I was preparing for another long call with Social Security, but mom received a letter of the denial of coverage. That’s what they told me in the first place, but for some reason, they processed the application and then formally declined it.
Now I will wait for the citizenship to go through and try again. I really want to schedule an in-person appointment because it is very difficult to explain all our circumstances over the phone. Also, I am unsure about Medicare – on the one hand, I want to wait till her citizenship, and on the other hand, they do not like when you apply later than you become eligible.
That’s something I completely and entirely don’t understand. For the longest time, whenever I talked to the people from the Social Security Administration, they told me that Mom could apply for SSI after she lived in the US for five years, regardless of her citizenship status. When I called to inquire about the same thing in April, a person with whom I talked assured me that it was all fine and signed us up for the phone interview.
When we got on the phone for the interview last week, the lady who was talking to us told us that my mom is not eligible because although she lived here for five years, she didn’t work, and she is not a citizen yet. Then she said that my mom can apply when her citizenship is approved. I thought that that was the end of the story, but she collected all the other information and said that my mom can’t have that much money in the bank as she has in our joint account. So I was like: should I remove it? And she was: I am not saying that, but…
So again, super annoying, but I thought: oh, well, we will restart the process when mom is a citizen. And then on Monday, she received a letter stating that her application will be reviewed.
There are sever minor inaccuracies there, so it looks like we will need to call there anyway, but this all is very confusing. And takes tons of time.
Mom is freaking out that she won’t understand the questions on the citizenship interview, and I am freaking out that she is freaking out. On the brighter side, she really likes my physical therapist which is not her physical therapist as well, and she says that she sees slow improvement. That’s great; merely the fact that she says this 🙂
I had my girls over this weekend, and that was the most cultural activities we ever had in one and a half days!
We went to the CSO for Kids concert, which was the first time for Kira. Straight from there, we went to the Art Institute and saw the Dali exhibit (Nadia actually liked it, and even Kira showed some interest). Fortunately, the Art Institute recently reopened its cafe, so we had lunch there and then headed to the Ryan educational center, where Nadia made a collage on the Salvador Dali theme. As always, we spent a really long time there and started to head out only when they were about to close.
We then walked to the Bean and then to the Chicago Cultural Center and stopped there to see a Tiffany Dome.
On Sunday, Nadia and I went to Joffrey Ballet to see “The Little Mermaid,” a ballet composed by Lera Auerbach. Everything about this piece is amazing: the music, the choreography, the instruments, the costumes, and most importantly, how the fairy tale is interpreted.
I read the synopsis to Nadia while we were waiting for the train, and while I was reading, I thought: well, this does not look like a ballet for kids. When I finished reading and said: so that’s a very sad story, Nadia asked: why is it sad? And then I thought that probably she is right because at the end, both the Poet and the Little Mermaid found new meaning in their lives.
I found a very interesting link where Lera Auerbach talks about the score and how she chose the instrument for the Mermaid’s voice.
Here are a couple of pictures I found. I do not think they convey how amazing this ballet is, but it is at least something!
This promotional video gives at least some impression of how it feels – imagine 2.5 hours of such intensity!
It’s ten days after the conference is over, and I finally started to get used to the situation when I do not need to run around and worry about twenty things. I think I still didn’t explain why it was “many.” First, I was a part of the Program Committee, with many responsibilities, including organizing the pre-party and managing volunteers. Second, I talked my company into Platinum sponsorship and was anxiously waiting for all legal details to be settled, nudging people who were not fast enough. Third, I was a community sponsor as a local organizer of the Chicago PostgreSQL User Group and had to design and order stickers and flyers. And most importantly, I was advertising the event, especially among local users, women, and students. There were some last-minute vouchers from the sponsors, and I tried to place them.
After all of the above was over, it took me a while to calm down, but finally, it was there. Although I have a lot of other things going on (it’s never just my work, always ten other activities), I am in a happy and worry-free state of mind.
Here is what I have lined up for May and June/
Work: Four projects which were “coming” for a while, and now I need to work on all four of them at the same time. I love them all, and I want to do them all, but I am hitting the limits of how one can stretch the time.
Health I finally started to meet with a therapist about how I should efficiently communicate with mom and, most importantly, what communication style would help her. Boris told me that I am getting visibly upset and frustrated when she says something that indicates that she does not remember things. I talked about this with my physician, and she recommended doing therapy for myself to help mom. Works for me 🙂
Mom. Finally started physical therapy for her. It was quite a project with lots of hours on the phone, but finally, she finally sees the same PT specialist as me. Although this office is close to both our homes, she still can’t go there by herself, so every week, it’s two hours of my life during work hours. Second, I went through the quest of setting up her online SSN portal, and next week, we will have a phone interview to apply for SSI for her. And yes, it’s again a lot of hours on the phone during work hours, and she has to be present, so I need to go to her place, which results in even more hours. And finally, her citizenship interview is on May 23. I sent a request on her behalf to make adjustments for her hearing loss, and we got a response that she could have somebody with her, and they would let her use a sound amplifier and many other accommodations. She is scared about each official paper that comes to her mailbox, and calls me…
My other professional activities. I signed a contract for the second edition of our optimization book, and the schedule is very aggressive. I agreed to run 8-hour optimization class for one of the local companies migrating from Oracle. Several smaller consulting requests. I plan to submit several proposals for PG Conf NYC and PG Conf EU. At list three blog posts and one article are overdue.
Volunteering I already described the situation in the youth shelter. I am often unable to do escorting, and I feel horrible about that. It might sound crazy, but I am thinking about returning to OMD.
Fun stuff. Vlad’s wedding is less than four weeks away! I am organizing a friends and family lunch the day before. And Anna’s family trip to Finland is coming in June!
Several new developments with mom. First, in February, I submitted an application for her citizenship. That was as long and tiring a process as you can imagine, and because of all the other things I had to do, it took me several weekends to complete all of the paperwork and to get the required documents from mom.
Originally they said it would be a nineteen-month-long process, but then they suddenly sent us the fingerprint appointment and said it would be a total waiting time of nine months. That sounded much better, only that the date for fort fingerprints was scheduled for one of the days of my European trip, and in addition, Igor could not take time off work on that day.
Fortunately, Anna was a savior: she came to Chicago and took mom for that appointment, But three days later, they sent us another notice telling us that the fingerprints could not be processed and we needed to come one more time. This one more time ended up being a Good Friday, which was very disappointing since I have it off once in a lifetime! But what can I do?!
We managed to get through several of mom’s medical appointments, including tuning her hearing aid (Igor took her there while I was away). The timeline in short: call the doctor’s office, schedule a tele-visit (mom has to be present, so I had to take time off work and come to mom’s place). Getting the referral, scheduling the audiologist, taking mom there. Scheduling her ear cleaning, taking her to that appointment, looking for the audiologist referral to the audio lab (finally found it), and taking mom there. And lots of calls in between.
She is still complaining about her left wrist, and now she is saying that she never said she did not want an x-ray, and I am making it up. I started by requesting a referral for occupational therapy. Mom’d doctor said that she would try to request the home visits and if not, then “we’ll see.” When I looked at the referral, I saw that there was no provider name or phone listed, so I had to call to find out (waiting, leaving a callback number, they call when I was in the meeting, etc.). They looked for the information, then gave me the name of the place, and then we got disconnected. I did not want to wait on hold again, so I googled the place, called, and left a message. Nobody called back, so the day later, I called again and asked to connect to the reception. They found the mom’s referral but told me that since she is on Medicaid, not Medicare, the house visits are not covered. They said they do not do office visits, which was a pity since this office was very close to mom’s house.
I had to request another referral, which meant another office visit. Fortunately (?) I had to take her to the doctor anyway because she needed the ear cleaning, so we saved one visit. I finally had the name of the place and the phone number, but the next available appointment was in four weeks (I accepted it), and it was very far from where we leave. I am contemplating ditching Medicaid and asking what would places close to where I live charge uninsured people.
Also, in the middle of my trip, mom started to email me that I was hiding from her where I was, and because of that, she had no idea.
Almost three years after Anna’s family moved to Milwaukee, we finally had our first day in Milwaukee Downtown! The reason for my travel was Nadia’s first recital, but the whole day was amazing! I used the Milwaukee streetcar for the first time. These streetcars look a lot like trams in Helsinki; even the buttons which open the doors look the same!
They are nice and clean, and they are free!
Robert Burns monument
Brunch
I liked the recital; it reminded me of the ones Anna’s piano teacher had, where the students of all different skill levels had a chance to participate. Nadia did great, and I think listening to more advanced students perform inspired her.
Milwaukee Conservatory
And then, I finally visited the Milwaukee Art museum. Many people toladme how awesome this museum is. My neighbor sometimes goes to Milwaukee just to see a new exhibit.
FInally, I made it there! The building architecture is breathtaking! Lots of interesting exhibits, and they have an educational center, too!
Thaitian ArtStill need to figure this out – see description belowleaving the Art Museum after closing
While we were at the Art Museum, I received a notification on my Amtrak app, that my train was canceled “due to equipment problems,” so I had to rebook for two hours later. On the bright side, we had dinner together 9and the girls seriously discussed the idea to go to Chicago with me :))
It feels like the whole birthday week with Boris being here since the 14th, with so many birthday wishes and things I’ve done during the week. On Saturday, Vlad and Anna organized a big party for me, and many of my friends came.
There were some dramatic moments with an original venue going out of business and too many people being unable to come due to COVID (either being sick or quarantining or deciding not to risk). Still, it was a great event, and I am very thankful to Vlad and Anna for organizing it!
I think there are more pictures around, and if I finally collect them from everyone taking pictures, I will post more :).
Mom turned eighty-eight on Tuesday. Since she always refused to celebrate her birthday before the actual birthday (the superstition that you can die not reaching it in this case), and since next weekend didn’t work either, Igor and I took her out on the day of her birthday.
Fortunately, since Igor discovered Eurasia cafe, we can always go there for the food that mom likes. We ordered several different Russian dishes, and gave her our presents, and everything was good. At leat, she seemed happy and thanked us. Although for the next two days, when I talk to her on the phone it sounds like she found some reason to be unhappy, but I am pretending I do not notice:).
As we had December 26 as the “Christmas day observance,” I declare it to be two Christmas Days this year:). And on December 26, I went o Milwaukee to spend a day with Anna’s family. I brought all my presents, the presents from Igor, the bracelets my mom gave to the girls, and two giant chocolate Santas from Boris. And also, I had my skates with me, because we planned to skate together, so although it was a day trip, I took a bigger suitcase than I usually take to Helsinki.
The girls decorated this snowflake for meAnd Anna supplied me with enough flavored coffee to last until the next season.
And we went skating together, although it took four attempts to find the right size for Kira, and she refused to skate at the end 🙂
And today was the final day of my Christmas marathon: I had mom and Igor over for tea, and we exchanged presents.
Two of my cookie parcels are “almost” delivered, but at least in the destination country, and the Ukrainian parcels are still god-knows-where, but all of the remaining parcels are delivered. Unfortunately, there are three unclaimed boxes that were intended for local people who ended up not coming to pick them up. I know that some people didn’t come due to the weather, but you know what -we will eat them for a change 🙂
Also, I received a parcel from Ireland today, and more postcards, and I hope that some might come before the end of the year!
Hettie's Reflections 