Time For Change

Unfortunately George Carlin was a wee bit before my time.

Rumor has it he was hilarious.

Actually, I’m well aware that he was the first ever host of Saturday Night Live.

And I’m well aware of his seven dirty words skit.

I’ve even used all seven of those words in a sentence.

If you don’t believe me, just ask my kids.

But one of his routines that I have seen, and that made me laugh out loud, is his routine on “Stuff.”

If you haven’t seen it, just click here, AFTER you’ve finished my blog.

I know he was just trying to be funny.

And he was.

But his was act was pretty darn true too.

Like the part about your house being a place to keep your “stuff” while you go out and get more “stuff.”

Or the part about “their stuff is junk” and “your junk is stuff.”

Except he used one of those seven words for junk.

There’s nothing really funny about moving.

I suppose if you are going to a bigger place... in a better place... it can be fun.

But funny, not really.

One of the little hidden gems of moving is the process of changing your address.

If you haven’t moved in a while, you have NO idea what fun you are missing.

Since we are in between homes at the moment, I hired a P.O. Box to be our home address for the time being.

Then I started writing down all of the places I needed to contact to change our address.

There were the obvious ones, like banks and credit cards.

And magazines.

The less obvious ones, like grocery stores and old employers.

And frequent flyer airlines.

And then there are the ones that I forgot all about.

When the list was complete, the tally had reached 77.

77 different places where I needed to change my address.

Talk about stuff.

Some companies made it easy by doing it on their website.

As long as you remembered your user ID.

And your password.

Or your security question.

And the answer to that question.

Other companies make you fax them.

Does anybody really own a fax machine?

Other companies want you to write them.

And then there are most of them who I needed to call.

As someone who is sans employment at the moment, I was fortunately able to carve out some significant time in my busy schedule to get this done.

And that still wasn’t enough.

The first call was to my old mortgage company.

Since I was in full multi-task mode, it was no big deal when they put me on hold.

For five minutes.

Then ten.

Then fifteen.

Really.

Apparently they “were experiencing high call traffic” or something like that.

But I finally got that one done and moved onto the next.

Did you know that menu options have changed?

I must’ve heard that one a thousand times.

“Please pay attention because our menu options have changed.”

Menu options?

Who did I call, Denny’s?

I wish I had a postage stamp for every time I was told that my call would be “monitored or recorded for quality purposes.”

Really?

As if the job of being on the phone with losers like me isn’t bad enough.

There are people whose job it is to listen to our phone calls.

Wow.

I’d rather dress up like a sandwich and hold one of those signs telling drivers that there is a Subway restaurant in that mini-mall.

At least they can listen to music all day.

One of the companies I called had a list of security questions to make sure I was who I said I was.

One of the questions asked, “what county did I live in when I was in high school?”

Really?

First of all, I went to high school 26 YEARS AGO.

Second of all, I went to three different high schools in three different cities on two different coasts.

I can’t remember ANYTHING I learned in high school.

How in the world can I tell you what county I was in?

I was also asked to verify my last four addresses.

Good luck with that.

By the time the day was done, I was wiped out.

But my mission was accomplished.

Well almost.

I still have about 15 to go.

And then I get to do it all again when we find a permanent residence.

That’s where those seven words come in.