Catching Up Wednesday

My helper Marilyn came today and typically I have prepared what I want to accomplish with her. Not so today. My suitcase was half unpacked, junk mail, laundry, all over. I had to take myself in hand and say that this is what a helper is for: to help me. So she arrived at 10, left at 1 and she unpacked the rest of my suitcase, put it away, folded laundry, wrapped some presents and packaged them to send, went to the dry cleaner, the post office, the bank, etc. and I felt it was time well spent. Without her, I would never have done this on my own.

I am still tired from Oshkosh, as is everyone I talk to who was there. Just tired to the bone, but these days there is not the luxury of taking a few days off. We all had to hit the ground running again. I am looking forward to a Saturday morning of sleeping in late.

I had heard on TV this morning that certain people were getting refunds from their health insurance companies -- this is part of the Affordable Health Care Plan (aka Obamacare) which says that an insurance company must spend 80% of its revenue in actual payments to doctors, hospitals, etc. So I got two things in the mail about my health insurance. The first, and I can scarcely believe this, is that I got one of those checks -- a whopping $108 -- but I'll take it and it was quickly deposited.

Once a year, I have to prove that I'm a business since I have a business health insurance plan and I do this by sending it a certain portion of my tax return for the previous year. In years past, when I faxed it, it would just go into that deep dark insurance company black hole and I'd get a threatening letter that I better send it in. One year, I was close to tears after my third attempt. So last year I faxed it and then also mailed it. That seemed to work and so I did it again this year.

You could mail it in a "supplied envelope" but there was no envelope -- and so they gave the address. When Marilyn was here on July 18, she had faxed it and mailed it and what turns up today was the envelope she mailed being returned for some reason we couldn't understand but it was something about an incomplete address. I had addressed the envelope and so I read the address back to Marilyn (from the original letter) and it was the exact address.

So when Marilyn arrived, I had her call the place (worth her pay alone!) and they had gotten the faxed version, gave me some sort of confirmation number and mumbled something to Marilyn about the address. We both agreed that if I had just mailed it they would blame me in... well, in a New York Minute for doing it wrong.

The envelope that was returned was sent to Manhattan and it's rather appalling it took two weeks for it to be returned to me. All's well that ends well -- at least so far, and I'm $108 richer.