This has been one of the strangest months (for many reasons, but I shall not go into politics); it feels like something has been fiddling with communication; I’ve been cleaning up messes all month. This includes not only phone and email communications and interpreting, but snags in orders, deliveries, mail, the disappearance of one outdoor neighborhood kitty and the return of another that was gone for ages.

Years ago, my astronomy class, (astrophysics by text book, star-gazing by night) had to meet atop Shepard Hall, a chocolate cake-looking Gothic building on the north campus of C.C.N.Y. There, as we shivered on a cold clear night in the late 1960s, the professor lectured us about planets, stars, galaxies. It was the time of Timothy Leary and The Beatles. It was THE time. But now we had to display our great knowledge base.

“Everybody point to Venus,” said the professor.

And so we did …

We pointed this way and that. We all had a vision of  “the brightest star” and could have poked one another’s eyes out.

Venus. So much for that bright, second planet from the sun.

Fast forwarding, this is where I have been feeling that I live: on another planet, racing around another Sun, somewhere out there but not here.

I ordered a really cool coat on Kickstarter in December and kept questioning when it would arrive; it just arrived today, well after a month and a half of the order. Several other internet purchases and complaints yielded similar outcomes, but this time, there were NO replies to inquiries until the third or fourth time when I switched from email to website contact. And still, no resolution.

My doctor has not responded twice to messages I left for her.

My mother’s trust check came exceptionally late making my rent payment for her later than usual but still, within the grace period; four days should be enough for mail to get to its destination a couple of miles away. Nope.  We were socked with a $40 late fee. I called the book keeper twice and never got a response, not to an email, either. That’s another thing I noticed: people just didn’t reply. I checked the bank, the checks were not deposited. Lost?

I have a gift for ten therapeutic massages from two birthdays ago. Last year, believe it or not, there was so much nuttiness going on with health issues here, I just never got around to taking care of myself. Finally called the therapist, made an appointment for last Thursday, heard myself saying that I’d like to follow up with an acupuncture session after, heard the time as 1:00. At 12:30 last Thursday, the therapist called: “So, where are you?”

“Don’t tell me,” I said, you said we had a 1:00.”
“You had a 12:00 with me and a 1:00 with Brian.”

Now I am beginning to doubt my sanity but this has happened before, and it goes to show, we can hear what we want to and very easily. I had my acupuncture and have to wait two weeks for that massage. And I am thinking: why don’t they call and remind people the day before?

To continue, there was my son’s accident where the windshield was hit and exploded and he was rained on with glass shards and splinters; the car was just fixed and is still full of glass. We still don’t know what caused it.

And then the kicker: At the beginning of the year I am sent a packet with a questionnaire for my mother to fill out (my job) for re-certification of her benefits. If we didn’t have these benefits, she would never have the hours of an aide’s help that she has. I didn’t get this packet until January 10th. It requires filling out about twenty-five pages of information and verifying data with print-outs and copies of financial data and more. It is hours of work. I did it, copied it all and sent it back in the envelope provided.

In the meantime, my mother was bombarded with mail which she managed to read despite her near blindness, with a “spy glass.” She inked a star next to the paragraph that read: “We are discontinuing your services because you or your representative did not return the re-certification form by January 10, 2017.”  She got the mail and I got the packet and we were screwed.  In addition, she got another letter which required my dealing with her trust company which is needed for her benefits. I was on the phone for hours.

I called her long term care company which sent the packet, apparently late, (they claim they sent one in December and another in January), and left a message with the case manager. She returned the call the next day and said to speak to the entitlement specialist. I called the entitlement specialist and left a message. No call back, two days passed along with my mothers’ services.

When I called back yesterday, Friday, the “specialist” I had left a message with informed me that they had not received the packet I mailed back. At this point I was getting frantic. I told her this was an emergency, that my mother had received a termination letter for services. She put me on hold.

I was told that they would accept emailed copies; she emailed me the questionnaire and told me to email it back once it was completed with all the documentation. That would have been thirty or more additional pages. By Monday.

Brainstorm. I told her that I had made copies of everything all assembled. “Could I bring them over and hand deliver them?”

The office had recently moved from Brooklyn and was about fifteen minutes away. The answer was affirmative.

I stopped at the bakery for a two-pound tray of lovely cookies and headed to the office with a pound of papers in hand.

There is something about meeting a telephone voice when it is attached to a person — in person. Out came “Nandi” from behind the door once I was announced; a lovely young woman. I handed her the cookies. “Cookies! No one has ever brought me cookies! You didn’t have to do that!”

Oh, but I did. It was (dress-down) Friday and everyone needs a break, a surprise. My surprise was that I was able to take care of my issue on the spot. I asked Nandi to please make copies; she took the papers to the back, and came out about ten minutes later with Carline, the woman who was training her. Nandi enlisted her mentor to go over the papers; though Nandi’s business card said she was an “entitlement specialist” she obviously had a lot to learn. I would say the first thing was to return phone calls.

After a long, hang-out, paper-work-checking chat in a conference room, a chat that went beyond the problem at hand, we were, in the end three women, from different backgrounds, ethnic groups, ages. Three women who were just trying to get through the day and head on out to begin the weekend. One knew her job, one was at the beginning of a new career, one had completed a career long ago and had begun a new one: the care of a very elderly parent. A job that for about five years had been full-time in thought and action.

I still worry about the package of papers I sent back, (full of very important, personal material), are so far lost in space.
I am worried about the rent checks and if I will have to start all over, get back to the trust and get another check.

It feels like we are all out-of-phase, and pointing at stars, and mail, and packages, and messages that are floating around somewhere in some parallel Universe.

I am hoping that by Monday my mother’s situation will be somewhat back to “normal,” whatever that is; that there will be no emergencies for a while, and that after two years and two months I can finally see my way clear to a therapeutic massage.