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groundhog day on Sunday 🤞☁️🌧️🌨️
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🙂
I crochet
so I don’t
choke people.

Save a life…Send yarn.
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BOJ, not a chance!
I’m gonna swipe your yarn and leave you a list of names!
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I didn't want my day to start like this!!!!!

Woke up in the small hours as usual and started my routine tasks, amongst which is checking my emails.

Hmmm! Notice of Collection from Revenue Canada (CRA) for a bill I paid a month ago. Called the CRA and did my thing there, with a few blips, - got told to send a copy of my bank statement and an explanation to CRA by mail. They will start an investigation at their end. I didn't appreciate the question "Is that you?" when I told them my birth date.

Looked online for my bank statement and it's not there. Contacted TD and was told I didn't make a certain change as advised in an email so I don't get statements any more ( I made that change this morning). Sent CRA screen shots of bank account activity. OK, but I want copies of my missing bank statements. Answer - Sorry you can't have them. Hmmmm!

Emailed a complaint to TD about the unavailable statements and also asking them to track the payment I made to CRA (with screen shots) attached).

This after spending too much time last night trying to rectify an error in my grocery order. Every avenue looped around to a dead end or wouldn't submit. Finally I used my phone app and it worked. I'm getting my $9.00 back for a wrong item. Not sure it was worth it.

The envelope with everything is ready to be mailed to CRA. The printer won't print Word in black (it prints black for an image) so they are getting it in dark blue Hopefully it will be enough. The problem is really between CRA and TD but I am in the middle.

Here's to the rest of the day being better. Have a good one everyone!🌷🌸🌺
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Stuck between big banks and big government sounds very much like being at that proverbial rock and hard place. 😬
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Oh, Golden, YES. I swear, computerland has made everything a nightmare, and you cannot speak to a real person and when you do they are working from home and haven't a CLUE. I think most here of H1-B workers.
It is just a bloody nightmare getting caught in these snarls, and it is EVERYTHING.
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Yeah, cw. Kind of feels that way. We'll see what happens. Part of what gets me is being treated like an idiot - like I don't know how to access my bank statements or my account activity, or make a payment through my bank to CRA.🙄
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Just got a response from TD customer care to whom I was referred by the TD chat person. We can't help you with this so go to a branch or call XXX... Sounds like another loop but I 'll have to try it.

Thx Alva - R and I have that conversation often. They build in loops so you can't get an answer. Asked my son who worked in retail for years and he confirmed it. Customer Service or Customer Care is not an appropriate term. It's more like confuse the customer so they stop trying to get a response.

When we were wrestling with the claim from the 2016 forest fire, the Insurance Bureau of Canada told R that 50% of claims take what they are offered, 40% are dropped and 10% contest. They count on that by making things so difficult for their customers that they give up.
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Golden: So sorry that you had to endure that nightmare. Hugs.
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“CALGON - - TAKE ME AWAY!!”
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Yesterday, I was not sure where to post this.
Now I see something similar is happening to others, with one explanation being
built in loops in customer care.

Not happening just a few times, but so often that I concluded I am disappearing.
I no longer exist!

At CVS checkout: "What's your phone number?" "You are not in the system."
So, does that mean I cannot buy here?

Showing new insurance card. Come back, I cannot make an appointment for you right now. Coming back, that doctor is not taking new patients (but insurance shows that doctor is taking new patients and had assigned her to me.)

Confirming appointment at new dentist: "You are not in the system" "You don't have an appointment".

Online ordering Instacart: Try again later.

Joining by phone: "It didn't go through". Calling bank, "It did go through".
Calling back: "It did go through" but shows you have not joined.

I am not in the system, I therefore do not exist?
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llama thanks - got to the point I am laughing about it

psue - good to hear from you Anybody take me away would be good right now.

nacy - I think it has to be better. Planning a big trip like that must be overwhelming. Just take it one step at a time! It will be great!
re doing the same things on the computer over a few times till it works I do that and told R to as well. He gets frustrated when it doesn't work right the first time. I just keep at it and usually it works out.

send - join the crowd. R and I exchange stories about useless customer service experiences. If you don't fit into their way of doing things you may as well not exist. What you wrote was just like what we have been going through. His dealings with insurance over the accident this summer has been dreadful. Persistence may get you there or going somewhere in person which is not always possible.

Picked up my phone to listen to a voice mail and out of the blue this person comes on saying punch in your temporary PIN number. I don't have one and I couldn't get to my voice mail without following the steps. So I go to the website and get a temp pin, then create a pin and go through the hoops of re-setting up my voice mail. When asked to choose the name I wanted I started to cough - so it duly recorded me coughing. When I listened to it I started laughing and nearly left it on. Just call me "hack!"
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Nacy: Thank you for the hug.
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Golden: You're welcome.
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On my Dad visit month and miserable here in NY anticipating a major snow storm and hoping I don't take a header on the sidewalk. I'm California dreamin' right now, it's supposed to be 60 degrees over here.
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My 7 day forecast - snow, flurries, chance of flurries, chance of flurries, cloudy then chance of snow, chance of snow, periods of snow. They do show a tiny bit of sun peeking out on Monday but I won't hold my breath 😩
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Brrrrr! Cwillie.

We are just coming out of record breaking heat and going to be in the mid/upper 70s for the 14 day forcast with a day or 2 in the mid sixties because of rain.

This is why we live where it is hot as fire in the summer, roughly 3 months, beautiful, outdoor weather for 9 months makes it worth it to have to hibernate in the A/C. I want to add, it is a dry heat and that makes a HUGE difference.

Stay warm and dry everyone living in frigid temps.
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nacy, hothouse, and cw - enjoy the snow while you have it lol. I think I would miss it if I lived further south. too. Itrr - dry heat makes a big difference - so does dry cold.

I guess this doesn't end. I set up my new mobile phone service account for preauthorized payment and have gotten two bills since. Checked my account and no money withdrawn. Checked my Virgin mobile account and it is set up for preauthorized payments. Got an email that I am set up and I will be charged $35 for service restoration.

I don't think so!

Got a rep on the phone pretty quickly, thankfully. Apparently my Virgin account balance has to be $0.00 before preauthorization can kick in. Never heard of this nor did the website mention it. Paid the balance by cc over the phone and apparently I am good to go now and no $35 charge for restoration.

What nonsense over what should have been nothing. I have set up many preauthorized payments over the years and never had a problem. The joys of technology. NOT!!! Grrrr!!!! 😠😠😠
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Nacy isn't it something when the thought of 8 inches of snow makes you go "phew, maybe a one day break for me" That's what I'm saying anyway. As long as power doesn't go out 🙏.
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Today, I filled out the Census questionnaire and sent it in.
Pretty sure some of those questions were against the law to ask people, in general.

Things that are just not any of the government's business. Trying to slot people into categories.

And, what do I THINK my home is worth? Ask a realtor, I am not a realtor!

And if you are white and don't know where your ancestors came from, how do you answer that if you think there are several countries of origin? It was NOT an essay question.

Then, give me a break! Married. Married period.
Can the government ask people such controversial questions of people, about everything that is no one's business? People who got rights to marry are now causing offense to those of us who are required to answer ridiculous questionnaires. And the people who got the government's permission to marry-they have to answer detailed questions too. That is what should be against the law. Asking should be unlawful. Is there no privacy left?

They have all gone too far in asking. imo.
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We had beautiful sun today, on Saturday.
And the night sky is showing some interesting planetary alignment.
Maybe some asteroid showers later.
At dusk, there is a heron flying across the sky. A rare sight to see a big white bird in the area, with a huge wingspan.
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nacy - wind can be make the cold so much worse- brutal is a good word. But a snow covered landscape is lovely.

send - I hear you. I greatly dislike surveys and questionnaires. Unfortunately we all have to do the census ones. Glad you saw some beauty yesterday. Herons are magnificent birds.
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You must have got what we in Canada call the long form census Send, it can be a real pain. Filling out my ancestry was never a problem for me because one of my grandmothers was a genealogy buff, plus my parents were actually from different branches of the same family tree.
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Welp sitting in the ER room with mom for the third time in 12 months. We got her to the hospital she /we prefer only to be told she has a collapsed lung and critically low platelets, and they don't do lung drains or transfusions so they transported her to the big city hospital. Oh also low sodium again and low potassium. They also want to do a back MRI to be sure her not being able to support her weight is not due to a spinal issue.

It sucks bc I finally got them moved back to their home last Tuesday. She was soooo happy to be back. My brother texted me and said it was the happiest he'd seen her in a long time.

Considering how anxious she gets, she is handling everything amazingly well and as you all know with the constant interruptions and flow of doctors, nurses, techs and specialists you can't get any real rest at all. They want to do another chest Xray to see if they can push off the chest tube until tomorrow when they do a smaller one. And all she wants to do is sleep and this is still the ER so we have to go thru all the questions again when she is fully admitted. This slow burn of decline is effing brutal. Especially when it doesn't fall into real DNR territory and who wants to spend a year "actively dying"

I'm also going to give myself flowers for getting her here, keeping dad sort of calm and getting him to go back with my husband tonight to sleep (he was up with her all night). Also committing to getting rest tomorrow.
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I came across a FB post about how you should take care of parents because they took care of you when you were a kid.

One comment set me off and it was all I could do not to respond. It was a woman who took care of both her parents. Both are dead and she said the years she spent taking care of them were the happiest years of her life.

I wanted to tell her that the years I've been taking care of my mom are the worst years of my life.
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Cwillie, What you wrote about the census and some people that I met from a very remote county in my state who decided to tell me for no reason that their parents were from the same branch of their family tree. Well, I guess for some, everything is relative. Frankly what they described was not the whole branch but one twig or small branch off of that one branch. People must find me easy to talk with because I've heard some stuff over my 67 years of life on earth.
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yoda - both my mom and my brother were people others confided in, I think it must be some kind of weird pheromone because they never did or said anything to encourage that level of intimacy.
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Please everyone in the storm and snow areas hunker down, stay inside and warm, with a heat source. If you don't have proper heat, go to a shelter.

ITRR.
I forgot about the dark cherries! Thanking you for the reminder!

Mt foot/toes no longer bend much. However, this morning, a cramp happened and
abruptly bent all my toes forward, stuck and in a painful spasm for a couple of minutes. Never heard of this. I am wanting to pretend this never happened. Lol.

As for the census, gone are the days when we refused to answer the door.
Life is getting even more heavy with instructions on how to live coming down from the top.
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cwillie, If these were truly healthy relationships, then no, it's not strange, nor does it always take anything to encourage that level of intimacy other than being perceived as safe, peaceful and non-judgemental. If any of these were reciprocal relationships, then they did take some effort to maintain. Even then, it not something two people did to reach that level of intimacy. It develops as two people respond to the challenges in their lives separately and together. Their is a progression from close friends to ah, you are like having you as a sibling. Reaching that point doesn't take too long, but the rest does.

What is important is not seeking for it but working on one's one healing from whatever. I've learned that only the healed will really listen plus not get upset if you don't say it just how they would have said it or get judgemental over the coping mechanisms that helped your survive for well, they never did anything like that. Ok, I wish that I could ask such people did they go through any thing like I went through. I never had to ask because I never found anyone that safe. except for some really good therapists. Along the way some become friends with a very wise and supportive person from what they have learned over the years. Sometimes, they will open up about their own lives & say things like you are being too hard on yourself about that, it was years ago and completely understandable, but now I suggest that you seek to meet that need in a healthier way. Often these people are living with the consequences of decisions & are hoping your life will do better, but they don't want you to beat yourself up over it. (Now, I am not talking about anything illegal, evil or totally immoral, but things that although legal might be considered on the edge. Yes, that edge does remind us of some things, but the context is different for this time, we are in control but then they were in control. For example, sometimes a female rape victim will return to the site of that horrible crime after some time, sometimes with a firearm. Depending on several things, some are content to go with a handgun and feel better after doing it once or several times more. Others, feel an immense need for power for how powerfully their own power was ripped in the rape from them. They often go there with a 12 gauge pump-action shot gun with triple 000 buckshot which is enormous with a huge kick. They may bring a larger safe female or male to handle its power if needed.
I've never heard of anyone being arrested for doing this or that anyone tried to rape them there again. Doing that however often provides them a sense of regained power and closure.
Mind you that not all of these ultra intimate relationships come from trauma victimization & earlier healing.

What I am saying is often these relationships have a strange mixture of being both a gift & an earned honor. It's confusing, but once two people either as a married couple or a platonic friendship reach this level, it is a bit scary & often each is anxious for what to call it. It's a relationship of peace & intimacy without ickiness although it will need continued maturity which is not hard for each has the freedom to talk & talk plus think freely. There is a surprising natural flow that comes as one learns not to analyze, but just go with it but at the same time hold firmly to one's previous boundaries. The two have proved themselves to each other & gained the strength to reach down into the other's dark places in those times and lift them up. It's way beyond any codependency, false role playing of seeing to be the parent the other never had or even being a soulmate which so often is only rooted and founded in emotions which like the honorific title of BF all too often is a vague dream of hope. That's not what any of this is. From my perspective, the biggest part that makes it a gift is that neither sought it. At the same time, it is an honor! It's a WVir phrase Ride or die as they define it.
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I agree sharing in relationships is healthy but the people who shared with my mom were often not people she was close enough to that you might expect those kinds of conversations, such as a local young man mom barely knew discussing his marriage breakdown, another confessing he got a secret vasectomy despite his Very Catholic wife wanting more children. And mom was not a person to pry or ask leading questions, people just... told her things 🤷‍♀️
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