Phishing

I was just phished!  I drove up the hill to have lunch with a friend, and when I returned there was a receipt in my inbox for $120 for a heft of coins--whatever that is.  Seems that I used my Apple App while I was driving home to order the coins to play pool, which, of course, didn't happen.

I immediately called Apple and was directed to Erika, who was very patient with me as she went through all of the instructions s-l-o-w-l-y and then decided to mirror my phone to speed things up a bit.  She (and I) walked through the process as she described the steps, and determined that I had not been charged, but phished.  Erika reported it, assured me I don't have to pay the charge, and then backed out of my phone, leaving me with a contact email and a case number if I have to come back to this.

It seems to me that with this phishing process going on all the time, the computer companies could come up with a fix so that phishing no longer is a viable option.  The receipt I received looked legit, which is why I immediately called Apple -- and had it been something else that was charged, not an Apple App, I probably wouldn't have thought twice about it, but since I don't use Apple App, I knew it wasn't a charge that I had made.

And, there was the whole driving home from Yucca Valley part that I factored in, but my phisher didn't know … .

Possessions

"But experience is less likely to teach us how to bid our dearest possessions adieu. And if it were to? We wouldn't welcome the education. For eventually, we come to hold our dearest possessions more closely than we hold our friends. We carry them from place to place, often at considerable expense and inconvenience; we dust and polish their surfaces and reprimand children for playing too roughly in their vicinity--all the while, allowing memories to invest them with greater and greater importance. …

Until we imagine that these carefully preserved possessions might give us genuine solace in the face of a lost companion.

But, of course, a thing is just a thing."

excerpt from A Gentleman in Moscow, by Amor Towles

Procrastination

Word of advice: don't put off cleaning up the clutter, especially from the past 40 years or so.  The job becomes overwhelming and takes weeks, not days.

Based on my recent experience, I found many, many old papers that simply needed to be either shredded (personal info) or trashed (generic paper).  I had kept things not knowing if I would ever need the information, so when it came time to purge the past, I had hours of recordkeeping to go through and make the shred/toss decision.  I used my personal shredder for a lot of the old paperwork, but when my daughter came to help me with the cleaning process, she told me I could take a lot of the personal papers to a company and have them do the shredding.  It was not expensive and it relieved both of us from hours pushing papers through the shredder.  Other papers, mostly from my 35-year career in public education, are being taken to the dump, which breaks my heart.  There is so much good material in those boxes, but time changes what's done and how it's done in the classroom, so I'm guessing it wouldn't be of value to anyone today.

I also saved many, many items that simply have no value, like empty tins, jars, and containers. When I was growing up, my mother saved empty jars for canning, but I haven't canned since I lived at home and that's been 50 years ago.  I used to bake and fill up the tins with goodies, but living alone negates the need to bake: I just go to the grocery store and buy one package of whatever cookie I'm craving. I also have decades of old photos, bins filled with photos I don't want/don't need.  I separated out some of the photos to send to my children, but I'm not sure they are going to want a huge bin filled with old photos to land on their doorstep.

I wasn't aware that I had become a hoarder, but my daughter made an entire shelf section in the garage into my own mini Costco!  It's one of those trips that is a bit farther away than the local store, so while I'm there, I may as well pick up another batch of paper towels, or Kleenex, or cleaning supplies.  I have enough plastic bags to last me at least a year. I truly wasn't aware that I was constantly buying more of the same item, but once it's on the shelf and I see the magnitude of the over-buying, it makes the point.  My daughter put a back-up list in my phone of things I don't need to buy at Costco.

And, I obviously wasn't on top of checking expiration dates on the things in my pantry and 'fridge. My daughter went through everything and tossed out at least half of what I had on the shelves, many of which were well over 5 years' of expiration.  I never checked the shelves, but seldom used anything from there either as I don't really cook like I used to when I had someone living at home. Now that I'm aware of expiration dates, I'll do a better job of staying on top of those items that either need to be used or tossed.

It is challenging to think about what lies ahead, when I either need to move out of this home and into a smaller space, or have to have help to stay in my own home.  Once I'm gone, there is still far too much stuff that my children will need to handle, and that's not fair to them. My message is to urge all able-bodied elderly persons to start now to declutter and discard. I was lucky to have my daughter come to help me with the process, but once I'm gone, she and her brother will be on their own, and it's a daunting task at best.