Resentment torments my heart

 I try to fight off resentment but the sibs aint' making it easy lately.   I'm sure it wouldn't ruin their health to send me a few texts letting me know they got their checks and whatever paperwork I sent them. 

yesterday I did nothing but play phone games all day.  I can't do that again,  my back is still unhappy today.   I guess I'll have to suck it up and try to network with people to go riding and stuff.    I'm very barn sour lately.  

I don't absolutely need stuff yet but I should have gotten some things at Walmart today but I could not convince myself to go.   At least I rode my baby loop at home on Tanza this evening.   Good thing I did not delay it.  We had a short rain storm a bit after I put Tanza away and got the mini's fed.  

I schlepped to AT&T to get the DirectTV canceled on Friday.

 I mostly lazed around today.   Sis got me hooked on Zen Word and then I got myself hooked on a tile match game.  I tried several games that looked fun in the ZW ads but weren't my cup of tea but the tile match is rather like the Mahjong solitaire game that was on my work computer decades ago that I really enjoyed.  

I'll have to quit wasting so much time playing the phone games but it was snowy and wet today and I decided getting the thank you cards done was enough.   I did a tiny bit of sorting cards and photos in the downstairs office.   I'm not ready to give all that stuff the BiL treatment.   The gun room does look nice now.   Hardly a gun room anymore now that he and sis took almost all of the  reloading equipment and guns.   I have a thought of offering the Bugle and hunting magazines to the neighborhood folks and blog's gun thread.   I would much rather give them to folks to read than just toss or burn them but I do want to get out from under all those shelf eating magazines.   I need to give away or toss my endurance magazines as well.  I did find I can skip some of the ads on Zen Word, thank goodness, as they have ads every couple of word games. 

I will have to figure out how to hook up the VCR, DVD etc to the TV and maybe buy a universal remote, the directTV one is not playing nicely with the DVD so far. 

Gaah, burning several magazines at once is always so smoky.

 I felt like I needed to burn before sis got here.  LOL,  I am not even burning the magazines that dad has 30 years of.  Just some misc ones.   But I will probably start burning the older ones too unless sis and B take them and they have no shelf space for them.  

More generally I am having to work to quash feelings that sibs and their spouses are being greedy snots.  It is a good thing that B wanted Dad's pickup.  I can probably buy it with a family discount if I need to replace my 350, and I certainly don't need to try to maintain two pickups plus two cars.   But pbbttt to sis thinking I needed to find the title and shit.  She can do that while she is here,  there is no reason I have to do ALL the grunt work for settling the estate after doing the grunt work of getting dad cared for for 18 months.  I PAID mom and dad and then dad a pretty decent rent living here all these years. 

p.s.   Wednesday, day after they left was a bad day for me.  Lots of ugly crying, I was having a mini meltdown, straw that started that was sis not finding a Thank-you card and addressing it to B's boss that sent flowers.  I was sooooo mad at him for not telling his boss to wait and send flowers for dad's memorial in ND,  or even the one we will do here.  What do I want with flowers when there is no gathering of folks to see them?!  But men are clueless, they are doing the best that they can.   

Mostly mad that of course I AM stuck with settling the estate, I know it only makes sense geographical wise but sis managed to dodge almost all of it.  She made ONE call to one insurance agency and sorted out that *I* have to just request it as the estate and send in mom's death certificate as well as dad's as mom was the primary beneficiary.   I knew dad spent plenty of time sorting out mom's insurance polices and retirement account but it all so full of legalese and time consuming to do. 

Going through some of the junk in the downstairs office

 I'm just gathering the low hanging fruit.  Throwing out a bunch of padded and large size envelopes where the labeling to send to us is large and might cause confusion if one tried to ship anything in them.  It's not like I am sending out pictures or glass or anything.  Also picking out old paper envelopes and some old handouts and whatnot of moms to burn when the wind quits.   The goal is to get to point of having the desk area available for doing paperwork.

The wind died down some so I burned a bunch of paper and some magazines.  It was smoking when I went to get Lady's sr pellets.  Stirring got to to burn again.  I'll probably have to keep stirring it a few times.   That is the problem with large amounts of paper, they squish together and don't all burn.

I wasn't hungry earlier but now feel like I need to grab some quick tuna salad before I go out and either ride or just do burn baby burn.  

I should to force myself to go get groceries and cash

 I don't absolutely need to do it today but its too cold and windy for any outside stuff so it would be good to get the shopping done so if it's nicer than expected tomorrow I won't have 'I should run to town' hanging over me at all.

I have to run to the Thornton AT&T on Monday to try and cancel direcTV, so maddening, I went Thursday and the guy at the local store said "you have to go to a corporate store, we are only retail and can't handle death certificates.  So stupid that I can't just cancel the service but I don't have the magic PIN for it and they won't cancel just based on the home address, ph # and SS#s of the parents.   So then I went to Verizon because they were just a block away and getting Verizon home phone service switched from dad to me so that bill won't hit his CC anymore was a two day process because I had a credit freeze.  I'm still like "why do you need to run a credit check?  I'm not financing a 1.5K smart phone I could give you my CC # for the monthly billing" but I suppose they just run the check for everyone.   So I am thinking that I will be way too frustrated on Monday to want to do any shopping after dealing with the TV cancellation even though I'll be driving right through town. 

Cuz I should also make multiple calls on Monday to banks and again to insurance agencies, GRRRRR on how hard it is to get them to send a check after they collected premiums all those years.  Blech,  I know I should be more proactive getting this shit settled but then again dad had no debts and I have no creditors hounding me.   If sis and bro want dough faster they can offer to help.    I want to cancel the TV service before sis arrives so she can't suck me into watching for hours.  I haven't had any desire to turn the TV on the last 2-3 weeks but if it is on past experience shows that I will start watching and get nothing done.   Of course I could fudge a bit and just disconnect the box and say I canceled it already but it will just be easier if I can honestly say I canceled it.  Maybe I should pull the boxes anyway and bring them with me just in case DirecTV wants them back.   

I know its paranoia but I feel like I'm out of the club

 The neighborhood ladies meeting apparently is not happening tonight.  I kind of figured they might skip with Easter having been just this Sunday but they didn't even send out a "we are skipping this month or shifting the meeting to another night or week"  Or if a text was sent at all it was by someone who didn't update their list since I was added or something.  

So I should make myself move and go buy horse feed and a few groceries tonight.  I am having difficulty convincing myself to get up and go.  I was chilled after catching and holding horses for their spring vaccinations but I'm not bad now after some hot tea. 

Or if I don't run the errands until tomorrow I should do work stuff but I feel very blah about it.  The autistic SE is whining about our repeat processing for the one PITB mission again.   I just have to ignore it, we have been doing this for a couple years now and neither the funding agency nor the vendor that provides the data will understand if we suddenly have higher latency or much lower percent of data processed because "we are only going to process a batch of data one time, data that comes in afterwards will be ignored, and we will increase the latency on all processing to try to catch a decent percent of the data"  

Dad's taxes are done, ready to mail the state ones

 I e-filed his fed return and set it as do an e-check to pay.   CO has an $800 credit for sales tax paid this year.   Wow.    I'm going to just donate dads rebate from this credit to the check off charities so I don't have to worry about the refund check when I want to close up his bank accounts.   I must remember to take this credit when I do my taxes.  

ND came out to zero owed.   I am surprised he owed $71 last year but I'm not going to worry about whether HR Block messed up for that small of an amount.   

Mar 31 p.s. 

I must read instructions for both ND and CO to see if I need to include copies of the 1040 form or anything else.   So much BS.   Geithner cheated on his taxes and was approved by the senate as SoT for Obama in 2009 but ordinary people have to worry about the IRS or state treasuries slapping a lien on them if they don't dot every i on the form.   Well not quite that bad.  I have made errors on my 1040 and the IRS just sent me a refund or a notice that I owed more.  No painful audit.  Since I don't itemize there would be little to audit.   They could audit dad's since the property taxes are a deduction but the counties have records of it so even if I lost the paperwork it would be OK.  

I just want to be a lump today but I don't want to get extra behind on things I need and want to get done.  

Lump status: partial.  I did haul out the remnants of my old sleep # type air mattress plus some trash from the feed room, the regular trash and my full bag of hay twine.  And got some tumbleweeds to the burn barrel.  Yesterday was a workout getting the new Tuft and Needle mattress unpacked and on the bed.   I am going to call 1-800 got junk or similar and have the dead freezer hauled away.  Siiigghhh a lot of wasted effort cleaning it up.  A bit of water is getting in there so I don't want to try to use it for feed storage since even a little water plus very little air flow would invite mold and the feed room roof leaks a bit.   Since I need to have the freezer hauled out, I could just get the sleeper sofa hauled out too and I spent a bunch of time yesterday cutting the memory foam topper from my bed to make that sofa comfy.   I'll be calling to have it hauled off sometime in the future when I sell this place and move but who knows when I'll get my ducks aligned to move could be a couple of years or maybe I'll even decide I'm just too old to set up a new place.  

Gaah, I can't focus today

 And I logged into T.Rowe to verify the change to sis as sole beneficiary that I made last year for dad and it DID NOT go through.  ##*#*#*@!  It still shows my dead for over 11 years mom as the primary beneficiary and then all 3 kids as secondary.   Sigh.  I suppose there was some extra step to "confirm you want to do this " that I missed.     

Well I guess since that didn't happen I can 'buy' the tractor and dad's pickup from the estate to give sis more money.   We will most likely have to include a death certificate for mom to get that IRA transferred.   Hmm,  maybe I can ask T.Rowe about ceding my share to sis?   I don't know what to do.   If I decide to move then maybe I don't want to keep 4 vehicles and if sis and B want to sell their half ton and take dad's pickup they can have it once I get the wiring fixed up on my Ford.   For however long I stay here I need a decent tractor,  and it would be most convenient for me to just keep princess Fergie rather than have to buy one.  I do intend to build in WY, possibly rent on an acreage first and expect I'll need a tractor there also.  

Caving an asking sis to change when she comes.  I think she is taking PTO days after her regular days off.  I was thinking to ask wouldn't she rather just skip this trip and not come down until whenever we do a memorial for dad.  But she wants to gather pictures and maybe some VHS tapes and get a service to make a slide show for the computer.    Of course she couldn't do that any of the times she has been down in the last 2 years.  Well I am glad she didn't take the pics from the photo album, dad enjoyed going over those with L.   

I hate that I resent her for not helping me more.  She will do stuff I ask her to do.  I've just remained in "big sis takes charge" mode instead of giving her a list of "could you do this for me" and she hasn't been all gung ho, wanting something to do when she's been here.  

Called SS office today.  Put the ph on speaker and did low focus needed disk cleanup for 30 minutes until connected.   I think the gal said Science Care had not called SS but me having called takes care of both the SS and medicare.   I probably have to contact his part C provider and cancel them separately though.  So many details.   I keep playing one of the senior life insurance commercials in my head where the sister comes in and asks daughter how she is doing "there's a lot to take care of"  Boy howdy aint that the truth, and thanks to the great lawyer in ND advising dad to do quit claims for the land to the sibs the estate is not so complicated.  But there is the fun hiccup of dad never taking care of changing the IRA from mom as beneficiary,  probably the checking accounts are that way as well, I don't think I ever pulled that up with the online banking apps.   

No tumbleweeds were burned last weekend

I did some yard work but didn't get around to trying to burn tumbleweeds in the pasture area.   Dad's 2023 fed taxes are e-filed.  If I get asked I do have his will that states that I have PoA in event of his incapacitation; I think that does give me authorization to wrap up taxes and the like.  

Texted sis about when she is coming.   I'm going to have to try to get her to shift if possible if she was driving on  thursday, so will be too tired to do much on Friday and then heading back on Tuesday with only 1 day or possibly a bit on Sat. available for helping me, or she would shuttle me from a mechanic or something basic on Friday I guess.   

I don't want to be resentful when she is trying to help but I do feel like she has come, sucks me into wasting time watching some dumb shit on TV for a full day when she is here, and then just picks out more of dad's guns and reloading equipment and does nothing to help me with my shit the last few visits.  That is not fair, she did help quite a lot with Dad when she was here in December.  No helping me with decisions and paperwork but the help with dad was needed and I know its hard to drive that far.  My limit to be able to ride the next day used to be 400 miles and I haven't done one of those in a few years, not sure I could still do it.   And it is a GOOD thing that she and B are providing a good home to the guns and reloading equipment.  I've wanted to be more into guns and to learn reloading; but thinking 'it is a shame that I don't have the interest' never translated into actually developing any interest for over 20 years, that was not likely to change now.  

Well I ran to the closer vital records office that is only available on Wednesdays and got 12 death certificates, 6 legal and 6 official.  They are $13 a piece so I didn't want to get too many but it's an extra $7 for the first one of each kind, so I may regret not getting more now, but at least I/we can get started on the legal stuff that requires a death certificate.   Plus I'll have to get good photocopies of my DL to order by mail, maybe can take a picture with phone to order online (for an extra charge + the $20 for first cert, 13 for each additional one)   Makes me wish dad had not messed with the 'funeral expenses' life insurance policy and taken the whole life value on the other ones and just had that money in his bank account.  Oh well,  at least I don't have any private policies.  

I want to burn tumbleweeds today.

 Not that I want to do the work , but I want to get rid of the layer of mowed tumbleweeds in the pasture area.  Last year I hauled some up to the burn barrel but that didn't make that much of a dent in the weeds.  I am hesitant to do the burning because I get nervous that the fire will get away from me.   Maybe I can haul some of the chain link panels down to contain a tumbleweed pile.  That would give me peace of mind while making it possible to get more weeds burnt, not having to move the weeds too far.  

Yesterday S texted and invited me to her bday party that evening.    I asked if I could bring anything and got a nothing needed.  Twas true, they had a lot more food than was needed, most of the guest families did bring a dish.   I was ok with not having to come up with something to prepare and bring and just brought a card and went "I don't care if its considered gauche, I'm just putting cash in it"   If I'd had advance notice maybe I would have bought a TSC gift card if they sell them.   I have the impression that S is like me in not enjoying shopping,  so a generic gift card or especially a specific store card other than for Wallys would not have been good.  I know she hates dealing with traffic and doesn't like a lot of commotion.   I don't know if they use TSC for most of their critter feed, but it is close enough that buying with a gift card even if they normally go someplace else would have worked.   Maybe I'll do that next year.  I always figure with cash they can spend it anywhere and I know I tend to forget that I have the gift card when I've been given one of VISA cards that can be spent anywhere. 

Here he comes to save the day

 Well I should be working on a different project anyway.  Of course writing special tools for the high profile project so he can list it on his performance review is like a moth to a flame for our super genius software engineer.  

Credit where due,  his fix does make results of the one mission with just a couple hundred occs look good.  And he was asked to look into this initially cuz the results for the mission with close to 20K occs didn't look good and we were getting zero occs for the one constellation.  

Next week postscript.  He is trying to rescue another mission.  His fix made things better below 15 km but worse above 18 km than doing nothing.  I emailed him and cc'd the boss and the gal who will process the data with the comparison plots from doing nothing to their data other than supplying my best guess as to the frequency.  

Sigh,  he insisted I just didn't see the bias in my plots.   Instead of working on my POD wrapper that I need to get done I spent a couple hours poking around and generating plots until I was able to get one from the next day that shows he is is full of BS.  (unless the mission had some weird errors just on their first day of data.)   Sheesh.  Some days he needs a Gibbs slap or 3.   I've been adding deliver me from arrogance to my prayers most nights and I do hope god does prevent me from emulating things like this when I have errors in my work.   I try to do a humble mea culpa and then attempt to be more careful when IT has to fix something I messed up, and to apologize and work late to fix the code I wrote if it proves to have a bug. 

God grant me serenity and ability to dismiss the sib's greedy spouse responses

 If it was just us 3 kids I am confidant that figuring out the estate remnants beyond the big "A gets this house and land, B gets this house and land,  C gets this land." that dad already set up would go pretty smoothly.

  But sis called asking about coming down and mentioned "B was asking about the tractor and dad's pickup."     I'm already kind of annoyed at B for wanting every last gun of dads; and I'm having to remind myself that it is fine, he and sis are into guns.   I wanted to keep a couple extra 22s just for sentimental attachments but it is better they went to sis and B and will get care and attention vs me once in a while thinking "I should do something with these, but I need to ride horse, burn weeds, etc today instead"

I do need to forward to sis that she is getting dad's TRowe IRA.   Maybe she can shut B down with that "honey we are getting this, sis needs to keep the tractor, and we will figure out if she owes us something for keeping the pickup ..." 

Brother has not detailed any of his wife's "what are we getting, can we have this?" statements to me.  That is nice; I don't need to know if she thinks they should get more so that she can give it to her son and DiL that don't work because entry level jobs are beneath them but they can't get higher level jobs cuz they don't have the work background to get them. 

Science Care just phoned me to let me know the death certificate has been signed and should be available online by Monday and they will email me the link to order official copies from my county.  I have got to get myself signed up with them; they are so helpful with sorting things out.   Plus it would be cool to contribute to better safety if my body was used for explosive or ballistic testing, or even just educating medical students or used in forensic research (I find that a bit creepy and didn't see it listed on the extended possible research that Science Care might do with a body, but it would be ok)  

I loathe the polite "you are always welcome, let me know if I can help", yada yada statements

 Not sure what the current vernacular would call me "on the spectrum" (autism) or "low emotional?/social? IQ" or some new term I've never heard of, but I'm low skilled on knowing whether I'm getting a polite brush off, "you are always welcome to join us --with an unsaid 'but we will NEVER tell you where and when we are riding cuz we'd rather not be in your presence'" or a real offer from someone who just doesn't know what help would be useful.   

Typing that made me all weepy.  Truly it is not good to dwell on emotional hurts, many of which are probably 100% unintended by whomever delivered them.  And apparently the new way schools are damaging their students is by encouraging them to dwell on their feelings.   The teachers may be too stupid to know they are creating mental illness but I'll bet the idea of doing "feelings checks" at the start of the school days was promoted by someone wanting to cause problems.   Perhaps some radical environmentalist seeking to create a population that will mass suicide to 'save GAIA', perhaps some communist wanting to create a population that won't fight for their god given rights and freedoms.  But it is an evil practice.  

I don't know what to do with myself.

 Dad died early Friday morning before I got up.   I wasn't sure he was gone or just shallow breathing, went out and fed horses, then tried the BP cuff and it errored out plus his forehead felt cooler so I called Science Care, and they directed me to call 911 and then call them right back.  I should actually have waited until the EMTs were done to call back but it worked out in the end.

I had the aide run some of the medical equipment to good health will and offered stuff to the neighbors, one neighbor did take the electric bed and lift chair so a bit of extra monkey work for JP to unload around them but it worked out.

I need to text B and tell her dad died.  I also want to get M and J's # and so on but it would be too tacky to announce "dad died, oh and can I get ph #s to text about riding now that I'm 100% free."   I didn't sleep much last night, kept going over 'get rid of Dad's recliner, do this, do that, in my mind.'   I hate that and haven't done it in a good while; I hope it is not going to reoccur.  Part of my mental looping was possible people north of me to try to meet up with for riding together since I feel like I can't meet the bar to ride and hang out with M and J.   Possibly I'm being silly,  if I offered to bring kielbasa a couple times for the not being a sponge at their 'happy hour' after the ride, and made it a point to think about good group horsemanship they might be ok with me.  

I need to find try to find farm lease paperwork so I can call, or I have no ph #, write to the leasers and let them know that brother owns that land now.  

I'm so close to getting a new RPM ready, but stuck waiting on a coworker

 Ugh,  I hate when I've been making good progress on something and then get sidelined, especially when I need a coworker to respond back to my email or slack request.   That's the bad part of WFH, and even if I was in the office sometimes, a lot of folks are hybrid and not in office 50 to 60% of the time so the ability to just walk down the hall and pester someone so that they will move my need up in their queue is gone.

Oh well, I'll get what I need eventually and I can do some other bits on my new code while waiting.  

Colorado is supposed to have a massive snowstorm that lasts 36 hours starting this evening.   Monday's forecast was for it to be a decent March storm and give use out here on the plains a needed half to 1 inch of total precipitation with part of it rain and up to 4 inches of wet snow.   Now we are up to 6 to 12 inches of wet snow.  I'm not clear on whether our total precipitation is also bumped up by much or if for us this is just more of it as snow.   Probably total precipitation, the snowfall totals for higher elevations have been rising with each day's update so I think the models just keep bumping how much water we will get as are rerun with newer data.  

Of course I had given up all hope of us getting a good wet snow this year and didn't buy any kind of pasture seed to try to improve our weedy few acres.   Oh well, it will help our 5-7 weeks of grazing and should help with the hay growers having hay to sell this summer.  

Cold is gone, but my energy level is still very low

 Dad caught my cold.  Knock wood I think he is past the worst of it w/o getting pneumonia.  But he is hardly eating or drinking and even with JP here I had to drag out the Hoyer so we could move him from his chair to his bed yesterday morning against his desires.   Once we had dad in the bed and got done cleaning him up he slept comfortably, so it was a good thing that I finally forced it.   I probably should call an ambulance and get him hauled to an ER for fluids, but he doesn't want to and even though the ER was very good about releasing him once they had given him IV fluids and gotten his blood sugar down when the aide called 911 last November I am hesitant to do it.   I sure wish it was possible to just have a service come out and administer fluids here at home.  

I did do shopping and got cash,  burned trash and a decent # of weeds this morning and finally swabbed out the dead freezer with a strong bleach solution.   I was wanting to burn more weeds but told myself that moving the freezer into the tack room, or junking it if there is a smell that will mess up feed storage will do more for overall appearance of the place.   I used to roll my eyes with mom messing with her flower gardens for small bit of reward while letting maintenance slide.   Course she probably thought it should be dad's job to do more of that maintenance.  

I am tentatively decided that it would be morally wrong to take or send dad to an ER when he does not want to go.  And I don't have a medical POA so I don't know that I legally could do it even if I was flipped on the morality.   But when he wakes up I will have to push him to drink some fluids.  I need to contact sis.  I've no idea what to tell her, but do need to keep her in the loop.  

Texted sis.  She is working and will call tonight.   Well I was not seeking her advice, just letting her know. I am a bit annoyed.  She calls me and always it is "you could call me"  Well I can't keep track of when her days off are.  If she wants me to call she needs to text me with "I'm off and not traveling anywhere on these days"    I don't think it matters as far as phone bills go.  I texted her last Sunday and she said she would call later and never did.   I would have called or texted if there was more definite news on dad.

I don't know what to do about L.   I had wondered a few months ago if paying her to come in was giving her the opportunity to start drinking again but I put it out of my head.    Thursday she was here and not feeling well so I had JP run her and her e-bike home.   She asked him to go to a store so she could buy something. Then I guess the place he took her to needed ID or something and she asked him to take her someplace else 'so I can buy liquor' and he declined, gave her the impression he would later, but he did not want to be a reason she relapsed.   I need to suck it up and at least have a frank discussion with her if she comes Monday.  This might be why her Dh is stalling on getting the breathalyzer lock put on a vehicle, he fears she would go buy booze to drink at home and relapse into the alcohol addiction and figures having to use the e-bike makes it hard enough that she won't do it, plus she had not been working so no ready cash.   Now I don't think trying to make it so she can't buy booze is a long term option.  That is something for short term to get past the initial tough physical addiction phase, but I think folks need to come up with another coping mechanism for whatever emotional or mental pains cause them to seek comfort in a bottle.

I've walked up to dad in his bed at least 3 times today and made myself walk away when I see he really is still sleeping.   I call it engineer brain.   I want to try to 'fix it.'  In this case fix him by trying to nag him into drinking a decent amount of gatorade, water, pepsi, or tea.   I went back and read a post on a a BB that only has a few members left from the one talking about her father's recent clot in his neck.   His arm was numb and poster's younger sister was respecting his "no I don't want to go to a doc" but older sister got a nephew to take grandpa to an ER.   It is the kind of situation where it would be good to have gone over various possibilities with dad while he was more with it.     If that poster's dad/grandpa was generally of mindset of wanting medical care up to going on a ventilator than yes I suppose one does ignore their "oh I don't need to see a doc just because my arm is numb" and takes them in.   I know when I read "when they are 87, you don't ask you just take them" initially and my thought was "NO,  just because they are elderly doesn't mean they shouldn't have any say in how much medical treatment they want"    

Funny how the countries that are farther down the socialist slope than we are, such as the Netherlands and Canada are going the opposite route and euthanizing people if they are not coherent enough to demand a chance to live as well as counseling folks with depression to have the state euthanize them. 

And if I had IV fluids in the house I might be tempted to try to IV dad myself.  Luckily I don't have any so I can't mess with it.   A dehydrated elderly person is probably hard to get an IV in a vein even for folks that do IVs regularly.  

Yuck, I hate being sick

 It is just a cold, but blech.  I've gone through dozens of kleenex in the last few days and swilling various tea like it is going out of style.   It was beautiful yesterday but I didn't feel energetic enough to ride.  I did get dad's car picked up from the repair place.  Very nice folks, he even took it in for emission test so I should see if I can get do the online registration.  Since I'm past the grace month I may have to go in as well as have the penalty charge.   I also did a bit of detailing on the inside of the Prius.   Got the back seats better this time.  I think Toby stink was a bigger part of the overall stinky car smell.   Hopefully it will be bearable now.  

Need to tell JP that he can take dad's pickup if he has concerns parking my extra long pickup as long as he hooks it back up to the horse trailer.   It probably can benefit from being driven.  

Well the penalty for not renewing on time was not horrible,  $25.   I wonder if they will send Jan tags or it ends up getting Feb tags now.  And I was able to do it w/o the reminder card that I mislaid.  

I don't feel like running to town so unless a check really won't work for JP I'll just do that.  but I guess I can drag myself to the bank if I really need to.   But he needs to make his bank behave properly and not hold checks for over a week.  That was just ridiculous for them to do that.  And if he'd had his zelle stuff correct I could have been paying him from dad's 1st bank.  As it is, I have to get a POA and get 1st bank to re-instate the online banking and send a new debit card.  Oh well I did need to quit procrastinating and get a POA form anyway.   I hope it doesn't take weeks and weeks to get permission to write checks and shit at the banks once I get that.

Ugh, Monday Monday

 I set up an appointment to have dad's care checked out, hopefully fix whatever is making the check engine light come on last week, stupidly forgetting that JP takes Mondays off.   But I figured 'oh well,  L comes in on Mondays and I can see if they can work on the car right away and maybe finish it in a few hours while I hang out in Fort Lupton, and if they need it overnight I can probably get a neighbor to pick me up or rent a car or something.'     So of course this is a rare Monday where L is a no show.   She hasn't even sent a text that she is sick.    I forced myself to put on my big girl pants and call the repair shop to reschedule.  No huge thing,  I will have to pay whatever penalty for renewing the registration late but such is life.

I was telling JP I'm probably foolish to keep the Prius as well as the rabbit and he expressed interest.  He would take the  Prius in lieu of most of his payment for helping with dad.  He wants to sell his Focus and get an SUV and figured if he could also sell the Prius that would work well for him.   I will have to think about taking him up on that.  

Dad is weak with another cold type virus.  I may have to just roll him back and forth in bed to get him cleaned up and prop with a pillow to have his pills and tea and breakfast.   I should text sis that he has this virus.   If it doesn't escalate it will be better for her to keep the plan to wait till April to visit, cuz dad recuperates slowly anymore.   But I do have to let her know he has the virus in case it does escalate. 

It is going to be a beautiful weekend

 I texted B last night.  Didn't ask about riding, just how was she and Taj.  She responded back asking about  me, dad and Tanza and I told her I have started having live in help and we are all pretty good.   She came back with that is good that I have lightened my burden.  But no "so are you free to meet at trailhead X and ride" or anything like that.    So I'm trying to decide if I will just go ride by myself tomorrow.  

Well I thought I noticed low wind speeds when I checked the forecast yesterday but it is gusting pretty good.   At least I burned the household trash earlier before the wind started.  Maybe I shall shlep to town after all.  We aren't absolutely out of stuff but some things are a bit low.   Its too bad I hate to shop. 

I rode Tanza Saturday in the paddocks and today I rode out on the road and field roads.   I had been nervous to ride out of the paddock at home and had quit doing it.  But today I figured since I rode some yesterday I'm happy to just ride at a walk and it will good for us.  And it was fun.  Tanza did get pretty animated but he was controllable.   Maybe I'll get my riding mojo back.   Keep the speed slow riding out and canter and trot longer stretches in the paddocks and swallow my foolish pride and ask B if she wants to ride together on weekends.   

Floundering lately

 I am going to have to go around my mental block and get a POA for dad ASAP.

I left the toyota plate renewal until 1/2 way through this grace month and 'oh crap, emissions required.'  Went to emissions place today but the check engine light makes it fail so I have to get that fixed.  I went to grease monkey and had them change oil and asked them to clear the codes.   "sometimes we are not allowed to do that"  I guess they were not.   So stupid.  I suspect the code is just a remnant from the battery going bad.  If there is a real issue with the car the code would come right back.   I'm probably going to be lucky to get the darned thing fixed in time to renew by the deadline and will have to remember not to drive it until the mailed tags arrive.  

I am in bank/zelle hell.   Tried to set it up zelle on dads WF since it his main bank that gets the SS deposits  etc.  But they INSIST on trying to send the approval code to the home phone by TEXT only.  They even did that with my new bank account sigh which had my cell phone entered when I set up that account.     First Bank has locked me out of the online account.   I installed zelle on my cell phone to try to use my elevations via the debit card.  Cannot because I have the # and email attached to First Bank.  D'oh.   I might have to get a 2nd cell phone and 2nd email in dad's name to be able to do the zelle payments from his bank accounts.   I don't want to pay from my checking and transfer money to reimburse myself.   Must get the dang POA yesterday to get things straightened out. 

Got myself to convention yesterday

 I was extra late to the morning sessions but at least I got there and visited a bit.  The afternoon session was pretty valuable.  I need to look up the stable core gal and see if I can get to one of her workshops. 

I must pray for better communication skills

 Especially when I am tired I am so whiffing on communications with the aides.   I've got to improve in that area.

But at least I am getting braver about having people come in.  Perhaps it is an overall good that the home health company did not work out.  Forcing me to grow a bit.  

Next week is the regional convention.   I whiffed on pre-registering and will have to force myself to go; but the forecast is still not good riding weather and I need to network with riding people and get inspired to start riding with more purpose by the ride opportunities.  

So hopefully JP or the other aide that has expressed some interest can be here on Saturday.   I thought I'd give JP a short briefing and go off to ride today unless I rode yesterday based on extended forecast that I had not checked back on.  I was so bummed last Thursday morning to get the work mo-cast that it was going to snow Friday night right about the time I was going to text B to see if she'd like to meet somewhere to ride.   But it is ok, gives me a better evaluation of JP.    He seems good so far, might a bit overly restless with down periods that happen between bits when dad needs something but he dived into vacuuming the floor, and I had him take the tree down.  

I mostly whiffed Christmas.  I tried, got the tree set up.   Had not bought a gift for dad but wrapped up his WW2 knife, thought I'd see if he remembered buying it.  But he slept all day Dec 25th, ignoring the box; so I never did have him open it.  

I rode Tanza a little bit yesterday

 I didn't get ducks in a row to be able to haul anywhere but at least I got a little bit of riding in.   I also burned trashed and a bunch of tumbleweeds that had blown against the driveway wings and into the yard.  Feels like I did more than that, but I did spend a lot of time lurking on my favorite blog. 

Today I took a walk,  got the door off the freezer that died so I could clean the kitty litter out of it.   I'm waiting for the litter to dry more so I can shovel or rake it away from the freezer with less mess.  Then when I'm not collecting that clay on my muck boots I'll scrub it with some bleach.  If the smell can be removed so it won't put the horses off their feed the freezer will be handy to store horse feed in.  If the smell is permanent then I'll do the got junk or equivalent to have it hauled away.  

K took the weekend off.  Saturday she was meeting a potential new family.  I need to update my care dot com ad and try to get someone to come in regular on weekends and probably Tuesdays and Wednesdays when I have a lot of online meetings.  Then I need to overcome my fear of rejection and start networking to try to get some riding meetups on weekends and get back into being a trail rider, maybe work back up to being a low level endurance rider. 

Work has been better having K here.

 I had not realized how much the interruptions to care for dad here and there were affecting my ability to focus and get work tasks done.  I had the mindset that "it isn't that many total hours caring for dad and the horses, I have time left to get work done and I was getting work done" but I was focusing much better this last week when K was getting dad his eggs and so on.   So it would be nice to have someone here more of the time when I should be working.   But if I just get more days or part days covered it will help tremendously.   

I'm so burned out I can't make myself do things

 I'm being stupid.  If I will suck it up and try some of the independent aides I can probably get myself to a point of being able to take a weekend really truly off now and again and that would probably save me from having a full on break down.  Perhaps part of me wants to have a breakdown.  Stupid.  Oh fandamily and neighbors would probably step in to get dad cared for; but I doubt anybody would try to help me.  I'd end up in a mental health facility and some of those are just about milking every drop of money out of any insurance and whatnot and do nasty stuff to keep from releasing patients.  

The caregiver role is stupidly lonely.  One of the IT guys reached out to me if I need an ear because he went through it with his dad.  He moved back home for a while to help his mom take care of his dad.   With as common as dealing with this shit is it seems like there would be scads of online forums and support groups offered by the community and so on; but that really does not seem to be out there.  At least not easily found online.  Perhaps a lot of people are in the same emotional boat as me and feel like they shouldn't find it such a hassle and don't want to admit they get screaming frustrated at their parents at times.  At least dad can't hear when I am ranting at him for getting decrepit.  

Waiting to hear from the possible live in aide

 I'm very poor at reading people.   I got a feeling she was mostly being polite and isn't going to choose to live out here "in the boonies"; but I could easily be wrong there.  This neighborhood feels quite urban to me having lived in a really rural area as a kid.  But she got lost trying to get here.  Was on the correct road but didn't come far enough east to find our house and called me and asked if I could meet her at the intersection.  She said she had a family in Aspen wanting to hire her and would decide by Tuesday and let me know.  Also said she wasn't sure about being clear up in Aspen, so far from the metro area so who knows.  I wondered later if she was trying to get me to offer higher salary but no way I'm going to try to outbid folks who can afford to live in Aspen. 

I have had some folks inquiring about coming on the weekends and if I got someone good for weekends that would be big help to me in feeling safe to try to schedule trailhead meetups.  

I dropped the ball on work year rollover.   I logged in at UTC midnight and a bunch of stuff had started failing early in the day.  Oh well.  I was not on call and no one volunteered to switch Xmas weekend with me so that I would be on call for the year rollover so they can just live with the short outage they had.