Check list accomplished... and a bit of luck

Unwatched Netflix returned. Dresses, shoes, pantyhose to thrift shop. First of the month bills in the mail. All was accomplished along with my helper Marilyn and a bunch of other stuff.

But in the midst of this, something very lucky happened. I was writing out the bills while we were also sorting papers and we had piles of recycle, shred, and keep and somehow the envelope for the mortgage payment got lost. I asked Marilyn to go through the recycling papers to see if she could find the envelope. There was a clear, large garbage bag about half full of paper recycling from earlier as well as from this morning.

As she was looking for the envelope, she picked out this catalog and started leafing through it when what does she find but an unopened check for $2000 which somehow got wedged in the catalog, maybe in the mail box. I am always careful, scrupulously so, with checks when they arrive. One because I never want the embarrassment of having to tell a client I lost a check, and secondly, hey, I need the money!

So that was incredibly lucky. Had the envelope not gone missing, had we not decided to look for it, had she not looked at that particular catalog, that check would be lost. Wow. I am usually not that lucky. It gave me goosebumps when she held the envelope up and I recognized it as a check and my client's logo on the return address.

I added twenty dollars to her pay for today, and she called it her finder's fee. I joked that I pay 1% for all lost checks which are now found, and gladly so.

As a PS, I'll add that I love electronic banking, but I can't pay my mortgage electronically unless I give them access to my checking account, which I won't do, even though I know other folks don't have a problem with that. I can't pay health insurance electronically at all.

One last PS: Marilyn and her husband got tickets to The View for Monday, October 10 so please send a thought into the universe that it's a day when they give all audience members something really fantastic. Gift cards, computers, cameras, etc. The show does this occasional feature with a guy called Mr. Gadget where he shows a half-dozen new of the latest electronic things and so we are hoping it's a Mr. Gadget day on The View. Marilyn and her husband had gone to The View two years ago and each got an Aero Bed. Marilyn sold hers on eBay for $150, and her husband wanted to keep his, even though they have a sofa bed and a spare bedroom. When he saw what she got in eBay, he sold his too.

Oh, and we never found the envelope.