I’d been asking for weeks, but there was only one person running the office: the others were out sick. “Not with covid,” I was reassured by the woman trying to hold down the fort. Well, that could be a relief or, given the length of time at that point, for their sakes I was in no way sure that it was.
But deadlines help with the business at hand and mine was next week.
And so the agent sat down and by appointment, she at her computer and me at home at mine, we figured out how much coverage and how much I wanted to have to pay, in endless detail, with the occasional this-okay-by-you? in Richard’s direction.
Earthquake coverage with a $166,000 deductible? We’d seriously have to fork over that much cash first before they’d pay a dime? I, I, just, no. Ok, so, this much more a month even if it’s a truckload.
She told me the companies are all expecting The Big One and prices have risen accordingly. Well then. The rest of you heard that here first, right? You cannot buy earthquake insurance for so many months after we have one–they’re not paying for aftershock damage to people who didn’t come on board earlier, which makes sense. I remember lying in bed after the 7.1 Loma Prieta with it feeling like we’d somehow gone back to having that terrible waterbed from early in our marriage back when those were a big thing: endless, endless ripples passing through underneath. The earth playing skipping stones from here to there across the surface.
I knew I was very fortunate to even be having today’s conversation as the fires rage a few hours north. But we are in the only part of the state whose statistical chance of wildfire was pegged at zero last year, though I’m less sure they would say so this year.
Any other customers emailing or calling, she had to deal with them, too, any lags in the insurance company passing on my questions, that was another wait that had to happen. Gold and silver? I laughed. We got married when gold and silver hit the highest in history (at the time). There is no silver. We have no gold. We were students. Our wedding bands were a bunch of my father-in-law’s melted-down 22k tooth fillings that had fallen out and been saved–he’d always wanted to see if he could recast them and so he and his dentist friend did. Jewelry? Does a little bit of turquoise count? We do have stainless steel cutlery.
She had blocked out two hours in her day to get this account done.
Yarnloveyarn.com’s Magic Forest color way in dk merino. Bought from the yarn-stocked delivery truck that was driven right onto the convention center floor at Stitches West two and a half years ago. Choosing that skein was a declaration that next year’s event, moved to Sacramento or no, was going to happen and I intend to go. Clearing out my Stitches stash, one skein at a time, is my insurance plan for that.