A Mixed Bag Life Update XI
The first life update of 2023; brings news of my brother Paul passing away. We rarely saw eye to eye, let’s say he did some things that were not acceptable to me, which led to us becoming estranged, and then I moved to the US of A, losing all contact with family back home. I found out about Paul’s passing through my niece Wendy, who managed to get hold of me through my wife, Erin on Facebook, as my Facebook account was locked down to friends of friends who can contact me or add me as a friend.
I’m unable to attend Paul’s funeral due to a lack of finances, but the bigger problem is my passport has expired and renewing it takes more time than I have before the funeral. Regardless of our differences, he was still my brother and I feel somewhat sad at the news of his passing. But from what Wendy told me, he had gotten his act together, kicking his drug habit and getting clean, which is great. Sadly I never got to see him ‘clean’ before becoming estranged, most of my memories were of him on drugs.
I don’t have too many good memories with Paul, but some I do remember as happy times were when he took me to Home Park to see Plymouth Argyle play in the 1980s, and fishing trips out on “Sea Witch”, the boat that my eldest brother David owned, this was the few times where we all were together and happy.
The positives of my brother’s passing are that I am now back in contact with my two nieces Wendy and Tracey, who have kids of their own, with the eldest being 20 years old. So, I find I am a great uncle to adult children…. that makes me feel old, but I did become an uncle at the age of six, so it makes sense.
while stateside, I am still waiting on my green card renewal to happen, it’s been 450 days since I applied for my green card renewal, and the status has not changed since October ’21. This is having a knock-on effect, I needed to renew my driver’s license back in October ’22, and if I want to have a driver’s license with the star that allows me to enter federal buildings and board flights, I have to present my green card + extension letter from USCIS. The issue at that time was, that my green card had expired and my extension letter was only for 1 year, my driver’s license was only valid for 83 days, instead of six years.
This meant that I had to renew my driver’s license again on January 12, 2023, for 1 more year as I received a second extension letter on December 10, 2022, stating that I am legal for a period of 24 months from the expiry date on my green card. I left it to my license’s expiry date, hoping my green card would arrive.
It got worse, I drove all the way to Derby, a neighboring city to Wichita, Kansas, as their DMV office is much less busy than the Wichita DMV. Only to find out that the vision form that I just got from my ophthalmologist was an old form, which they would not accept. So I had to drive all the way back to Wichita, with the updated form, get it filled out again, and return it to Derby DMV. I drove almost 100 miles this day between my home, my eye doctor’s office, and the DMV. The silver lining is that at least because I went to the Derby DMV, the wait time was minimal, it would have been 2 – 3 hours in Wichita.
While talking about my vision, as mentioned, I was at my ophthalmologist’s office on January 12 and did the usual battery of tests because of my diabetes. And my vision has changed slightly, but I wanted to make some changes to my prescription. I wanted to ditch my Transitions, opting for clip-on sunglasses instead, as Transitions don’t work in the car, which is where I need darker lenses the most. I added Varilux to help with focusing between close and far objects, which combined with clear lenses, should help me with nighttime driving, which is somewhat problematic with my current prescription.
My 18-year-old son, Conner has held onto his part-time job at Ollie’s and has been getting some good hours. Now that his employment seems to be stable, I am going to introduce him to adult life, making him transfer service for his phone, which is just $22.17 per month onto his own account, being responsible for paying for it himself. And suffer the consequences of not paying, like being cut off as it’s a prepaid plan, which will be a problem for his employment as they need to be able to contact him.
We also want him to save some money towards his driver’s education course, he will have to save half of the cost and we’ll pay the other half. Conner says he has saved a couple of hundred dollars, I have not seen his bank account balances, so I don’t know if that is true or not, but I hope he is being honest and has saved some cash, he needs to get driving, I am not willing to be his (unpaid) chauffeur forever.
My 13-year-old daughter Alya has competed in three school robotics competitions since the last update and has done really well. Her team has reached the semi-finals in all three tournaments, which is amazing as at each competition, there have been 30 – 50 teams. Finishing in the top four out of 30 to 50 teams is excellent, and I’m so proud of her for this achievement. I wish I had this available to me at school, 30+ years ago, kids in the 2020s have so many more opportunities than Erin and I did at school.
We are powering through our medical insurance deductible and max out of pocket at a pace, which is great, but we are still to get the bills, we are looking at $1,500-2,000 already, which is not great as we don’t have the cash to pay it, after paying the $658.17 premium every month. We have to get to $4,900 max out of pocket before insurance starts paying 100%, minus copays, which we still have to pay.
So it really is a mixed-bag update, some positive news, some sad news, and the usual money struggles. I don’t know when the next update will be but watch this (web)space for the next exciting installment!