Feeling insignificant and Date Balls

Do you ever have one of those days, one when you feel really down and unimportant in the big scheme of things.

I had one of those recently.

Years ago, when Pete and I got married, as you do, we combined everything and reshuffled a few things to suit our new life.  One of the things we did was close the banking accounts which were in my maiden name as they became somewhat redundant and instead of changing the accounts into my married name we  closed the account as to prevent unnecessary monthly banking fees.  Made sense at the time.

Fast forward a number of years to just the other day.  As many of you know, my uncle recently passed away and having worked through the process of his estate with my aunt, it brought a lot of realities to the fore which brings us to my not having a bank account in my own capacity.  I am a secondary card holder on all of Pete’s accounts with full signing power plus I have a power of attorney so what more do you need, right… but in the event of anything happening to him I would be in a bit of a dormant situation until his estate is wound up which as we all know can take quite some time.

This all sounds very depressing but it is a reality which needs to be dealt with and I am sure I am not the only one in this position.

Long story short, because I do not have any utility bills in my name showing our physical address in the region we reside in, it seems I cannot prove who I am to the bank!  HONESTLY!

The 2 ladies at the, let’s call them, the Blue Bank, were not very sympathetic to my situation and after lengthy explanations said they were happy to accept a store account printout with the stores official stamp on it, just so long as it reflected our physical address – no amount of further explanation that we do not have street delivery in our area and that everything is registered to our box address made no difference, regardless of the fact I do not have any accounts.  The more I was trying to explain this, the more they were insistent that I must have!  Urgh!!!

Long story short, they are now happy to have Pete sign a piece of paper saying I am his wife (you should see the unprofessional form) and to provide a utility bill in his name.  They don’t need to see him sign the silly piece of paper so I could just as well sign it and take along my power of attorney and see what they have to say about that!

So feeling very unimportant and worthless I came home and made a batch of date balls.  Food is very therapeutic.

Date Balls

Ingredients

250g butter
2 cups sugar
500g packet dates broken into small pieces
2 eggs beaten
1½ pkts Marie biscuits crumbed
2 tsp vanilla essence
Coconut for coating

Method

1. Melt the butter, sugar and dates together in a pot until combined.  Remove from the heat to cool.
2. Add the eggs.
3. Add the vanilla essence.
4. Add the Marie biscuits and mix well.
5. Form into walnut sized balls.
6. Roll in coconut.
7. Refrigerate.