In which Primo and I negotiate Getting Stuff Done that should just Be Done

There is some tension in our house right now because the guest room is full of Sly and Doris' junk (Primo trying to sort out all their financial papers so he can send everything to the accountant to do their 2015 taxes and then so he can do the trust taxes in the death year.)

(IF YOU LOVE YOUR CHILDREN and you are not a complete jerk - which, if you are reading this blog, you 1. do and 2. are not, then please please please keep your financial papers current. Shred old documents. Organize papers in the proper files. You do have files, right? I am sure I have some accountant readers who can advise us on what you have to keep and what you do not, but I am pretty sure that check registers from the 1970s are not useful and that Medicare EOBs from seven years ago are also unnecessary.

And we don't need your poop diary.)

Anyhow. The guest room is full of stuff.

The living room is full of stuff.

When we moved into the house eight years ago, Primo promised to get rid of most of the boxes in the basement - boxes he had brought here from California without even looking in them and that include things like his employee manual and the earthquake guide and a bunch of floppy discs from when he worked at Apple in the early '90s.

Those were the Bad Years, BTW - the years that the people who worked there did not get rich.

Oh well.

I hate having all this crap around. I want it gone.

Primo gets paralyzed by overwhelming tasks because the way he works is that if he starts something, he feels compelled to finish it in one fell swoop.

I break a job down into manageable tasks and then commit to only small chunks of time.

That is, Primo is Waterfall and I am Agile.

He spent the afternoon yesterday trying to

1. Find an appraiser to give a date of death appraisal for Sly and Doris' house. Apparently, you cannot use the appraisal for selling the house and the guy who did the appraisal for selling the house does not do estate tax appraisals.

2. Emailing the lawyer about the house, which the woman at the title company had told Primo was good to go but then wrote back and said there had been some change in Florida homestead exemption law and Sly and Doris had not done what they were supposed to do and complicationcomplicationcomplication. The lawyer and the title lady have to figure it out. Primo and I googled "changes in Florida homestead law estates trusts" and wanted to hit our heads against the wall until they were bloody. Holy smoke. I don't care what it costs the estate - someone else has to deal with this.

He was supposed to be clearing out a bunch of stuff from the living room and figuring out how to get the money from a credit union account that Sly had put him on earlier in the year so he could pay bills and he was supposed to be reimbursing his estate expenses for the past several months.

Of all of these, it is most important to me that he get the money from the credit union account (because that is now our money) and that he reimburse himself for his expenses. Why you ask? Because if he dies in a car crash tomorrow, I want that cash in my hand.

I was getting all pissy yesterday looking at all the junk in the living room and then I thought, "Slow down missy. Sly and Doris are no longer a factor in your life. If someone had asked you a year ago if you would trade getting them out of your life for having some boxes in your living room for a few months, what would you have said?"

So I adjusted my attitude.

And then, after Primo and I had a date night, which we have not had in a long, long time, watching The Judge in the basement with the cats, who were all excited because when we watch movies in the basement, we have to put a heavy blanket over the space heater and our legs because the basement is cold and hard to heat and the cats love to sit on the blanket-covered space heater, we sorted through some of the living room stuff, putting a big plastic tote together to go into the basement To Be Dealt With Later, which I can live with, and Primo agreed to donate a box of decorative wooden bowls that he had bought for his old apartment but had no sentimental value and had been in the basement since we moved into the house.

I got a box out of the basement. Gone!

And then we negotiated today.

Me: What are you going to get done on Thursday?

Primo: I really need to deal with that credit union stuff.

Me: What about reimbursing yourself?

Primo: I can't get all of that done! I don't even have the receipts consolidated.*

Me: You said you would clean the bathroom.

Primo: That's a lot! I hate cleaning the bathroom.  And I need to do laundry.

Me: I will make you a deal.

Primo: What?

Me: If you will get the money from the credit union - or at least do all that you can on your end - and if you will consolidate all of your estate expense receipts, I will clean the tub.

Primo: OK.

Me: Good.




* I would have all my receipts consolidated.