Yesterday and today have been very trying. Actually, Wednesday was giving me ogida, too. I learned then that after my boss's boss left the company, they decided to do some "restructuring" and I will no longer be reporting to my boss in customer communications. I'll become part of the creative services team and report to someone new while doing more marketing copywriting. Yet, my priority will continue to be what I'm doing now, customer communications.

This is the part that doesn't make sense to me. So I'll be doing my performance reviews and getting evaluated by one person yet still doing the bulk of my work (85% or so) for someone else. So my workload will no doubt significantly increase. I do have a fair amount of free time and I must admit taking advantage of that to deal with my mother's affairs/healthcare matters, but I worry that I'll be flooded with more work than I can handle. I've certainly experienced that before, and it's not fun.

It's nice that I will be doing a combination of customer communications and marketing moving forward, broadening my horizons at the bank, so to speak, but the bottom line is they'll be heaping more work on me and not taking anything away that I'm doing now. So things may be about to change for the worse.

The person I'll be reporting to and the rest of my team of about 5 people are all up in our Massachusetts office. And they quickly invited me to spend one day next week up there to meet the team.

Except that this particular day is the date of another family meeting at Masonicare as it relates to my mother's progress. An occupational therapist, physical therapist, social worker, Maplewood rep, nurse, etc. I don't want to try to reschedule with all of them, it's too important a meeting; I need to come to a determination soon whether to keep paying $5200/mth for an empty room at Maplewood, where mom had been living before her fractured hip, or maybe keep her at Masonicare, possibly in THEIR assisted living community, which would have the advantage of guaranteeing her a spot in their nursing home should she later need it, or put her directly in their nursing home facility if she's not well enough to live in assisted living.

So I sent a brief note to my new boss and her boss, who had sent me the invite, explaining the situation simply but directly. Probably not the best way to start off a new relationship by saying you can't make their meeting (and unfortunately my new boss's boss sent out the invite to all the others on the team before I had a chance to respond that no, I can't make that day) but they're going to find out sooner or later so they may as well find out now; it may stifle some impulses they may have to get me up there on a frequent basis. Not happening. Reality check.

I really hate any meetings that I have up there. I usually have quarterly meetings up there and it's such a taxing day. I need to allow 3 hours to get up there and 3 hours to get back, and they usually expect you to get there around 9 a.m. I hate the drive. It's exhausting.

At least before I would drive up with others who rented a van, etc. Now I'll have to drive myself. To save themselves money, the company made a new rule that if you have a business trip that's over x number of miles, they won't reimburse you for gas unless you rent a car. Because I live alone, I have no one to drive me to or pick me up from the car rental place, which is about 15 minutes from here. The car rental place will do that, but sometimes you have to wait, so it just is one big pain in the butt. Especially on the ride home, when you are tired and just want to get home, you don't want to have to wait around for the car rental people to drive you home.

I don't think i would bother with the car rental and I would just spend my own money on the gas.

Yesterday I went to my lawyer's and signed all the paperwork. He made it very confusing because he showed me 2 different versions of the HUD statement as well as his own summary sheet. The numbers didn't match up. There was still a $1,000 discrepancy between what his numbers showed as my net and what the buyer's attorney's numbers showed. I have to trust that he's going to straighten that out. He was on the phone with his paralegal, etc. I felt stressed.

Saw my mother last night after that. She was doing okay but i could see that she was still sort of hyper and she wasn't really coherent. I think the meds were kicking in, but not completely. She was very happy to see me.

The closing is supposed to take place right now, around 2 p.m. But my lawyer is running late. I had asked him this morning if he could swing by my house today on his way in to the closing because I'd forgotten to give him some keys to the slider doors in lower level of mom's condo yesterday. He didn't come by to get them til 1:55 p.m. and his office is 20 minutes away. Sigh.

So I can't collect the money right after the closing as I thought I could. He will get a trustee's check and that will take several days to clear; then he can either overnight or hand deliver me a check mid next week, he said.

I decided i will open up an Ally online money market account, not a Sallie Mae account, since the Ally earns 1%, not .90%. Otherwise, they're identical. Limited to 6 withdrawals a month, so I'm not sure at this point if I'll close my mother's old checking account since keeping that open may be helpful if I'm inundated with medical bills that threaten to exceed the 6 withdrawals a month.

I did get on the phone with T. Rowe Price and they walked me through how to fill out the forms they sent me a full year ago to gain complete access to my mother's brokerage account. (I easily obtained access already simply by opening up an online account with my mother's information, but i also wanted to ensure I got all the tax forms at year end, which they would have snail mailed to her old address.)

As to the POA form, they will accept it if i get a medallion stamp on it, which i can get from my mother's bank this Saturday. But i have to send T. Rowe the original POA form, and my lawyer already has one "original" that must be sent to the city clerk to record the condo sale.

Luckily, I have a 2nd "original" POA form that I can send to T. Rowe so as not to waste time waiting for the return of the other original by the city clerk.

Do you see how all this stuff consumes so much of my time?

I am feeling anxious. Maybe I'll feel better if my attorney thinks to call me after the closing to confirm things went off without a hitch and to clear up that discrepancy in the numbers. Either way, I'll be netting about $129,000 when all is said and done.

It's a long three-day weekend coming up. I just am really looking forward to gaining some time back in my life to take a few walks and do things like clear up my veggie garden, continue trying to put things in order in my house, etc. And relax. Deep breaths and relax.