Expired Insurance

This plant is known as a "lipstick echeveria," according to my Picture This app. I've never known the name of it. It's one of several cacti or succulents I adopted from the library, where plants often get abandoned when people move or clean out their offices. Every year it sends up this little pink stalk of tiny flowers, and for a while I was disappointed because it seemed they never quite opened. Then I realized this is the bloom -- this is as good as it gets. And now I like them.

Poor Olga was very wobbly this morning. I don't know if she strained something getting into or out of bed, or just slept wrong, but she could barely get out and move around in the garden. I'm going to cancel her dog-walker and give her a day of rest, along with an extra Paracetamol, and we'll see if that helps. She was just as eager as usual to wake up -- she slept parallel to me, pressed against my back, and when she wanted to get up at 5 a.m. she put her head on my shoulder and thump thump thump went the tail. (The tail is my alarm clock.)

Last night she ate normally and ravaged the candytuft as usual, so who knows what's going on. Maybe just achey morning joints. (Addendum: We later took our usual morning stroll and she seemed fine.)

When Dave was in Michigan over Spring Break, cleaning out his parents' house, he found an old life insurance policy they'd bought in his name right after he was born. It was purchased from the Aid Association for Lutherans, back in 1968. We were pretty sure the policy was inactive, but we wanted to check, so I looked around online and found that the Aid Association for Lutherans had over the years been absorbed into a larger insurance and investment company called Thrivent. We sent a message to Thrivent online but of course no one got back to us, so last night I called them.

Calling was an adventure in itself because, for a variety of reasons, I usually use Skype for overseas calls to 1-800 numbers. But I don't make many of those calls and hadn't opened Skype in ages, and it's now being phased out by Microsoft, so I had trouble getting it up and running. Finally I managed to make the call and the operator did indeed find Dave's policy and it is indeed inactive. I'm sure his parents stopped paying premiums ages ago. When we asked his mom she barely remembered it.

The estate sale of his parents' stuff (sans the belongings they want to keep, which have been moved to them in Florida) is happening on May 1. I suggested to Dave that he or his sister should touch base with their cousins or other family members to see if they want any of it -- because there's some stuff there, like china and furniture, inherited from Dave's grandparents. But I don't want to get too involved. This is really his family affair, and from dealing with my own mom's stuff a few years ago I know everyone already has too much of everything.