don't fence me in

it has been a frustrating week

about a month ago my neighbor told me that she wanted to replace the fence between our two properties

we had talked about it before, and originally this was not going to happen until the fall -- but she decided to do our side first, and I've given her some of the money already, with the agreement to pay as I can -- and after I see receipts

so on Thursday of last week, we went out and helped her take out the old fence -- everything except the posts, which were sunk in concrete and we needed some help with -- which we got on Friday from another neighbor and so Saturday morning when her "help" showed up, all they had to do was run a string line from back to front and put in the new posts

and since two of the three of them work for a developer here in the state, I thought we'd be ok

not so much

the post line was about as straight as my dog's hind leg

and they trampled my dahlia even though we had our trellis standing there to give them a clue and they were told about it

and they knocked down some of my garden

oh yeah, and yesterday, all of those posts came back out -- which turns out to be good from more than the "not a straight line" standpoint -- they didn't really put in enough concrete to hold in the 60 mile an hour winds we get through here when it storms -- which is why my neighbor could get them out so easily

in the process of trying to help, the DH hurt his arm, so for the rest of this week at least he won't be doing much that requires him to lift his arm -- and hopefully this won't require a visit to the doctor and more serious treatment than ice and rest

next weekend someone else will come to work on the fence

I hope they get it right this time -- we're going to our daughter's next weekend so neither of us is in the way or tempted to go tell them "you're not doing that right"

and I'm wondering just how much this is going to cost

another small victory and facing the inevitable

the endless saga of the medical bills continues to haunt me

on Wednesday afternoon (just 3 days shy of a year after my surgery) I got a billing from the pathology lab

not a big surprise that the envelope had arrived, I get a monthly billing as I've made an arrangement with them to pay this

the big surprise was when I opened the envelope -- and a bill that I expected to say "total due $180" said "total due $672"!!

WHAT!!??

and of course it was after 5 pm when the mail man brought this little bundle of snakes, so I couldn't do anything about it but stew until Thursday morning

so I called them, and by then I'd figured out that the difference was that for some reason they had backed out all of the payments made by the Colorado Indigent Care Program -- and I was not pleased

the person on the other end was pleasant -- and just as puzzled as I was -- she simply couldn't see anything on her computer screen that gave her any reason they had done this

she told me she would look into it

yesterday morning I talked with them again

seems they had experienced a little computer glitch and that now all of those CICP payments had been reposted and the actual balance due is $180

makes me wonder how much money they actually rake in because some folks don't watch as carefully as I do and wouldn't have challenged it

it's another small victory!

and then there is the inevitable

earlier in the year I spent some time fussing over rather or not to continue paying for the domain name for my website

I decided to do it mostly because I've had it for a long time and because I don't want someone else putting X-rated stuff on it if I give it up

the deal is, however, that if I'm going to pay for it, I really should do something with it, even if I can't see much happening with it

so I'm starting to think about what I should do with it and what "look" it should morph into next

a good idea would be great here, I just don't really have any