was tracking which is exactly what the program is supposed to do, and we all agreed that the average home could very easily have more than 4 accounts to track, they are actually going to look into making an adjustment for this in the next upgrade.

The real horror of it all was when I realized that every transaction I’ve made through my bank since 2001 was eventually downloaded.  All of them. Now, mind you, anal me already had them entered. This doubled them all up!!   So my Visa with a Zero Balance, now showed that Visa owed me some $64,000!!!!! I use it a lot, pay it off most every month.  ALL of those payments went in again. All of my mortgage payments. All of the transfers back and forth between Checking and Savings account. EVERYTHING was in there twice. It’s taken hours to go through all of it and delete the duplicates. I’m white-haired, what few are left.

I’m now clearly aware that the records of what’s been downloaded and what are new transactions must be stored in the old program on the old laptop, and not in the bank’s records which is another reason this whole mess occurred.

While on the phone with the Quicken tech, he asked me if I was aware that the new 2013 version also had an app for my phone, to track transaction on-the-fly, as it were, and asked if I had started using it. I think I’ve got enough new technology right now, and that’s gonna have to wait until my hair grows back.