Killing Zombies

My former stepson's widow has been spending an inordinate amount of time dealing with the loose ends discovered after his passing.  Most of it was financial, and some of it was critical--like the fact that their car insurance had expired and she didn't know it.  Little by little, she's been jumping through the hoops.  She calls it "killing zombies".

I've killed a few zombies myself...with a little help from my daughter.  I hate it, but once it's done, I feel like a million bucks!

Before I left for my sister's, I paid my electric bill.  I was shocked at how low it was--a mere $84.  Wow!  That was easy!  So now, the next electric bill has arrived.  Again, a shock.  $227????  It was more than TWICE as high as my heating bill, and this is the dead of winter!  I've been searching my brain for answers as to why the bill would be so high this month.  Even accounting for the fact that I had company for a few of the days of the billing period, I was also gone a few of those days.  Megan offered to get on the website and nose around for me.  She couldn't account for it, either, so I decided to call Duke Energy to see if the current meter reading could be inaccurate.  After talking with the gal--nice lady, btw--we determined that it was the LAST meter reading that was probably inaccurate.  We connected the dots and figured that this month's bill was a catch-up.  I can't really complain about that.  I mean, I used the electricity and I owe the money (although I wish I hadn't been hit with that high bill all at once).

But here is the good news:  in the process of messing around on the Duke website, Megan resolved a glitch for me.  For many years, my electric bill has been the ONLY bill that I couldn't pay online because, for some reason, it had a place to pay the bill but wouldn't let me do it.  Turns out, I had to sign up for "paperless billing" before I could do that.  When I called Duke today, the gal I was working with put me in touch with one of their tech people who started to walk me through the process, but the process was already in place.  Voila!  For the first time in 20 years, I paid the bill online and didn't have to pay the service fee for paying it on the phone!  One dead zombie!

I have another zombie to kill with my medicine prescription situation...and I have one day to do it before I run out of meds.  Now that I feel armed against the red tape zombies, I can do it!  Just watch me!