Wednesday, February 15

[gottawonder]

Today I am grateful for:

Ongoing okay weather. Not QUITE as warm, but still pretty good.

A little more texting with the vet about the goat's skin. A biopsy might show us more. Whether or not it is parasite or fungus, allergy or deficiency, cancer I suppose.

I got fuel, and the owner of the small gas station is having a tough time financially. He can't get much of a bulk deal on fuel so he can't match the prices at places like Costco, and too many people just get fuel when they are in the city. Me personally? I would rather have a local gas station than think I can always make it to town half an hour or more away.

I went to see River, and we had a lesson today. Phoenix was not in our lesson today, and oddly enough R didn't even bring up having me work with him or anything. I did at the end of our lesson, to let her know that I could maybe help out, or have her work with Phoenix at one of our riding times, but was relieved that he wasn't there to be worked in our lesson time.

Here is the link to the video: https://youtu.be/F01eV-dR25A

We worked on filming for the show that R is putting on. We did a walk/trot/canter class at Liberty. It worked out well.

We also worked on the Liberty circles with me on the ground, where he tends to drift out in one direction. We broke it down a bit and tweaked my body and whip hand position.

So, a good class. We were also on time today, so I didn't feel like I was being rushed out the door to compensate for her falling behind.

I didn't do much else, except for felt frustrated still with the situation surrounding our stocks that we are trying to sell from the U.S. My husband pretty much never has the time to call the company holding the stocks since he is always at work (he has a list of questions from the guy at the bank that need to be answered by someone at the company holding the stocks that has more information than the average customer service person). He has ONE DAY every two weeks that falls on a work day, and COULD spend half the day on hold. Now, that said, I haven't seen much evidence of him even TRYING to get anywhere with them the last few times he's been home. Is it going to be fun? No, it is not. Does it need to be done? Yes it does.

Once again, he doesn't understand why this has become an issue for me. I get that I have more or less arbitrarily decided that we are going to sell the stocks and move the money back to Canada, hopefully just dump it straight into an RRSP. Mainly so that in the event that something happens, we actually have reasonably easy access to it.

Also, as things stand, all of the stocks are only in my husband's name, meaning I would have an absolute bitch of a time gaining access to it should anything happen to him. So far, it has been six months of my husband not being able to reach anyone who can answer his questions, so that tells you that this money really IS nearly impossible for us to access and control where it is. I want it somewhere that we have easy access to it, and where it is in both our names. In THIS country. This needs to happen.

I learned that the character of Sherlock Holmes was somewhat based on a real person; Dr. Joseph Bell. Bell was a surgeon and lecturer at the University of Edinburgh. What is interesting to me, is that there is a pretty reasonable likeness between Bell and Benedict Cumberbatch, who played Holmes very well in the BBC series.

https://www.arthur-conan-doyle.com/index.php/Joseph_Bell

Comments

[ratunderpaper]

Perhaps you can ask your husband to choose a future date that you both agree to; it is good for him work-wise, and it is soon enough to give you peace of mind.

"This is important and brings me peace of mind" should not have to be explained, though with men-types, often it does.

[gottawonder]

I can understand the issue that he has with trying to reach someone who can actually answer his questions at the company that holds the stocks. Yet, I don't really know what steps he has done, or is able to do, to accomplish this. If you keep calling the customer service number, and no one is available who can help you, what on Earth are you supposed to do?

That said, there must be some mechanism for selling these stupid stocks, does it not happen a million times a day in the world? What exactly is the barrier, here?

I feel that part of the issue, is that my husband is trying to avoid paying taxes on transferring the money from a pension plan from his previous job by trying to invest the money straight into an RRSP in Canada. That may or may not be possible, but we aren't getting any real answers yet.

We are supposedly getting advice from a person at the bank where we hope to bring the money. This is the person who gave my husband the list of questions.

So the key to all of this seems to be trying to find an actual human being who can answer this list of questions for us.

It is driving me absolutely nuts, because I can't make any of the inquiries, even though I am the one who could make more time during work hours to do so, and my husband comes home, allegedly makes some weak attempt at calling something, and leaves it at that, and his next opportunity will be in two weeks.

So many of our issues together as a couple come from this stupid life situation where absolutely nothing happens for the ten day stretch he is at work, and then of his four days at home, two of them are Saturday and Sunday. Often enough, half of the people he needs to talk to are also gone on Friday or don't come into the office Monday. To be perfectly honest, you wonder if everything shouldn't just be in my name for the sake of being able to have authority in directing our finances because I am the only one who can make a freakin' phone call during the week.

[ratunderpaper]

It's perfectly understandable to procrastinate on financial issues that aren't pressing, but think how much peace of mind this transaction will bring once it's done. Hopefully the bank people can steer you both right on this.

[gottawonder]

Well, here's the thing. Very few things are actually pressing for my husband.

I think it is because he gets a lot of pressure from work. The kind of pressure where you have three people above you yelling at you all day long for things that have to be done NOW, and it happens all day long.

There is probably nothing I can do to make him feel like anything at home even really matters, if he doesn't feel like it matters to him.

[ratunderpaper]

Could be pressure, and that would be reasonable.

I have met and known people who really don't care about anything except specific things that interest them: vintage cars, for example, or comic books, or fast food. It's been rather nasty to get to know them.

[gottawonder]

I suspect that my husband, were he single, would have all kinds of financial loose ends and abandoned accounts. He just would likely live off of his paycheck and forget about going back and closing old bank accounts and moving the balance to his new one, or consolidating the little benefits and such from shorter term jobs.

It is unappealing to him to have to make dozens of phone calls and deal with paperwork.

I used to fight with him to even get our taxes done. Mine were simple, and his weren't that bad, but if I didn't push him, they would never be done on time (if at all) or correctly because he didn't keep track of the things that he needed to collect. He expected ME TO DO IT FOR HIM.

So, this is a man who is smart, and has a job believe it or not that is all day on the phone keeping track of paperwork, progress, financial things, and being on time.

[ratunderpaper]

Well, good job he isn't single. These blokes don't always realise they are being treated very well.

[gottawonder]

In a lot of ways, if he were single, it might not have much impact on his life. He could probably do fine without those smaller income streams.

WE could probably live without them too, but it drives me nuts, and who knows, that money from the stocks, if brought here and invested where we can pay attention to it (I looked it up, and the value of the stocks has gone up, and down, and right now it is sitting low enough that we've never made any money on holding them at all) they might accrue some value.

[ratunderpaper]

Also, hopefully the vet can give you a better idea about the goat's skin soon.

[gottawonder]

Yeah. I mean, at least we are closer now to warmer weather, and she otherwise seems okay, but she has several patches where she is itching and the hair is gone. It must drive her crazy. I can't help but feel that if she were a dog, this would have been cleared up already because EVERYTHING seems to be better understood if it's a dog because that is where the money and the research have gone in veterinary medicine.

[ratunderpaper]

Even with dogs, there is never a clear-cut diagnosis. There are holistic vets and proactive vets. Our vet put the bull terrier on good medication for heart disease and arthritis, and he's happy as a pig in mud. But a holistic vet would likely give him herbs and let nature run its course awfully quickly.