What it’s like living in the country, or, Now What?

First things first. I want to thank all of you for sending me consolation notes about the demise of my favorite cat, James the Magnificent. He had his own following and he was immensely proud of it. He sat just to the right on my computer desk, and he knew his own name. OK, I might have made that up. I had to read his name to him.

Now, this is a crabby column, so if you are expecting sunshine, shuffle on along, it ain’t here. We moved to the country for many reasons 38 years ago. My beloved in-laws, Chet and Jessie White, almost always lived in the country. Their son, Bill, just had to move out of Albuquerque to be where he could breathe the crisper clean air. Things were lovely, except for the squirrels, but that was another column. Then lately things have gotten crazy.

We have grandchildren, four girls and one boy. The two oldest are going to Arizona and Oklahoma for college. We decided to open a special account where we could deposit money and thus make it easy for our delightful students to take out money when they needed it. Bill did this when our sons were in college, and it worked great.

He went into the bank in Edgewood and returned with me to sign a form jointly. Well, a year ago, I almost got hacked on my computer and I flagged my account, (that was another column) so I personally had to go into my bank to do anything related to my account. The Edgewood bank ran Bill’s name, no problem. Then they ran mine and said I could not be on the account because my name was flagged with credit bureaus. (Yes, I flagged my own account and I had driver’s licenses and military ID. Not enough.)

I had to go to my bank at Moriarty and bring a letter saying I was the victim and not the villain. OK, then I had to prove I lived on a real street in Edgewood. How do we know you are from Edgewood? My checks have a Post Office box number, and my name did not appear on water, propane, or electric bills. Bill pays them online; he was with me. We just celebrated our 50th wedding anniversary. Not good enough.

Do you see a problem here? We wanted to deposit money, not take it out. Ladies, if your name and street address are not somewhere they recognize, then you do not exist. I took them lots and lots of papers. We will see, they have not called us to come and sign in yet.

Next, our computers, Wi-fi and phones. Since June 20, our landline has been out. We called the phone company to come and fix it. Thank God we have cell phones. I have waited on the phone five separate times for four, that’s FOUR HOURS, to get to a person. When I do, they make a ticket for a tech guy, and then you wait from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Since June we have had two techs and they were good, but we found out the lines have been bad. Twice I waited at home, and no one came. They text the cell and say to use the computer to contact them, but there is no internet at my house. AGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG.

The phone guy I finally got to listen said I had too many phones hooked up and too many televisions hooked up. That's new. It never happened before. I will be waiting this Thursday from 12:45 to 7:15. Write me a letter and send it by mail. The last time I sent a check into an arts alliance it took seven days to make it three blocks from my house. I should have walked it over.

As if all of that wasn't enough, this week the Edgewood police came to our door about 7:30 a.m. to check on Bill and me. Our phones took it upon themselves to send out a 911 call all on their own.

My neighbor had the same thing happen about six weeks ago; they jumped the fence to check on her. Come on now, we can’t be the only ones this is happening to. My phone is out, but drop me a line at donaldduckjo@gmail.com.

Roaring Mouse. Really Crabby. Out.