When I'm 64

If you've recently turned 65 you know what I'm talking about. If you haven't, just wait! You are in for a treat. You are about to become one of the most popular people on the planet.

The mail and phone calls started about 6 months prior to when I'd be turning 65. On average, I get five pieces of mail each week related to Medicare. I get even more phone calls. And now that I'm only a month away from my Medicare effective date, they are turning up in my Facebook news feed. They are wearing me down. They are wearing me out.

Caller: I know you've been getting a lot of mail about Medicare. It's probably all very confusing to you.
Me: Not really. I throw it all away.

Then there was the young man who was putting serious pressure on me to buy the supplement he was selling. I said I needed time to do a bit more due diligence. I said I wanted to check with some of my friends who'd read all that stuff instead of throwing it away to see what they'd chosen and why they'd chosen it.

"Did you consult with your friends before you bought your car insurance?"

"It's not the same thing," I said.

"Okay then, did you consult your friend before you bought the health insurance you have now?"

I didn't but so what if I did? I am free to ask a Ouija board if that's what I want to do. Bottom line, that remark didn't go down well with me at all. "In essence, you have just questioned my judgement. I'll tell you this, when you get to be 64, you don't especially like your judgement questioned, particularly by someone half your age. This conversation is over."

Bottom line is that I first got Marketplace healthcare with assistance from some clown who called claiming he could make the process run more smoothly. Totally and completely bungled it. I ended up having to be rescued by an agent that I'd used before and whom I trusted and who has helped me with my healthcare insurance needs ever since. I'll go to his office when I need help. I don't want or need any more help from clowns on the phone. 

Of course, not all of them are phone clowns. Some of them insist that they must come by to "meet you" and "explain" all the "new" benefits of Medicare. Some days I'm so beaten down by these people that I end up making appointments. (I really hate to be rude to people on the phone.) So this morning I ended up giving the guy who only wanted 15 minutes of my time nearly an hour. I still don't know what Plan N is. But I do know that I'd have to make 40 trips to a specialist on the plan I signed up for to break even on his plan. Not likely. Guess I'm just going to have to get rude.

10,000 Steps

My Fitbit goal is 10,000 steps per day. While we were in England I hit and exceeded that goal nearly every day. We did a lot of walking - usually once in the morning and again in the evening and nothing is better than walking along the seafront. Here are some of the photos from our walks.

The Great Escape

I had one job. It was to escort the Bicker Sisters from the hospital to the car. Most days I did my job quite well. But one day I decided to take the stairs (which are located right next to the elevator) and meet them on the ground floor.

What could go wrong? I left them on the first floor waiting for the elevator to the ground floor while I walked down one flight. I got to the bottom and waited for the elevator door to open. I know my jaw hit the floor when the door opened and no one was inside. No one. I looked in again in total disbelief. There was absolutely nowhere for them to hide in there. Where were they?

Perhaps they'd been busy bickering and missed getting on the elevator. I decided to wait for the next one. While I was waiting, a young staff member came to wait for the elevator.

"I seem to have lost a couple of old dears. I was supposed to meet them down here but they didn't get off the elevator."

He seemed to get a bit of a chuckle out of that. "Don't worry. We'll find them."

The elevator opened again and an orderly pushed out a bed but no Bicker Sisters. Perhaps something had happened with Mark's dad and they called her back to his room.

I got on the elevator and went back up to the first floor. The Bicker Sisters weren't waiting for the elevator. I looked down the corridor that leads to the main building. Empty. I went back to Stan's room. Not there.

Not knowing what else to do or where else to look, I'd just have to tell Mark that I'd lost them.

I went outside and headed for the car when I saw Mark driving toward me. There in the back sear were the Bicker Sisters. When they arrived at the car without me, Mark asked them, "Where's Barbara?"

"Barbara?" (Like they'd never heard my name before.) Then they started in with the excuses.

"There were so many people on the elevator and they were all pushing buttons." (There are only three buttons to push - Ground Floor, 1st Floor and 2nd Floor - if it had been a high-rise building we'd probably still be looking for them.) "I think we got off on the wrong floor." (You think? They'd only been going to that hospital everyday for over a month.)

Apparently they went up to the second floor, crossed the corridor over to the main building, and then took a different elevator down to the ground floor.

Looks like a fairly sophisticated evasion tactic to me. Mark believes that they secretly wear camouflage around the house and practice their ninja moves when we're not there. I don't doubt it.

The Bicker Sisters

Mark's stepmother is 84 years old. Her sister is 80. They appear to be sweet little old ladies, what the British call "old dears", until they start talking. They bicker about everything. They argue about who will put the bread into the toaster. They argue over whether the toast should have marmalade. They argue about who will make the tea. They argue about what shoes and coats should be worn on any given day. They argue about moving chairs from one room to another. They argue about what time to leave for the hospital. Once they are there, they argue about what time to go home. I even heard them argue about a card game that took place decades earlier.

One couldn't compliment the other without an argument breaking out.

 "I hope I'm as strong as you are when I'm your age."

"I don't know why you say that. I'm not a strong person at all."

"I think you are. I think you're a very strong person."

"I'm not...I'm not."

"You are."

"I'm not."

"You are."

"I'm not."

And on it went. I wanted to bang my head against the wall. At least they're not lonely or lacking conversation.

Perhaps They WILL Spit in the Food

Years ago we were taken out for dinner in Manchester by Mark's grown children. After waiting for well over 30 minutes for a table we started to get a bit "antsy" about being seated. I'd gone to inquire and when I didn't come back with a suitable answer Mark was prepared to do battle. "Don't say anything, dad. If you complain, they'll spit in your food."

Well, we just couldn't believe it. Wouldn't believe it. People don't do that sort of thing. But then when we returned to Clacton, we booked a room at the Premier Inn on the seafront. It was a great room - queen size bed, sofa, desk, lighted makeup mirror. Elevator. Reasonably priced parking. It's brand new, nothing has been retrofitted. After being at the hospital all day we came back and found that we had no towels. I checked in the bathroom, on the closet shelf, and on the bed. No towels. During this check I also noted that the bathroom hadn't actually been cleaned. Toothpaste residue in the sink and the toilet needed brushing. As long as I had to go get towels, I felt I should mention the lack of cleaning.

"My bathroom wasn't cleaned, which I can live with - but I have no towels and I can't live with that. So if I could just get some towels..."

He didn't have any there so he brought them up.

The next day when we came back from the hospital, not only had our bathroom NOT been cleaned, someone had actually pooped in our toilet and left it for us. We were stunned. Management was summoned to the room. The housekeeping manager came and personally cleaned the bathroom. We were refunded for one night's stay. But we decided we'd be ahead to look for another hotel because we no longer felt safe in that one. Seriously. Who does that kind of thing? (The same people who spit in your food, no doubt.)

We learned that part of the "deal" when building that hotel was that they would be required to hire people from the local Jobs Center. My best guess is that some (if not all) of those people would rather be drawing a check and doing nothing and feel that brushing out a toilet or cleaning up toothpaste residue is beneath them. My suggestion to them is to get an education and acquire some skills that allow them to do work that is more to their liking.

70 Decibels

Since Mark's dad seemed to be doing a bit better we decided to go to Manchester to visit the kids and grandkids over the weekend. And in our attempt to stay in thoroughly modern places, we booked a room at the Premier Inn in Prestwich rather than our usual Church Inn.

Mark secured the last available room for the weekend. It was a disabled room, which meant it was on the ground floor and had wider than average doors. Not a problem. It also had a queen size bed, a sofa, and a desk.

The problem was that when you turned on the bathroom light, the exhaust fan came on automatically. This wasn't all that unusual. What was unusual was that the fan was measuring 70 decibels. (Yes, we measured it.) I don't think it was quite as bad as waterboarding but it was enough for me to inquire at the front desk how we might turn it off.

"Is there a way to turn off the exhaust fan so that it doesn't come on when you turn on the light."

"No, I'm sorry, there isn't.

"It's really quite loud and annoying."

"Would you like to speak to a manager?

"Not unless the manager knows how to turn it off. What I need is an engineer."

Oh wait. I have an engineer. But he's not about to tinker with their "stuff".

So I sucked it up and kept the light off as much as possible. It was only a couple of nights. The only other negative comment I have about this hotel is that one of the dining room hostesses kept trying to seat couples in a corner so the larger, airier, more easily accessible tables could be available for "families". Sorry, but those little kids stand a much better chance of crawling into that corner space than I do.

Self-Clearing vs. Self-Cleaning

Five hotels in two weeks! Phew. Why so many? Keep in mind that we didn't book much in advance. We got the phone call on Sunday and Monday we were on the plane. All of the hotels in Clacton and Holland-on-Sea were booked up. It was the end of the summer holiday and it is a seaside town plus they were having a big air-show that draws people from all over the country. We would have to stay in Colchester, at least until after the airshow.

We chose a Holiday Inn in Colchester. The hospital was in Colchester but we drove back to Holland-on-Sea each day to pick up Mark's stepmom so she wouldn't have to take the bus. (It's a special hospital bus. It's free but it makes one round of pickups in the morning and one round of dropoffs in the afternoon. You don't get to choose what time you want to go.) The 14 miles took nearly an hour each way by car - I can't imagine how long it took by bus - but I'm willing to assume it wasn't a particularly easy journey for an 84 year old woman with osteoporosis.

It was a nice enough room - adequate space, queen size bed, desk and dresser. Elevators. Free parking. Parking, although free could be a challenge. The spaces were small and we were never able to park in the same place twice. One evening we ended up parking on the far side of the building. We went through the door on that side only to hear "Excuse me! You can't use that door!"  Seems we were expected to walk three quarters of the way around the building, all the way back to the front door. (You were prevented walking the one quarter way around by a brick wall.) The hotel wasn't conveniently located - a lot of what seemed like unnecessary driving in order to get on the highway going the right direction. (Regardless of where you were going.) There was a restaurant in the hotel but the menu consisted of fish and chips, burgers, and pizza. Not the things we wanted to eat and there wasn't anyplace else in walking distance. We managed to find a nice place, The Shepherd, that was an easy drive and we ate there every evening. We did have breakfast in the hotel since it was included in the price. All of the tables had a little placard on them - "This is a self-clearing area. Please put your tray in the area provided." - or something like that. What they failed to realize is that "self-clearing" and "self-cleaning" are not the same. After someone has used the table, it's dirty. It needs to be wiped down. They shouldn't need me to tell them this.

Insignificant compared to what would happen later.

The End of Old World Charm

What comes to mind when you think about "old world charm"? Cozy cottages with thatched roofs? Tudor-style pubs with fireplaces ablaze in winter? Elegant old hotels with grand staircases? Flower boxes and hanging baskets showcasing their abundant blooms? Narrow cobblestone streets?

 I used to have romantic notions, too. The old-style pubs are alright except you have to go to the bar and place your food order. Follow up service (would you like dessert?) is sporadic. The flower boxes and hanging baskets are gorgeous. But they're everywhere, especially in summer. (It always makes me think of how much my poor little flowers struggle in the dry Texas heat.) The reality of most old hotels is not so grand. (I suspect the grand ones have been updated.) Narrow staircases with no elevators. (And even if there's a strapping young man to assist you getting your bags up two or possibly three flights of stairs, he will have disappeared when it's time for you to check out and get the bags back down.) Your room will be small. There won't be enough room to store your bags. The bathroom will be smaller. Sometimes it will be across the hall. In most cases, it's been retrofitted and the layout of the room may be "unique". The floors may be slanted to some degree. (We stayed in a place one time where I feared falling out of bed.) There may not be a closet and if there is, it too will be small. There may not be a convenient place to park. And those cobblestones can really hurt your feet.

But let's be realistic, what really puts me off the romantic old world charm at this stage in my life is the narrow staircases and lack of elevators. And even if you could be guaranteed a ground floor room, the trade-off is that you'll have a view of the parking lot (if there is one) or the adjacent building.

I think I'm ready to be practically modern.

A Bad Idea

Sometimes bad ideas can seem really good. (Like putting the smoker racks into the oven and running the clean cycle.) Because it was still pretty hot in Texas when we were finishing up that last RV trip, we decided that it might be better to start out a bit later and drive at night.

With that being the plan, we left Indiana after lunch. The GPS said we would arrive at home at 3 AM. We stopped in Missouri for dinner - parked the RV on a side street and popped into an Applebees. So far, so good.  After dinner, the GPS said we'd arrive at 4 AM.

We were about to get on some kind of toll road in Oklahoma when I pointed out that I'd spent all the cash I had on sweet corn and tomatoes back in Indiana. I knew I had more money, but it was inside the RV in a pair of jeans that had been put into the clothes basket for washing. Did we want to stop and get that money or reroute away from the toll road?

We opted for the rerouting. Bad idea. We ended up on some narrow backroad that kept going back and forth between Kansas and Oklahoma. I hadn't even realized we were anywhere near Kansas! The GPS said we'd get home around 5:30 AM.

Okay then, money in the clothes basket just added an hour and a half to the trip. We needed to find a place to sleep for a while. We finally found a road big enough to have a truck stop and we pulled in and went to sleep. The plan was to sleep for an hour and get back on the road. The reality was that we slept for about three hours. Now we were looking at an 8:30 AM arrival time.

Bottom line, we stopped to eat two times. We stopped to sleep two times. We stopped for gas two or more times. We ended up getting home at 10:30 AM. We were both worn out and in no shape to do anything other than take the cats inside and go to bed. We finally started to feel like we had lives worth living around 3 in the afternoon.

Looking back on it, if we'd stopped for the night and had a decent night's sleep, we'd have arrived home within an hour or two of when we actually arrived and we wouldn't have felt like the walking dead.

We won't make that mistake again.

The Sights of Indiana

We didn’t want to get up and head home at the crack of dawn. If we did, we’d arrive home in the heat of the day. And even though it had cooled off a bit at home, it seemed the drive would be more pleasant if we stayed as far north as possible during the heat of the day and made our way south during the cool of the evening. 

So to kill time, we decided to go to Cataract Falls in Indiana. The largest waterfall in Indiana and just down the road from Cloverdale where we were staying. After all, we’d gone to Brandywine Falls in Ohio - this could be the "theme" of the road trip. (Chasing down the covered bridges of Putnam County seemed like it might consume more time than we wanted to expend. Although most counties aren’t all that big. - In retrospect, it may have been a better idea.) 

I'd noticed the sign when we’d got off I-70 the day before. The falls were the opposite direction from the campground. Plus the campground owner told us it was there - “It’s not Niagara or anything but it’s the biggest waterfall in Indiana.”

“By the way, what time are we supposed to check out?”

“Check out is 11 AM”

“Oh, well. It’s almost 11 now. We thought we’d go check out the falls, but it doesn’t look like we’ll have time.”

“Go ahead and go. As long as you’re out of the space by 1 PM.”

“Thanks!!”

We had some time but we didn’t have all day. We really did have to be out of there by 1 PM. The first thing I found is that the signage for Cataract Falls is seriously lacking. Our GPS couldn’t seem to locate it. We were looking under the “Attractions” category. It was probably somewhere else. Garmin has issues. 

I started Googling it on my phone. There it was. Everything you wanted to know about it except how to get there! Then I figured out that it was part of Lieber State Park. Garmin knows where that is. We drove up and saw that there was a $9.00 charge for out-of-state vehicles. We decided to make sure the falls were actually down that road before pulling out any cash. 

Turns out they weren’t. The booth attendant sent us back the way we came. (We’d gone about 30 minutes out of our way to get to the wrong place.) When we got to the right place, we were once again faced with a $9.00 charge. They didn’t take credit cards. (Seriously! Who doesn’t take credit cards??) and we only had six dollars cash on us because we’d spent four dollars buying air for our tires. (Now that's capitalism at it's finest - charging for air!)

Anyway, not wanting to lose a customer the state park ranger advised us that there was a general store down the road and we could get cash back with a credit card. (Ummm, that’s only if you use a debit card, which I don’t use since they switched over to Visa.) 

But the fact is we were going to run out of time. And I'd already run out of patience. How much did I pay to look at Brandywine Falls earlier in the week? Zero. How much did I pay to look at Blackwater Falls a few years ago? Zero again. How much did I pay to look at Niagara Falls? That’s right. Zero. Why would I pay to look at some falls I’d never even heard of until the day before? Like the guy said, “It’s not Niagara or anything.” 

I didn't see the biggest falls in Indiana. I took all the cash I had and spent it on sweet corn and fresh tomatoes. Because, unless you got your sweet corn in Ohio or Indiana, it’s probably better you feed it to the pigs.