Because there’s at least one of you who looks forward to these.
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This is the story of my life.
For 23 years we’ve lived in the country and loved it…. but we never had high speed internet. No streaming, lots of buffering, too many dropped connections. But this year? A miracle.
Fidium was hooked up and I can finally watch what everyone else does on something other than a 5 inch cell phone screen.
Yay!
So naturally now that I can stream? Maine is going to tax it.
The rat bastards.
Apple TV, Amazon Prime, Paramount Plus, HBO Max and Netflix. So my answer is 5… though the Amazon is free with my Prime shipping membership and the HBO comes with our Direct TV subscription.
I think I’ve mentioned my waning interest in Christmas over the past few years. After decades of being crazy for the holiday and decorating anything that stood still, I’ve reached the point where I write cards, put up a few wreaths and call it good.
The husband and I stopped buying each other gifts a few years ago as well. The love is still there but when you’ve been married as long as we have? It just becomes more unnecessary stuff.
Instead of the normal Christmas celebrations? We take a trip.
This year I had a two week getaway to the Berkshires planned and paid for. Snowy mountains, hot buttered rum, quintessential New England villages… the literal Norman Rockwell Christmas because we’d visit Stockbridge as well.
And then?
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This.
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Right before we were supposed to leave, the husband hit a deer.
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Only a half a mile from our house, at dusk.
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It came flying out of the woods and he didn’t have time to stop.
It was killed… and my husband limped home with a damaged car.
😰
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And then our vacation died as well while we dealt with insurance claims, tow trucks, mechanics and body shops as well as the first snow of the season.
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We could have cut it down to a one week trip but as bad luck would have it my husband’s previously troubled tooth picked this week to get infected, be extremely painful and now requires surgery.
Ho! Ho! Hell….
Last year we caught Covid for the first time which ruined our holiday plans, this year it’s deer and teeth.
We just can’t win.
😫
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(Photo of our tree from 2023, pre living room remodel)
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I’m dropping the tree photo because we didn’t get one this year since we planned to be elsewhere.
My husband and I have great health insurance through his military service. We rarely have issues and there’s usually no reason to complain.
Until now.
Our medications are prescribed by our doctors and sent to a mail order pharmacy at their main campus here in Maine. Refills are done by phone and if there’s something you can’t wait the ten days it takes to process? You can pick it up in person.
Until now.
Because they shuttered the local pharmacy due to government staffing cuts a while back and if you have a problem now? Too bad, talk to the bots.
So of course we had a problem when their automated refill system updated and didn’t transfer payment information for security reasons. The next time I needed a refill? I was denied because they no longer had my credit card number.
When I tried to update it online it said no, I had to call and personally speak to a representative. The only problem with that was everyone else in this network found themselves in the same situation and there was only one phone number available.
One.
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See those numbers in the top right hand corner?
One hour, twelve minutes and thirteen seconds. That was me, on hold… and not the least bit happy about it.
In the end I waited over an hour and a half to speak to a human … and no, I was not pleased.
With no other way to update payment information and no chance they would fill prescriptions without payment… half the state of Maine was probably calling the same number at the same time.
It was maddening.
Even more maddening? That number is the same one we use for refills and now even the bots aren’t picking up because the system is overloaded with calls. And it’s not like we can drive to the pharmacy because they closed it.
It’s quick and painless. And you can’t say that about much else these days.
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I’m a white wine drinker all the way.
And it’s not just a slight preference, because for some bizarre reason the taste of red literally makes me gag. I absolutely can’t stand it, never could.
River's world..... 