(no subject)

[mellicious]

It looks like it might rain. I bought some silicone to put in the rusty spots in the roof of my leaky car, but I haven't gotten around to actually doing it yet. I really should. Let's just hope it doesn't rain hard, because every time it has lately I have ended up with wet carpet. It's very annoying, and probably not very good for the car, either.

Speaking of cars, we are not supposed to be buying a new one for a couple of months, but Rob is really shopping already. Our budget is really limited, but we are looking at either a new small car or a "lightly" used one, hopefully not more than a year or two old. We were planning to buy my mother's, but she has decided not to sell it. Which I think is wise. She doesn't need a new one right now.

When I was over at her house on Saturday, my mom made me take her to the bank so that I could sign the card to be able to get into her safe-deposit box. That's all we were supposed to be doing - but Chase, bless their little hearts, has a rule that you have to have a Chase account to be able to be added to a safe-deposit box. (As near as I can figure out, the logic there is that you need to be somebody who is known to them.) I flatly refused to move my accounts to Chase just for that - at first they were trying to tell me that I had to have my check direct-deposited with them. I have my bank accounts with the credit union here at work and I like them that way. But then they decided that it would be ok as long as I had any kind of account at all with a little money in it, so I ended up taking a little bit of money from my savings to put in the new account - and we actually ended up making it a joint account for my mom and me, which might be a handy thing to have at some point in the future, since I'm now her executor and have power-of-attorney and all of that stuff. The people that were working at the bank were very nice and obviously they have no say in the bank's policies, but the whole thing didn't make me think any better of Chase, in general. What a pain. (However, the fact is that I now have an interest-bearing checking account with no service charges. I might end up using it some.)

I have been doing a fair amount of worrying about the future, lately - specifically, my mom's future, and how much longer Art can take care of her and how much longer they can live in the townhouse with the stairs, etc. etc. I told her that if it came down to it she could move in with us - of course we would have to get a bigger place, but she has always said she wanted to live in Galveston anyway. (She used to say that long before I ever even thought about living here.) So in theory she doesn't mind moving to Galveston, and in theory Rob doesn't mind the idea of her living with us. I'm worried about how well it would work in practice, though. This seemed like a decision far off in the future until recently - but lately I'm afraid that it could come pretty soon. Art is 83 (or he's going to be in coupla months, I always forget) - and he's in good shape for that age, but taking care of my mom is a little bit of a job and I don't know how much longer he can manage it. It's not that she's completely decrepit, but she doesn't get around too well, and she's very spacy and can't really manage her own money and things. I have gotten out of doing all that up to now, thanks to Art, but I just don't think that's going to be able to continue indefinitely.

(If she did move in with us, I can't see leaving her alone all day, either. That's the next big can of worms. But I'll worry about that later.)