Thursday, April 16, 2026

Today kinda sucked.

 We went to the gym this morning and I did my 3 miles. I also did this:



It is the biggest blister I have ever given myself. Tim said, "why didn't you stop?" Short answer: I felt the blister on my big toe. I did not realize the rest of it until I took my shoe and sock off.



(I was walking, but you get the idea.)

So I am gimping around. I soaked my foot in hot water with Epsom salts. I put a blister dressing on it. It is pretty painful though.

Today was another one of those storm days. We were under tornado watch for a time, with those eerie strange skies.

Since I was confined to house, I tried to use my time wisely. We pay the water and sewage bills on our rentals. As the property owners, if the tenant defaults on the bill, we are responsible. We decided early on that it is easier to pay those bills monthly ourselves than inheriting a delinquent account, especially since it reflects negatively on our credit. 

A $12.99 charge has been added to this account. The original phone call happened in November. Here we were 5 months later still trying to get it resolved. When I called about it 6 weeks ago, I was told that there was no record of the initial call. I went all through it again. Ultimately, I was told that I would be credited for that amount. Yet two bills later, that billing was still there. It was showing as past due, highlighted in red, all caps warning with exclamation points.

The first phone call was very frustrating. A man just kept telling me that he had the transcripts of that conversation. Except what he was telling me was said wasn't what was said. I insisted I did not owe the $12.99. He insisted I did. When he said "is there anything else I can help you with?" I kept my rude remarks to myself and simply said to note my account that the charge was being disputed and I would not pay it.

Meanwhile, Tim was rooting through the old records. He found the information that proved our side of the conversation. So, taking a deep breath, I called back. Once again, I began the whole story. She interrupted me to say that I was calling the wrong customer service, that I needed to be speaking to another department. 

Sensing a brush off, I pointed out that I had already called this number and the previous person claimed to be reading the transcript of the conversation. She flatly said he wasn't. He had no access to them. 

!!!!

I called the number she gave me, braced for round three. Imagine my surprise to be told that my account was current, that the $12.99 had been refunded. I was told not to pay it, that it would eventually drop from the billing. 

!!!!!!!

The rest of the day was spent being very angry at my husband. While I was away, the man brought a bunch of stuff from the old house and stuffed it into the spare bedroom. It required going through. I pointed out that we had an agreement that we were not bringing a bunch of shit to the new house and stuffing it in the attic. We would sort it at the old house and make the decisions about what came and what didn't come here. The new house is just too small for all that clutter. Once the sorting was done, we could move the necessary things into the attic, sorted and organized. 

He listed to my frustration and got a stubborn tilt to his jaw. "You were not here!" he shouted

"Then wait until I AM!!!!" I yelled right back.

So I spent the evening going through that stuff , pulling everything out of the bedroom one box at a time. Old tax paperwork was organized by year. 3 years no longer needed and tossed. I kept showing stuff to Tim. He kept saying, "That's nothing, throw it away," which only irked me more, because there was no need to stuff all that shit into the spare bedroom. It literally proved my point.

I am pretty sure Tim and I have an understanding now. 



29 comments:

  1. OUCH! That blister looks painful!!! I do want to admire that you do three miles. We worked up to two miles, but I dont' think we could ever make it to three. . .
    I can see where that colored your whole day! We share the thunderstorms and I think we have put up with it for enough days in a row. I wish someone around here would go through paperwork and toss it. Me - it's me that needs to go through paperwork.

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  2. Kay of Musings: Yowch on both the blister and the aggravation. My friend in Illinois wrote about the tornado sirens going off a couple of times at night. Our rains have stopped… for now.
    We have so much stuff accumulated. I really need to donate or get rid of it.
    I just read that last part of your post to Art. He’s chuckling because he knows he aggravates me sometimes too.

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  3. Definitely an aggravating day!
    Thanks to Tim for finding the old records..how can companies get things so wrong..and assume they are right?!
    But no thanks for the old stuff..

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  4. Well at least at the end everything got sorted and a bit of downsizing took place. Plus of course you had a wonderful time with your grand children.

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  5. A blister on the sole of your foot!! Ouch indeed!
    My new shoes rubbed away the skin at the back of my heels but I could cover that with padded dressings and still walk. Yours looks awfully painful.

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  6. Those phone calls - I wanted to scream on your behalf.

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  7. Men just get things wrong, eh? 🤪

    Your blister reminds me of my tennis days and something that i had forgotten. I actually played tennis with two pairs of socks — a thin liner under a regular pair. I never got blisters doing this.

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  8. OUCH 🤕. I bought Danny some special blister proof socks when he was planning to walk Hadrian's Wall and they worked a treat. You could try hardening the skin on your soles with surgical spirit. That's what Keith was told to use in the Army. Glad you have that bill sorted now, but don't you just hate it when someone is clearly living to you?

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  9. That guy pretending he was looking at the account! Too much. Also Tim unable to resist stuffing a bunch of things into the spare room. Sounds like a pent up need. Especially funny that he probably waited till you were out -- legitimately could say but, but, you were out! Maybe I'm a little too cynical here.

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  10. So that guy on the phone flat out lied to you. That's disgusting!

    And Tim, I'd be pissed too. I can't stand stuff everywhere, except in my husband's office, I just close my eyes and shut the door. I cleaned out some useless shit in the basement last year and he was looking for a box of cords in January, "they were gold cords", whatever that means, and "worth a lot of money". I had taken them to the eco centre because they have been sitting in the basement for ten years. I asked him if he had bought new "gold cords" and he said no, he had not. I guess he didn't really need them and I will continue clearing out the basement:)

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    Replies
    1. We have a box of Russian ammo, which contains probably 24 boxes of rounds. Easily a thousand rounds. It came from his father's house. Lord knows where he got it from. But Tim brought it home. It fits nothing he has. This box just keeps moving with us. Why, I do not know.

      I don't want to get rid of his stuff for him. It would make me mad if he did it to me. But this ammo....honest to pete.

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    2. I’d love to hear his reasons!!! But you’ve said he’s not the introspective/ communicative type, so we’ll probably never know!!

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  11. Since I live alone, I have no one to blame for the accumulation of stuff but ME. I had a huge amount of paperwork to shred but couldn't find my shredder. Who loses a shredder??? I searched every conceivable and not-conceivable place in this house. It isn't big, is one of those which expands to fit whatever wastebasket you want it to fit. I finally decided It must have quit working and I had thrown it out. I shopped several stores before finding another in the dreaded Walmart. A couple of days later when chatting with daughter, i mentioned the new shredder. "Oh," she says, "then I can keep the one you loaned me last year?" I had NO recollection of that. No, she couldn't keep it, and yes, I took the new shredder back. And, no, I still haven't done any shredding.

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    Replies
    1. I had a nice afternoon sitting in the sun tossing pepper in a bonfire.

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  12. Today kinds sucked is a good caption. We all have days like that.

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  13. Are you breaking in new shoes? Or are they old shoes? I hope you get relief from that blister!
    Are you going to sell the old house eventually?

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    Replies
    1. They are old shoes. Not sure why they were an issue on this occasion.

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  14. The only time I ever got blisters on the bottoms of my feet was when I used to run and did a few barefoot beach runs.
    NOT a good idea.
    Lady, you have to take care of your feet! You know this.
    I would be pissed as hell about finding "junk" in my new pristine guest room.
    Marriage.
    Sigh.

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    Replies
    1. This made me very mad. I believe he dragged it home, certain that I would work like crazy to get it all cleared out. In essence he was forcing the issue. That is what made me so mad. He did not want to sort it. He wanted me to do it.

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  15. I hate clutter so it's hard for me when stuff is dumped somewhere to go through. I still need to deal with my den, full of various estate business from my step-grandma and mother, for whom I was the personal representative. Never again, I hope! Dare I say that I would wait until seeing that charge drop from your account. I'm a distrustful person especially after reading everything you went through with customer "service."

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  16. The blisters look terrible. Hopefully they're gone soon. Living in an RV for 11 years taught us to not retain paper. We're still adamant that no paper accumulates. There are two drawers in the filing cabinet, and that is IT.

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  17. Those blisters look painful - take care.
    Customer service is frequently not helpful and some representatives are clearly in the wrong job. It's so nice when someone knows what they're talking about and is not just 'following the script.'

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  18. How do spouses not realize that we’re a lot nicer to live with when they don’t pull stunts like that?????

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  19. Well, at least you're getting some stuff cleaned out -- even if that's not quite the way you wanted to go about it! I've read that there's virtually no need to keep paper records anymore, because everything can be had online -- though I suppose Tim's retention of the information from the call to the utility company shows that's not exactly true. Take care of those blisters!

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  20. You had a few days like mine this past week. Spent 3 days furious with my old man, but prace finally prevailed. Hugs, Debby

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