Senior Classes, Scams and Reading Addictions

I signed up to go to two, free back-to-back classes at the senior hall with lunch in between. I should have known when the company sponsoring the seminar is giving you a free lunch there will be a significant sales pitch involved. Still, the two topics were interesting---just not exactly what I expected. The morning class was all about scams, schemes and swindles and how to protect yourself against them and it all boils down to not being gullible---my word, not theirs. Apparently, there are still people out there who believe they can win lotteries they didn’t enter overseas or they trust that people who send them checks for hundreds more than something they are selling on Craig’s List made an ‘honest mistake’ and you can just go ahead, cash their (phony) check and make it right by refunding them the difference. And apparently, there are still people who will fall for the phone scam about grandsons needing get-out-of-jail-money or that your computer is being taken over by a virus but never fear, the guy on the phone can help you stop it. I didn’t learn about any scams I didn’t already know about, but on the other hand it’s a good idea to be reminded of them from time to time because who knows when your brain cells will get wiped out by a meteor shower. 

The afternoon session was all about the services of a company that was new to me but has been around our town for thirteen years, a group of eighteen---all women---CPAs and Daily Money Managers for seniors. It’s for people who are struggling with keeping up with mail, bill paying, filing receipts, budgeting, doing income taxes or who are trying to sort out their medical bills and their insurance issues. They’ll do everything but sign your checks which they are not authorized to do---it’s not a conservatorship---nor will they teach you about investing, which is what I thought the lecture was going to be about. My mistake, I didn’t read the class description carefully enough. I did, however, pick up a good resource for researching the background and experience of financial brokers, advisers and firms---BrokerCheck.org. It was on a handout they gave us and that handout was worth my time spent at these classes. Assuming, of course, that when I need those resources links I’ll still know where I filed the handout and I’ll remember how to use a computer. Those meteor showers can melt the marbles in your head if you're not wearing your tinfold hat.

One interesting fact about this group is that they are funded by a senior millage, one I voted for and they charge on a sliding scale from $3.00 to $48.00 an hour. Boo hoo, guess which end of the scale I fall in. The average person who uses the service has two, two hour house calls per month. I do not need a service like this but it’s nice to know it exists. And if you are poor and lonely it would be worth $12.00 a month just to get four hours’ worth of company. For me, at the rate of $48 times four ($192) I’d rather hire someone to take me out for a nice steak, a bottle of wine and a movie. And it bums me out that I’d be essentially paying twice if I use this service---in my county taxes to supplement their other clients and then again by check for myself. Still, I can see how a service like this can keep you living longer in your own home. When you’re old and alone in the world, if you keep forgetting to pay your utilities social services steps in and bing-bam-boom you're shipped off to a nursing home via way of a court order. (That's not a joke like meteor showers and tinfold hats, in case you're wondering.)

Change of topic: Reading has become my excuse for not doing stuff I should be doing now that summer is here. If it was a drug I should be in rehab to rid myself of the gotta-read-monkey on my back. If I’ve got a book or the Kindle in my hand, I can’t do exercise I desperately need to be doing nor can I deep clean my closet, prepare things to take to the auction house or organize a garage sale. In the past month I’ve read The President is Missing; The Handmaid’s Tale, The Woman who Smashed Codes; Murder, Curlers and Cream; The Good Widow; Born a Crime; and I just started reading two books at once: The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry for book club and the Luckiest Girl Alive just because the title called me over to the book rack at the grocery store like a drug pusher promising me a good time if I’d just exchange a little money for what he’s selling.

The Handmaid’s Tale surprised me the most because I didn’t realize it was dystopian novel set in the near future after the U.S. government had been overthrown and taken over by a totalitarian, patriarchal society. (Silly me, I thought it was going to be a tale about a too-weird-for-words cult.) Thank goodness I don’t have Hula or I’d be binge watching The Handmaid's Tale seasons one and two. I long to know more! In the era we’re in right now, it’s easy to suspend my disbelief and imagine that something like the author wrote about could actually happen if we don’t reign in our collective intolerance and start doing some critical thinking about what it means to be the kind of nation our Founding Fathers envisioned---one that values Truth, Justice and Compromise. ©

From Boredom to our Laugh-Fest

Just click along to another blog if you don’t want to hear a bored widow wailing about stupid things that she has no right to be wailing about in the first place. That’s what happened when I hadn’t talked to another human in several days and it didn’t have to be that way. I have both a landline and a cell phone that I could have used to chat with someone plus a car in the garage that could have taken me to some people populated place when I got tired of being alone with no one but the TV to get fat, sassy and nasty with. Not that I’m ever nasty with people but I’ve been known to use a few nasty words when I talk back to the TV news pundits.

Since I got my new landline phone with the ‘block caller’ button I don’t get nearly as many junk calls as I used to get every night between five and seven. I did get one yesterday from a guy who wanted to warn me that my computer was being taken over by hackers. He said he was from Microsoft and was calling to help me fix the breach. I took great delight in saying, “Oh, no, that’s terrible! Please tell me what to do!” and then I pressed the ‘block caller’ button to disconnect the jerk. It’s hard to believe that people still fall for that scam, but apparently enough people do so they keep trying to find those suckers in the haystack.

Monday I got up at the crack of dawn if dawn came at 7:30. I hate getting up with an alarm clock but I had places to go and fun to have with my posse of Gathering Girls. The seven of us had plans to meet for an early lunch at a popular bar slash restaurant. They have a lunch menu that offers ten things for $5.50 each. Such a deal. The acoustics in the place were so bad I hope never to cross over their threshold again. But I would have loved the place if I was young and slightly buzzed at happy hour. The place was noisy and filled to the rafters with grey-haired old women and a few working class guys who had me thinking about the Village People singing Y.M.C.A. "Young man, there's no need to feel down. I said young man..." At one point we Gathering Girls were attempting to discuss a thrift store that unbeknownst to me is named ‘Y.E.S.S.’ and it was like the old Abbott and Costello baseball nicknames’ skit, “Who’s on first.” “No, Y.E.S.S. is closed today.” “Which is it…yes, or no?” “Africa’s Child is open, Y.E.S.S. is closed.” I was confused until I actually saw the thrift store sign a half hour later.

At the first of several thrift stores we went to after lunch, three of us put our purses in one shopping cart and it was like keeping track of the president’s nuclear codes football. “You’re in charge of the cart now.” “I’m taking charge of the cart.” “Where’s the cart?” “I thought you had the cart.” “I thought you did!” You can’t be too careful wandering around a place where a hundred dollar bill could probably buy out the entire glassware and china departments. Slight exaggeration. It might take closer to ninety dollars.

After leaving the last thrift store three of us stopped at the Guy Land Cafeteria for dessert and we laughed so hard two of us were ready to burst and the third Gathering Girl wasn’t far behind. It all started when lady number three shared that she goes to Bible Study every week because, she said, “I like the stories.” Then she leaned as if to share a succulent secret and in a voice barely above a whisper she said, “Sometimes I have doubts. Do you believe in the Immaculate Conception? I mean I’m just not sure… We’re supposed to believe everything in the Bible is true.” I leaned in and replied, “I don’t care if it's in the Bible it takes a man to make a baby!” Then I babbled on, as the other two laughed, about how back then they didn’t understand how a lot of natural things work, "why the sun comes up every day, how babies are made," etc. Lady number two chimed in, “We think we know the sun will come up every day but we really don’t know that for sure” which led to a remark about Trump blowing up the world. Yadda, Yadda and a lot of laughter later we noticed the man in the next booth had slid over in his seat so he could eavesdrop better. He probably wanted to point out that today a virgin could---with the help of modern science or a turkey baster---have a baby without having sex. It was one of the funniest, gut-splitting and most fun conversations I’ve had in a long time and I wish I could have recorded it to savor later.

Unbelievable, isn’t it, after me trying so hard for so long to find friends after my husband died, that I finally have some. Making new friends is not easy at any age but in widowhood it’s probably the hardest, and maybe that’s because so many of us have lost our best and longest standing friendships when our spouses died---that one person we could truly be our unguarded selves around. At least that’s my Truth to take or reject. ©

Pink Hats, Politics and Pedicures

Another busy week with half of it behind me, half in front of me. Monday was haircut day followed by having to drop off a check to cover up an old person mistake I made of sending a payment in the mail to the wrong address. The senior hall has a physical address with no mailbox and an accounts receivable address with one. Thankfully I still use return address labels on my mail or I never would have known that my February/March RSVPs were in danger of getting canceled. That same day I learned on the news that a new phone scam is going around. The caller pretends to have trouble with a headset and asks, “Can you hear me?” When you reply “yes” they record it, hoping to get more information out of you so they can somehow use your own voice for credit card fraud challenge questions. “Is this Mrs. So-and-so?” “Yes.” “Did you just charge a $10,000 necklace at Tiffany’s? “Yes.” Or another one that involves them playing your voice back to you as “proof” that you ordered something you didn’t and they say, they’ll put you in collection if you don’t wire them the money RIGHT NOW! A few hours before hearing that news story I’d gotten one of those calls. I knew enough to hang up after the caller asked about a credit card but not before she got a chance to record my “yes.” Growing older is definitely a blood sport.

Decades ago I read a book set in the future. Tensions were high. Masses of people were demonstrating every day in the streets and no one went anywhere without their face masks in case the wind carried tear gas your way as you skirted around the demonstrators on your way to work. The military all wore white, metallic gear and the protagonist in the book was a specialist in crowd control. Crazy story-line for a romance book but it worked well enough for me to remember the plot all these years later. Do you think the “future” is here? This past week I’ve been waking up in the middle of the night, worried about what’s going to happen next. Already I miss having a no-drama president who I didn’t have to be concerned about blowing up the world. On the good side, I was able to find hot pink yarn to make ‘pussycat hats’ for several family and friends who are gearing up to make their opposition known when key votes come up in Congress that will hurt a multitude of issues they care deeply about. As one of my blogger friends who is also making post-Woman’s March hats wrote, “Every stitch I knit is a protest against the actions of our current President” and to that I say, “Amen, sister! I feel exactly the same way.”

Ohmygod, just when I thought I’d weaned myself off from stopping at Starbucks every time the car leaves the garage the president’s fan club is calling for another boycott of their coffee houses. This time because their CEO announced they are hiring 10,000 refugees over the next five years world-wide who have worked as interpreters and support personal to U.S. troops. The latter part of that sentence the fan club “forgets” to include in their rally cry. They just don’t like Starbucks’ CEO because he dared to criticize the Muslim ban this weekend. So instead of coming home after getting my haircut and having a sensible lunch, the boycott made me go to Starbucks for a ham and cheese stuffed croissant and cascara latte. That’s a whole day’s worth of calories consumed in one meal and if this keeps up I’ll be one of those fatties that #45 likes to insult. Who am I kidding? I haven’t had a figure that would meet with his approval since I was thirty-something, assuming he’d even look twice at anyone wearing a B-cup bra.

After my husband died I went through a pamper-the-widow phase when I got my first (and last) manicure and massage, and a year’s worth of pedicures. Then I quit the pedicures because apparently getting pampered isn’t my thing and spending $45 on something I could do myself seemed like a total waste of time and money. Things were going along fine. I don’t wear sandals so I didn’t care if my toenail maintaining skills are not what used to be when I was young and agile. But when your toenails get so long they’re snagging the carpet when you walk barefoot you know something has to give. I made an appointment and, boy, did I hit the jackpot! The young pedicurist and I had the room to ourselves and right from the start our conversation took off like a rocket. She has friends who went to the Woman’s March and she said she feels an obligation to educate herself about politics and that wasn’t just lip service. She knew her stuff. She said she’s actually excited to be a part of what she and her friends view as a new wave of feminism on a par with the Suffragettes and Woman’s Movement of my era. “I wanna be part of a history!” she said. When I told her I’m making some pink pussycat hats, she asked if she could buy one. I left that pedicure appointment energized by a sense that her generation has ‘got this’---that they aren’t going to let woman’s rights and our place in the world backslide without a damn good fight. ©