I went out right away this morning to solve the little billing issue in person, and it could not have gone more smoothly. The woman I talked to was cheerful and reassuring and said these things happen all the time, and that we were lucky the seller sent us the bill at all: she says a lot of times the seller doesn’t realize they’re supposed to, or else doesn’t care, or else forgets, and so the first anyone hears of it is when she’s sending out overdue notices. I gave a little whimper at the thought and she waved it off with cheerful dismissiveness: “And then you’d just panic and call me and we’d figure it all out, no big deal!”
I fretted that since the seller’s name was on the bill, the seller would get credit for paying it. She said that is just never going to come up—and that if it DID come up, it’s all very clear and easy to see how things happened: the house closed on this date; the bill was issued too shortly thereafter to have the new info; the buyer paid the bill. “No one is going to ask you to prove it—and even if they did, you HAVE the proof! It’s your house! It’s your check!” She showed me her screen: “There’s your name!” “So my fretting is all for naught?,” I said. “For NAUGHT,” she said; “It’s kind of cute, though,” she added. I nearly asked her on the spot if she were by any chance in the market for a fretful middle-aged assistant. The key to living a good life as a fretful, anxious person, I think, is finding the people who find it cute—or, at worst, find it charmingly exasperating.
My next task is a much more fun one. Every year we give gift cards to our bus drivers. To make it clear to the drivers what the situation is (like, why are we giving one driver $10 and the other driver $40), I have each child hand over a greeting card with a $10 gift card in it. Not that I think the bus driver is keeping such careful track, but anyway that is my fret-reducing way of doing it: $10 per kid, handed over by that kid. All four remaining housechildren are on the same bus now, and this has been one of our drivers for a number of years, so I don’t want to skip his holiday gift card just because we’re leaving this house before Christmas. But this time I think I can skip the whole fussy element of one per kid and so forth: I’m just going to make one from all of us, thanking the driver and putting in the last gift card.
What a lovely tradition you have with the bus driver!
And I am totally in love with the woman who took care of you today. HEART EYES.
So glad to hear an update about the bill already! And double glad it was all Just Fine.
I am so glad that the billing issue was handled swiftly and easily!
My kids don’t ride the bus, so I wouldn’t have thought of bus driver gifts! I will have to keep it in mind if we move. What are you doing for teachers these days? And I’ve also wondered about other school staff—the counselor, admin, lunch, resource officer etc. why does this feel so fraught?
I am also clearly in the market to be a middle aged fretful assistant.
We stop with teacher gifts once the kids reach middle school (though we would make exceptions if it seemed appropriate in a particular case). We would send a gift to the counselor or speech therapist if our kids were still using them, and we send gifts to karate/music/etc. teachers outside of school.
I love that woman who helped you – and all people like her. I wish more companies would take the time to hire soothing, helpful people like her.
It is such a nice surprise when someone decides to be MORE helpful/pleasant than their job necessarily demands. I want to hug her on your behalf.
I’m glad you mentioned the bus driver gift because my oldest just started riding the bus this year and I hadn’t thought to add her to my list for gifts. And she is SO nice, I would have felt terrible forgetting.
My daughter started riding the bus this year now that she’s in junior high. I don’t plan to get a gift for the driver, who seems to manage to somehow remain oblivious when a grade 7 is throat-punched by a grade 8 on the bus. (Not that that happened to my daughter, but it did happen to our neighbour’s kid.)
We might get something small for my daughter’s homeroom teacher though, which will be a reduction from elementary where she had 2 main teachers a year.
I’d like to suggest rodent bait before you move in. Both the house and barn. You will have to pull the bait before you move in (cats won’t eat it but may eat mouse who has eaten bait and not yet died – unlikely but why risk it). Most of the mice will die out of sight so no need for funerals. In an empty house, bait can be extremely effective bc there is little else to eat.
I’d keep bait in the barn all winter until you have a barn cat.
Poison bait is not recommended for rodent management anymore due to the impact to wildlife that eat the rodents – owls, hawks and other birds of prey especially. It hurts them just as much as it hurts the mice and rats. More info here – https://www.audubon.org/magazine/january-february-2013/poisons-used-kill-rodents-have-safer
We moved from Iowa to Chicago days before Xmas when I was in 1st grade. My parents put our Christmas tree on the moving truck. My brother’s birthday was Dec. 27th and mine the 30th. Someone gave us a gingerbread house for a going away gift. We ate that house for Christmas. Then more of it for my brother’s birthday. For my birthday, all that was left was the gumdrop sidewalk. Not really relevant to your post, but your pre-Christmas move made me think of it.
So very glad you got your bill handled without much hassle or stress!
Hey Ernie, my birthday is the 30th too! :)
I love “housechildren.” What is the opposite of that, or the other descriptors of non-housechildren?
We definitely need a word for it! Rob, for example, is no longer a housechild, because he is away at college. Here is another question we should consider as we’re thinking of a term: is he a housechild when he is home for the summer? or is he still a visiting non-housechild?