AND MANY HAPPY RETURNS 7-26-20
The Weeks and Years Fly By; Chocolate; Bad Banks and Moving On Up (and Down)
Dear Weekly BiWeekliers,
A week or two . . . or three . . .egad now four since my last “Bi”Weekly. Without theater, tennis or travel what is there to write about anyway? The last four weeks can be pretty much summed up as one week consumed by my mother’s (and father’s, for his trust) taxes, one week of activity advancing the facelift for my kitchen, a week (and then some) aiding and abetting Elise and Aaron’s move to their new apartment, and then, this last week – recovery.
Sprinkled throughout have been trips to the beach (amortizing the Sandy Hook pass I splurged on), videodoc and in-person medical appointments (it’s hard to do the eye doc on the internet), the full-on resurrection of the Jane-and-Mary weekly supper-and-a-stream program, Thursday night theater-at-home courtesy of the National Theatre, much cooking and baking including two sachertortes, two cheesecakes, and a chocolate roll; an overnight visit to Hartford, an afternoon lost in Chinatown, not one but two instances of driving or biking the wrong way down one-way streets, graduation from three to five-pound weights for the Swiss Ball program I am now devoted to . . . and even a little job hunting. Plus progress on Mirrored, the gallery I have set up to document images of buildings in my neighborhood as reflected in the Harlem Meer (Meer is Dutch for brackish pond) on my morning circumnavigations. All the while dodging and weaving coronavirus as best I can manage. That pretty much calks up any gaps in my schedule.
And not to muddle this in all the above, my Aunt Sally – my only “real” first-degree aunt, six years my mother’s junior, had a stroke in her dentist office, something I myself have contemplated when the hygienist starts digging a little two deep, and after a few miserable days in the hospital, left us at a time when neither pomp nor circumstance was possible to celebrate her life. There was a simple graveside service attended by my cousins and their families, and we dispatched Alexander to represent ours. Such is life – and death – in the era of Covid-19. My mother now remains the last one standing of her generation in the family, kind of like Teddy Kennedy. She is rising to the occasion.
Here are some of these adventures fleshed out.
THE TAXMAN COMETH
Last month, I was prepared to declare unequivocally that Citibank takes the blue ribbon for The World’s Most Awful Customer Service. But now, there’s a contender – Bank of America.
I finally buckled down to pull together the paperwork for my mother’s taxes (nothing like an impending deadline to inspire and motivate), and for the relatively simpler taxes for my father’s trust, to send off to the accountant.
There’s always two or three pieces of information that have gone astray and this year it was an accounting of ET’s prescription drugs, a 1099 from one of her CRTs and the Bank of America Mortgage Interest Statement for 2019 on the home equity loan on 727 Prospect. The first two were readily secured with a phone call.
The third piece of paper should have been mailed to 727, then forwarded to me in New York. But it never made it or maybe I lost it or whatever. It’s typically a simple matter to go into the account online and download the statement.
Except we sold the house in February and paid off the loan. And then I asked Alex to transfer the balance in the BofA account into ET’s main bank account at Santander. And then shut it down. Which he did. The only reason my mother opened the B0fA account was to chisel an eighth of a basis point off the interest rate by signing up for automatic withdrawals. Six years ago she had six bank accounts. She’s now down to two.
The troubles started when I then I tried to log onto ET’s BofA account; it wouldn’t pull up. That was how I always accessed the HELOC, through the bank account. There was no there there. It was gone with the wind. The account and all its precious records had been eliminated with extreme prejudice.
Sadly, I had no choice but to call the bank. Which wouldn’t even connect me to a human being without an account number. I did have the retired HELOC and checking account numbers but they weren’t recognized. I could move a few inches forward with ET’s Social Security number, but not too far and the hold times were inhumane.
I started this paperchase on June 30th. That Thursday I was heading to Hartford to see ET so I figured I’d just walk into her branch and ask for a printout.
I tried calling a few more times, hoping I might luck into signs of intelligent life, but instead was relegated to endless musical hold. On Friday afternoon, on my way back to New York, I stopped in at the branch, a printout of ET’s POA in hand. I was told there was nothing they could do except call the same number I had been calling. Did I want to wait?
No. I stormed out. Then calmed down as I rolled onto 91 South to return to New York. I dialed the customer service number as I was passing through Wethersfield. Let me skip to the punch line. Five transfers later, as I was passing 129th Street on Fifth Avenue, I was connected to someone who knew how to access this information for me.
I wasn’t going to mess with the whole POA thing this time, so I just claimed to be ET and hoped I sounded like I was 91 years old. Yes, he had the information. Could he email it to me please?
No.
Could he fax it?
No.
Sensing the desperation in my nonagenarian tenor, he then offered to overnight it to me. So generous! Because the next day was Saturday, the Fourth of July, he cautioned it would probably arrive Monday, but Monday for sure.
I was so elated I declined his offer to read me the numbers. Foolishly. I was almost home and didn’t want to pull over to write them down. I was so sure my troubles were over I forgave BofA for promising me while I was on hold all that time that “someone will be with you momentarily.” This was not how I defined momentarily.
You know what happened, of course. Saturday, no FedEx. Monday, no FedEx. Tuesday, no FedEx. On Wednesday, I stopped in the BofA on 86th and Lex. “I’d give it another day,’ the concierge said. “It’s a holiday weekend.” Like, when?
I sucked it up Wednesday in the late afternoon and again called BofA. This time, I was snared by the bank’s security system. Soon enough, a friend fraud officer was on the phone. I explained that all I needed was the piece of paper for a closed account. Sure, he said. Let me just put you on a brief hold while I check this out.
An hour and 19 minutes later I hung up.
I had to wonder, what happened? Did he take a bathroom break and forget about me? Was there an armed robbery just after he put the phone down and he was shot dead? Early onset Alzheimer’s suddenly struck? Or was he yukking it up over a beer with his buddies? Perhaps there was a drinking game associated with it?
The next morning, I tried one last time before I donned a mask and borrowed an M1 Carbine and stormed the bank, Patty Hearst-style. And miraculously I got through to someone who was able to READ me the information, could see in the records that it was supposed to have been FedExed to me (but no verification on that) and promised to mail it.
That was July 10th. The promised piece of paper showed up yesterday, Saturday, July 25th, postmarked July 21 – five days after the tax return was due.
And the winner is . . . stay tuned.
GOING HOME AGAIN
I hadn’t been in Hartford since mid-February, the longest time I’d been away since 2016. ET’s residence is now allowing brief, in-the-flesh visits, so I got myself on the old familiar road the Thursday before Independence Day to see her in the flesh. What I got to see the part of her face not in a mask as we sat longways at opposite ends of a six-foot table for 30 minutes, She is fine, though it’s kind tough keeping up the pitter patter when she’s been basically doing nothing and I have too.
That evening, Alex and I partied like it was 1999 (or thereabouts), meeting my Oxford School BFF Jill Martin and her always-interesting former prosecutor husband (this was right after the Berman thing so I peppered him with questions about it) for a socially distant dinner at Max Burger, a West Hartford establishment that does everything absolutely right. This included placing the tables outdoors a real six feet apart. I still have yet to indulge in a restaurant meal in New York, where the yardsticks are on a different scale.
WHIZZ BANGS AND NO PERCHANCE IN HELL TO DREAM
It is a truth universally acknowledged that in 90+ degree heat if one’s air conditioner is wheezing and sighing like a character in a Jane Austen novel, it’s time to clean the filter. I finally gave up on the stoic “the fan is good enough” posture and moved into the3R guest room last week, a luxury I have not had the option to indulge in for the past many years when a heat wave descended, as the room it had been occupied by a parade of roommates for whose benefit I’d installed the AC. That would be Nora, Evan, Jess, Elliot (a girl), Blythe and Kariema. I may have missed a few in there. Besides I spent half my steamy summers shuttling the last six years between the northeast mountains of Pennsylvania and NYC in my air-conditioned car, which took much of the sting out of those weeks of relentless heat. Anyway, in all this time I have never cleaned the AC filter. The urgency of this realization catapulted me out of bed some time before 5:00 AM last week. But first, I had to figure out how to pull it out, which took six or seven YouTube videos to master. The dirt on it was titanic. It’s clean now and works great.
Moving across the hall to a bedroom with no Fifth Avenue exposure (though still on 108th Street, Party Central in the summertime) I thought I might sleep a tad tighter being that further removed from the fireworks that were going on (or, rather, off) every evening in the Park smack across the street for the better part of the month of June. Much of the merriment did die down after the Fourth, just the blowing up of leftover supplies at 2:00 AM. Still, my sleep patterns of the past few week can best be describe as “Clump Slumber” which is to say I sleep in segments of three to four hours and if I’m lucky can fall back asleep and if not eventually I get up and do stuff around the house at 3:30 AM. The hotel-like setting of the air-conditioned back room worked like a charm for exactly one night and then soon enough – the next night -- I slid back into the old habits.
And then, just for auld lang syne, the City decided this past Friday night at 1:00 AM was a terrific time to mill the street outside my window.
Basically, on sleep, I’ve given up.
A QUESTION ABOUT CITIBIKES
Have any readers who may have taken a Citibike out for a spin noticed that the bell that’s installed on the left handlebar sounds exactly like the one that Tio Salamanca rings in Breaking Bad? Is that on purpose?
47 IS QUITE OLD ENOUGH
And I haven’t been 47 for two decades. Nevertheless, I did have a lovely birthday for so many reasons, chief among them because I was determined to. Friends and family facilitated: Jamie Allen Black left a wrapped birthday gift on my doorstep four days prior which all the neighbors saw as they walked past from or two the elevators. She also included brownies, kicking of a major chocolate theme – as next appeared an extravagant death-by-chocolate cake arranged for by Carolyn Greene which came all the way from New Orleans unblemished and no coronas attached. It fed me for 10 days straight, I already have Carolyn’s birthday present on order: The Complete Boxed Set of Andrew Cuomo Press Conferences 2020-2021. She’s a fan.
Elise threw a surprise birthday party for me on Thursday, ordering a full spread from Korali Estiatorio, the fancy Greek establishment with alarming proximity to their new place. (If they start ordering from there regularly, someone’s going to have to get a second job.) It was an intimate gathering that included Sarah who brought a dacquoise – more chocolate – and a set of rejuvenated casters for one of my many Container Store bungee chairs. I had been despairing because the wheels wouldn’t turn but discovered they were just jammed up with hair shed from the aforementioned roommates over the years that had wrapped around the wheels.. I spent many hours trying to free them up (mostly blonde, though Kariema’s raven locks were there too) but they were too tightly wound, so to speak. Yes, I tried to buy a new set of casters myself to no avail. Sarah managed to clean them up using some caustic, cancer-causing solvent I’m sure but I’m not asking.
Still Life of Moving Day Birthday Party with Spreads, Hammer and Mask
A few days post-birthday I received a mystery package from Snapfish containing a canvas print of a photo I previously published in the WBW, a red bowl containing eggshells. For a while I really thought I was going nuts as I had no recollection of ordering this. Turned out, I hadn’t. It was a surprise gift from my b-school pal Vix, a WBW subscriber, who downloaded the photo from the email version and had the canvas printed.
And let’s not forget that I finally treated myself to a new phone, the Samsung Galaxy 8 was giving up the ghost, so I jumped all the way to the S20 and never looked back. All in all, an excellent haul.
THE KITCHEN RENO
Nothing like a little kitchen renovation anxiety to trump Covid-19 worries. I have been inching along since I decided to pretty up the kitchen, and it’s not quite finished but now at that point where what’s been done thus far makes the rest of the apartment look shabby. Here’s a little before-and-after look at the dining end.
OK, that photo of the desk was totally staged. This is what it really looked like most of the time:
And now:
Moving the desk yielded a treasure trove of family artifacts that had fallen behind it over the years, including a long-lost metal ruler I had often wondered about over the last 15 years, several photographs and a math assignment of Elise’s and many promotional address labels. Also, a patch of the grey I’d originally painted the kitchen.
The Elfa bookshelf system I sold to a very happy woman on the west side for $65.
The next, and final project will be to have to butcherblock countertop stained dark grey. It’s in negotiations now.
THE BIG MOVE
Elise and Aaron’s new apartment is five blocks south and on block east of their (now) prior residence, and since they basically had no room for furniture their old place and planned to order it all form Ikea and have it delivered, we jointly decided to forego the moving company and even the truck and just do it all in the Forrester. Here was the secret to our success:
The move went as smoothly as these things can go. The furniture arrived Wednesday; the move started Thursday morning at 8:30 AM. Brandon put it all together – there would have been blood if we had tried to do it ourselves. We wrapped up the day with the surprise party, inviting Brandon of course. After constructing a bed, two night tables, a bureau, a shelving system . . .a couch and a coffee table as well as mounting two TVs and two bedside lights, he was part of the family. Elise put together the side chairs. Here she is testing it out, doing her best Florence Pugh imitation:
And Aaron and I made four round trips moving the contents of their old apartment, some of which spent some time on the street.
Yes, that is a Jackson Pollack.
Then I went home an edited a proposal for a big boondoggle assignment for which I quoted a rate of double my plumber’s hourly rate plus a kicker of $5 for my MBA.
Friday I picked up an 8’ X 4’ piece of melamine which I had trimmed lengthwise to use as the top of a double desk for the WFHers. Somehow that consumed most of the day.
Saturday, Sarah and I road tripped up to Stroudsburg where I still have a storage space to liberate the Sultan newlyweds’ wedding presents and consolidate what was left of my stuff in a small space. It was at this point that my sciatic nerve began to whine a bit, then start screaming. I also crammed in a trip to the Monroe Farmer’s Market, arriving an hour before closing to find the entire market stripped bare – not a tomato to be found. The theory was everyone had come early to beat the heat. While in town we noted that apparently the mask memo never made its way to Stroud, especially along Main Street in the 500-800 blocks.
Sunday morning found me in the pre-opening line at Ikea at Hicksville – the third of the three IIKEAs I’d visited in a week. This time, I had printed out the aisle and bin numbers for the two items I needed to collect, proceeded there directly on being admitted, ran straight to the checkout line and was out of there in 12 minutes. A record.
Sunday afternoon we worked on the desk: Sarah came by to help Elise cover it in marble contact paper and Christine agreed to load us her husband Julian who drilled two 2” circles using a hole saw I bought him. Then we fitted them with grommets and voila! A profession desk with a place to feed electronic wires.
Meanwhile Elise and Aaron were engrossed in constructing the console that I’d pickup up in Hicksville earlier in the day. I swear, an enterprising marriage counselor should team up with Ikea to offer couples therapy as an add-on to the purchase of select large furniture pieces. Sharing an Allen wrench is only the start of it. If they can manage to put the piece together without killing each other then indeed This Marriage Can Be Saved. And, they have a nice new piece of furniture as a bonus that will serve to remind them that they found a way to collaborate, communicate and together work their way through complex, wordless and at time incomprehensible instruction booklets.
Monday we should have been done, but Sarah and I met over at the old apartment to pull down some shelving, sweep the place out and practice folding our beach tent in an open space that wasn’t Central Park. We never got to this task, but Sarah studied up on YouTube and the next day, at the beach, we folded the shelter in one smooth move. We have finally conquered the Manta.
PHASE FOUR AND BEYOND
Yet again I am way over deadline – by two weeks and 14 hours at this point. Blame it on the pandemic. Or the Republicans. I’m back in Hartford tomorrow for two days and after that, I dunno. August is around the corner and who knows what else. Hopefully not a surge. I opted to hold off on scheduling the next CT scan until mid-August. In the meantime, I am up to Level Three in my exercise program and one of these days will catch up to the State’s phasing program. It’s truly an epiphany to discover how much I like working out at home. In the 45-off years since I transitioned from skipping gym class to paying for workouts, I never imagined I would enjoy rolling out of bed onto a mat, much less stick to a program for three+ months. I even briefly considered moving permanently into the guest room and converting the Master to a swanky private gym.
Naaaaaaah.
Cheers
mbl