challenges

Mundane Things

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So a few things have moved along in just the past couple of days.

I got a response from the movers, after I emailed the estimate to repair their property damage in, then asked about the $400 they said they’d send for the damage to our belongings.  The first one I read said that the claims department had already sent the money by etransfer, then let me know that my estimate was being passed on to the insurance company.

I didn’t have an etransfer, so I went checking through my spam folder to see if it was there.  It was only after I sent a response saying I didn’t get it, that it came in.

So that part is taken care of as of yesterday evening.  They’ve paid up for the damage they did to our stuff during the move.  That lets us breath a bit easier for getting our van fixed.

Which leads me to the next bit of progress.

I got a call this morning, from my brother who lives next door.  I’d called a cousin everyone has been recommending to me to fix our van.  He’s retired and said he’d come out when he was in the area – he lives in the city, but has property out here, where his shop is.  He had stopped at my brother’s for coffee and they would be popping by together to look at our van.

So when I went out to do the cats stuff, I also went to open the garage, pop the hood, plug in and hang a light, left the keys on the seat, then opened the gate.  Then I went inside and had my tea in my crochet corner, so I could see them when they drove over.

Then there was a knock at the door, and they came in to tell me the status of the van. Since I had everything already set up, they pulled over at the garage and checked the van first, and I never saw them!

It’s confirmed that the noise is from the bearings in the water pump.  My cousin says he can fix it for me – and he can even get a new pump at wholesale cost for me!  We talked for a bit and I mentioned the first noise being made by a belt in temperatures colder than -20C, but that when the other noise started, I stopped driving the van.  I’d only started the engine a couple of times.  I think he appreciated that I didn’t drive the van with that noise.  It would have worked for a while, but could have caused some much more expensive damage, eventually.  On hearing about the belt, though, they decided to go back and check it, in case it needed to be replaced.  He’ll have to take the belt off when replacing the water pump, anyhow, so that would have been the time to replace it, if it was needed.  It turns out my belt is fine, so that’s good.  When he puts it back on, he’ll be sure to make sure it isn’t loose anywhere.

So he’s going to order the part for me and will come and pick up the van to fix it, probably around Friday.

Which is SUCH good news!

It’s also going to be much cheaper.  I’d gotten the cost of the water pump, if ordered directly from GM.  Depending on how much his price turns out to be, getting him to fix the van for me will cost about as much as it would have cost me to just buy the part from GM!  Not that I would have done it that way, if I had had to buy the part myself.  I would have gone elsewhere.

Meanwhile, my brother told me to keep using his van.  That is so sweet of him!

useage.details.before.Jan.resetAnother thing on the list of things to do today; reset the data usage for my computer.  Our internet account rolled over today, so I will monitor it over the next 30 days and see if all the stuff I turned off made the difference.

I noticed, however, that my total system usage over the past 30 days had gone down.

That means that, between 30 and 38 days ago, my computer’s system alone used up about 3 gigs of data.

I will be checking my data usage often, to see if there are any sudden jumps.

The next thing on my to-do list was to call the phone company.  I had been able to use their automated system to find out what our bill was, and it told me they’d mailed it out on Jan. 15.  I never received it, and needed to call back during business hours to find out why.  I asked to have it emailed to me, and for future bills to be emailed as well.  Then I got myself transferred to the sales department, so I could pick a long distance plan.

The pdf of the bill arrived in my email before I finished the call.

I found out why I didn’t get the bill.

Despite having given them my name and mailing address, they had my name, but my mother’s mailing address.

So that explains why my mother called me a while back, thinking she was going to be charged with my phone bill!  She must have opened it, not even noticing it had my name on it, instead of hers.

So that is now fixed; confirming my mailing address was one of the things done when I called.

As the hours passed, the winds and snow continued.  We had intended to go into the city to do our big, monthly shopping trip with our own vehicle, but since that won’t happen until the weekend, my daughter and I decided to go to the next town and get some groceries to tide us over; we’re still okay, but at that stage where we’re running out of enough things to be inconvenient.  Which would have been fine if we were going to the city tomorrow, when the pay comes in, but not so fine for several more days.

I also wanted to get it done while the roads were still clear enough to drive on.

The drive was certainly interesting!  The open road between our little hamlet and the next down over runs East/West.  The wind was coming from the south.  There are a few places where there is nothing to cut the wind at all.  It wasn’t too bad, but we definitely got buffeted a fair bit!

But it was done, and we’re good for a while, even if for some reason the van ends up taking longer to get fixed.

The wind can blow and the snow can fall.  We are safe and warm and well supplied.

I must admit, though, I can hardly wait to be able to drive our van again.  We avoided using my brother’s van as much as possible.  Once our own wheels are up and running again, we will be making quite a few more outings.  Especially to the city, so my husband can visit his father.  And with the money from the movers, I’ll be able to get the vehicle registration and our licenses transferred faster, too!

It’s going to be good.

The Re-Farmer

Estimate In

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I received the estimate, last night, for replacing our power pole and hooking electricity back up to the garage.

The total, including taxes, is $1500.25

Which is actually lower than my brother had expected. He thought the labour, alone, would cost about $1500.

It also includes delivery of the pole.  My SIL, who works for the electric company, had looked into getting it done through a contact she had.  It would have been a bit cheaper, except they would have had to pick the pole up and deliver it themselves (even if our van was repaired, we don’t have a trailer hitch, so we couldn’t do it ourselves).  And to do that, they would have had to go to a town about half an hour north of us.  So it would have been about two hours drive for them, just to get it.  Then they’d have had to load it up themselves, haul it here, unload it, then drive the 1 1/2 hours back home.

Paying to have it delivered is the much better choice!

Once I had the estimate, I responded to the movers.  With the cost being above their deductible, it means I will be dealing with their insurance company.  Which I hope will be more professional than the moving company.

I also sent an email to my lawyer, updating him.  If all goes well, that will be then end of that, with him.

My email to the movers also asked about the status of the $400 they said they’d pay me for our damaged belongings.

We shall see how that works out.

The Re-Farmer

The Continuing Stoooooorry…

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I finally have more progress on our saga with the movers.

A few days ago, I spent some time talking with a lawyer about our options.  One of the things he mentioned was that, usually one would start an insurance claim, then let the insurance companies duke it out.  The lawyer can send a letter to the moving company for me about it, if the moving company continues to give me grief about it.  How the company responds to that would determine our next move.

Hopefully, we will never have to find out.

Making a claim on my mother’s property insurance was not really preferable.  The deductible is a thousand dollars, so if the cost of replacing the pole is close to that, it’s almost not worth it.  However, my brother thought to contact our provincial vehicle insurance company, since the damage was done by a vehicle.  They said that yes, they do cover that sort of thing, so I called and started a claim. I spent some time talking to someone on the phone, then got an email address to send photos to.

As I prepared to send the email, I got an email from the moving company.  This after 10 days of nothing from them at all.

It was pretty short.  Basically, they wanted to know if I’d gotten an estimate on how much it would cost; if it was under $1000, they would cut me a check for it.  If it was over $1000 (the amount of their deductible), they would give me the information for their insurance company, and I would file a claim there.  (I’m paraphrasing a fair bit, since English is clearly not the first language of the person writing to me.)

Which really, the movers should be doing, not me.  Except I think I’d rather deal with the insurance company than with the movers.

No word on the money they said they would pay for our damaged goods a while back, which is a separate issue from property damage.

So I included their email with my email to the vehicle insurance company.  I was told it could take 2 or 3 days before I got a response, but I got one the next day.  Turns out that, because no vehicles registered in this province was involved, it’s out of their jurisdiction.  We would have to deal with the driver’s vehicle insurance company.  And I have no way of knowing who that is, since in the province we moved from, it’s private insurance companies, not one provincial insurance company.

So after I got that response, I got a phone number of a local electrician.  Someone I went to high school with, actually.  He’s a year or two younger than me, but we took the same bus to school for many years.  He has done work here on the farm for my brother before, and was highly recommended.  Since he works in the city, I was given his home phone number, and I left a message for him there.  Much to my surprise, not only did I get a call soon after (my timing was good, I guess; he came home from work shortly after my call), but he said he could come over right away!

He spent a fair bit of time checking things out, including making sure there was no damage to the cable itself.  I will get an estimate from him emailed to me, and I’m pretty sure it’ll be over $1000, so it looks like I’ll be dealing with the insurance company.

One of the things he mentioned was that he likely wouldn’t be able to install a new pole until spring.  The electric company has access to the machinery that can drill into frozen ground, but he doesn’t.  It’s unlikely the electric company would be willing to come out for a customer owned pole to begin with – and we’d have to prune those trees for them to get into the yard!

Pruning is something that’s going to have to be a bit of a priority, it looks like!  I’d like to get that done while the trees are still dormant, so February would be good.  By March, it might be too late.  Hard to know.  We might have a late spring.  Or an early one.

Anyhow, that’s where we are at now.  I will wait on the estimate, then go from there – and will ask about the coverage for damage to our goods in the process.  I’ll update my lawyer about how things are going, too.

What a long and convoluted process this is!

All because no one bothered to look up.

The Re-Farmer

Looking Forward

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Now that we’ve been here for a couple of months, I’ve looked back at some things.  Now I want to look forward.

I had some idea of what would need to be done here before we moved in, and not a lot has changed.  Continue reading →

Trying to Decipher

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We’ve made a lot of progress with unpacking.  Yes, I still have stacks of boxes behind me as I type this, but just about everything else is unpacked, or at least partly unpacked.

I even managed to repair my dad’s bedside shelf, which I am now using.  This allowed me to move the large-ish end table I had on my side of the bed over to my husband’s side, so we could put his tiny fridge on it (for his medication), get his CPAP machine off the floor and have a place to tuck away his bottles of distilled water for the CPAP humidifier.

We still haven’t been able to find some of the girls’ things.  There was some stuff in their third floor bathroom that was in a bag we can’t find, and some movies that were on another floor, so they shouldn’t have ended up in the same box.  Also, we found other stuff from their  bathroom, so those items should have been there, too.

While my brother and I were at our van yesterday, checking on the engine, I remembered to go into the glove compartment and get the paperwork from the movers that was in there.  On moving day, I barely had time to skim over them as I signed them, and just shoved them into the glove compartment as we were leaving.

Today, I finally had a chance to sit down and look at them closely, to try and figure out what happened to the girls’ stuff.

I still have no clue.  The sheets tell me next to nothing useful.

This is so frustrating.

20180121_174836.25%

As near as I can figure out, the above photo is mostly third floor stuff, but also second floor stuff.  Maybe.

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While this one is of second and third floor stuff.  The information I was looking for should have been on these two pages.  I can barely decipher it at all.

All over the place I see the word “mettals.”  I think it’s supposed to be “metal”.  But metal what?

“Matters”, I’ve figured out, means “mattress.”  “Pichers” are “pictures,” and likely refers to both pictures from the walls and my daughter’s paintings.  Then there are the shalfes, pellows, pillasstic taibls, hendels, wood and even anberallas.

I’m guessing shelves, pillows, plastic tables (I am guessing our collapsible tables, including the folding one they didn’t fold), handles (???), wood (my daughter’s easel?) and umbrella.

The other pages are no better.

There is 4 pages of this, each with two columns.  The first page was mostly
marked boxes and bins.  According to the sheets, including the piano, we had 234 items.  Some of those items were things like a bundle with our mop, broom, window cleaner and snow shovels, taped together.  The piano bench had its own number sticker, but I don’t see anything that even remotely looks like it could be “bench”.

When he brought the sheets for me to sign, he’d made a comment about how we had “a lot of stuff.”  You wouldn’t know it, from what’s on these sheets!  According to them, we just have a lot of mettal and shalfes.

In the end, though, there is no way of knowing what box they packed the girls’ stuff that’s missing into.  It looks like they not only marked the boxes and bins we packed ourselves as just “box” or “bin,” but also boxes they packed have no listing of their contents.

Which is something I was told they do, when I was arranging all this.

These sheets are useless.

As part of the contract, the client is supposed to use these sheets to make sure everything gets to its destination.  Given the circumstances of the delivery of our stuff, that was impossible.  Even if we’d managed to unpack everything with 10 days and could say for sure there was stuff missing, there would have been no way to say which item numbers weren’t accounted for.

What a mess.

Meanwhile, I still haven’t heard back about my claim, when I responded by saying I expected them to repair the damage their driver did, on top of the basic liability for items damaged.

The Re-Farmer

Looking Back

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It has been just past 2 months since all of us have been living here, in my childhood home.  Three months for my husband and younger daughter.

It’s been rather tumultuous, all things considered.  Hopefully, this will all have been worth it in the long run.  We shall see.

There are, as always, a number of things that we couldn’t know until we actually lived here a while.  Some of those things were budget related.

Living on my husband’s long term disability has changed a lot.  Thankfully, 60% of his previous income left us doing much better than others I know in a similar position.  Still, living in the city kept getting more and more expensive, while the income can’t change.  Our daughters had gotten themselves part time jobs, and my older daughter has been working on turning her art into an income, but they both gave that up to come with us, so that they could help their father and I as much as possible.  They gave up quite a lot of other things to come out here, too.  And with our van making noises it shouldn’t be making, and no money to get it looked at, all our options are severely limited.

So it’s 4 of us living on one fixed income, still playing catch up on the costs of the move and the bills we had to let slide a bit.

But we’ve been here long enough to get an idea of what some of those unknowns are going to be.

One of them was the electricity costs.  We knew, from living in the area before and heating with electricity, we would be looking at Hydro bills in the winter of about $400 or more.  Previously, our winter bills were in the $80-$90 range, while in the summer, it was closer to $150-$180.  We had to use an air conditioner all summer, for my husband’s health.  We won’t need an air conditioner here, but winters are another story.

Our very first electric bill came out to over $400.  I had actually expected it to be a bit higher, because of all the troubles we were having with the hot water tank, and needing to use the stove to heat so much water every day.  I knew the next bill would be even higher, partly because it covered the time period were we were heating the most water, but also because of the polar vortex that sent temperatures plunging and the furnace running.

We send in our meter readings in the middle of the month, and now have the new bill.  It’s just under $600.  And there was absolutely nothing we could have done to make it lower.

Ouch.

At least we can be sure that this is going to be the highest electric bill of the winter.  After this, it should start doing down.

Still.  Ouch.

The next unknown was the internet.  Our satellite package is only about $100 a month; less than the cable/internet package we had before the move.  Unfortunately, the maximum data available for non-commercial packages is 100 gigs.  Before coming out here, we averaged about 350 gigs a month usage.  Still, we can control that to a certain extent.  No more watching lots of Youtube videos, and no more World of Warcraft.  We take advantage of free WiFi elsewhere, as much as we can.

Reaching the limit on our package didn’t mean we would lose our internet for the rest of the month.  It would just be reduced in speed.  It would be enough to check our email or whatever.  Or, we could have the bottleneck removed and pay $2 a gig on top of our regular package.  There would be no slowdown that way.

That resulted in a bill of almost $300, even with reducing our online usage.

At the start of the month, there was a lot of downloading of updates and patches, which resulted in us reaching our limit before even half way through the month.  So options were looked at on how to get around that.

In the end, we got a second account, with a second satellite dish.  It was installed yesterday. By doing it that way, we’ll be paying around $200 + a month for internet, instead of $300 +.

We still haven’t received our first phone bill in our name, so that one is still an unknown.

Then there’s the fact that we’re feeding so many extra animals, including the deer.  We will probably be spending another $150 a month, just on that.  That wasn’t in our projected calculations at all.

The fact that we are no longer paying a housing charge of just over $1400 a month does give us the room to handle these extra expenses.  Or at least it would, if we didn’t still have to catch up on old bills, plus deal with additional expenses related to the move, plus we had to buy that new hot water tank, plus we have to get the van looked at, plus we’re going to have to put money into this house to make up for years of neglect…

It’ll probably be another 2-4 months before we get to a point were we can actually know if living here will be a financial improvement.

The next question becomes one of quality of life.  Did moving here improve that situation?

Well, for my husband, we’re not there yet.  First, there were the problems with not being able to get certain prescriptions, and the screw up with his insurance coverage.  So he’s been in massive amounts of pain.  Big drop in quality of life, there.  Then there is finding a new medical team to replace the specialists he left behind.  That will take time.  Still, there is the advantage of stress reduction in other areas, and stress = pain.  There’s also the fact that this house, for all its issues, is more accessible that the townhouse we left.  He’s no longer essentially trapped on the second floor.  Something as simple as getting up and going into the kitchen is something he can do now, without too much difficulty. The biggest plus is that we are close to his family again, but without reliable transportation, we may as well still be two provinces away.

For myself, there is a definite huge reduction in stress.  I’m still in contact with friends living in the co-op we’d been in, and I am so glad we’re not there anymore.  I honestly cannot recommend co-op housing anymore.  The concept is good, but human nature being what it is, it just doesn’t work unless the members are aware enough to get a good property management company in.  Otherwise, it’s just not worth the stress.

That stress was having quite a negative effect on my health, but since being here, for all the hassles we’ve had, there has been a huge improvement.  The pressure headaches are gone.  My sleep has improved.  I hardly ever need to take pain killers anymore.  My body’s aches and pains have reduced substantially, though I know they will never go away completely.  And I do still have my mystery pain in my side, and that chronic cough that no amount of testing could find the source of.   Unfortunately, while I’ve been able to set up the office part of things, I haven’t been able to set up my crafting side of things quite yet; not enough that I can get back to working on things or writing patterns, and I have not been able to get my photography area set up yet.  That should come in time, though I will have to evict the cats from what will be my work and photography area on my work table, which they have claimed for naps. :-D

And for our daughters?  They once again have an upper floor as their own space.  Sometimes, as I work in my office, I can hear them upstairs, singing together, and they sound so wonderful.  I know it’s been hard on them, but I do hope that, long term, this will be good for them, too.

We knew coming out here would be a mixed bag of positives and negatives.  We’re still figuring out what those are.  Plus, once we’re past those first few months of settling in, there will be new options ahead of us that we could not have done without coming here.

In the end, I do feel that we made the right choice.

The Re-Farmer

Really?

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As if it wasn’t bad enough my husband hasn’t been able to get one of his prescriptions refilled at all…

He gets one drug in two forms – instant release and extended release.  He was able to get one version, but not the other.

Today, he was going to open the new bottle of the one he got.

They screwed up the dosage.  Each tablet is only 1/3rd the dose it’s supposed to be.

Keep in mind that this is a medication he can only get in 30 day refills, and cannot refill more than a few days in advance of running out.  Not only that, but not all pharmacies have it in stock, or if they do, in only limited amounts.  They have to order in if they need more.

He phoned them up and they will fix it, but they won’t get the proper dosage tablets until Monday, when I will return the bottle he got with the wrong dosage.

I’m not sure he has enough left for two days.

Thankfully, my brother was a sweetheart and, when I asked about borrowing his van on Wednesday to take my husband to see the doctor, he told me to just take it home again and keep it until then.  So I actually have the wheels to go to the next town to take care of the prescription error.

Well, it’ll give me a ch20180113_163318515116999.jpgance to remember to bring the old prescription we found, from 1984, for proper disposal.

The Re-Farmer

Prescription for Pain

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When my husband had his first visit with a new doctor, one of the things he was able to get was a renewed prescription for one of his pain meds.  It comes in two forms; quick and slow release.  Because it’s an opioid, different rules apply.  Only hand written prescriptions, on a triplicate pad, are used, and they get signed for when they are picked up.  My husband had had a 3 month prescription, but could only get 30 days worth at a time.  As his files were to be transferred from his old doctor to the new, he got only a 30 day renewal, and was to book a follow up appointment for a month later.  That would be enough time for his files to get out here.

Well, the two versions aren’t in sync.  He was able to refill one of them right away, then the second one a couple of weeks later. Yesterday, the first one was one of several refills he called in to the pharmacy.  As he’d already used his 30 day renewal and didn’t have anymore refills left, the pharmacy needed to fax the doctor for a refill.  So I made arrangements to borrow my brother’s van to pick them all up today.

Except it still wasn’t there.  The doctor had never responded to the fax.

Even if he had, they could not fill it without the physical prescription.  Previously, the doctor had been able to fax the prescription to the pharmacy, but that’s not good enough, here.  They could get a fax and start it, but would not be allowed to give out the medication without the physical prescription.  This is one of those things that, once the doctor gives out the prescription, it must be brought to the pharmacy within 3 days. The clinic is close enough that the pharmacy can sometimes just send someone out to get it, though, which is good to know.

However, my husband is to see the doctor in less than a week.

Chances are, he’s not going to get the updated prescription until he sees the doctor.

Meanwhile, he’s out of the medication.  It’s one of the primary pain medications he uses.  One version of it is not enough.

Theoretically, he could have phoned the doctor and tried to make arrangements, but then I’d have to borrow the vehicle again to pick it up tomorrow, because it wouldn’t be ready by today.  Then I would need to borrow the vehicle again for the medical appointment a few days later.

What a pain.

For my husband, literally.

The Re-Farmer

 

 

Some updates

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So, in between unpacking and rearranging, cooking with sourdough, feeding the critters outside and taking pictures of our deer visitor, other things have been going on.

First update: I did get an email back about our claim to the moving company.

Actually, I got two.

Continue reading →

The lengths we go to…

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Okay, so having an internet connection was a necessity for our living here, for a variety of reasons.  We had to settle for satellite, which is better than nothing, but has limitations.

As the router is in my office, my desktop is hard wired.  Everyone else is on wireless.

That, too, has limitations.  These range from sporadic connectivity (I get that even with my hard wired desktop) to slower speed. Even with the use of a wireless booster, which we had handy because we needed them even in the townhouse we lived in before the move, it’s still an issue in parts of the house.  Whether that is due to wireless issues, or our satellite itself, there’s no way to know for sure.

My husband’s desktop still isn’t working, so he’s using his work laptop.  Due to space restrictions, he’s set up in the living room.  That gives him the added bonus of using the big screen TV left behind for us as a second monitor.

The wireless connection, however, is causing him some problems. Continue reading →