Friday Eve

I can't believe the way this week has hurled itself at breakneck speed through the universe. Or at least, it seems that way to me. I've been sick with a cold and sore throat since Tuesday, but only stupidly so (as in, staring off into space for hours at a time) since Wednesday. I'm starting to feel a little more lucid now, although I have the energy reserves of a very old slug. Luckily, the weather was horrible, too -- Max's skiing on Wednesday was cancelled till next Monday and I didn't have to go pretend to enjoy skiing while just trying to stay upright and conscious. Hopefully by Monday I won't have to fake enthusiasm.

Just to even the score, the universe is handing me some more financial bad-karma to clean up in the form of a minor, but ever more irritating, skirmish with the YMCA. To make a long story short, they took their fee out of my account this month -- twice. And they won't give it back. Today the lady tells me she's "still waiting to hear back from Cash Flow -- the people who handle their EFTs" to see if they can confirm the deposit. Then she says, "it's not that I don't believe you, it's just that I don't see it in our records."

Okay well, Wal-mart never saw any of their mistakes in their records and yet they still screwed up every step of that massive transaction we had back in mid-December. Even after they DID deposit over $200 in my checking account on the Monday following -- they still had no record of it. *I* took the money out and drove it back over to them. Goobers.

So, guess what I think of their records?

So she says, "why don't you come by tomorrow and we'll try to work it out?"--in an email. I wrote back "What will my physical presence in your office change about your 'records'?" but I didn't hit send.

type type type

fume

delete delete delete

rinse. repeat.

Finally I wrote: "I can come by now, but I'm assuming that what you meant is that you need something more from me. Shall I ask someone from the bank to call you?"

I know. I know. I ask too much.

Then I called my health insurance company and reminded THEM that THEY forgot to take out my premium this month. "Oh, yeah!" they said. On the upside, they somehow decided they owe'd me $12, so my premium this month will be $12 less. As you can imagine, that greatly reduces the financial burden of being self-employed this month. (not)

We're cell phone holders again. I almost hate to admit it. But after going through the books sixteen times and weighing what it would cost to get out of the contract with what we'd save by reducing the landline to nearly nothing -- we went with cutting the landline and DSL services.

Little known fact: if you get sick of paying your Verizon Wireless bill, you can opt to suspend your own service for 90 days to think about it. Nothing happens. There's no interest, no change in your service, no credit dings, nothing. The only downside is that your contract end is extended another 90 days. Anyway, that's what we did this past fall. We cut it off ourselves for 90 days and thought about how to handle the twin burdens of high home and cell phone bills. We thought we'd cancel the cell phones and stick with the landlines, but in the end, we did not. But don't call us on the cell phones this month. I moved the payment date to the other end of the month and we only have 500 minutes "left" till the 28th now. We can still receive calls on the landline. We just can't make outgoing calls (for less than the cost of a bodily organ anyway).

I'm morphing into a budget Nazi.

::ring::: "Hello, is this [pause while caller double takes on the first name] Uuuhhhh-laska?"
Me: NO! No money for you! And take me off your calling list!
Chris: [in background] Go, Girl.
Max: [in background] You'd think they'd learn . . .