Mom takes both pride and delight in paying her bills on the first day of each month. As the envelopes arrive, she slits their tops and stacks them, the bills unexamined, ready to “make out the bills” when the last day of the month rolls around. The icing on her cake is an outing to the post office to mail her stack of checks in their envelopes, strapped together with a rubber band. Despite her diminishing problem-solving skills, she has been able to maintain the bill-paying routine because it is, well, routine. Like clockwork, she pays the bills on the first of each month. This routine works fine for bills that are due on the first of each month, but for bills that are due, for example, on the 21^st of each month, the routine does not work. About the 24^th of the month, I get an email from Xfinity with the subject, “Your Xfinity payment is past due.” The first time this happened, I went to Mom’s desk and found the bill waiting patiently (or not so patiently) with the other bills. I showed Mom the 21^st of the month due date on the bill, and explained that she couldn’t wait until the first day of the month to pay this bill; she had to pay it earlier. She felt embarrassed and became upset at the thought of Comcast turning her TV off—no more Dr. Pol, and no more NCIS. I assured her she could write a check and put it in the mailbox for mailing the next day, but she insisted on taking it immediately to the post office. I asked her to watch out for the bill next month, and to pay it when it arrived, so she would not be delinquent and would not risk an NCIS blackout. But this week the same email came: “Your Xfinity payment is past due.” I rummaged through the pile of bills accumulating on her desk and found the Xfinity bill. I showed it to Mom. “Do you remember how this happened last month?” She did not, but worried about Dr. Pol and asked if she should make out a check right now. No, I told her, I’ll take care of it from now on. I have wanted to set up her utility bills to be paid electronically from her checking account without her receiving paper bills or writing paper checks, but she won’t hear of it: making out the bills is a monthly pleasure for her, one of the few remaining to her, along with her ice cream and her purple blanket. But I told her I would set up the Xfinity bill for electronic payment so she wouldn’t have an overdue bill again. She acquiesced. I know: I could have changed the bill due date to the first of the month, like all of the rest of the bills, but I decided to begin the gradual transition toward automatic electronic payments. Maybe I’ll do the power bill next.