Maybe you remember the lyrics to this Beatles song:
...the fool on the hill,
sees the sun going down and the eyes in his head see the world spinning round...
It's Saturday. The Polish citizenship issue is pushed to the side. I must confer with my sister. A commenter also suggested I try Polish bureaucrats in another city. New York comes to mind. The saga doesn't end, but the threads are left dangling for a while.
So I bet you missed my recordings of drama in the matter of identity theft? Well now, that topic is making a come back! Did I mention that the police report that I dutifully filed was sent not to me, but to the wrong address? And that Pay Pal (aka Bill Me Later) had the audacity to send me a letter (received today) explaining that I was probably a victim of identity theft and that I should register this with Credit Bureaus and thus prevent anyone from opening a new account under my name? Even as they themselves ignored the already in place fraud alert and permitted a new account to be opened despite that alert?
And the latest twist -- the blender that first triggered this round three of theft for us, the blender that came from Walmart, delivered to me on this new account which I never opened? Well now, we learn that it's some fancy blender! Priced at $299. Who even needs a $299 blender?? We call Walmart today, as instructed and ask if they've decided what we should do with it -- do you want us to return it to the store near us perhaps? Yes, do that.
But at Walmart, they're not buyin' it. Or rather -- not takin' it.
We can't accept it unless we credit your account.
We don't have an account. It's not ours. It's a theft.
Well then, we can't take it.
Round and round and round and round and round.
I tell Ed that I have never had such a bureaucracy infused spring/summer before. I have four ongoing folders of various messes -- none of them of my doing -- and it's as if they all race to be at the forefront, vying for my attention.
The Ocean post begins with recounting the latest in these ongoing sagas because they've become absurdly inflated and therefore almost funny. But they are not at the core of my day. This is:
Breakfast.
The garden.
And a day spent almost entirely on the porch, with my stack of school work. It is the most beautiful summer day of them all! I could not get enough of it!
In the very late afternoon, we bike over to my daughter's house. It's about 6 miles on the bike paths and it is one hell of a gorgeous stretch of pavement. Away from traffic, away from everything, cutting through the prairie as if it were an ordinary patch of grass. But it isn't. The prairie is at its most robust stage. You can't help but stop and admire it.
Again and again.
We visit with Goldie. Well, I visit. Ed raids their cupboards and promptly falls asleep on the couch. Though not before giving the old girl a good rub around her face.
The bike ride home is even more golden and splendid...
And I have one more story to add -- Ed is determined to make the best pickles ever out of our increasingly out of control cucumber crop. After studying the various methods for making pickles, he devises his own, which, so far as I can tell, is based on many assumptions about what happens to gases that build up and how they should be released. Here he is, in the thicket of pickle making:
Me, I just breathe in the evening air and exhale. Again and again.
...the fool on the hill,
sees the sun going down and the eyes in his head see the world spinning round...
It's Saturday. The Polish citizenship issue is pushed to the side. I must confer with my sister. A commenter also suggested I try Polish bureaucrats in another city. New York comes to mind. The saga doesn't end, but the threads are left dangling for a while.
So I bet you missed my recordings of drama in the matter of identity theft? Well now, that topic is making a come back! Did I mention that the police report that I dutifully filed was sent not to me, but to the wrong address? And that Pay Pal (aka Bill Me Later) had the audacity to send me a letter (received today) explaining that I was probably a victim of identity theft and that I should register this with Credit Bureaus and thus prevent anyone from opening a new account under my name? Even as they themselves ignored the already in place fraud alert and permitted a new account to be opened despite that alert?
And the latest twist -- the blender that first triggered this round three of theft for us, the blender that came from Walmart, delivered to me on this new account which I never opened? Well now, we learn that it's some fancy blender! Priced at $299. Who even needs a $299 blender?? We call Walmart today, as instructed and ask if they've decided what we should do with it -- do you want us to return it to the store near us perhaps? Yes, do that.
But at Walmart, they're not buyin' it. Or rather -- not takin' it.
We can't accept it unless we credit your account.
We don't have an account. It's not ours. It's a theft.
Well then, we can't take it.
Round and round and round and round and round.
I tell Ed that I have never had such a bureaucracy infused spring/summer before. I have four ongoing folders of various messes -- none of them of my doing -- and it's as if they all race to be at the forefront, vying for my attention.
The Ocean post begins with recounting the latest in these ongoing sagas because they've become absurdly inflated and therefore almost funny. But they are not at the core of my day. This is:
Breakfast.
The garden.
And a day spent almost entirely on the porch, with my stack of school work. It is the most beautiful summer day of them all! I could not get enough of it!
In the very late afternoon, we bike over to my daughter's house. It's about 6 miles on the bike paths and it is one hell of a gorgeous stretch of pavement. Away from traffic, away from everything, cutting through the prairie as if it were an ordinary patch of grass. But it isn't. The prairie is at its most robust stage. You can't help but stop and admire it.
Again and again.
We visit with Goldie. Well, I visit. Ed raids their cupboards and promptly falls asleep on the couch. Though not before giving the old girl a good rub around her face.
The bike ride home is even more golden and splendid...
And I have one more story to add -- Ed is determined to make the best pickles ever out of our increasingly out of control cucumber crop. After studying the various methods for making pickles, he devises his own, which, so far as I can tell, is based on many assumptions about what happens to gases that build up and how they should be released. Here he is, in the thicket of pickle making:
Me, I just breathe in the evening air and exhale. Again and again.
