I Might Be Moving?

I went to bed at around 5 a.m. instead of the planned midnight. The reasonable thing to do in that case is to sleep all day, but the cats need their Prozac by noon or so, so I reframed it as being a nice six-hour nap instead of a night of sleep.

I felt horrendous when I got up, and so reminded myself that this is not a good day to decide anything and that I should take it easy and focus on the absolute essentials, including dropping off an Amazon return, because I plan to fly to Ypsilanti on Monday and have much to do before that. I also sternly instructed myself not to spend all day texting people about my every fleeting thought and most definitely not to sit in front of the computer doing things that don’t need to be done today.

I had told my sister that the cat transport people were no longer speaking to me. She said to give them a chance to process and maybe they’d respond. I was pretty sure they wouldn’t, because we had been going back and forth pretty steadily, and then nothing, but my sister, as always, proved to be correct: This morning I received a genuinely reassuring email laying out in detail how they would proceed if Marvin threatened to escape his temporary lodgings, and so then I had to hop on the computer, after all, to correct the record. I was wrong to think ill of them.

However, that really is a big expense for a person who is retiring who didn’t make that much money to begin with, so in my email thanking the husband profusely for setting my mind at ease, I put forth the idea that I could travel with just one of them, that person escorting Marvin (in part because he is one pound heavier) and I Duckworth. I’m sure they will be amenable to that.

It was also essential to text my cat friend to ask for a pep talk on flying with Marvin, which I did before seeing the email from the professionals, because I must be driving our realtor crazy, though maybe she is very used to this exact kind of thing. 

Since I did happen to be sitting at my desk, I decided to give my former employer a call to see if I need to link to an external bank in advance of making a modest withdrawal from my 401(k), in the event that I did decide to buy the house. This caused me to identify yet another annoying aspect of having to talk to a machine about every dad-blasted thing these days. I’m so glad this whole A.I. thing will be over in a week or two, because I’m already sick of it.

Besides it never understanding anything I say (“I’m sorry; I could not understand”) and offering one ridiculous idea after the next, it is annoying having to listen to long-winded recorded instructions: “If you’re ready to proceed, enter the six-digit number we sent to your phone number with last four digits such-and-such.” Right after the word “number,” that is my precious seconds going right down the drain. It is certainly possible to speak over the thing, but it is not then a serene exchange, and it sometimes gets what you interrupted it to say and sometimes not.

The New York Times on my phone is doing a very weird thing where it continually flips back to June 26. If you want to know what happened that day, let me know. Yesterday, it began to do this every several seconds. I called them. I will let you imagine the conversation I had with the A.I. about this. I am going to have to live with it. Here is the kicker: Soon it will not be any better to discuss the matter with an actual human being because they will not have learned anything about the topic in the first place or will have forgotten it, so if the A.I. cannot fix it, it cannot be fixed, and my experience is that it does an astonishingly poor job with just about everything. Really, we are doomed, just to mention it. 

I cannot afford to have an A.I. raising my blood pressure, either, because the higher number was 25 somethings higher than usual yesterday. Twenty-five units? Slices? Heaps? Whatever they’re called, there were 25 more of them than usual. I checked my records and saw that it had been 13 years since I had an upper number that high. Objectively speaking, it was just four inches (?) over normal, but my blood pressure as a rule is very low. However, I think I have this figured out already. I think it’s the tablespoon of tamari I put in my garlic-permeated dinners. This I can adjust.

So, anyway, the 401(k) person said I did need to establish the link to the external bank before making a withdrawal. I was only calling to get the answer to that question, but once I found out that I did need to do that and that it could take up to 15 days, I sprang into action, since there could also be a wait associated with the withdrawal itself. It turned out my account was locked due to fraudulent activity five years ago, but that was easily and quickly straightened out. 

I initiated the link to the other bank which was established immediately, so it certainly seemed to make sense to go right ahead with the withdrawal. I am now all about my taxes, and was delighted to hear that the withdrawal would be subject to withholding, with mandatory percentages for federal and state that I could choose to make higher.

At this point, it started to seem like I might be moving to Ypsilanti again, but I think I should still give it a bit of time before asking our realtor to restart the process. But then, is it fair to leave the poor woman to stew about this all weekend? 

This can’t possibly be the way to end up retired and living 2500 miles away, all these random little things leading to other little random things, or is this the only way anything at all ever happens?

It is also essential, on this day of great haggardness, to mention what remarkable and precious friends and family members I have. I wasn’t exactly expecting anyone (outside my own family) to say, “I always knew you were a self-pitying jerk—glad you’re finally seeing it,” but I was nonetheless very touched by Lisa Morin Carcia’s kind comment here.

When my father fell ill, I made the acquaintance of a high school classmate of his, a devout Catholic who has become a wonderful friend. After I told her that I couldn’t move to Michigan because there was no possible way whatsoever to get Marvin there, she emailed: “It is difficult to assess if this is an omen, a road block, or just a hurdle.” Very nicely put indeed. That is the whole trouble, to be sure.

She had some ideas about cat transport, and she said that while she was not equipped to assess the emotional aspects, the economics of getting into real estate are highly favorable: "If there be any virtue, or if there be any praise, think on these things". (Phil 4:8)