Happy Cinco de Mayo

We've had a lot of special days since first of the month — first there was Justin Timberlake Day (It’s gonna be Me/May), then May Day, followed by Star Wars Day (May the 4th) and now Cinco de Mayo.

But Wait … there’s more. Mother’s Day is coming, then Memorial Day.

I made ground turkey tamales week before last, still have a few in the freezer. So, after whipping up a quick Spanish Rice, I’m good to go on a meal appropriate for the day.

Due to driving all over town to pick up a prescription, this past weekend wasn’t much of a time off from the outside world.

Of course it rained on Sunday, the day I had to drive all the way to the Main Medical Center, and driving on the freeway in serious rain was terrifying. I equated it to driving through a giant car wash, even found myself singing a bar or two of that old song about working at the car wash from the movie Car Wash.

Once I arrived safe and sound at the exit, a few street miles from the medical center, I told myself no way was I taking the freeway back. So, after picking up the medication, I set the GPS to give turn-by-turn street directions home.

Of course there just had to be another glitch before I got hands on the medication … the pharmacy didn’t have the order.

After Saturday’s fiasco of driving from one end of town to another, finding pharmacies closed and now this, I began thinking …. is this all a warning? does the Universe not want me to take this medication?

I’d been at a level of discomfort for so long that I didn’t know how I could do without it, but turned out the missing order was not the work of the Universe blocking me. It was that the facility is so large that they have two pharmacies — the order went to the pharmacy in the hospital.

After I gave handsome pharmacy guy the sad tale of my previous day, he took pity on me. Instead of having to find my way to the pharmacy on the hospital side, pharmacy guy cancelled that order, had it processed where I was, and I was out and on my way within 10 minutes.

Taking the streets back, I ran into quite a lot of flashing yellow lights but was calm, patient, respected every one of them.

So, with the medication off my bucket list, I turned my attention to the high service fee, and sent an email to Manager asking that, because of the excessive nature of the fee, she consider reopening the rent drop box, as it’s convenient for us and less disruptive to office staff.

Bright and early this morning, she opened the email, replied having no awareness of the fee, would look into it, but that Corporate had ordered the removal of drop boxes at all of its properties.

The drop box is not coming back.

LATER: So. Manager’s investigation shows it’s something like what Scary Mary said, "If I pay with my credit card on the resident portal the fee is $38.00. But if I pay with my bank account the fee is only $3.89". Turns out the payment went to a credit card, thus the service fee of $29.14.

I did say registering for the online portal was way too complicated. Somehow, it’s connected to the card, instead of the account.

That tells you how complicated the portal is because, when I was in the working world, the secretaries and attorneys would call me to fix their computer problems before they called Tech Support.

I’ve a meeting with Manager tomorrow morning. She’s going to walk me through the process.

She thinks the fee is $3.89.