Category Archives: Life

Denied

Finance

In which I’d forgotten I’m a second-class citizen.

Today I went to a local bank and tried to open a checking account. I was denied (thanks, TeleCheck) because the many bills from my marriage haven’t been paid and they’re all in my name. I never did deal with my financial issues… mainly because I haven’t had a real job until now.

I’ll be getting a post office box (to keep my bills from filling up Gramma’s mailbox, once my new location is known to my diverse creditors and they start harassing me), requesting a report from chexhelp.com, and then contacting one of those places that helps you get your bills reduced by working with your creditors. I’ll spend the winter and spring paying back my family (for the move and upcoming surgery), and then I’ll spend the next ten years paying off all the credit card and cell phone companies I owe.

Although, if The Ex sells the farm property and he sends me some money, it may only take five or six.

Years.

To get out of utter, abject debt.

Today’s moral is this: no matter how deeply in love you think you are, do not put all the bills of any relationship into your own name, spend more than you earn, allow your partner to quit working, let the relationship fail, and then spend a year depressed and not making any money.

Because while it all sounds really super double-plus fun, it totally fucks up your credit score. For real.

There are plenty of ways to get ahead. The first is so basic I’m almost embarrassed to say it: spend less than you earn.” – Paul Clitheroe

“The poverty of our century is unlike that of any other. It is not, as poverty was before, the result of natural scarcity, but of a set of priorities imposed upon the rest of the world by the rich. Consequently, the modern poor are not pitied…but written off as trash. The twentieth-century consumer economy has produced the first culture for which a beggar is a reminder of nothing.” – John Berger

“Poor and content is rich, and rich enough.” – William Shakespeare

“The only man who sticks closer to you in adversity than a friend is a creditor.” – Author Unknown

Until I get my finances sorted, I am unable to open even a savings account. I’m not sure how I’m supposed to pay all these bills when I can’t get a checking account and debit card… I’ll be standing in line at the post office buying money orders ad infinitum, I suppose.

Sometimes it occurs to me that I have made a bit of a hash of certain aspects of my life. *sigh*

Innartubez

Blurbs

In which this totally cracks me up!

Sometimes I go to I Can Haz Cheeseburger and laugh my arse off at stuff like this:

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…and this:

bold bunny

I mean, OMFG, do you see that cute bold bunneh stealin’ that cookeh? PEOPLE, HAVE YOU EVER SEEN ANYTHING MORE LIKELY TO INDUCE ADULT ONSET DIABETES?! I DON’T THINK SO!

Today is payday for me. I am so excited I can hardly stand myself because, well, TEH MONEH: I WANTZ IT.

In other news, Happy Halloween, my babies!

That is all. *smooch*

The Results Are In

Health

In which there’s another riveting post about my damned uterus! (Can I generate content, or can I generate content!) (Wait. Don’t answer that; I’ll probably cry.)

I had to call the clinic this morning to get my biopsy results, even though they promised they’d call me by Tuesday afternoon. The biopsy shows I have a benign prolapsed fibroid tumor, which is exactly what we were expecting the biopsy to show. (In other words, I don’t have uterine cancer. Yay!)

My uterus monster sucks. I want the fucker out, and I want it out before my next period because this month SUCKED SO BAD. OMFG. I couldn’t make it through my shift Monday and had to go home and sleep for 14 hours. I lost at a pint of blood in four hours that day; heavy bleeding is common with fibroids and believe you me when I report that IT SUCKS. I won’t even talk about the pain or how scary it is to bleed like that, nor about the general exhaustion and despair that accompany the whole process.

I’ve applied for Medicaid (thanks for the suggestion, amped!) and should hear back on that in the next day or two. Since I have no assets whatsoever, I may be eligible for some kind of coverage. Keep your fingers crossed for me.

I have no idea what the surgery will cost – maybe around six grand? – so it’s hard to prepare financially. No doubt I’ll be making payments for the next few years whether I’m eligible for any kind of benefits or not. I’d hoped to get new glasses and have my teeth cleaned and buy another car, and then maybe splurge on some clothes without holes in them, but I guess I’ll pay for surgery instead. (I am so sick of having my check spent before I earn it. Gah. Poverty may be spiritually enriching, sure, but a girl can bitch, can’t she?)

I’m waiting to hear from Medicaid before scheduling surgery. The nurse I spoke with today was all weird and vague and useless, so I’m not even really clear on what my next step is supposed to be, but I think it involves scheduling a follow-up appointment and getting referred to the hospital.

During my appointment last week, the doctor was all, “You have to have this out within the next month, and if you start running a temperature you’ll need to get in here right away.” But today, the nurse made it sound as if her interest in helping me was tied directly to my insurance, which of course I don’t have. I’m not certain but I think she may have been trying to tell me, in code, that I need to call a lot and complain a lot so that her office can report to Medicaid that the problem is, in fact, an emergency. Hard to tell, but I have called three times in just as many days to complain about pain and bleeding, so they have records of that.

The whole thing sucks, and ruminating upon it gives me anxiety attacks.

In other news, living with Gramma rocks, and in the near future I shall write a post about exactly how excellent she is. And today I rode the bus to work and it was all amusing and shit because [A] I haven’t lived in a town with public transportation for over a decade, and [B] there was a cute boy, who got on and off at the same stops I did, eyeballing me in that style specially reserved for public buses and trains. I’ve been losing weight since I got here because I’m not eating like a pig, and that plus getting ogled makes me feel double plus good awesome!

OMG. WTF. BBQ.

Health

In which there’s an actual reason for it.

The short version: I went to the gynecologist yesterday, and it turns out I have a giant fibroid in my uterus and need to have surgery within the month.

The long version contains way TMI and (to protect those of you who don’t want to know any more about my uterus than you already do) is concealed after the break! Continue reading OMG. WTF. BBQ. →

I hate The Curse

Blurbs

In which being female sometimes sucks.

So it’s that time again. I feel like a balloon, and I keep having mild panic symptoms. Any minute now the faucet should open and I’ll be bleeding like a stuck pig.

Walking to and from work for the next couple of days should prove to be interesting.

Since I live a block from Planned Parenthood and I haven’t had a pap in three years, I’ll be making an appointment there for the week after next to let someone dig around in my innards. Then I can have a long conversation with a professional about how much my period sucks. Who knows, maybe they can offer me some relief – wouldn’t that be awesome?

In other news, I’ve pretty much finished training at my new job and am spending the afternoon listening in on another tech’s calls. It’s all standard stuff, mostly dial-up support but some line-sharing DSL and wireless to keep it interesting. I think I’m gonna like it here!

Yes, this is exactly the kind of riveting content that brings you back to the ‘box time and time again, eh?

Even I can stand only so much laziness

Blurbs

In which I’m very nearly on the road again.

I’ve repacked the jeep with the heavy things forward, so it actually has a little bit of play in the suspension now. I’ve held out a half dozen boxes to be shipped so I can see out the windows. I’ve even Windexed all the windows and they’re so clean I can’t tell if they’re open or closed. The remaining 960 miles of my journey should be much more comfortable. I’ll leave on Thursday or Friday, depending on when my iPod cable arrives from Fairfield.

I didn’t watch any more DVDs yesterday, but I did apply a new template to this site. I did so because my main machine’s display is a mere 1024×768 these days, and the other layout looked squished at this resolution. Plus: it’s autumn! Plus: now that I have a laptop, I have Fireworks MX installed and can start making image files for the first time in more than a year!

I found some old Fireworks files on CDs in my warez folder. Remember this art, from way back in ’02?:

orange-layout.gif

Once, back when I still hand-coded everything, back before I used a CMS to manage content, the entire site was orange. I love orange. I also love glassy buttons.

I feel a full redesign coming on soon.

Like Living in a Marshmallow

Blurbs

In which I’m so lazy I have nothing to blog about.

Today I managed to bathe, look for work online (I applied at three ISPs!), and make black bean soup. Which is way more activity than I engaged in yesterday.

My mom’s house is so comfy and mellow that it’s hard to get up the gumption to do anything at all, really. She lets me sleep in late, eat whatever I want (including the cheesy poofs and the dark chocolate M&Ms!), and has long conversations with me about quilting and knitting. Last night she and and stepDoug re-watched Pan’s Labyrinth on the big TV so that I could see it. I can drink all the pop I want, I have a whole bathroom to myself, and my dog is utterly spoiled and they give her scraps off the table during meals.

I have my own room in the basement. I’m sleeping on a water bed, which is heated and comfy, and I have access to my own television in case I suddenly need to watch any of the hundreds of movies they’ve collected.

If all that weren’t enough, I’ve been offered my pick of several quilts and will be treated to dinner out on the town tomorrow night.

So, yeah, it’s freakin’ rad here. The only flaw is the being-in-Wyoming-which-is-thousands-of-miles-from-Washington part. And the moving away from all my friends part. And the not having a job, home, money, or relationship of my own even though I’m too old for this kind of vagrancy parts.

In other news, tomorrow is my birthday. I love birthdays!

Just like Jack Kerouac

Blurbs

In which we ask, “Wyoming?” and answer, “Hey, why not!”

I should be out of here by midday tomorrow, unless I screw around too much with my remaining chores, which include visiting the farm one last time and doing extremely tedious shit with many cardboard boxes: loading some into the jeep, getting rid of some, and shipping still more.

The Ex didn’t get around to returning my call until Saturday evening, so I didn’t get out there last week like I’d planned. Behind the swollen closet door at the farm I expect to find two boxes of family things my dad sent to me (because he lives in a motor home and has no storage room and foolishly thought that I was stable enough to care for heirlooms – hah!), my sewing machine, and perhaps some clothes or jackets that still fit. I’m also going to grab my monitor, keyboard, and bowling ball, look one last time for my PPCs sync cable, and then take one final sweep through the house in general to be sure I haven’t missed anything precious to me. (I’m of the opinion that once I leave the state, The Ex will pretty much have carte blanche to throw out anything I’ve left that he no longer wants, so I want to be thorough.)

I also need to take the jeep for a drive-through oil change at Fessler’s to get all the fluids topped off and the tires properly aired up. I meant to do it Friday after I picked the jeep up from getting its new fan belt, but I was having major issues with The Curse and I didn’t make it.

Hopefully I can get all this shit done and be out of town by early afternoon, and get some miles under me and my blue dog before dark-thirty. I plan to sleep in a motel in Nebraska somewhere – Lincoln or Grand Island, perhaps – and thus be at my mom’s place at a decent hour on Wednesday.


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At my mom’s I intend to catch up on my blog reading, send my resume to all seven of Walla Walla’s ISPs whether they’re hiring or not, drink lots of tea, knit wool slippers, read, and shamelessly make my way through half of the household’s DVD library. I also might cook weird foods and try to feed them to my mom for laughs. At night, my dog and I shall sleep cuddled together right in the middle of the bed, and moan groggily in the mornings when mom tries to wake us up to hang out with her.

I’m posting this entry at two thirty in the morning because I slept most of the day. I slept most of the day because my Going Away party was last night (thank you so much for a lovely party, Baby Girl!), and you know how it is: all those cocktails just seemed like a good idea at the time. Now, in spite of the hour, I’m going to finish packing up my clothing and stack all my boxes together and then determine which ones I should ship. I suspect I will also have a pile of garbage I’ll have to dispose of somehow; I can’t leave it here to fill up the trash bin so maybe I’ll just dump it in some previous employer’s dumpster.

In other news, my birthday is Saturday. I’ll be thirty-nine. I have no idea how I got this fucking old, nor did I expect at this age to be driving across the country with everything I own. Oddly enough I am once again as I was when I arrived back in Fairfield eleven years ago: single, broke, with no savings or insurance, with all of my earthly belongings in a vehicle too old to be anything more than merely functional, separated from utter destitution only by the generosity of friends and family, and yet irrationally possessed nonetheless with a bubbling suspicion that something way cool is on the cusp for me.

I guess I’m blessed, in the sense that rootlessness of this sort tends to feel exciting rather than scary to me. I feel hopelessness when I’m conventionally safe, with shelter and income and work and bills and monotony, but when I’m like this – in transit, homeless and uncounted – I feel buoyant and grateful and as if the world is full of potential.

It occurs to me that I may be wired wrong. *wink*

The most fun I've ever had with a battery-driven device

Blurbs

In which I looooooooooooooooooooooove gadgets, omgwtfbbq!!

While I was in Portland my bro-there, Jay-rob, and I exchanged iPods. He gave me his 5th gen iPod Video, and I gave him my older iPod Photo (plus Firewire cable, charger, and FM transmitter) because I didn’t need it any more after he gave me his. (Because I guess he’s in love with his PSP and basically quit using his iPod. Plus he’s way fuckin’ cool.)

Additionally Jay-rob forced me to watch Serenity. (Let me tell you: it totally rocked out with its cock out. The fact that I only got five hours of sleep because I stayed up late watching it is totally irrelevant: THAT’S how much it rocked. Dude.)

(I know, I know, how can I call myself a card-carrying sci-fi geek when I haven’t watched Firefly? Well, it’s like this: NO FUCKING CABLE TV FOR YEARS, MMM’KAY?)

Anyway! (Focus, would you?) The result of all these things is that today, I used the $10 in my PayPal account (thanks, Amy! *smooch!*) and bought five episodes of Firefly from iTunes and synched them to my video iPod.

And then I laid in my bed and watched one of them. And then I sat on the porch with a cocktail and watched another.

AND I’VE STILL GOT THREE LEFT.

This is a totally true story.

My September Schedule

Blurbs

In case you’re curious what the hell I’m doing during the next few weeks.

Sept 13 – 18: Fly to Portland Oregon, drive to Walla Walla Washington with my brother, celebrate grandma’s birthday with the family. Back to PDX, return to Iowa.
Sept 19 – 22: Tune up the jeep, organize and pack my belongings. Hock books at local used bookstore. Get dog’s records from the vet, etc.
Sept 22: Enjoy a lovely Going Away Party!!! at the little bar.
Sept 23: Recuperate.
Sept 24: Depart Iowa. Whee!

Sept 25: Arrive mom’s house in Wyoming. Hang out for a week or so. (Note to self: get the hell out of there before winter snows your ass in.)
Sept 29: My birthday! Whee!

Oct 1-ish: Get back on I-80 heading west.

Oct 3-ish: Arrive in my new home, Walla Walla!