First post of the new year!  Welcome 2012.  Let’s see what you bring us.

I think my focus for this year is to try to get life in some sort of order.  My daily existence is already pretty orderly, but right now I’m thinking of things that I need to tackle to help bring order to our future.

One thing 2011 taught me is the importance of detailing the minutiae of your life on paper, somewhere, so that your little world can continue on if you become unable to care for yourself.  Every family unit runs a household so completely differently from another that it is next to impossible for a third party to step in and help with the controls.  However, my goal for this year is to try to take specific steps to ensure that if something major were to happen to me, David, or both of us, that the person who ends up handling our affairs can do so with as little red tape as possible.

My grandparents had a rough 2011 and 2012 doesn’t look much brighter.  Trying to figure out how to find order in their situation has been an un-ending and very complicated task.  I would like to think that my cousin and I have done a remarkable job piecing it all together, but how we really know if we have?  She’s done many hours of work trying to sort insurance policies, and bills, and random bits of information here and there, but it still feels like we could easily be missing something important.  The only thing of all of this that we’ve had in our favor is that we have been very close to our grandparents throughout the years, and between me living with them for many years combined with her frequent visits, we know enough about them that we’ve been able to put together a somewhat workable system to help them out.  It’s been such an arduous task that it is hard for me to think that I might be doing the exact same thing in my own life to someone who has to take care of our affairs in the future.

It is surprising – the random things that we take care of without thought every day.  I began to realize -

*if David and I both suddenly died, does any family member have the name and contact information for our landlord?  How would they even find him?

*how would anyone find out that I participate in the 401(k) program at CVS?

*who would know to cancel our Lifelock service once we no longer need it?

There’s just so many details of life beyond the obvious!  It’s a little scary when you think about it.

So, this year, I am working on a detailed list of the what, where, and how to contact.  I want to make things easier for the person who has to come behind us.  Not the most enjoyable goal for a new year, but I think it’s important!

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On the lighter side, I’ve been having a series of recurring dreams lately about our old apartment.  I have no idea why!  All the dreams are extremely vivid and happily pleasant.  Each time, I am aware that I don’t live there anymore, but I always seem to have an excuse ready about why I need to go inside.  Sometimes the new tenants are home and sometimes they are not, hehe.  (Although they are different people every time.)  I usually enter the apartment and just take a look around to see what they’ve done with it.  I think I ate a meal in the apartment last night.  hehe.  Sometimes I just go in and take a nap since it’s so close to work.  :)

Hope your 2012 has gotten off to a great start!

 

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