http-equiv='refresh'/> Tin TeePee/Log Cabin: It’s Hard To Know What To Do

Thursday, October 2, 2014

It’s Hard To Know What To Do

The last blog I wrote was on Tuesday—a quilt-y blog.  On Monday I mentioned Nat had been under the weather—well things went from being under the weather to being in the hospital.  He has spent a couple nights in the little clinic based hospital in Big Timber under the care of an awesome nurse practitioner, Hannah.  I spent the day in town with Nat and spent some time giving his house a good cleaning—I left the clinic about 5:30pm and wouldn’t you know it, I left right before Hannah walked in the room.

But, Hannah did call us at home and her plans are to discharge Nat tomorrow morning.  Nat is 92 years old and very independent.  He is not one to ask for help, he doesn’t want to bother anyone.  It’s probably past the time he should be living alone but he is sharp as a tack, can still drive and makes his own decisions—so what do you do—at this point in time, it isn’t our decision to make. 

Yesterday we were in Billings all day—I had my yearly stuff, mammogram, etc. and the cowboy had a yearly checkup with his internist who told him, “you are way too healthy to be seeing me—I can’t help you!” Smile 

We enjoyed a delicious lunch at CJ’s and made for us, a minor run to Costco.  Then we made a mistake—we stopped at a Verizon store—good grief!!  Our intent was to purchase a MiFi device, perhaps a booster and maybe a phone—all to see if Michael could boost enough signal into our home so we could rid ourselves of our land line.  We live miles and miles and miles from a cell phone tower but sometimes we can get one bar of signal inside the house—not enough to make a call but maybe enough to boost and make a call.  We can go up into our hay field above the house—often referred to by our friends as the phone booth—and make calls. 

In the state of Montana a law was passed many years ago allowing individuals to “freeze” their credit to prevent identity theft.  We completed the appropriate paperwork and “froze” our credit seven years ago.  No one can access our credit to open any new accounts, not even us.  To release the freeze we must call one of the three credit bureaus such as Equifax, provide a pin number and confirm our identity using various methods of identification.  The charge to unfreeze your credit is $3 and the freeze can be lifted for a specific time frame such as 24 hours or two weeks, etc.  For people who aren’t opening new accounts all the time or trying to obtain mortgages, it works and works well!

Well—we had service with Verizon for probably 10+ years before we went to a Wal Mart Straight Talk phone—you would think they could access our previous account, see that we were good paying customers and go from there.  Nope, not happening so we had to lift the credit freeze.  The young man helping us was good but some glitch in Verizon’s computer was telling him our credit was still frozen.  Well, the third person I got at Equifax said, “Janna, this is NOT your problem, your credit is unfrozen, this is Verizon’s problem, they have a computer issue.”  When I told the young man I was leaving unless he got us out of there pronto—we had been in the store for over 2 hours—he finally managed to find someone in the Verizon world who could resolve the issue.

Unfortunately the cowboy had no success with getting a useable signal into our house so with the 14 day return policy, we will return all the pieces to Verizon soon.  Bummer!!

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A chilly, breezy nasty day!  Coming up the Boulder tonight I had to stop and take this photo—a gorgeous scene.

10 comments:

  1. Have you considered the Wilson Booster Antenna? I read bloggers comments about their. Just a thought.

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    1. Yep, Nan, that's exactly the booster we tried, the new Wilson 4G booster but still not enough signal. Bummer!

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  2. hmmm... "climb the hill" and you can make a call? hmmmm... think Helium balloon :) See... ya turn the mifi on... tape it to a helium balloon and let 'er out on six or twenty piggin' strings all tied together to gain enough altitude to climb into the signal up there above your roof! :) ... well... that or maybe stick six or eight lengths of 20' pvc pipe together and duct tape the MiFi to the end of that and tilt 'er up :-P bwahahahahahaha

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    1. Maybe the balloon would be a good idea Brian, the cowboy did weld together a 30ft length of pipe but even that didn't find us a signal. I guess we are stuck with our local telephone company--at least the internet is DSL and fast!

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  3. It sure is darned hard to know how to help older folks when they aren't quite ready for more help. We somewhat resolved that issue for awhile, prolonging the time Mom could stay in her home, by having Meals on Wheels deliver lunches. The food came from the Senior Center in her very small town, and the drivers (bless 'em!) would stay and talk for just a brief time. As Mom's offspring, we were able to talk with this person if she noticed a problem of any kind. She's 97 now and has been in assisted living for four years. But that period of time before that was our temporary solution. Perhaps there's something in your small area like that.

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    1. Er...I meant MOM'S 97 now, not the delivery driver.

      Sigh.

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    2. Emjay--yes there is Meals on Wheels in our area but Nat can still drive and goes to the Senior Center in our little town for lunch the four days a week they are open. He enjoys the socialization as much as the food--he loves to play cards and there is quite the group which whiles away the afternoon playing cards. People do notice when he hasn't been there for a couple days and call him to make sure he is OK. I would love to find a house keeper/caretaker who would go to his house 2-3 days a week and check on him but I don't think he is ready for that, either!

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  4. There is hardly a day goes by that I don't thank my lucky stars that my Dad was a pretty sensible guy. He realized himself that he wasn't just cutting it any longer as a care giver for himself and one day he said to me, I am moving into town. He had found himself an assisted living place right downtown so he could wander around to all his old business cronies for a visit. A few years later he decided, on his own, that although he probably could drive OK, his reactions weren't quick enough to deal with the other idiots on the road, so he turned in his license. Both huge steps for anyone, and I can only hope I am as wise when the time comes.

    Too bad about the cell service. I know when I was working in the patch we sometimes were able to set up directional antennae that could draw in a signal a little better than those off the shelf omni-directional ones. And once we had it tuned in we were our own little cell tower. Not only the company phones could use the signal but also anyone going by.

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  5. It's a real dilemma trying to figure out what's best for aging parents. In the end, like you say, as long as their mind's are sharp as a tack it's best left to them. My Grandmother lived on her own until she was 104 before she passed away. She refused to go to what she called "an old folks home"!!

    Good luck with your cell signal.

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  6. Sounds like Nat is a hardy fella with enough folks in his life to keep a "subtle" eye out for him. Hopefully he keeps a cellphone on him even at home (provided it works where he is, not like where you are) so that if he gets in trouble he can call for help quickly. Other than that, whatcha gonna do :-) Sounds like Mike is a hardy guy too, which is doubly great!
    We were just talking the other day about how identity theft started a huge new industry to avoid and correct it - thousands of jobs created out of something so negative. Hard to know how to feel about that :-/

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