Coffee heat rising

Angst

When It Rains…

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Wow! The sheer amount of work that’s pouring in the door defies belief!

One pair of clients, co-editors of a collection of original essays, is ready to send their (really wonderful!) MS to University of New Mexico Press. Naturally, we prepared it in APA style — most of the contributors are social scientists or in businesses or professions that use APA. UNM wants, much more naturally, Chicago style. So tons of reference sections have to be completely reformatted, creating a monster headache. The press has a number of other idiosyncracies that will require reformatting the body copy for every damn essay, too — morphing what is normally a large job into a ridiculous job.

I’m now halfway through one of three books emanating from another client. This also is an extraordinarily interesting collection of his own essays, well written, unusual, and engaging.

Yet another client is having a good time rewriting chapter after chapter and sending them back for new reviews.

Another Singaporean graduate student showed up at the doorstep, begging for help on her English-language dissertation in an arcane subject. Foisted that project onto the associate editor, being beyond maxed myself.

I sent off a proposal for the novel — 53 pages, all told — to the agent who was advertised (ahem…last October) as being in the market for adult fiction. Naturally after I’d e-mailed it I spotted a typo. Never fails. Anyway, that was a huge job: to write the narrative outline required me to synopsize 79 chapters. Short chapters (average length is around 2000 words), but still…79 of them. Then I had to tighten and blend all that copy into the most compact form I could come up with and try to do it in an engaging way. And add a query, and a table of contents, and a new bio and on and on and on. As you can imagine, by the time I finished that, I was whipped.

Then the division chair at Heavenly Gardens pounced: asked if I would teach an online section of English 102. Welp…online is the only circumstance in which I would agree to do such a thing (and even then, it’s iffy). But he sounded like his back was against the wall, and besides, I can always use some more spending money.

In the new simplified bookkeeping regime, teaching income does not get hoarded, as was the case in the cookie-jar scheme. I’m now using drawdowns from Fidelity and the S-corp plus Social Security to cover base costs of living, and the teaching income will cover short-term emergencies and small indulgences. That’s assuming I can get said drawdowns: the bank rejected Fidelity’s attempt to deposit 15 grand, claiming the name on the account didn’t match the account number. Lovely. So I had to spend part of yesterday morning hassling with that, as if I didn’t have enough to do.

The North Scottsdale Chamber has folded and melded itself into the Greater Scottsdale Chamber. For moi, the result has been that the North Phoenix Chamber has been actively soliciting me to come over there — and really, I’d rather, because they do meet at venues a lot closer to where I live. The weekly trips to Scottsdale for the Scottsdale Business Assn meetings provide about enough junkets to the east side, thanks.

And finally, just to put the frosting on the cupcake, I’m getting another cold. Damn it. I wasn’t over the last one! I’ve already missed three weeks of choir…I may have to drop out for the rest of the year, since I can’t sing while I’m coughing and gagging. Went to bed after 11 p.m., having wrestling with copy for something over four hours, and then spent most of the night awake choking and gasping for air. The first stage of a cold often causes a throat spasm for me — so far they haven’t killed me, but I’ll tellya, last night’s was damn scary. Oh well. There’s usually only one…hope that will be it.

And so…to feed the dog and then get started writing that 102 syllabus. Ain’t retirement grand?

Cheers!

Eine Kleine Stress Reduction Trick…

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Uhm… D’you ever wonder where on earth your common sense went? Does common sense take vacations in the South Pacific? If so, is it possible for us to join it now and again? Preferably beside the gentle waves on an unspoiled white-sand beach?

So the blood pressure has now dropped, pretty consistently, into the “normal” range. Figures are pretty much the same now, all the time: 125/73 this morning; 127/77 after dinner last night. Not bad, for an old bat pushin’ 70. Years, that is, not millimeters.

Whence, you ask, this miraculous change?

Whence, indeed: from the coffee pot. As far from it as one can get.

I happen to favor very high-test black coffee: the best espresso beans I can get my hands on, fresh-ground and brewed in a French press. As you might imagine, this substance will raise the hair on a normal human’s head. Moi — it just wakes me up and gets me going, a desirable result in my book.

It’s not like I drink this stuff all day long: imbibulation is normally confined to about 16 ounces first thing in the morning. It is enough, however, to bring on a monumental withdrawal headache if I quit cold turkey. One time after I quit, the headache lasted a full week. That was fun.

Welp, the other day I was contemplating the return of the accursed palpitations and the painfully evident link between the palps and the elevated BP numbers. Got palps? Got systolic pressure upwards of 150. Don’t got palps? Systolic is down in the mid 130s. Hm. Exploring the Hypochondriac’s Treasure Chest for clues to this phenomenon, I realized that most sites discussing control of blood pressure mention caffeine and alcohol as culprits…naturally, my two favorite self-medicating prescriptions.

One site indicated that you need to go on quite the little binge for booze to push up your numbers; I don’t do that — presently I have a shot of whiskey a day, liberally watered down.

But then I recalled that spates of palpable heartbeats and light-headedness are nothing new. When I was in my 30s, a stretch of these moments visited. Once I was on assignment for Arizona Highways in southern Arizona when such an intense episode occurred that I really thought was was going to pass out. So did the people around me. It went away, though.

At that time, the connection between the amount of coffee I was drinking (in those days it was a lot more!) and the unpleasant chest sensations dawned on me. Quit drinking coffee for a few weeks, and all the irregular heartbeats and vertigo disappeared. Presto-changeo!

Like diets, though, coffee fasts do not last forever. I love coffee. I live for coffee. And so inevitably, every time I would go on a coffee-asceticism jag, sooner or later I’d take up the habit again.

And over time, I forgot about the coffee/palps connection. In fact, it takes quite a long time for enough caffeine to build up in the system for me to notice anything that looks vaguely symptomatic. Takes even longer when you’re only drinking it once a day.

So, not paying much attention, I’ve been consuming two cups of coffee so thick you can stand a spoon up in it every day for years now. Week or so ago, I decided to knock it off for awhile, just to see what would happen. And lo! After about three days of caffeine detox, the BP measures went down and stayed down. They’re pretty  much the same now, all well in the normal range.

Dang…who’d’ve thunk it?

If you have stress attacks or “palpitations” (sensation of your heart racing, skipping a beat, or thumping), you might want to try kicking all sources of caffeine, including soda pop. This gives you a roaring headache for a day or two (or more, depending on how much you habitually consume). You can ameliorate that, though, with a cup or two of green or white tea, both of which contain smaller amounts of caffeine than coffee and soda. Use the tea to ease yourself off the drug over the course of two to five days and then quit drinking that, too.

Hey. Nothin’ ventured, nothin’ gained. And it’s free.

If It Looks Negotiable…

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…Grind it up!

This whole accursed business of the college district’s having exposed everyone’s personal finance information to the effing Internet will not go away! Every time I turn around, here’s some new hassle to deal with.

Shut down, per the advice of the credit union’s assistant branch manager, the bank accounts; started new ones. Totalleeeee confused Fidelity, which direct-deposits funds to my cause. A couple hours of figuring out, untangling, explaining, fixing, reinstating follows. Nothing better to do with my time, eh?

Shovel out the office. Find box after box after box after freaking BOX of old checks.

Do I think they’re negotiable? Of course not. Do they look negotiable? Well, sure. Am I going to throw them in the recycling or trash? Don’t think so.

Grind up box after box after freaking BOX of checks, some of them ordered quite recently. Feels like money itself going into the shredder. Annoyed. Pissed. Wanna bite!

Dump three bins of shreddings into the recycling.

Not done: find more old junk that should’ve been dealt with…

• unasked-for credit cards from lenders;
• unasked-for negotiable checks from credit-card merchants;
• plastic, piles of plastic.

Grind up pieces of plastic. How much time is going into this fun experience, anyway?

Financial manager’s admin sends a six-page form to print out, fill out, sign, scan, and send back. Realize she has the wrong auto-transfer and is about to redirect it to…what? If to anywhere, to the wrong account. Argha.

Become confused. Call credit union, get doughty assistant manager on the phone. She becomes confused. We study the online records. We think we have it figured out.

Call  financial advisor; explain. Financial advisor explains to admin. We decide nothing will do but what I have to traipse to their office tomorrow after the doctor’s appointment. Bleyagh. Remember to toss the “MCCD Flap” (aptly named) file into the car.

Hook self up to effing blood pressure machine. Systolic: not through the stratosphere, exactly, but reflective of stress. How am I gonna convince this new cardiologist that these spikes are the result of insane fucking pointless goddamn annoying inflicted-on-me-i-didn’t-do-anything-to-bring-this-on stress and not the normal goddamn state of affairs???  Well…except insane goddamn annoying stress IS the normal goddamn state of affairs.

If it looks negotiable, grind it up. Grind it all up!

QUESTION. AUTHORITY.

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Hot dayum!

I’m back from New CardioDoc, an “authority” picked from that bazaar of authorities in all genres, Angie’s List. Wanted a second opinion to original CardioDoc, who aggressively insists that I need to be on a drug that makes me sick and puts me and everyone around me at risk when I’m behind the driver’s wheel.

Old CardioDoc, having viewed what happens to my blood pressure when I suffer a stress attack in his goddamn office, refused to brook any questions and would not even listen to me when I tried to point out that if I fall and break a hip, I’m here alone in the house and could very well die on the floor before anyone notices and that the vertigo caused by his favored medicament was making it dangerous for me to drive my car. Neither would he take the slightest bit of notice of the fact that overall my average BP is in the normal range, even when one adds in the occasional spike engendered by this or that moment of hysteria.

So before I agreed to return to gulping down a med that does quite the number on me, I decided to pick another quack, any quack, and see what he thought. On Angie’s List, one cardiologist (count him, 1) was both highly recommended and within reasonable driving distance. Made an appointment with him.

Today, with vast trepidation, I slinked into his office, bearing a list of five questions and seven months’ worth of BP figures.

I happen to have, neatly registered in Excel, blood pressure figures going back to June 1. This is how I know what the averages look like. The anxiety-induced spikes are indeed alarming…but most of the time, when I’m not worrying about identity fraud or scared shitless from being in a goddamn doctor’s office, the figures average about 128/79. Not bad for an old bat.

You cannot imagine, especially if you’re a young pup, what it means to someone in my generation to question a doctor. Especially for a woman to question a doctor. Especially a male doctor. Here I was not only questioning a doctor, but questioning a freaking high-powered male specialist.

Sorry, but I just was not buying what CardioDoc1 said: he was telling me things that directly contradict what credible sources say; he was refusing to listen to me when I described the side effects of the crap he’d put me on; and he was blatantly trying to frighten me by way of manipulating me. I hate that kind of thing. All of those kinds of things.

But I was equally scared shitless of going to a new cardiologist and telling him I suspect his colleague is full of beans. So I’ve been racking my hot little brain for weeks trying to come up with a humble, tactful, boot-licking way to ask this new guy to give me a straight story.

And as you might imagine, I had myself mightily worked up by the time New Cardiodoc came wandering into his examining room. Blood pressure was through the stratosphere. However. I had the figures.

He actually believed that anxiety sends one’s blood pressure skyward. And he believed that was what was happening this morning. After he reviewed the figures I’d printed up, with their averages, he announced that he did not believe I need treatment with medication at this time.

Thank you, God!!!

It’s three hours later and I’m only just coming back down to earth. If I took the BP now, it would probably be pretty close to normal. From his office I went by the financial guy’s office to deal with the current stage of the Identity Fraud aftermath. And from there to Whole Paycheck, there to purchase one slice each of two exotic yuppie pizzas and a four-pack of Guinness. Figured I deserved it.

Pizza and two cans of stout ingested, I’m feeling a bit better. Have already had a mile-and-a-half walk today but think I’ll invite the dog out for another stroll by way of burning off some more nervous energy.

That was soooo hard! Soooo scary!!!! And sooooooo goddamn difficult!

But I did it. I questioned authority and came away with a sane answer.

Music Soothes the Savage Beast

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And as anyone who knows me has realized, “savage beast” is an understatement whenever some fiasco imposed by someone else’s stupidity imposes extra work, extra time-wasting, extra meanders through phone punch-a-button mazes, and extra headaches. Corporate stupidity, in particular, evinces glorious fireworks of savagery.

This weekend I could not get into the “new” credit union checking and savings accounts created by changing the account number. Error message claimed the site was having “technical problems.” By 10 a.m. they were still having “technical problems,” and, since I couldn’t get through on the phone, it looked like I was going to have to make another trip up there to talk with them in person. Given that the Dog Chariot burns about a gallon of gasoline in a round trip to the closest branch, this trip would cost me $3 and another half-day of wasted time.

Meanwhile, I have workmen here and no way to pay them unless they’ll take plastic.

FINALLY I found the credit union assistant manager’s business card, which I had conscientiously put away someplace where it would be safe (read “where not even Sherlock Holmes himself could find it!”). Turns out she neglected to tell me that the account number I was supposed to enter as the userID is not quite the right number….to get in, you have to drop the last three digits of the endless number she gave me.

Anyway, at last I’m in and it looks like everything indeed is just the same as it was in the previous account. They’ve even imported the prior few months’ transactions. The only things we’ve lost, as she said would occur, are the automatic bill pays and the direct deposits.

After a full day of hassle I did get through to a human at Social Security who claimed she changed the direct deposit to the current account. However, I used the number on a form she gave me called “Employer Direct Deposit” and can only assume it’s the correct data. I surely hope so…we’ll know next month. I’m concerned that if the account number that has to be entered for one’s initial online foray into one’s account at the CU is actually three digits shorter than the one she gave me, the next Social Security check will go astray.

In other precincts, the power company said they would move the electric bill on their end. The city water dept and the gas company said “we’ll send you a form.” So far no such form has surfaced from either worthy entity. However, they send statements, so it’ll be easy enough to just bill-pay them whenever the paper shows up.

Last night I went to an amazing performance staged by our church’s music department. It truly was spectacular.

Usually by the end of the day I’m so beat I can’t drag myself out of the house. But on Saturday evening I went to our friend Craig Petersen’s chorale performance — he directs the Mesa Community College choir, which performed at All Saints this weekend — and found that just sitting there listening to the chorale music was SOOO relaxing, it totally unwound all that annoyance stress. Very nice.

So at the last minute thought I’d try for the same last night. For Evensong, the chamber choir — mostly professional singers — sang the Great “O” Antiphons by John Muehleisen. Unbelievably gorgeous!!!!!  This setting of the Advent set of antiphons alternates passages in Latin, sung in traditional chant mode, with their translations, sung in contemporary style — and very beautiful contemporary, not the unmelodic cacophony we too often associate with modern classical music. It was an incredible, spectacular thing to listen to.

The preliminary recital was played by an organist named Curt Sather. He has a Ph.D. now, but…get this! At the age of twelve (!) he was a church organist. He was very, very good — played three pieces by Bach and one by Aaron David Miller.

All in all, it was an impressive performance from beginning to end.

Meanwhile, this morning’s damn hectic.

Yesterday M’hijito’s dog, who given half a chance will run off to Yuma like a rabbit with a coyote on its tail, countersurfed an entire frying pan full of (mercifully cold) cooking oil. This, as you can imagine, had some interesting repercussions.

He’s pretty much stopped barfing. But my son didn’t want to leave him alone all day, so he brought the hound over here. He needs to have free access to the yard, because you can be sure he still has the doggywobbles, even tho’ no manifestations have occurred here. Yet…hmmmm….  Thank heaven for all-tile flooring.

The men are building two French wells and a river of rock in back, to drain rainwater away from the porch and the CoolDeck. The back porch has always been a bit below grade, so when it rains a nice lake comes right up to the back door. And the deceased Devil-Pod tree heaved the CoolDeck on the east end with its accursed roots, and so now that corner floods every time I try to water the plants over there, to say nothing of every time the rain falls.  They’re also replacing the ironwork in front that’s about rusted through. When Pup gets here, I’ll need to wire a little screening on there to keep him from wiggling out, and just now there’s nothing to wire it TO. 😀

At any rate, this activity is driving both dogs nuts. Even Charley, who hardly ever barks, is jumping up every few minutes to sound the alarm, and Cassie has gone absolutely bat-sh!t. She doesn’t have to sound the alarm: she is the alarm.

This is the last week of class, so I’d better get to work on stoont papers.

Identity Theft Aftermath…arggghhhhh!

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Or, one might say, gaaaaahhhhhhhhh!

“You may continue to hold, and a representative will be with you as soon as possible”…blat blat blat blat blat blat blat blat blat blat blat blat blat blat blat blat blat blat blat blat blat blat blat blat blat blat blat blat blat blat blat blat blat blat blat blat blat blat blat blat blat blat blat blat blat blat blat blat blat blat blat blat blat blat blat blat blat blat blat blat blat blat blat …

Spent an hour chatting, in person, with the assistant manager at the credit union about the annoying community college district’s having blithely handed over every goddamn iota of my personal financial information to identity thieves. She knew whereof I spoke, in spades: incredibly, the District had sent her the same apocalyptic message I got, but she has never had anything to do with any of their colleges or with anything else related to their entity in her ENTIRE LIFE.

It begins to get hilarious.

Given the hard-copy message, whose credibility we cannot assess under the ridiculous circumstances, we decide that the most prudent course is to assume that the data has been hacked, rather than to take a chance on making the opposite assumption and regret it later. Since my accounts there only hold about 13 grand (the entire amount of my 2014 living expense needs), if money is siphoned off, then the CU (read “FDIC”) will cover it as long as I clue them within 60 days of an illegitimate transaction.

We confirm that it’s possible to create a new account for me within the credit union without my having to lift the security freezes now in place at all three major credit bureaus (Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion).

So, Assistant Manager Renée, a very nice lady and wondrously together, says that now that we’ve changed the account number, effectively closing my account and opening a new one in ONE swell foop, I need to call every merchant that engrosses money from my account automatically (that would be all the utility companies plus my long-term care insurer) and clue them to the new account number; and forthwith I must get ahold of Social Security and give them the new account number, since they deposit my Social Security payment digitally.

So first off I call Social Security. …blat blat blat blat blat blat blat blat blat blat blat blat blat blat blat blat blat blat blat blat blat blat blat blat blat blat blat blat blat blat blat blat blat blat blat blat blat blat blat blat blat blat blat blat blat blat blat blat blat blat blat blat blat blat blat blat blat blat blat blat blat blat blat … “Your estimated time is…

“1 hour and 15 minutes“

Moving on…

• City of Phoenix Water Services: “We’ll send you a form.”

• Southwest Gas: “We’ll send you a form.”

• Salt River Project (electricity provider): CSR takes routing and account info but has a difficult time understanding that the credit union will post this month’s bill even though there’s no way SRP can get its act together in time to apply the new account number to this month’s bill. He thinks I’ll have to pay this month’s bill with a check.

• Metlife: HOLY mackerel! Straightaway I reach a human being and she has good sense. Or at least she seems to. She takes the new information and the old routing number and says all will proceed without a hitch. That’ll be the day, I think. Privately.

• Cox is paid a set figure through bill-pay. I’ll have to go into the new account and reset the bill-pay info.

And as for the accursed community college district, which caused this whole mess and which has shared my bank account information with the entire fucking universe: I told them to send whatever further paychecks they emanate by snail-mail. You can be sure that outfit will never get its corporate paws on another bank account number of mine.

This will add a significant new layer of hassle, since depositing snail-mail checks is a major pain in the proverbial ass. But it’s one helluva lot less of a pain than the present endless series of hoop-jumps.

Tomorrow I’ll have to DRIVE TO THE GODDAMN SOCIAL SECURITY OFFICE, be sure my stupid little pen-knife is NOT in my purse, trudge in there, wait around for half an hour or more, and then try to make a face-to-face CSR understand a) what’s happened, and b) what needs to happen.

By and large, however, experience suggests the face-to-face CSRs are a lot smarter and a lot more knowledgeable than the phone representatives, who routinely dispense incorrect information. That notwithstanding, however, based on the outcomes of past exploits it is reasonable to expect that I will miss at least one Social Security payment and so within a few weeks will end up back at that office doing battle again.

ogodogodogodogod it’s not good to know too much