Round One--House Cleanup in the books

BIL was here over the weekend, along with Sparky. We did a LOT of things!

• The office is emptier and a little more organized; I need to clear out files yet, but the surfaces have been emptied and lots of stuff went in the trash and elsewhere. 
• The basement...well, the main room looks worse, but the workroom/shop area...! I can actually walk into it without feeling like I'll trip and kill myself getting to the lights. BIL went through a lot of stuff from his side of the family. Much of it got tossed. There are at least two full contractor bags of trash that I'll need to get to the curb over the course of several weeks; ditto with all the magazines and other recycling. 
• We got the Honda started and moved out of the garage. The giant heap of cardboard boxes is collapsed into one box for recycling. 
• The insurance paperwork is sorted and generally made sense of. 
• BIL found Beast's Social Security card (which I need for part of the Medicaid form) in a box of Random Things From Some Drawer. 
• Sparky found Beast's cross necklace, which he now has with him.

And yesterday after BIL and Sparky left, I finally cancelled SiriusXM ($200/month), downgraded DirecTV and ordered a new remote (saving $150/month), and downgraded our Sprint account to three lines and no more monthly charges for Beast's and my phone (saving $100/month). I spent, quite literally, over two hours on phone calls to Sprint to delete BIL's number from our account and was so frustrated by the end I was just repeating "ALL I want to do is delete the line. That's all" and sobbing. They kept telling me only the account holder could cancel lines, and as I'm not the account holder it can't be done. So then let's change the name on the account--nope, gotta have proof that I'm allowed to do that. So where do I fax/email the paperwork proving I'm allowed? A transfer to another department and some ridiculous procedure that involves SNAIL-MAIL, but I really need to talk to someone else about cancelling the line...transfer back to where I started but to a new person to whom I have to give my name, the name of the account, the PIN and the password. I definitely know the PIN now! Which is great, since I'm the one who created it and changed all the online account info last month after another (shorter) marathon to find out how to do that, with the threat that if I couldn't get into the account, they wouldn't get paid because I couldn't access the bill. Oh, and I left out two trips to the nearest store--the staff of which was great, by the way!--and an online chat with customer service. All this between 2 and 6 yesterday afternoon. DirecTV = 20 minutes on the phone tops. SiriusXM = no more than a 10-minute call. Sprint = a four-hour ordeal that was only resolved when I started sobbing and calling Beast "a vegetable" who can't talk on the phone for fuck's sake! I only swore once, by the way. I just have to say that when I get really upset, it becomes entirely impossible for me to understand accented English. The guy who finally just canceled the damn thing...when he told me that, I sobbed out something like, "You're the nicest guy I've spoken to today" and then hung up without further ado. So I hope he a) deleted the right line, and b) actually DID something because I have no confirmation # to prove anything with.

[Time out to check the online bill. Guess what. The extra line is still on the bill. Also, I'm "past due" with my payment, but only $.26 is due. My next payment will be minus the $15 and whatever other charges for that extra line. I hate HATE Spring customer service.]

In short, all the wind is out of my sails. The house, superficially, looks worse: more piles in places I can see in rooms I use, and I still have all this goddamned paperwork to fill out which requires still more phone calls and planning and TIME and Finding Things (like 5 years' worth of tax returns and pay stubs and bank statements) and Making Copies of Found Things (same as above)... The weather is abysmal: rainy and dank and gray. The mailbox "temporary" fix has tipped over into the street, so I'm going to have to go to the P.O. and ask them to hold my mail for pickup till I can get someone to power out a new post-hole for a new post and mailbox setup (which means waiting for the ground to thaw). And the stupid Honda is still here, albeit out of the garage finally. The last person I want to see today is Beast, and all I want to do is crawl back in bed and alternately sleep and cry and feel sorry for myself.