Resistance Is Futile

My bank has an app for PC that had a function where I could pay my rent by electronic funds transfer directly to my landlady’s account in about 45 seconds.  It was just great.   So Friday, the 31st,  I went to the app to pay my rent and promptly discovered that I couldn’t.  They’d changed the app so you can’t do the “People Pay” bit from the PC app any more, and it was apparently too much trouble for them to bother telling anybody they were going to do it.  Now you have to use the phone app to do it.  I spent most of the morning going round and round about it with my bank. (Like I really needed one more thing to sort out. . . .)

It was presumptive and high-handed of them to make changes out of hand and without warning, and I didn’t hesitate to mention that in the three separate phone calls I made to three different people trying to find out what in the Sam Hill was going on and how I’m going to get my rent money to my landlady in a timely fashion.

“Well, now that everybody has smart phones we’ve gone to this new app.  All your landlady has to do is download it and . . .”  Excuse me, but my landlady does not have a smart phone, doesn’t want a smart phone, is not about to fork over that kind of dough to get one, and wouldn’t know what to do with it if she had one.

“Well, you can drive down to the bank and set up an automatic funds transfer in person . . .”  Darling, I just had my left knee replaced, and I’m not driving anywhere for at least 10 days, never mind negotiating my way in and out using a walker, and my landlady would like her rent money now.

“You can mail her a check.”  My landlady has an invalid husband and doesn’t have time to be driving off to the bank to deposit the dang check, and doesn’t have a smart phone to do a mobile deposit.  See above.

I swear sometimes I feel like I’m channeling  John Cleese in the Dead Parrot sketch.

Anyway, I think I have it sorted now. Either I can mail a check to my landlady, or the bank can mail her one, which she still has to deposit.  So much for progress.  It’s been over a week now since I went round and round with the bank.  Not only is resistance futile, it’s bootless.   I’ve had time to simmer down now and I’m gradually lapsing into resignation.

Technology has brought me one nice thing, though.  My grocery store now delivers — for a $10/£8/€9 fee, of course.  You shop on line, pay on line and pick the best available delivery time for you (2-hour windows).  Two nice men in bermudas brought my order by this morning and even brought it in the house and put it on my dining table.  It was worth a 10-spot not to have to traipse around in a grocery store on a leg which still hasn’t forgiven me for what I put it through on the 24th.

I am walking around the house without a walker OR cane, trying to walk as naturally as I can.  I’m working on flexion and doing the exercises the home PT people showed me.   Don’t know exactly when I’ll start outpatient physical therapy — the VA makes you jump through so many durn bureaucratic hoops to do anything — but it will be soon.

I go to the VA tomorrow for blood test and checkup — I expect I’ll be retailing the tale of the knee for the edification of my VA medical data base.

In the meantime, I’ve gotten back into knitting.  One of the couples whose YouTube channel I follow* is expecting their first child.  It’s been a while since I knitted baby booties.  I remembered that Arne and Carlos did a tutorial demonstrating a variant of short-row heel without holes  and I decided to try their method, which works beautifully.  I call them booties, but they’re really more like baby bobbie socks.  The people I’ve given this style of booties to say they really like them because the fold-down ribbed cuff makes them harder for the baby to kick off.

I’ve also started one of Marianna’s baby tops in 6-month size.    They knit up fast.  Instead of binding off the sleeves, I put them on some scrap yarn and will make a long sleeved version.  I probably could have finished it today, but I got side-tracked reading blogs and watching videos on YouTube.

One of the things I’ve been trying is “knitting backwards” to do stockinette stitch.  In this method, the purl row is done by knitting backwards. It’s kind of the Columbus method (Going east by sailing west. . .) for doing stockinette, but that little top has five inches of stockinette at the bottom, which means you’re purling 130 stitches every other row. . . .  ugh!

Two things I wanted to mention.  If you use double pointed needles (DPNs) for things like knitting socks or hats or baby things, check these out.  When you put your knitting aside, you put all five needles into the case and snap the snaps.  The little case keeps your work from sliding off the needles, as well as keeping that fifth needle corralled so it doesn’t go missing.  (Somebody had their thinking cap on!)  The other thing is The Sock Ruler.  If you knit socks, you need one of these!

I’ve been gestating an idea for a knitted messy bun hat using one of those hair elastics for ponytails (of which I have a number).   It’s on the back burner for now, but stay tuned.   That’s all I got for now.

*On the linked video starting at about 6:24, you can see a very pregnant lady driving a backhoe.  We've come a long way, baby.