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.