Bad One

Bad, bad, bad. I hadn't slept well to begin with, plus I was fretting over getting my income tax stuff finished. Yes, I have an accountant (Michelle, who's done mine since I moved to California), but there are a lot of receipts, bills, checks, and other documentation I have to pull together first. Anyway, I did some last week, but have been putting the rest off. Finally sat down to it and saw there are several questionable areas (where to put this and that, etc.), so I called her, but she was with a client and asked me to call back. 

In the meantime, it occurred to me that I hadn't gotten the return receipt for the items I had sent Little Egg Township. These are essential to a house rental--a Rental Mercantile License and a code enforcement document. I called and they had never gotten them! I sent them February 9, this was the twenty-fourth, and they hadn't arrived. 

What ensued gives me a headache even to record here, so I'm just going to mention I spent the entire day on this. What I did included phone calls to realtor Kim, my former neighbors and friends, Walter and Susan, calls to several township departments, and so on and on. Walter offered to take the documents and checks and when I scanned and then emailed to him, he couldn't open them--they had changed from jpeg to dot something. When I sent them to myself, I could.   

The upshot was I bused to UPS, got a notary to notarize, copied what I needed to, sent all to the township with new checks via overnight mail, and paid $71 dollars and change for the privilege. The U.S. Postal Service is one of those many institutions I used to rely upon and even revere. No longer. I'm beginning to think all the rock-solid basic institutions I was brought up to believe were, and always would be, bastions of rectitude and worthy of all trust, have crumbled, one by one: the church, the military, now the post office. 

Howsomeever (I can't remember who used to say that), I perked up a bit by violating one of my own rules: I popped some popcorn, put on my favorite movie of all time, Chinatown, and poured myself a glass of Chardonnay. By the time I went to bed, it was almost 10, and I slept soundly all night. I was awakened at 5:30 by a text notification (I'm going to turn off that sound) from Eileen, saying she would pick up some plants and stuff on Saturday.  Texted back to ask if the new tenants could leave some things in the garage on Sunday, as they had asked. Also called her, but haven't yet heard back.