so much for "express"
Mom update!
It had been several days since I heard anything about Mom. Lynne, who sits at the desk behind me at work, is not often here at the office. She came in today and came over to ask how my mom was doing, which was very nice of her. I said, "Good-ish." That was as far as I knew, really.
But, it also occurred to me I should ask Christopher again. I went to Facebook Messenger and saw in the message history that our last exchange was . . . last Thursday. I got completely distracted by Pride Weekend and never thought to ask after her over that time. Should I feel guilty about that? Well, guilt is just not something I do. Besides, I do feel pretty confident that, even with Christopher's spotty record of keeping me informed (and I have plenty to take responsibility for in terms of keeping myself informed; I can't fairly make that entirely Christopher's job), if something terrible had happened, I would have known about it. No news is good news, basically.
I had totally assumed Mom must be back home now. This was wrong. I messaged Christopher this morning, So is Mom back home now? -- and he replied, No, not yet. She's still at Good Samaritan.
. . . Oh. Shit. I wrote back, It's been nearly a week, right? They don't have any ETA on getting back home? That makes me nervous
Then I saw the little dots showing that Christopher was composing a message. He took quite a while. What was he going to tell me? It could have been anything. Reassurance, or details on Mom taking a turn for the worse somehow. What finally came through was lengthy for him, and sort of existed somewhere in the middle:
I agree with the nervousness cause that's how I felt at first as well being as I know how mom has always said she'd never want to be put in a home. However, I've been told it could be longer than a week but there's nothing really to worry about if she's willing to put the effort in her rehab. It's only when someone doesn't try when it gets to a point where they end up staying. That's definitely not mom right now. However, she did go play bingo yesterday, lol. We'll be going to visit again today & I'll look into an update.
So, I feel better after reading that. Kind of. "That’s definitely not mom right now" is reassuring . . . her still being at the rehab center after six days is still, you know, not.
I've been saying for some time that Christopher really has no business living there, making himself an extra burden that neither Mom or Bill need. His presence there has still been a very much appreciated convenience and help in times like these, however. So now I'm sort of reaping rewards for something I don't really think should have happened. I guess you could argue it's just making the best of a bad situation. I would not nearly as easily get information as quickly as I am now, with him there.
There's not much else to tell today. Shobhit and I spent the evening at home, watching television. The Westworld season finale -- pretty good. The most recent episode of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver -- one of the funniest episodes they have ever done, seriously. I nearly hurt myself laughing. The season finale of season 1 of Billions -- truly excellent. So much so that, although I initially was going to stop there for the evening, it left me eager for more, and so we went on to the first episode of season 2. Then I finally went to bed.
Well, I guess I could tell you more, about the time I spent on the phone today with American Express, after getting an annual fee on the account I called to cancel on June 2, but I don't want to get into much more detail here because it was all just so infuriating and exhausting. I just hung up after being on the phone a second time today, for forty-five minutes this time, the first half of which being before I was put on hold and then wound up back at their main menu. I had been very patient and understanding with customer service representatives up to that point, but once I got on the phone with a live person again after that, I wasn’t so nice anymore.
In the end -- after an additional forty-five fucking minutes! (additional being on top of a wholly separate call made an hour before that) -- I finally got a supervisor who did send me an email confirmation that my account was closed, and I'll even get a fax copy of said letter within a day, she said. I wasn’t having any of this shit with waiting for a letter confirmation in the mail, during which time I could still be charged interest in a charge that should not have been applied to my account to begin with.
But, whatever. I have the email saying the account is closed. I feel better now. The whole endeavor did suck up too much of the middle of my work day though.
[posted 1:09 pm]