Journal: For Security Purposes 🙄

 

Last Tuesday, since I still couldn’t get through the automated system to find a real person who could help me with setting up an account after the transfer of our mortgage to another company, I decided, ‘Well, hmmmph!!!   I shall go buy fabric for Juliana’s quilt at Sew What.’ 

Seemed appropriate, name of the place and all.  Matched my general attitude, you know.  So what.

I got eleven different pieces of fabric to coordinate with the Chihuahua panel and all-over print I already had.  Every time I type that word, I think, ‘Shi-hoo-uh-hoo-uh’, which is how one of Hannah’s classmates said it, years ago.  He was funny then... and he’s still funny now.  Anyway, we’ve said it that way ever since.  It’s now hard to say it correctly, in polite company.  😂

Hopefully, there’ll be a bunch of that fabric left over for other quilts, because it certainly wasn’t cheap.  Every time I use leftovers in future quilts, it lessens the cost of the original quilt.  Know what I mean?

I decided to try getting a real, live person on the phone at Rocket Mortgage one more time before heading upstairs to my quilting studio.  When given the options, I blithely announced to the perky little robot girl that I wanted to pay off the mortgage – and hey, whataya know! – I wound up with a real, live person before I could even spit my gum out!

Didn’t do any good, though.  No, she would not help me unlock the account.  No, she would not tell me if RoundPoint had transferred my last payment to them.  No, she would not tell me if that was what was commonly done.  She wouldn’t even tell me if they would be tacking on a late fee.  My name is not Larry; there I am a pariah.

I again tried calling RoundPoint to find out if my payment would be transferred to Rocket – but no matter what buttons I pushed or what key words I said, I could get nothing but a recording stating that my monthly payment was “No,” my mortgage amount was “No,” and my next payment was due on “No.”  I wonder what trilingual gink programmed their answering system?

So I had no idea what had become of my payment that got sent to the old loan company.  And the emails from the new one telling me that my payment was due kept arriving daily.

I should’ve just talked in a growly voice and said my name was Larry.  Short for Larissa.

Not once all week did he (Larry, not Larissa) get home soon enough to call them.  Even if he had’ve, he often has difficulty hearing people on the phone, though his new hearing aids do help.

The mortgage has now been transferred three times since we got it.  I had no trouble making a new account the first two times.

I gave up and went to my sewing room to put the binding on the Nine Kittens quilt.

Back side of binding

Binding front

That evening, a friend remarked, “I put fish and potato in the oven and forgot to set a timer.  Now I have to just go by my nose.”

Haha, ‘go by my nose’.  I often told my girls that was an excellent way to know when to pull things from the oven.  (Doesn’t woik, if you’s schnozz doesn’t woik.) 

I advised, “Never leave cookies in the oven as long as the recipe says; pull them out the moment they smell good, and you’ll have soft, scrumptious cookies instead of hockey pucks!”

At 6:45 p.m. I texted Larry:  “Do you think we need some Mexican food for supper?”

He did, and he brought some, though he didn’t get home until nearly 9:00 p.m.  Trouble was, the only place he found open was Taco Bell.  We didn’t used to like their food, but then it improved.

It was NOT improved, that night.  We didn’t like it.  Not the tacos, nor the chalupa, nor the ... ?  Burrito, I think?  They don’t even put any sauce of any sort on their stuff, though they do hand out packets of salsa.  The pastry for the chalupa was more like rubber than anything else.

So that was disappointing.  Even more disappointing was that I ate so much of the unpalatable stuff, I was too full to eat the piece of peach cobbler I’d been looking forward to.

(No, there is not ‘always room for dessert’.)

By 9:30 p.m., the binding was on the Nine Kittens quilt, and I was inputting lettering for the label into my Bernina Artista 730E.  It’s a bit of a fiddly process, and takes some time.  When the design was complete, I saved it to the machine’s memory and shut everything down.  I would stitch it out the next day.

Wednesday, I trotted upstairs, turned on my sewing/embroidery machine, and pulled up the label I’d designed the previous night.  I always have a moment or two of wondering if it’s going to show up, ever since my older Bernina Artista 180 froze a couple of times right at the moment I was ready to save a design, and I wound up losing hours of work.

But the 730 has never done that.  There was the label, exactly as I’d saved it the night before.  I cut fabric and stabilizer to the right size, put it in a hoop, connected the hoop to the embroidery arm, made sure the feed dogs were down and the embroidery foot was in place, threaded the machine, and pressed Start.

An hour and a half later, the embroidery was complete.  I removed it from the machine, trimmed it, pressed under the edges, pinned it to the back of the quilt, and stitched it into place.

Soon it was time to get ready for our 7:30 p.m. service.  Larry didn’t get home until a few minutes after 7, and I like to leave by about 7:15.  It takes 7 minutes to get there. 

He didn’t seem to be in any particular hurry to shower and don his glad rags.  He’d done a lot of carrying of heavy forms hither and yon that day, and was tired.

So I headed to church without him, and he came later in the BMW, arriving as we were singing the last verse of the third song.  Not bad!  He must’ve really picked up speed after I departed.  😂

During the service, there was a hard downpour, nearly drowning out the preacher (my nephew, Robert).  Unusual, in that big building.

Larry, who had his hearing aids set on ‘Voice’, didn’t hear the rain at all. 

It had stopped by the time the service was over.  We all got free car washes!  Here at our house, 7 miles to the west, it didn’t look like we got so much as a drop of rain, though when we walked into the house, I brushed against some hosta blossoms along the front walk, and a drip of water landed on my ankle.  Maybe we did get a drop of rain, and it landed right in that particular blossom?

We had a late supper of turkey pot pie.

Thursday morning when I went out to fill the bird feeders, I was surprised at how hot and muggy it was.  It looked like it had rained during the night, but I had not heard it.  Maybe it was just the high humidity that had made everything so damp?

While I was blow-drying and curling my hair, I listened to the radio, and heard the weatherman say that rainstorms had made their way across Nebraska early that morning.  So the dampness was from rain.

Since the wind wasn’t blowing (much) that morning, and the sun had dried the deck, I got pictures of the Nine Kittens quilt outside in natural light.

Here’s a breakdown of the hours spent on this quilt.  And to think that this tally pales in comparison to other quilts I’ve made!  The quilt that I spent the most time on took me 936 hours.  I finished it almost 11 months after I started it.

A quilting friend, upon seeing this hourly breakdown of work done on the quilt, said, “If you charged what folks make at McDonalds where I live, this quilt would cost $4,370.  And if you charged what a plumber here would charge, it would cost $26,220!!!”

Two or three years ago, someone wrote to me on Facebook and said, “I have decided to go ahead and buy a quilt from you.”  (Never mind whether or not I was selling any.)  “I am able to spend $50-$100.  Please let me know when you can work me into your schedule.  Thank you.”

I responded, “Well, that’ll pay for the thread.  I recommend you buy the supplies, a How-to-Quilt book, and make it yourself.”

No answer.  Huh.

By Thursday noon, it was 79°, but the heat index was 89°.

That day, I spent some time working on the EQ8 design for Juliana’s quilt, which I will call, “For Love of a Chihuahua.”  

Here’s the design I settled on.  I was ready to start cutting fabric!

One time I was cutting netting for cancans to go under puffy dresses the girls were going to wear to a wedding.  Back then, I no longer had a sewing room, as it had been made into a bedroom, so I was cutting the netting on a big cardboard cutting board that I laid on my bed.  Suddenly, I heard the unmistakable thumpity-thump-thump of two sets of cat paws running down the hallway – and I knew exactly what was going to happen.

I whirled around to shut the door — too late.

Black Kitty and her nearly grown kitten, Tad, both long-haired, beautiful cats all full of spunk and ginger, dashed through the door, and took a flying leap — right onto the bed.

Kitty landed first and farthest, sunk her claws in, and rrrrrolled.

And there she was then, wrapped up tight in the netting.  She was stuck.

Her big kitten Tad stood there on the edge of the bed and stared at his netting-wrapped mother, debating whether or not to take a swipe at her, now that she could not retaliate.

I was laughing so hard, I could hardly do anything, but I first scooped Tad up, put him out in the hall, and shut the door. 

“MrrrrRRRRRRooWWWWwwwwwWWRRRR!” he remarked indignantly, patting on the door with his thickly-furred paw.

I hurried back to the bed to help Kitty, who was looking a bit more wild-eyed than usual.  I talked to her calmly, and slowly unrolled her, petting her through the netting, and telling her, “Don’t claw.”  She knew what that meant, and so she sheathed her claws, releasing the netting.  Silly little beast purred the entire time.

They do know when you’re helping them.  ❤️

Later that day, when I was telling some of the kids and Larry what that cat had done, she marched in, stared at me with her piercing look, and protested, “MEEEEOOOOWWWW!!!” at the top of her voice.

She’d heard her name, and I’m quite sure she knew I was telling all about her escapade.  She was one of the smartest cats we had.

She was a stray, so we don’t know what breed she was, exactly; but she definitely had many of the characteristics and mannerisms of a Siberian.  Pretty funny, if that was the case, since we also had a Siberian husky at the same time!

Thursday evening, a coworker of Larry’s bought burritos for us from one of the authentic Mexican restaurants, and Larry brought them home for our supper.  I’ve never seen such a humongous burrito in my life!  It had big yummy chunks of beef in it, ground beef, green and red peppers, rice, lettuce, tomatoes, black beans, various cheeses, and some kind of white sauce throughout, with sour cream and chunky salsa on top.

Mmmmm, it was good.  It more than made up for the bad food from Taco Bell earlier in the week.

I ate a third of it, and was stuffed.  Larry managed half of his.  We had plenty left over for supper the next night.

The following day when I got started on the For Love of a Chihuahua quilt, I quickly discovered that the puppy panel was warped.  (Aren’t they all?)  (Panels, that is; not puppies.)  If I would trim it, I’d lose some of the color gradation.  I considered stretching it and hoping for the best.  But... I’d be giving myself one of those quilts from customers who say carelessly, “♫ ♪ You can quilt that out!  ♪ ♫ !”  🤣

I had strips to insert into the panel, so I would have to cut it – and if I didn’t trim first, I’d be cutting on a bit of a curve, in order to make sure the measurements were correct.  Sigghhhh... Do they ever make panels that aren’t warped???  As I added straight strips and then the borders, would the picture straighten up?  Maybe.  Maybe not.

I trimmed.

At a quarter after seven, I was getting hungry.  Suddenly I remembered, Leftover burrito! – and just thinking it made my stomach growl.  😄

I managed to eat another third of that big burrito.  Fortunately, that was all I had warmed up.  I tell you, that thing was huge.  We had Chobani Flip yogurts for dessert.

A cousin mentioned that she had gotten some Werther’s original candy, which reminded me of the following story:

Caleb, who was about 4 at the time, came and looked at me with big puppy-dog eyes and said, “I’m really tired.”

This being unusual, I asked, “Why are you tired?” wondering if he was sick.

And he said, said he, “I’m tired for a Coffee Nip.”  haha

You see, someone had given me a box of Werther’s Coffee Nips – and since he’d heard people say they were tired and needed coffee, he figured the same principle might work for a Coffee Nip.  Nope, sorry, kiddo; those candies were too big (and too unbitable) for the little ones; they were definitely a choking hazard.

I was going great guns on the Chihuahua quilt when I realized that some of the strips I’d cut – and already sewn onto the quilt – were too short.  So I removed them, cut longer strips, and sewed them back on again. I hate to stop for the night and then have a mistake waiting for me to fix the next day.  I got the strips put into the inside of the panel, and three borders attached.

Saturday, I went to visit Loren.  I left a little sooner than usual, because rain was predicted for later that afternoon in Omaha.

This is Siffring Landscaping & Gardening Center between Fremont and Arlington.  One of these days, I’d like to stop there and look at all their pretty flowers and plants and trees.

There were dramatic skies on the drive to Omaha, and it was a windy day, with gusts up to 35 or 40 miles per hour.  One of our rural radio weather announcers calls it a ‘white-knuckles-on-the-steering-wheel’ day, and another calls it a ‘both-fists-on-the-wheel’ day.

I found Loren in one of the big activity rooms with a number of other people.  A game of Bingo was going on – but Loren didn’t have the faintest idea how to play the game.

I pulled a chair up beside him, handed him a National Geographic magazine with pictures of migrating caribou on it, and slapped a couple of chips down on the numbers on his Bingo card that I’d already heard the staffer call out. 

Loren looked at his card, looked at me, and grinned.

He had a hard time conversing that day.  He tried to ask the elderly man at the end of the table something, but no one knew what he was saying. 

“Can you ask him for me?” he requested of me.

“What do you want me to ask him?” I queried.

But Loren couldn’t tell me.  “Ask him,” he suggested, pointing at the friendly younger man on the other side of the table, who was visiting a relative.

I chose a topic out of a hat.  “Did you want to know what kind of vehicle he drives?” I asked Loren. 

Loren is always interested in vehicles, after all.

He looked a bit surprised; that probably hadn’t been in his mind at all.  But it was to his liking.  “Yes!” he said, “That’s what I was wondering!”

“I drive a Ford,” said the man, smiling; and his description went no farther. 

With some people, friendly though they might be, you must run them through a wringer to get a conversation out of them.

So I, after explaining that Loren is my brother, and 22 years older than me, launched into a story about how he helped teach me how to drive, as sometimes our parents were traveling, often visiting other pastors or missionaries, and I would stay with Loren and his wife. 

“Once when I was too young to drive,” I said, “and Loren had a nifty 1970 Buick Wildcat, he let me sit on his lap and steer it.  We were way out in the country on a blacktop road, and I thought I was doing a pretty good job – and then Loren, who was running the accelerator since I couldn’t reach it, stepped down.”

I turned and looked at Loren, laughing, and he was laughing, too, and nodding.  I suspect he did actually remember.

“Well, I didn’t like going at that speed when I was only just getting the feel of the steering wheel, so I let loose and exclaimed, ‘I won’t steer, if you do that!’”

Loren kept speeding up, thinking I’d get worried over our trajectory toward the shoulder, where there was a steep drop-off, and reclaim the steering wheel.  But I’d said I wouldn’t, and when I said I wouldn’t do something, I meant what I said.  Besides, I pretty well knew he wouldn’t crash his beautiful rust-colored Wildcat.

I was right; he wouldn’t.  He finally took the wheel, pulled the car back to the center of the lane, slowing down and letting me steer again.

“So I won that showdown of wills!” I finished, grinning at Loren.

“Yes, you won,” he agreed with a smile, but I think by this time he’d lost track of the conversation.

Meanwhile, the man on the other side of the table was hunting online for a Buick Wildcat.  Finding one, he showed me the picture and asked if that’s what the car looked like.  Not exactly, as it was a convertible, and Loren’s was not.  I hunted on my tablet, found a similar one, and showed it to Loren. 

“Is this like the Wildcat you had, except for the color?” I asked.

“Oh, yes, it is!” he exclaimed happily.  He studied the picture for a moment.  “It was a two-door,” he told me, and then tried to say something about the motor, but couldn’t find the words.

“It had a jet engine,” I supplied helpfully, which really made him laugh.

Above is a nifty old pickup someone is fixing up (the lettering isn’t on it yet).

There are vast fields of golden corn all over the countrysides.  Soon it’ll be ready to harvest.  Can you see the spray from the irrigation pivot?

I got home from Omaha at about ten after six.  After eating a quick supper, I went to my sewing room and worked on the Chihuahua quilt.  I got two more borders attached, then quit and retired to my recliner to edit pictures.

Sunday was the first day of fall, and, for the first time in a long time, when we walked outside in the morning to go to church, it felt a bit chilly.  

When we got home around 12:30 p.m., the temperature had climbed to 64°, and there was actually a wind chill of 61°.  The high would be 67°.  Larry fixed his yummy pancakes for our lunch, putting a couple of packets of Raisin, Date, and Walnut Oatmeal into the mix.  Mmmmmm.

Looking at the weather, I learned that it had hailed in Lancaster County late Saturday afternoon.  That’s a bit southwest of where I was driving, but bad weather in that area often moves to the northeast.  I was glad I hadn’t stayed in Omaha too long! 

Last night after church, we picked up a fairly large grocery order at Walmart, brought it home, and ate part of it.  😄  Among other things, I got a bag of Broccoli Slaw.  It consists of shredded broccoli, carrots, and cabbage.  It sounded good – and it was good.  I got a bottle of G. Hughes’ sugar-free coleslaw dressing to put on it.

There was a problem, though:  the slivers of broccoli (cut from the stems) were looong!  First, we couldn’t figure out if it worked better to use a spoon or a fork.  Actually, neither worked well.  I suspect chopsticks would’ve panned out much better, had we owned any, and had we known how to use them.  Next, once we managed to get a bite to our mouths, the broccoli slivers wouldn’t fit.  That might not have been too bad, had not each broccoli sliver been coated with coleslaw dressing.  I wound up with coleslaw dressing on my chin, nose, cheeks, and glasses.  Honestly, it was worse than slupping up spaghetti!  At least spaghetti is pliable.

We swabbed our faces and continued the meal with cottage cheese and big, crunchy, sweet red grapes.  For dessert we each had a small almond bear claw.  These were disappointing, as there was only a small dab of almond paste in each claw.  I think the chef sampled the filling Bialosky-Bear style, until he didn’t have enough for the bear claws he was making.

When supper was over, I played with EQ8 for a bit, designing a quilt for grandson Justin, Juliana’s older brother.  While Justin is not next in line age-wise, going from youngest grandchild to oldest, I want to be sure I get his quilt done in time for Christmas, since he and Juliana are the only children in the family.  Justin likes airplanes – new fighter jets, and vintage and WWII planes.  My friend at our LQS showed me a fabric panel with these planes on it.  I checked with Joseph to be sure Justin would like it.  He would.  I need to get back to the quilt shop and buy this panel before they’re sold out!

Below is the fabric panel.  

This is the design I put together in EQ8:

A friend recently told a story about trying to find a motel room on the evening of July 4^th.  There didn’t seem to be a single vacancy anywhere. 

This reminded me of our attempt to get a room in Wyoming on the evening of July 16, 1979, on our honeymoon, as we headed toward Yellowstone National Park.  Everything was plumb full, because of rodeos – and, as usual, we had not planned ahead. 

I, more accustomed to traveling than Larry, told him, “We’ve got to get off the Interstate and head toward some little towns out in the boonies, and then we’ll find a place to stay.”

  

I’ve never been fond of Interstates in the first place; backcountry roads are much more scenic and fun.

We took the next exit... drove 50 miles north on a narrow cow-path of a road – and found a place to stay.

The Mortgage-Transfer Saga continues:

This afternoon I received this email in response to one I wrote to Rocket Mortgage, the company to which our mortgage was transferred, whether we liked it or not:

“Hi Sarah, Thank you for contacting us!  At this time, we do not have you listed as an authorized person to speak with on this account.  Moving forward, please have the borrower contact us at 1-800-508-0944 to provide verbal authorization that we can speak with you.  This is strictly for security purposed [sic?] to protect our clients, [bad punctuation; hit the buzzer] we do appreciate your understanding and cooperation.  If you have any general questions, please feel free to ask.  [Well, I did, but y’all refused to answer me!]  Thank you so much and please take Care!  [Where should I take him?] 

Sincerely, Denali

Rocket Mortgage Servicing Team

Monday - Friday 8:30am - 9:00pm EST

Saturday 9:00am - 4:00pm EST”

 

I sent this email on to ‘the borrower’ (that’s Larry), since I have apparently become chopped liver.

He, amazingly enough, actually stopped whatever he was doing and called them to request authorization for me to make an account on their website, to pay the bill, and such.

I found this out because directly I got an email reading as follows:

“You recently connected with:

Kita

Detroit, MI

I love working at Rocket Mortgage!

Overall, how would you rate your experience with Kita?”

 

Figuring this meant Larry had contacted them, I set out to see if they would now help me unlock the partially-made account.

They would not.

I am an Authorized Person – for them to speak to.  That’s all.  They can speak to me.

That’s...  nice.  Isn’t it.

The odd thing is that they evidently have no qualms about sending correspondence to my email address, sarahlynn.jackson2, even though that’s clearly not Larry’s email address, but mine.

Meanwhile, Larry found out from RoundPoint, the old mortgage company, that they had returned our last payment to our bank account.  I checked, and sure enough, it was indeed in there.  So that was a small relief in the middle of the mess.

I tried another number for Rocket Mortgage, got the answering system, worked my way through the options without hitting any landmines (which told me my name had in fact been added to our account in some capacity, at least), and was able to make a phone payment.

Once the payment was taken care of, I went back to Rocket’s website, pulled up chat (since calling does little to no good – I can rarely get through the automated system to a real person) – and was informed that I am not allowed to set up an account.  Larry has to do it.  And he’ll have to call them to get it done.

Great.

Yeah, great.

I guess I can use BillPay through our bank, but I’ll need to have the proper account information to plug in, so the payment doesn’t go to Timbuktu.  And they will not give me any account information.  You’d think they didn’t want to receive any payment at all!  I’m trying to pay you, you idgets!

Hopefully, the page Larry took with him this morning (which I hunted for at length) will have the information I need.

Through all this foofaraw, I have not shot any songbirds, nor have I kicked any cats, nor have I thrown my phone through any windows.

I deserve a gold star for my remarkable constraint, don’t you think?!

I shall now wash the dishes (I doubt if I need any authorization to do that), play the piano, and then go work on the For Love of a Chihuahua quilt.

I wonder what all those other poor lost-in-the-mortgage-transfer souls do, if they have no dishes to wash, no piano to play, and no quilt to put together?  Poor things.  Or maybe poor songbirds, poor cats, and poor phones.

 

,,,>^..^<,,,          Sarah I’ll Pay You Whether You Like It Or Not Lynn          ,,,>^..^<,,,