Day Twenty-Four: Tons of Paperwork and a Beautiful Sight

Today I spent all afternoon on the phone, mostly on hold of course, although I gave up on the last call for the day when the Social Security office told me my estimated waiting time was two hours. Our biggest concern has been trying to cash out my mom's mutual fund before the value drops too much further - it's been falling like 15-20% a month for the last two months. It's at Wells-Fargo, and my sister and I aren't signators for that account. Finally I learned that I'll need an "small estate affidavit" from the county, and the death certificate, and a "brokerage account" where the funds can be transferred, and then I can finally liquidate the mutual fund. Then this evening I found out that I can't even apply for that affidavit until May 1 (there's a 30-day waiting period). So I can stop rushing about.

Then it was 5:30 p.m. and I wanted to go for a vigorous walk to restore my patience. I discovered it was lovely outside, 62° and blue skies with little puffy clouds. We headed toward the school field, and when we got there, we discovered something wonderful: A young man was flying a remote-controlled plane, a big one with a wingspan of 4-5' (1.5m, maybe), and doing a fine job of it. Quite the barn-stormer! My favorite part was when he dropped a parachutist out of the plane, coasted onwards a bit, then swooped back to see if he could intercept it as it fell. Not quite, but pretty close! After we'd looked at the wildflowers a bit (not much new in bloom this week), we went back past him, and I thanked him for making my day.

Then this evening we started the new Ori game, very cool.