Catching Up

My last post was May 29th!  This is hard for me to believe in one way, but not so hard in another.  We've moved of course, & oh the stories I could tell ... but this is going to be a short post, so I'll just say that what appears to be a squeaky clean house at first glance may very well not be.  Far from it in fact.  We spent the month of June renting U-Hauls (yes, I meant that to be plural) & making trips in the SUV to cart most of our things here ourselves.  I had wanted a specific moving company to move our furniture & some unwieldy boxes but the owner never got back to me in time, which is sad because they took the utmost care with our furniture when they delivered it from the store.  I had a backup company I found on Angie's List that had nearly 200 glowing reviews.  I had to end up hiring them instead, but I felt confident from the reviews that all would be well.  It wasn't.  I asked for three moving men; two showed up.  Young dudes with questionable training or experience.  I did not walk out to the truck with them & watch them load.  I should have.  I don't believe they padded anything.  There was so much damage to almost all the furniture.  Chips & scrapes & scratches & a literal gash down the side of my hutch.  They brought in the washer & dryer sideways, then sat the on the carpeting & force-pushed them into the laundry closet leaving a bunch of black grease on the carpeting which the homeowner had cleaned themselves & I followed up with professional cleaning the week before.  The young dudes had no idea where the grease came from but said not to worry about it, the company would take care of it.  They brought in an end table & placed it on the living room carpeting.  I asked them to place it a tad to the left.  When they did, there were grease marks left by the table legs.  Once again they were puzzled but said not to worry, the company would take care of it.  Despite the fact that I paid for additional insurance to cover each piece of furniture separately, the company took care of nothing.  I submitted detailed pictures & descriptions of all the damage.  The owner called to advise me that the insurance did not cover damage to flooring.  When I told him of my concern regarding our two power recliners & John's fancy-schmancy 65" nano crystal UHDTV, he stated that the insurance did not cover damage to anything mechanical or to any electronics because "who's to say if those things were working before they were moved?"  He said he would pass my photos along to his repair technician who would contact me in four to six weeks to come to my home to assess the damage & make any repairs.  I could not & did not want to wait that long.  In addition, the owner was so cavalier about everything (he didn't even say that he spoke with the young dudes regarding the damage!) that I really didn't trust that his repair technician would be any different.  It was a blessing from above when, quite by accident, a person was recommended to me as "the best furniture repair person in the state."  He is indeed!  An interesting & chatty man, we enjoyed visiting while he skillfully repaired all the damaged furniture & readjusted the recliners.  Thankfully the TV is okay.  I rehired the professional carpet cleaners to come back to get the grease out of the carpeting.  They were successful.  I've been scrubbing with various cleaners (none of which worked) & have now taken to sanding & resealing the bottoms of the wood furniture legs on several pieces of furniture in order to remove the grease.   

And speaking of cleaning, we've been here five weeks & I've been cleaning pretty much every day.  The cleaning was obviously not done by professional cleaners as I had been led to believe, but rather in a slapdash manner by the prior tenants.  I still need to clean most of the light fixtures & plate covers, two ceiling fans, two sets of blinds, & all the windows.  I'll get the house power washed as well.

Our landlady is a real interesting character.  She's an "it happened the way I say it happened" & "your way is wrong, my way is right" type of person.  I've had to bite my tongue several times when she was going through here telling me the leaking faucets really weren't leaking & the chip in the ceiling must have been made by our movers (it wasn't) & so many other things.  I haven't mentioned anything to her about all the cleaning I've had to do, but if, when we leave, she says that she wants us to leave things as they were when we moved in, I will say "no you don't" & proceed to tell her all I've had to do.  I probably should have taken pictures as I'm sure she won't believe me.

The bedroom furniture issue has been extremely stressful.  I sent it back three times to be repaired or replaced per the manufacturer's lifetime guarantee.  The last time I sent it back, trying to get them to fix the silver metal bits underneath the drawers that are quite visible when the drawers are shut, I was told this is the way this furniture is made & there is nothing wrong with it.  However, I could pay them $450 & they could add lips to the bottom of the drawers to hide the metal bits, or they could color the metal bits with a black marker so they wouldn't be as visible.  A friend (you know who you are!) called this the saga of Schrodinger's Defects: Simultaneously not existing while still being fixable.  The manufacturer would not budge.  I called a multitude of attorneys who all said there was nothing I could do (I still don't understand this).  I finally told them to just send it back.  I'll use it for the two years we're here, turning a blind eye to the metal bits, & sell it for whatever I can get for it before we move again.

My RA has unfortunately been very bad.  My doctor had prescribed a drug which was not working in pill form so she suggested injections.  This was two weeks before we moved.  During those two weeks I had a lot more pain & stiffness & swelling & just chalked it up to the rigors of moving.  However, things kept getting worse.  I was so very tired all the time & developed bone pain.  John said I could no longer blame these things on the move.  I saw my vascular surgeon ... no problems there.  Two weeks ago I saw my hematologist who discovered that I'm anemic.  He said that all the problems I was having were most likely from the medication injections.  He ordered a few more blood tests to be safe & told me to call my rheumatologist as soon as I got home to tell her my symptoms.  Sadly I was only able to speak with the nurse as the rheumatologist was on vacation until August 8th.  She suggested stopping the injections & she would talk with the doctor upon her return & let me know what she wanted me to do.  She said I also should call with an update or two prior to the doctor's return.  In the meantime the extra blood tests that the hematologist ordered came back negative so he feels the anemia & other problems are definitely being caused by the injections.  I've been off them for a week now & I'm doing a little better.  Don't know what they'll give me for my RA now as this makes three medications that have resulted in bad side effects.

I did get things straightened out with my insurance company ... again ... so I "only" had to do without my other medication for two weeks.

John is doing well.  Not really any change in his vision though.  He is seeing his eye doctor today & hopefully some sort of relief will be provided.

You may remember my Aunt Vera.  I wrote about her last year asking for prayers.  She was diagnosed with breast cancer at the age of 90.  Unfortunately she waited too long to seek medical attention & the cancer spread to various areas of her body.  She seemed to be doing better for a while, but then the chemo stopped working.  She passed away on August 28th ... the day of our move.  The funeral mass & burial were scheduled for July 5th.  I drove to Pittsburgh to attend.  She is at peace now but I will miss her so much.  She was like a mother to me.  I always wanted to run away & live with her.    She was always fun, always joking around.  She loved to cook & go to yard sales & flea markets.  She loved jewelry & Christmas.  When she was in her 80s, someone suggested to her that they had various events that she might enjoy at the local senior center.  Her response was "What do I want to go there for?  I'm not old!"

My good friend Mary passed away on May 4th, now Aunt Vera just two months later.  The world just won't be the same without them.