Audrey Borschel

I have spent many frustrating hours trying to register to pay our bills online. I finally decided to “modernize” and also reduce postage costs. My first attempt was to pay a small water bill. When I registered to pay the less than $5 charge, I found out the water company levies a service charge of $1.95. No savings there-a 44 cent stamp looked pretty attractive.

Then I spent an hour trying to set up online payment for our phone service. After all the time it took to fill out the idiotic form (who was your favorite elementary school teacher?), I got this message: “This site is down for updating.” SO, you guessed it, I took up my trusty pen again and dispatched that bill with another 44 cent stamp. A while later, I received a phone call telling me my registration had been completed. Okay – next time.

On to a department store bill. I filled out the form and found out we already were registered online (news to me). However my name didn’t show and the “computer” said it would send the login password to Mike’s former email address, which is quite dead, so I phoned the helpline. A delightful young woman from Wisconsin helped me through it and after a LONG time we were able to reset a password into something readable. (Imagine using uppercase “I” and lowercase “l” in the same password.) At last I paid my bill using our reset password.

On a roll! I set up another utility online payment. Piece of cake. Getting the hang of it now.

However, in all of this online bill paying I forgot to pay my own credit card, which I’ve been paying online for years. Three days late, it was time to roll out the pretty please to have the late charge reversed. Happy outcome there because, as the nice lady said, I’m such a good customer.

Okay. I temporarily lose things all the time. So does my husband. Maybe we all do! “Have you seen my car keys?”  “Where are my glasses?”  “Where did I put my appointment book?”  “I can’t find my cell phone.”  (That’s the easy one. We just call our numbers.)

But yesterday I misplaced the manuscript to my new book, Sleuthing the Truth in Media.  It was in a canary yellow folder, not something easily overlooked. I searched everywhere – in my office, of course, in the bedroom, and getting more agitated- by the minute, in every room of the house!  It was nowhere to be found. Knowing full well it wasn’t in the garage, where I was about to search the cars. I looked again in the bedroom and grew suspicious when the quilt on our bed didn’t seem to be quite smooth.  In fact it looked lumpy. I patted around the  bed that Mike had made up so well and lo and behold- my magnum opus was tucked in between the sheets.

Don’t know if it needed a rest from my editing and trying to mold it into a publishable book, but I really want to complete it before we leave for Hawaii on vacation.  So don’t hide from me anymore little book!

Last June, distracted by conversation, I tripped over uneven pavement while on a walk through the neighborhood with Mike and Sophie. Guess I wasn’t watching my feet! I fell flat on my face, busting my two front teeth. My dentist and very good friend fixed me up on a Saturday emergent visit so I wouldn’t look too goofy when we left on vacation a couple of days later.

The other day I got temporaries for the permanent overlays I’ll get next week. As I left I was warned: Don’t drink dark liquids, (coffee, tea, cola, juice) or eat dark foods such as blueberries because the resin will absorb the stain and darken the teeth.

Okay, two days out without coffee I’m having headaches. Green tea isn’t cutting it! I was very conscientious until I stopped for lunch yesterday and “won” a cookie. No, I didn’t pick a chocolate cookie. I chose a giant heart-shaped sugar cookie – with bright red frosting.

Oops. As I headed toward recording my Sunday sermon for DisciplesNet, I looked in the mirror and was sure I saw a bunch of red-stained teeth. Fortunately I was seeing things!

It’s 3:00 p.m. Green tea time….