What Can Go Wrong

Hey, we all know that Murphy had an "in" with the big Lawmaker of the universe. That's why he's the go-to-guy when the bad stuff happens. Somewhere Murphy's got a rule which explains all about it. Now, we may fool ourselves into thinking that everything out there is all good, but when we get carried away with that tomfoolery, Murphy turns around with a slap to our face as a reminder.

Take that day last week when I went shopping for a few groceries and a "white noise machine" - aka a HEPA filter fan - for my bedroom since the last one got the wobblies and I got afraid to keep it running. I went to the same store, Walmart, where I'd purchased the first fan and subsequent clean filters for it. Nowhere in that store, not in all the logical places I hunted plus several ridiculous ones, could I find a HEPA fan. Nor any fan, though we have several "any fans" at home so they weren't on my list anyway.

I left the store will all the desired groceries plus a cart full of annoyance. Not only do I need that fan for my allergies, there still being plenty of allergens in the house, but the white noise helps me sleep even through Steve deciding to do the dishes down the hall, or just wearing his hard-soled house slippers while down on our end of the hall where the bathrooms live. I'm feeling sleep deprived. And that didn't help my mood that day either.

Perhaps the mood was the root of my problem. We'd found a nice handicap parking spot, but so had somebody who'd parked next to us and left their motor scooter/cart parked right next to our car while I was in shopping. I could just envision the scratches along the car if I didn't back out exactly perfectly. Pedestrians are hard enough to avoid. I know, I could have moved their cart, but I just wasn't in the mood. After putting my groceries in the car, and, conscious of my good-citizen duty, pushing my cart over to the cart corral, I did manage to back out carefully enough.

The real problem didn't dawn on me until we started unloading the car. I knew my pocketbook wasn't in the front where I often keep it these days. Nor, however, was it in the back anywhere visible while we lifted out bags of groceries. Aware that a black pocketbook can easily hide against black upholstery, particularly around twilight, we hunted. And hunted. I went back in and checked every bag as it got emptied and food put away.

Nothing. Zip. Nada.

HELLLLPPP!!!!

Thinking back, I didn't recollect actually removing it from the cart, not thinking to look for it at the bottom of the cart as I pushed it back to the corral. Stupid, stupid, stupid! I immediately turned back around, hoping against all my common sense that nobody had stolen it from the cart. I pulled out my cell phone, since I keep that store's pharmacy number in my directory. After four transfers, I got somebody in customer service who could actually tell me whether it had been turned in. With each wait, I'm adding to the mental inventory of all that was in it. Steve and I had just been to the bank, so it carried the cash he contributes to the monthly bills for me to pay. Driver's license, medical insurance (with SS#), checks, 2 credit cards, pictures of my kids and granddaughter, AARP card, address book, the get-in-free to National Parks card which then cost $10 and now cost $80... and etc. My life was in that thing, and I had no idea how long it would take to straighten things around nor what I would live on in the meantime.

I finally got the person who knew something, and her first question was whether I had any ID. Well, yeah, of course, but guess where it was? So she decided to ask my name, which I gave her, and, major relief, it had been turned in. I informed her as to my ETA, and asked where in the store I should go to claim it. When I showed up, it had been locked up and there was a hunt for the person with the key. Again asked my name, they somehow looked at my plethora of IDs and decided I was supposed to be somebody named Rosa Maxson.

I got the pocketbook anyway. They didn't bother to recheck the order of my names nor compare my photo to me, but I wasn't going to quibble. Heck, I didn't even bother to check whether my cash was still in it until after I got home. I was so relieved to have the rest of my life back that I wouldn't have begrudged somebody helping themselves to a finder's fee. (Just don't tell them that! Because they didn't take one.)

I guess Murphy wasn't satisfied with my managing to navigate through that little mess. Today is the official Sales Tax deadline for the State of Minnesota. The reason it's relevant to me is that who-knows-how-many years ago I got a Sales Tax exemption for what I thought at the time was a wonderful business idea. It involved getting a bunch of inventory produced without paying tax on what was to be resold. By the way, that inventory is still cluttering up the den in the house in Minnesota. Yes, unsold. My tastes do not appear to be universal. Still, every year I have to report to the State how much I've either sold, to pay sales tax on, or how much I've, say,  given away for marketing, thus incurring use tax fees.

Year after year those forms have been a solid line of zeros.

After receiving a couple of email reminders from Minnesota that the deadline was fast approaching, I decided to get it out of the way. This is where the perfect storm hit.

My tax exempt number, since moving to Arizona, is no longer on any paper form I am able to locate. There formerly was a remedy for that, however. I send an email to myself with relevant information on it, like that number, my latest incarnation of user name and password, and the periodically changing website where one can go to e-file taxes. Once received, it is archived, as well as recorded in my "sent" file.

I keep track of a lot of stuff that way. Even important information like an author's name I want to look up to see what else they wrote.

But a short time ago, my email company decided to pair up with Yahoo, much to my ongoing displeasure. Years worth of archived and "sent" files didn't make the transition. (Brother, some of your best pictures were lost :-(   !) I still cannot access those websites with my medical records on them. And of course, every bit of information on paying (well, not paying) my annual sales tax is fubar.

Minnesota tries to make it easy for us. All we have to do is follow their link from the reminder email, log in, and there the form is. I figured I would be safe using the username and password I used for everything back in the day. Nope. But there was a link to get them to send you the correct information. That always works, right? Except the first time I entered it, their system wouldn't let me in because somehow in the previous snafu something had gotten left open and I had to go back in and close out of it.

Yeah, right. I have to get into it to get out of it so I can get into it? Ahhh, government!

I tried Saturday, figuring whatever it was had managed to close by itself over that amount of time. Apparently I was right, because that wasn't the error message I got. Back to me not giving them the proper login info. Now, I'm not one to be quite that easily discouraged anymore, thinking this time I could try various incarnations of what was possible. Sometimes that works, right? Or perhaps there was a different way in I hadn't noticed earlier?

Quit laughing!

OK, offices are back open Monday. Still time to file. So thought 3,287 other people, and I was put on hold behind every one of them. After a couple of hours, my phone was kept on the charger to stay alive and on speakerphone so it could drive both Steve and myself crazy with the repeat message and short awful segment of what some tone-deaf person thought qualified as innocuous music. I had at least come to the conclusion that they were not shutting their doors at the usual Minnesota government quitting time ... unless, of course, some evil twisted bureaucrat had decided to leave the entire system on hold till Tuesday morning. By now, however, my need for a hike down the hall outweighed any possible information I might lose by unplugging the charger, or any embarrassment either of us might suffer, should my call finally get answered, from a loud flushing noise drowning out the conversation.

I'm still kicking myself for not thinking to do that sooner. That of course is always when the phone gets answered!

From there, things went smoothly. I gave other personal information proving I knew who I was, because, you know, so many other people out there are standing in line to pay your sales tax bill. She provided me with confirmation of my username and a temporary password  which I had to be sure to use before it expired in 15 minutes! She didn't explain the 15 minutes part, though, but somehow I made it in on time, granted myself a password I can remember, and filled out the form with zeros, then upon prompting, confirmed that yes, indeed, I did mean zeros.

Before shutting down, I emailed myself all the updated information. Maybe it'll still be there next year.