Raincharm’s Weblog

One of our jaunts today was to pick up prescriptions. It was the first big order on our Medicare plan. Of the seven prescriptions, 6 had a $0 cost. The 7th was over $600. For a 3 month supply. This almost hit the deductible for the year. We knew this was coming and had stocked up as much as we could on the old health care plan where the same order would have been $60. We may reexplore the Canadian drug pipeline that we had used when a previous health plan had similarly high costs as we’re paying now. But with tariffs and other political issues I’m not sure it will be as easy as it was several years ago.

Our big outing today was applying to volunteer. Actually step 2 of the application process. The first part was online, several months ago now. This part was called a tryout and was actually an interview. The questions were either a follow-up on the earlier application and a few new questions.

Part 1 had 24,000 applicants. 6,000 made the cut to Part 2. Apparently 2,400 will be chosen from this group. What are our chances? Who knows.

We want to be involved when the World Cup, somehow. The most likely scenario is going down to the stadium area and hanging out to participate in the vibe. The second scenario would be landing a volunteer gig. The third scenario is managing to get a ticket through one of the lotteries.

Carl only applied because I wanted to. If we don’t get chosen I will be a little disappointed, but fine. Carl will be fine either way.

The focus is really on having the soccer world come to Seattle. However it turns out for us.

I try to make sure I get something done each day. Today’s list is pretty short.

I made an updated list because I had crossed most off of my last list.

I checked on our first big prescription order since moving to Medicare and new providers. The order was placed on Monday morning. They suggested we would here it was filled and ready for pickup on Wednesday. Nada, so I checked on-line this morning.  The site indicated 3 of the 7 were ready for pickup. The other 4 showed, “In progress.” We don’t want to go to the pharmacy 2 or 3 or 4 times. That was the reason for ordering them all together. We have time, this time, so we’re waiting. I may try mail order next time, but that seems like we have to change pharmacies, and I would like to just deal with one source if possible. Maybe I’m making this harder than it needs to be. Learning curve and all.

Besides dealing with drugs, we took a long walk in the cool, but not raining, morning.

One of my post-retirement self-assigned tasks is to go through all of our tools and combine like types and figure out how to store them so we know; 1) what we have,  and 2) where they are. The wet, now dry – at least for the time being if it ever/never stops raining  – basement, has expanded the basement sorting well beyond tools. So the tools themselves will have to wait their turn.

Yesterday I decided it was time to sort and file all of the paperwork received in conjunction with acquiring Medicare, in all of its parts. After pulling out all of the brochures provided to help, confuse, overwhelm, and explain the alphabet soup of Medicare choices, it was not a large amount of paper.

And while I was looking at our filing system to decide which file box they should join (medical or finance) I started looking at some of the other paperwork we had. Sorting through this was almost a fun activity, in a liberating way. Old work reviews, medical plans that we’re no longer part of, explanation of benefits from a decade or more ago are all headed for shredding or recycling. I did stop at the EOBs for 2018, the year of Carl’s half million dollar medical expenses. I just wasn’t quite ready to send it on its way.

There are guidelines for how long to save certain records, and I probably exceed the suggestions for some things. On one hand I still have the gas/travel records for my 1980 Honda Civic that lasted 20 years and 280,000 miles. It contains records of my trips crossing the country back and forth, first by myself, then with boyfriend/husband in tow, and finally with kids. But on the other shoulder is the voice reminding me of going through my father-in-law’s files after he passed, and not wishing that on our kids.

We started the day dealing with a mostly dead car. It had been mostly dead for a few days. Mostly dead means the idiot lights would turn on when the key was turned, but only clicking after that, no engine start.

Apparently the mostly dead had been preceded by a few starts when it clicked, but eventually started. This almost dead situation was noted, but not acted upon, and the car parked nose down at the bottom of our sloped driveway. What this means is that our jumper cables are not long enough to reach. On the positive side, it was in the bottom spot, not blocking our other car.

It needed some help, so we made an appointment for this morning. But still needed to get the car to the shop, either by starting it or towing it. Cue AAA. They came by and did a quick diagnostic and jump. According to the nice AAA person, it was the battery. And the battery was original to the 2017 car. As they are expected to last about 5 years, I guess it was time. Moral of the story, pay attention to almost dead signals, and don’t park in the least accessible location.

And don’t forget the smaller variety. I think we’re out of 9 volt, AAA, and possibly low on AA too.

We like jigsaw puzzles, and got 3 new ones for Christmas. In addition I got one at my retirement from work.

Two from Christmas have been completed,  and the retirement puzzle is currently under construction.

We’ve been fitting in work on the puzzles around other chores. My other chores today included our first big pharmacy order under Medicare, and summarizing expenses from 2025. I actually enjoy this bit of spreadsheet play. We started really tracking expenses in the current format in 2011, so we can see the trends and changes over the years.

Before we listed payments and reciepts, but not categotized. This really started when we were trying to look ahead to figure  how much we should be saving for retirement. Our finance person asked the simple question, “How much do you spend on food each month?” We didn’t have an answer, so we started tracking. I guess now we get to see if that planning works out.

Today’s primary task was to take down the Christmas decorations. Our yard waste pickup is Monday, so we wanted to get the tree to the curb.

The picture captures a good percentage of the decorations from this year. There was a creche and some other bits and pieces around elsewhere.

Carl is showing off one of his presents, originally gifted by Mariner Mike Blowers to the craftsman who built a staircase for him. It was handed on by a fellow blogger. It’s a heavy bat.

The Christmas decorations all survived our basement flood because they had been brought upstairs. We did lose some Halloween stuff, but that was all much less important.

Most importantly, Carl’s mother’s ornaments were not harmed. That would have been hard to accept.

And we did get through the decision phase on our collection of cassette tapes. One or two have been retained, with the rest destined for a recycling firm, and potentially a few to a used record store in our neighborhood.

A term I heard at a meeting this morning. It perfectly describes our cleaning up, and sometimes out, situation.

I’m trying to slow down, but not stop, take smaller bites when I should ask for input. My first area of stuff planned to go through is old cassette tapes and some homemade CDs. It’s only 4 medium boxes, and I know some will be easy to say it can leave the house.

One fun bit from today was taking the 2025 Filthy Lucre Funds to the winner. We allow each person in a household to enter a guess, and their house had 4 guesses. She described the different methods behind the guesses.

• Used AI with the 2 pictures of the money provided as input. $81.00
• Trying to estimate a value per inch based on what they could see, and then expanding to the whole jar. $48.15
• 6-7 twice from a teenager. $67.67
• Used the 2024 actual total. $75.69

As it turned out 2024 = $75.69 and 2025 = $75.40 were very close, but this is not the norm, so it might not work in 2026.

On the outdoor front, a mix of hard rain and partly sunny. So we went out for a medium walk. There are several lawns, including our parking strip, that are being torn apart by crows.

According to the article in the Seattle Times today, they are eating European Chafer grubs, who would kill the lawn themselves if left alone.

I’m not sure what we’re going to do. Maybe find a ground cover that will fare better.

Baby steps on recovering the basement.

I’m just trying to clean the floor before putting things “away.” This entails moving things out and off of an area so the floor is accessible. Then sweeping, vacuuming, and mopping. And each thing I pick up begs the question of should it be retained, moved on, or thrown out. I can’t answer most of the keep or not questions on my own. And the partner in these questions isn’t in the same head space as I am. I think  I am more able to focus on this task because I have a time void that work used to fill. He, on the other hand, has well established routines and things he does.

Plus, final destination questions aside, where does it sit while moved. It’s rather exhausting. And it’s generally dusty and full of cobwebs in the corners.

Essentially it’s taking quite a bit longer to accomplish than I thought it would. I completed about 30 square feet today. But I have time, right?

We welcomed in the new year in bed, but hardly asleep. I could here the downtown fireworks, about 3-4 miles away, going off with a soft, bass sound. The neighborhood explosives were much louder. Like in the backyard loud. And they went off until about 1 AM. Needless to say, we slept in a bit this morning.

Our “work” today consisted of identifying the winner of our Found Filthy Lucre contest, the 2025 version. On walks Carl looks for money that has been lost, and is now found. At the end of the year the found funds are totaled and pictures taken. Then we invite the neighbors to guess the total, and the closest to the actual amount wins the money. This year we had 33 entrants, and the winner was only 29 cents from the total of $75.40. We will deliver their winnings tomorrow.

Other than that we were treated to a good luck black-eyed peas gumbo gathering at a neighbor’s house. Really good eats and conversation.

Generally speaking a quiet start to the year. We didn’t do any work on recovering the basement from the minor flood. But no worries, since I’m no longer working I should have plenty of time to work on that in the coming weeks. Yes, a few things have happened since I last posted….