Rant #3,206: Trouble

Everything that is happening is starting to get to me.

I had a miserable night last night, not sleeping well again, but this time, it had to do with me not feeling well.

I think I know what it was, but I can’t be sure.

After having the photographers take pictures of the house--it ended up being top and bottom, which I didn’t know about, as well as in the basement and outside—I had lunch, and I had some deli roast beef that I bought at a local supermarket about two weeks ago.

I had been avoiding eating this deli meat because right at the get go, the first time I ate it, it had absolutely no taste, and the second time was much like the first time … so could the third time be any better?

So I made a sandwich with it, and for the first time, it actually had some taste, which should have been a warning sign right there that something was the matter with this deli meat—

And lo and behold, I felt it about two hours after eating lunch.

I was fine afterwards and into the night and into going to sleep, but at about 2 a.m. in the morning, my side was bothering me, my stomach felt funny, and I was miserable.

I tried everything to get comfortable, but the pain simply would not go away no matter what I did.

And I felt all bound up, like my middle portion was in a tightening vice.

Then, I had something of a brainstorm … I tried to get myself to throw up.

This was not successful—nothing but dry heaves—but for some reason, several minutes later, I felt much better, the pain had subsided to just here and there—not constant—and I was comfortable.

I woke up my wife—I think she may have been somewhat up anyway, what with my constant trips out of the bedroom and walking around the house as I was—and I thought I was going to have to go to the hospital, but I did feel better, and we talked about not only how I felt, but we also talked about our dire situation, a situation that was not created by us but where we find ourselves in.

As the pain subsided, we both fell asleep again, and I had a few pangs during the rest of the evening, but I do feel better now.

Today, I will eat blandly, and unless my body tells me otherwise, I think I had some type of food poisoning … mix that with my current mental duress over our situation, and you get one messed-up guy.

I feel OK now, and maybe what I had has passed.

Maybe it was all psychosomatic … I just don’t know.

But I can tell you that with the situation my family is in, and with not just the cleaning up of the house but the numerous phone calls I have had to make to basically tell whatever providers my mother had that she was gone—has turned into a nightmare of epic proportions.

Just to get her phone bill—and number—taken care of has been nothing short of a nightmare.

I have had to call the local provider three times—count ‘em, three times—to square everything away with her phone account:

1) I spoke to someone in India who was not only difficult to understand, but while she gave me a cancellation number, it was never applied by her, as literally a minute after I got off the phone with her, my mother’s phone rang, asking me to complete a survey—about the phone call I had just had to close out my mother’s phone account.

2) I immediately called the phone provider back, and the fellow—someone who spoke good English and seemed to understand me, I thought—assured me that my mother’s phone account was canceled, and her phone number retired, and that I would get a confirmation letter attesting to these actions.

3) The very next day, I received notification of a bill that my mother had, through my email, but I could not pay it because my mother never used any electronic payments to pay the bill—and neither have I since I took over paying her bills—and what’s more, I discovered that I had already paid the bill, snail-mail-wise, several weeks ago.

This led me to speak to another associate who, when I said that I had already paid the bill seeks ago through the USPS, literally read off his list of accomplishments to me and told me flat out that he was a senior billing clerk for the company and that the company had never received my check in the mail—something I have heard from other providers that my mother used when I paid her bill through the mail.

Finally, I simply decided to pay the bill over the phone, and for the glory of finally getting her account closed—no, it still had not been closed up to that point—I had to pay a $3.50 service charge for paying the bill over the phone.

But since my mother’s account was also charged for September, too, I had an additional amount of money I could pay, but the fellow told me not to pay it … will I get another bill from this provider in the near future looking for payment?

Again, this is a period where I should be mourning the passing of my mother, but here I am, trying to tie up loose ends with her different providers—which as you can imagine, takes hours to do—questioning my mother’s sanity when she made her deal with the devil, and cleaning out her house of more than 50 years of memories …

And you wonder why I was sick last night?

Maybe it had nothing to do with the roast beef after all … .