and the Most Helpless People Ever Award…

… goes to…

…my parents!!! You’d think it would be all the baffled college students swarming around me. But nope, it’s my parents. Well, it’s my FATHER. My poor mother has an excuse, with the mild/moderate Alzheimer’s thing and all. I’m not too sure what my father’s excuse is.

Okay. Six months or so ago he bought the house that he grew up in. That alone was a big mess and I’m not even going into all THOSE problems, other than it had belonged to his sister who had to go into a nursing home several years ago. When she died, they found that the will was all screwed up somehow. Don’t ask me how. His explanation never made a lot of sense to me. She intended to leave it to him but he ended up having to buy in in order to keep the state from taking it to pay for her nursing home care. He (and by "he" I really mean my brother the Handyman) fixed it up and now Daddy’s renting it to my niece and her …. ex-aunt?? My sister-in-law’s younger brother’s ex-wife. The brother is on the black list; they love the ex-wife. ANYHOW, Daddy has dependable renters and they’re paying more than the mortgage payment each month.

So. He’s trying to get the mortgage paid off as fast as he can, being nearly 80. He’s paying extra on the mortgage to get it paid down. When we were visiting the relatives in Charlottesville last fall we checked in with Accountant Cousin and got the details on how to best do that, which is basically put the extra on the principle. Not complicated. Especially when the payment form comes with the monthly payment filled in for you, and a space that says "principle" for whatever extra you want to throw in. Easy as pie!

Or not. He insists he can’t do it and he doesn’t want to mess it up and I need to do it for him. Even though I wrote a note and taped it on the wall with details of how to do it. Details which are just to put the extra money on the principle line. But he can’t do it. I have to do it. Or it will be messed up. Because I’m, like, such a whiz with numbers and all. And he could ask my brother, of course, but John just stays so busy and has so much to do. And he lives all of five seconds away, too.

Daddy’s only been making extra payments for a few months and so far I’ve managed to visit right before it needs to be mailed, so I have been able to fill it out for him. Until now. I was just down there Sunday, and he hadn’t gotten the bill yet. Oh, he worried and worried! What would he do??? Did I think I’d be back down before he had to mail it??? Well, since it needs to be wherever it’s going by the first, and that means I’d have to go back down there this weekend, well, NO. I can’t come down every weekend!!!! This is another fact that seems to be escaping him lately. I’m sure that’s because I’m not busy and I have nothing at all to do. And don’t live an hour and a half away.

So I decided I’d just set up an online account for him, and make this payment that way. That’s how I pay most of my bills. How hard could that be?  And in the future I could pay online for him if I didn’t visit during that window between getting the bill and needing to mail it, which is apparently only about a week long. Now it escapes me why I didn’t bring an old statement and one of their checks home with me last weekend. Because I kind of needed them. Especially the check. So I called him last night and asked what his account number on the mortgage payment is.

"Well, there’s all kinds of numbers!" he says. He starts reading off about ten zillion numbers. I finally get him to just read the ones that specifically call themselves account numbers. Then I tell him to read me the numbers on one of their checks, so I can use that to set up the payment. He doesn’t see any numbers. I say they’re down at the very bottom. He still doesn’t see any numbers. I tell him they are at the very bottom. They are under where you sign the check. He still isn’t too sure about that. Finally he spots some numbers and reads me off, oh, eighty five or so numbers. Well, okay, I think I can figure out which ones are which when I start setting the account up. How hard can that be?

Ha ha.

Of course I’m trying to set this up at work today where I have access to something other than dialup, and of course my boss is there and she has that really annoying supersonic hearing combined with paranoia thing going on, so when I got started and then found I needed his social security number, I just went outside with my cellphone to call him instead of doing it from my desk. I call, my mother answers, I tell her I need to talk to him and get his social. She goes to get him. I wait. And wait. And wait. And wait. And think about how many of my sparse cell minutes are being frittered away.

Finally I hear someone pick up the phone. And start punching buttons.

I say, "Hello!! Hello!!!" for awhile, and finally I hang up. And their phone is busy for the next half hour. I have to go back inside long before that, of course, but at last my office phone rings and it’s Daddy. Who tells me Mama had been on one phone and went to get him and didn’t hang that one up and he picked up the other one and he couldn’t hear anybody. That’s why it was busy for half an hour. I never did figure out the button-pushing, but whatever.

So I get his social, hang up, go back to the form, and discover that the check numbers I have don’t seem to have any relation at all to what I need to have. The routing number needs to be nine digits long, and nothing I have is nine digits. It does take the account number – I guess, it didn’t kick it out anyhow – but the routing number doesn’t work. So I call Daddy back, abandoning any pretense of worrying about my paranoid supersonic-eared boss hearing me, and tell him to read me those numbers on the checkbook again.

He doesn’t see any numbers. I tell him to look at the long string of numbers at the very bottom. He doesn’t see any numbers. I tell him to look underneath the line that says "memo". He doesn’t see any line that says memo. I tell him it’s the ones he read me last night. He isn’t too sure which ones he read me last night. Finally he DOES see a bunch of numbers under where you sign the check, and he starts reeling off about ten zillion numbers. That appear to have no relation whatsoever to the eighty five numbers he reeled off last night.

"Okay, you know what?" I say. "I’ll come down there tomorrow."

Aaaaaagggggggggghhhhhhhhhh!!!!!

 And before I get any praise for being SUCH a good daughter, I have to admit that I’ve led him to believe that we’re going to be in Morganton this weekend visiting my mother-in-law. Because I DID think at one time that this would be the weekend Baker B’s niece and her kids are coming up, and we ARE going down to see them. But that’s next weekend. And I let him just keep believing it’s this weekend because that gives me an excuse to not stay very long – I’m just running over to Asheville from Morganton! Which is about half the distance of coming from Boone to Asheville.

So I’m going down there and fixing the stupid mortgage payment and then I’m going to go do fun things.Like hang out downtown. And go shopping. And perhaps take the scenic route back up here because the weather has been gorgeous and it’s supposed to be even better all weekend. So, no, not a good daughter. If there’s a hell I’m probably careening straight for it, because I’m always lying to my parents so I can spend time doing things I want to do.

But I was just there last weekend!!! And he COULD get my brother to do this.

Wow, what a long entry. I’ll just have to wait till next time to tell the Registration is a Disaster story. In which the registrar’s office is not getting the students admitted in twenty minutes after we send the information over for them to enter like they swore they would, and is not getting some of them admitted for DAYS. So they can’t register. And a lot of them are probably not going to get in classes they need now. And I’ve been hearing about it all day long. But that’s going to have to wait.