LILL's LIST

(From 2/2007 at my poor neglected first blog, News From Hawkhill Acres.)

I think I’ve cursed myself. Remember my mantra, “I’m a willow; I can bend”? Well, as my ds would say, I’ve had to bend so much I’ve been pretzelized! It’s my own fault, because I will keep making these foolish plans and writing “To Do” lists. And then, to compound my folly, I actually try to follow them. What is that definition of insanity again? Doing the same thing over and over and expecting it to turn out differently? Yeah, that’s the one.

So, yesterday, the first thing on my list was paying bills and the last thing on my list was digging out the yummy sock yarn that I’ve been holding out like a carrot on a stick, to force myself to do what needs to be done. It’s three skeins of Fortissima Colori self-striping superwash wool that will make a gorgeous pair of socks for me to wear with my low-rent Croc-clone clogs this Spring.

Unfortunately, between the bills and the yarn was a list of several other things that I had to wade through, so I poured another cup of tea, sat down at the trusty Compaq and fired up Billpay. Or tried to. Actually, I never got as far as Billpay, because I couldn’t log onto online banking. The bank’s software was delusional and told me my computer wasn’t registered, so I’d have to enter my bankcard number and pin and issue number on the front of the card. Issues! I’d give it issues! I’m the one with issues because I knew that I had registered my dratted computer a long time ago and had used the online service almost daily since then.

Fuming, I entered my information. But the stupid software wasn’t buying it. Another error message flashed on the screen, this time telling me that my information didn’t match their information and if I tried to pull this stunt again, they’d lock me out of my account. An empty threat, I thought, since I was already effectively locked out of my account,because their idiot programmers had evidently been under the influence of hallucinogens or bad takeout food or something when they set up the damned site.

I called the bank’s help number, navigated my way through several levels of choice menus, none of which had the choice I wanted, and finally got to an actual person. In a slow, measured monotone, he introduced himself as Scott, but I didn’t catch his title. He may have been the janitor for all I know, but I was so happy to hear human-speak instead of robotic phonetics, I didn’t care at that point. I told him my problem, gave him my account number and he said he’d look at the log. That sounded promising. Now we’d find out where the bank had screwed up.

“The problem is that your computer isn’t registered,” he said.

“I registered my computer,” I said, “I’ve been using it since I registered it, so I know it’s registered.”

“You may have registered it,” he answered, “But it’s not registered.”

Ah, this certainly helped to clarify things. My computer was registered but not registered. No wonder I was having problems. Maybe it was one of those quantum physics things like quarks or antimatter or neutrinos. You know, where something is something and its direct opposite at the same time. Or maybe it’s that something is nothing and something at the same time. Well, we’ll have to go into that in my Stephen Hawking post and that’s slated for later. I bet he’d know what to do with a wonky banking site.

Well, anyway, Scott and I soldiered on, backing and filling until we got to a state of detente, only a little less shaky than the one between the Israelis and the Palestinians. We really could have used Jimmy Carter, but we had to make do with his supervisor, Emma, who spoke with a heavy Indian accent and only understood about one word in three that either Scott or I said. She suggested that the problem might lie in my “goo key”. There was a moment of silence after she said this, but then Scott jumped on the “goo key” bandwagon and said, “Of course, that’s almost certainly what it is.”

Ah. So, was my goo key stuck? Had I inadvertently hit the goo key by mistake, which would be easy to do since I wasn’t aware that I had a goo key until Emma brought it up? And, most important of all, I asked, what does one DO when one has a problem with one’s goo key?

“Well,” Emma said, “You must undo this goo key and then re-do the goo key with another goo key. But this time, you must make it a good goo key, not a bad one.”

Of course, why hadn’t I thought of that? I’m sure by now that – unlike me – most of you have figured out that “goo key” was Emma’s mispronunciation of “cookie” and that’s why my computer wasn’t showing up as a registered computer on the bank’s site. Fixing it was simple, according to Emma. All I had to do was re-enroll my account on the online banking site and I’d be paying bills like nobody’s bidness inside of five minutes. She and Scott even walked me through the whole thing, just in case I was as stupid as their impression of me indicated, so it only took about twice as long. Think Gandhi giving directions with Ben Stein doing a voice over – simultaneously.

The bank site let me in. I thanked Emma and Scott, profusely, hung up the phone and, with tears streaming down my cheeks (I was eating a sandwich of tuna and red onion because by now it was lunchtime), I clicked on Billpay and turned to reach for the folder of bills on the filing cabinet behind me. When I turned back, I almost choked on my tuna. There on the top of the screen was the Billpay payee list, where I keep all the information I need to pay all my bills each month. And there underneath the “Payee” tab was a small line of print that read, “You have no payees on your list”.

After a couple minutes of stunned silence, my brain managed to grasp the fact that re-enrolling had deleted all the information I had so painstakingly created over the years that we’ve had the account. The only way I could pay bills from Billpay was by entering each creditor’s account information into the payee list all over again. Of course, I didn’t have to do it all in one day. I only needed to enter the bills that were due immediately. There were five of them and it took me about an hour to gather the information and then enter it. True, if I was more organized and didn’t shove paid bills into a dresser drawer, stash vital information on the kitchen counter with one of my daughter’s Bratz dolls for a paperweight, and lose about one third of all the pieces of paper that come into the house, it might have been easier and quicker. Hey, so I’m not Martha Stewart. (On the other hand, I haven’t been to jail, never ask my friends to use my handmade Ultrasuede coasters and I’ll let you turn around in my driveway without calling the cops. So maybe it’s a draw.)

By two o’clock, the bills were paid and I had managed to unload and load the dishwasher, but I was definitely flagging in the stretch and there were still four things to do on my list before I got to cast on my socks. I won’t turn this blog into a book. I’ll just say that I cleaned the pellet stove, which consists of knocking the slag off the burn box with a hammer and chisel and washing the window with glass cleaner and paper towel. Then I helped my son cook fudge for his friend’s sleepover, which would have been easier if either of us had remembered to get butter the day before when we were shopping. Luckily, the little store four miles up the road had some when I boogied on up there, but by the time I got back, it was too late to do the last thing that separated me from starting my socks, which was re-hanging the homemade street sign at the end of the driveway. (Vandals stole the official one last Halloween.) That was, unless I wanted to do it by flashlight, and I didn’t.

So, no socks. No yummy self-striping yarn winding sinuously around my fingers and the bamboo needles, making little swooshy noises as it turns itself into k2p2 ribbing. Nope, I made myself a promise and I stuck to it and I’m a better woman for it. No one can say I neglect my duties to pursue my pleasures. But, today, I sent my son down to put up the sign and sat myself down with a cup of tea, an oatmeal goo-key and my yarn, and got to the second item on today’s “To Do” list. “Complete ribbing on two socks.” When I’m done, I’ll get on to the rest of my list – if I have time.

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