The Birthday/Christmas Rundown, Part V

Ahem. Anyway.

Work yesterday was relatively quiet. It wasn't dead quiet (we're expecting that for most of the weekend), but it was quiet enough. We had all the help we needed, and each of us had about five or six issues to work on. Compared with double that (or more) on our busy days, yesterday was nice. The building/company is still open today, though Daisy and I are off -- along with probably about half of the daytime employees and four or five of our 2nd and 3rd shifters. Again, I'll remind you that Daisy and I are off only because we took PTO for today, just like we did for my birthday. If I ran a company, I'd never have my employees work on Christmas Eve. But I don't run a company, so....

Last night I came home and ate dinner while Daisy holed herself up in our bedroom to wrap all of the presents she had to wrap -- all of mine (of which, looking under the tree, is an ungodly amount), and the parents' gifts from her/us that I didn't already wrap -- so this morning, I walked out into the living room to see this:

If you don't think that's a lot, consider the fact that we have a seven-foot Christmas tree and note the size of the ornaments on the tree for scale. I...yeah. I don't know what's in about 80% of those packages, as the ones I wrapped are stuffed so far behind them that you can only see one in the picture -- the gift bag on the far right. How we're getting all of these over to the parents' this afternoon is beyond me. It's going to take several trips up and down to even get the stuff loaded into her car -- and that doesn't even take into account the two pies she made last night for tonight's dessert.

Anyway, while she wrapped the gifts, I absolutely passed the fuck out on the chair in the living room. I awoke sometime around 3AM -- when she was still baking pies, mind you -- and shuffled to the bedroom, where I woke up this morning shortly after 8...as she was coming to bed herself. Yeah, the woman stayed up all night baking pies and wrapping presents, and that's after she spent all day yesterday cleaning the house. Completely cleaning it, as in steam-cleaning the carpet in every room and scrubbing down the bathrooms, even. I don't know where she gets the energy for any of that.

I've been told that Daisy needs to be awakened by 2:30 so that we can load everything up and get it over to the parents' before we go to the Christmas Eve church service at 4:30. We did this last year as well, though I'm not sure if I wrote about it here. It was nice, non-denominational, very laid-back and all-accepting. That's the only reason I agreed to it last year, and ended up enjoying it. I'm sure the parents know that I'm a lifelong atheist, but it's not something they ever bring up in conversation (probably because Daisy, at one point, told them not to). But they do know that I put value in family and togetherness, peace and love, above pretty much all other things -- so I'm sure that supersedes any opinions about my views of religion. So, that's our plan for tonight -- get Daisy up in a little more than two hours, load the stuff into the car, drive over to the parents', go to church, come home and eat, and then bed.

My mother seemed surprised when, on the phone yesterday, I told her we'd be spending the night at the parents' so we could get up there on Christmas morning -- until I reminded her that I'm no longer six hours away, but about six minutes (traffic permitting).

Tonight for dinner we're skewing non-traditional, as apparently we're making taco pizza as well as snacky-like foods. I don't know what, however. Tomorrow I don't think we're doing anything special at all food-wise, and of course Daisy and I have to return to work on Friday, so by tomorrow evening we'll be back home anyway. Because we don't want to be anywhere near any sort of retail establishment on Christmas Eve or Day, we stopped at Walmart last night on my way home from work to get a few tiny essentials we needed (cat litter, cigarettes, parsley for cooking today, etc). Anything else can wait until at least Sunday or Monday before we go get it.

The Birthday/Christmas Rundown, Part IV

As mentioned in my scheduling post last weekend, we've now gotten the two big family-interaction days out of the way, and yesterday was our "day of rest." And rest we did, really -- as mentioned before, Daisy has spent most of the past 24-36 hours sleeping (her own count, as of yesterday afternoon, was sixteen hours). I can't say I blame her, really. She never gets the chance to be off work for an extended amount of time, and even gets less of a chance to sleep as much as she wants or needs to.

In between her sleep/wake cycles, my own day yesterday was also restful -- and I was able to get a lot of necessary work done in that time. I wrapped all of the presents I had for her and for the parents, with the exception of her stocking-stuffer things (which I'll put in the actual stocking tomorrow night, I'm guessing). Last night and this morning has been a day to take stock of pretty much everything that's left, which isn't a whole lot:

• All of my/our Christmas cards have been mailed; the last one I sent was to my parents on Friday. We've gotten about four or five in return, and I received one birthday card from my grandmother, but no one else. Which I'm fine with -- most other friends/relatives stopped sending me birthday cards around the time I graduated high school. I know there are at least two or three Christmas cards still on the way from friends and family who have told me they're sending some.
• I was able to do all of the laundry we had in the house; I'll have another load to wash/dry before tomorrow night as I plan to take my bathrobe with me to the parents (it's the warmest garment of clothing I have, and it shields me from the wind and snow when I go smoke outside).
• As mentioned above, all of my presents are wrapped; however, there are at least two gifts for Daisy and one for Mama that has not arrived yet. I checked my log -- two of them I ordered on November 9, and the third I ordered on November 26. Generally my orders come within three weeks or so, but apparently not these ones. One of the gifts for the kids was on backorder over three weeks ago as well, and it's still not here yet either. At this point I have absolutely lost hope that any of them will be here before Christmas -- I have no idea what's taking them so long. 
• I have to work this afternoon. I leave in about forty minutes. I'm waiting to wake up Daisy as, since it's a Tuesday and I'm relatively sure it will be quiet, I don't want to spend any more time there than necessary tonight. In, do my work, take a lunch, do more work, get the hell out. 

However.

I did get the best early Christmas present of my life last night (and no, it wasn't a new car, though that would rank up there pretty close as well). No, my best early Christmas present was that I got an email from my student loan servicer telling me that my paperwork had been processed and that I have officially been granted forbearance on my loans for another year. The forbearance ends on the same day it ended this year, December 10. I also received the paper version in the mail as well to verify. Why is this the best early Christmas present of my life? Well, as my monthly loan payment would have been $524.40, it just saved me about $6300 (a huge chunk of my yearly income) that I can actually put towards things like food and a new car over the course of this next year, and, y'know, actually see something come of that money instead of giving it away.

Some of you may be saying "you'll have to pay it back eventually, Brandon," and to that I say yes, probably, but until I can afford to, those fuckers are getting the middle finger from me. Merry Christmas.

Of course, that confirmation comes way too late now compared to when I needed said confirmation much earlier this month, as if I'd gotten the forbearance when I'd applied for it instead of almost a month later, I'd probably have another car now (of some sort) or I would've been able to get Daisy the present I actually wanted to get her for Christmas -- a new laptop. Which I couldn't get, primarily, because a) the one I was planning to get for her doubled in price on the day I was going to order it, but b) because I had to budget for that loan bullshit.

On that note? Time to go to work.

The Birthday/Christmas Rundown, Part III

We knew Sunday would be hectic and busy; we didn't know how much. Y'see, Daisy's sister (the middle one, the one with four kids) has to operate around her husband's work schedule and doesn't like overnighting if it can be helped, as one of her sons is allergic to everything and being outside his environment for any longer than he has to be ups his chances of finding something that will make him ill. Therefore, for them to come down on Saturday night for my birthday, and then stay until Sunday evening, it was a big deal. I fully understand and appreciate the time and effort that went into their trip to Omaha, and know how important it was to Daisy's sister that she was there for my birthday. Keep in mind that plans were changed for that -- they were originally going to come down on Sunday morning, do the presents/dinner thing, and then turn around and go home, so yeah -- they added about sixteen hours to their schedule just for us.

Anyway. We were told before leaving the house on Saturday night that we needed to go back over early in the day, as everyone would go to church at either 9 or 10:30, then we'd do presents, then we'd eat. My response to that? "I don't think either of us will be conscious before 9 or 10:30." And really, I was about half right -- I woke up after 10, and I woke Daisy at 11. I don't know what church service they went to or where, but we weren't awake for it.

Once we'd gotten up and I'd showered/gotten just enough caffeine and nicotine in me to be somewhat mobile, we left for the parents'. I will state that one of the things that our nephew is highly allergic to is smoke, specifically cigarette/cigar smoke. This means I can't smoke at all when they're around because even the smell or the smoke particles on my clothing afterwards will send him into an asthmatic fit. I'm generally fine with this -- I don't want to hurt the kid, after all -- but I usually take my vapor pen with me when they're around as none of that will hurt anyone in the family. Well, my vapor pen is leaking -- the new tank I put on it drips down onto the heating element and kills the vaporizer whenever I use it, so I need to get another tank and probably another battery. We weren't going to have time for that on Sunday morning, so I smoked what I could and left it behind here at the house.

So we went over to the house after 11AM or so to help cook the dinner, as our sister with the four kids had to leave that afternoon to get back home. We did this so that Mama wouldn't have to make everything two days in a row (we love Mama greatly, but she is old and after having double-knee-replacement surgery last year, she still has a lot of daily pain -- especially when there are six grandkids running around). Dad already had the turkey in the oven, and between all of us older kids we helped cook, set the table, and got everything else we could ready for another thirteen-person dinner.

Before that, though -- and almost immediately after arrival at the house -- we gave in and let the kids have their "Christmas morning" of sorts by opening all of their presents. We also opened the presents from the siblings as well, and they opened theirs. This took over an hour, but it was fun -- even though the living room looked like a tornado had hit it afterwards. The kids loved their gifts and toys, and from our sisters/families we got gift cards, glass ornaments for our tree, and a stove-top popcorn maker (which Daisy used last night to make three large bowls of popcorn for us).

Then it was dinner time. We had a very basic Christmas dinner (due to the kids' allergies) of turkey, mashed potatoes, green beans, and corn, along with a few other little things like cranberry sauce and the like. Dinner was very nice, though more quiet and subdued than the birthday dinner the night before. Afterwards, we cleaned up and helped the sister with all of the kids get ready to leave, which she did probably two hours at the most after dinner was over. Daisy and I stuck around so that we could clean up everything we could, including doing the dishes and sweeping the floors -- and we played air hockey on the tabletop air hockey game I'd gotten at work as my Secret Santa gift with our oldest nephew before going home shortly after dark.

Finally, the big family Christmas was over -- and after two days of everything, Daisy and I were pretty drained. We came home and she almost immediately went to bed -- where she would spend much of the next 24 hours sleeping as much as she could -- and I watched the majority of Batman Returns (hey, it's a Christmas movie) on Netflix, as well as the BoJack Horseman Christmas Special before she got back up for a while and I went to bed for the night.

The Birthday/Christmas Rundown, Part II

Hoo boy.

This was one hell of a weekend, that's for sure.

So. As planned, on Saturday (read: my birthday) we got off work and went to bed sometime around 2AM after getting home from work. I was exhausted on Friday night; it wasn't because we'd been busy (compared to most Fridays at work it was really tame, to be honest with you), but because I just wanted to get out of there, I hadn't slept well the night before, and because I really wanted my extended weekend to start.

"I can't wait to give you your presents," Daisy told me in the car on the way home.

"Presents? Ohhh, presents," I said. I was genuinely surprised.

Look, I lived alone for a long time, folks. I was functionally a hermit for several years, only leaving the house to teach or take my classes, and to go two miles away to the local Walmart before turning the Monte Carlo around and coming home again. Therefore, the concept of getting birthday presents from people -- even my wife -- was something I didn't even really think of. Normal people get and give birthday presents, riiiiight. I'd completely forgotten about it and the thought never even crossed my mind, truly. I don't know what that says about me as a person or about my personality and self-esteem levels right now.

Of course, part of it was probably that I was just tired, too.

When I woke up on Saturday morning, again, it was really just another day for me. I let Daisy sleep because I knew she needed it, and was told that we didn't really have a set schedule except for dinner at 5:30. I woke Daisy around noon, as she told me she wanted to be awake and spend as much of my birthday with me as possible, and she called the parents at some point while I was on the porch smoking.

Here's where everything gets a little hectic -- Daisy informed me that her other sister and our brother-in-law, who lives a few hours north of here and has four kids -- didn't know it was my birthday and they wanted to come down a day early to celebrate it with me. I mean, since they'd be here on Sunday anyway, another night wasn't a big deal.

I was fine with this, of course -- the more the merrier, and obviously I love everyone in the family and couldn't wait to see and spend time with the kids. The kids (all six of them) have become a highlight of our big family gatherings, especially as they're getting older and thus are more fun to talk to, play with, and interact with. I'm a huge fan of babies under 1, and I love kids old enough to talk to and have conversations with -- it's that grey area in-between where most of the time I'll get frustrated with being around children or don't know how to respond/interact with them because they speak gibberish, run around screaming, or don't listen. I will also say that for the most part, our nieces and nephews are very sane, well-behaved children. This is because (obviously) not only have I gotten used to being around them a lot in the two and a half years that Daisy and I have been together, but because they've gotten older in that time as well. Kids mature, kids grow up, kids settle down somewhat. But, honestly, it's probably that I'm a little more at ease and more used to being around children all the time now.

So, anyway, instead of setting a table for seven (the parents, me, Daisy, and Daisy's sister/her two boys), we were setting a table -- and making a dinner for -- thirteen people. Again, would've been fourteen had our other brother-in-law been able to come to town for our family get-togethers this weekend. And because the rest of them were coming in early, we were doing this two days in a row.

"So does that mean we're going to do everything today and just get it all done and out of the way?" I asked Daisy, since I didn't know what our overall plans were.

"No, we're doing your birthday dinner tonight and then we're going back over tomorrow for the family Christmas," she replied.

Okay. Whatever works. It's the holidays, we don't see the family much as both sets of them live waaaaay out of town, and I was off work for three days in a row. I really didn't mind anything as I'm a go-with-the-flow sort of person when it comes to family stuff most of the time (mainly because I'm going to be along for the ride for most of it anyhow). The entire family hasn't been together all in one place since our wedding back in May, so even having most of them here in Omaha is a rather big event that only tends to happen, at most, twice a year or so. I mean, us adults work or have kids or both, drive times are long for everyone but us, sleeping and dietary/allergy arrangements in the house have to be made when everyone's here, etc etc. It's a big deal, a big production.

So we had my birthday dinner -- poutine -- with everyone there. I got several more presents from the family as well as a few cards. The presents were very nice; a few tin signs to hang on the wall, signs which were relief-stamped and painted with old comic book covers from the 30s through the 60s, as well as a bag of the new Starbucks Christmas blend coffee (which I have yet to grind and drink, actually). It was a nice night, with a nice dinner -- supplemented by the fact that Dad opened a big bottle of champagne that I'm sure I drank about half of.

Daisy's gifts were incredibly nerdy and took the cake, though -- and there's a backstory to them. Well over a month ago (I'm guessing long before Thanksgiving, even) I showed her a link to one of ThinkGeek's newest products, their Star Trek hoodies. I just thought they were neat, and didn't think much else of it -- in fact, I promptly forgot about it. Little did I know that even before I'd shown her the hoodie, she'd already ordered it for me in command red, in my size, and threw in the combadge as well. The result? Well...

Possibly the nerdiest birthday present I've ever received. Now I feel clothed enough to attend conventions without getting the stinkeye.

Ahem. She also got me a tabletop card game we'd been meaning to get for a long time called Dominion, which we played with our sister and brother-in-law for more than an hour that night (until we were so tired we needed to go home). When we actually got home I wasn't awake too long before I promptly passed out until Sunday morning.

How did Sunday go? Well, that's a story for the next post.

The Birthday/Christmas Rundown, Part I

We've mostly solidified our Christmas plans now, from what I know. I say mostly because I'm sort of out of the loop for a lot of it, and along for the ride with the family get-togethers and whatnot. Here's what I do know, or what I've been told by the wife thus far:


Saturday, December 20: My 32nd birthday. Our plans are to go to the parents' and spend the evening with them, Daisy's sister, and her two boys for the traditional birthday dinner and/or celebrations. Mama already knows (without even asking) that she's making poutine for me as my birthday dinner, as the "kids" who participate in this sort of thing (namely me and Daisy) get whatever they want for dinner on birthday night. Because it's a Saturday when Daisy and I would normally be working, we both requested the day off far in advance with PTO. Should be a fun night, though to me it's really just another day. My birthday doesn't really hold much significance to me personally.

Sunday, December 21st: Wrap whatever gifts need to be wrapped in the morning, because we'll be returning to the parents' for our massive family Christmas gathering, where everyone who is available will be coming to the parents' house for dinner and presents. Everyone will be there except for our brother-in-law (who married us, actually, in our ceremony -- the husband of Daisy's sister mentioned in my birthday post above), as he has to work. This means that all together, there will be thirteen people in the house, six of them children under ten. We're cooking dinner and doing presents with the kids because none of them will be available for actual Christmas. This will be a very long, very exhausting day for all of the adults involved, but it should be fun overall.

Monday, December 22nd: Rest. For fuck's sake, rest. Finish up everything we need to do around the house and wrap whatever gifts need to be wrapped for each other and for the parents, as on Sunday's celebratory day, the people getting/unwrapping gifts will be mostly the children and the gifts to/from our family members who won't be here for actual Christmas. Hopefully by this time all of the other gifts I've been waiting for in the mail have actually arrived, because otherwise I don't know when we'll have the time to get them all together and take stock before wrapping them up. Will probably make a short trip grocery shopping if necessary to get necessities like cat litter, almond milk, cigarettes, bread, etc.

Tuesday, December 23rd: I work. Yep. I work. Daisy has the day off still as it's a Tuesday, so she'll more than likely finish up whatever didn't get done on Monday while I'm at the office until 11PM. I expect it to be dead, since it'll be two days before Christmas and many companies we'd work with normally on any other given Tuesday night won't have people in their offices from Christmas Eve forward, I'm guessing. So I'll work my shift, wish everyone well, come home, and go to bed.

Christmas Eve and Christmas Day: Daisy and I are both off of work on Christmas Eve, as we took PTO for that day as well. Since nobody else is in town, we're planning our Christmas Eve/Day with the parents, just the four of us, where we'll exchange our own gifts for one another and have our own quiet Christmas dinner together. This is the plan, anyhow. We return to work as per the usual on the 26th and 27th, days I also expect to be incredibly dead in the office due to most people in most offices, again, being out for a long, long weekend after Christmas.


It's not actually as hectic as some years and some Christmases I've had in the past (such as when I was in high school and college), but compared to the last, eh, five years or so, where the only two "busy" Christmases I've had were in 2012 (when I flew home to visit my parents) and last year, when I came up here to Omaha for a few days, it's a lot to take in. Being married now and having all sorts of plans that are metered out and scheduled is quite interesting compared to having, well, basically none before. So, we'll see how it goes. I'll keep everyone posted.

Tightness, Part III

Today is payday. Finally.

This didn't help me yesterday, however, when I had to drain half of our savings account to pay my first student loan bill.

Look, nothing can be done about it right now. I know this because I pored over the entire servicer's website, reading all of their details and fine print. Here's what it boiled down to, basically:

• Even though I've applied for forbearance, until the forms are received and processed, I still need to pay the entirety of the bill before or when it's due.
• If I don't, it goes into delinquency and then collections/default, all of which is really, really bad.
• To change your payment plan, it's not a simple click -- no, you have to apply for it, and it doesn't end there -- it's a process just like anything else that you have to be approved for.
• In changing my payment plan -- which I can't do yet -- it would only cut my payments down to about 2/3 of what they are now, and would skyrocket my interest. Oh yes, I looked. There's something like a 200% increase on my interest over the course of repayment if I do that.
• If I were to change my payment plan, I can't do it before the forbearance forms are received and processed, as they base it on what your payment is every month. They'd see that I was on a different payment plan that would no longer qualify me for forbearance and would deny it instantly. 
• I have not even received the confirmation that the forms were received and have been sent for processing, which tells me that a) either the fax machine at work didn't actually send them even though it told me it did, or b) the processing people don't even have them yet because they're so backlogged.
• As we're still within the ten business days required for a response/receipt of the forms, my hands are tied.

So, I had to transfer money from our savings account into our checking account and pay the damn bill. I was exceedingly, seethingly angry about this, but it's done now. I retrieved the forms from work last night, stuck them into an envelope this morning with a new letter saying, basically, "hey, did you receive these when I faxed them to you? Well, if not, here they are again with proof that I faxed them and I still need this done." I mailed it out earlier this afternoon. I no longer trust the fax machine at work as it took nowhere near this long last year to get this shit done once I faxed it in from the university.

Ten business days from today is the 26th, accounting for Christmas Eve/Christmas that adds two more since they'll be closed, and adding in another four days (giving leeway for the postal service here to mail an envelope to Pennsylvania) would be Friday the 2nd (or Monday the 5th at latest, given New Year's as well). Even accounting for holidays there's still a month between now and when my next bill is due for them to process this shit, so for now this saga comes to a close until I hear something back within the next month one way or the other.

Daisy, of course, ever the pragmatist who wants to solve unsolvable problems, basically told me that I need to take control of this situation as she knows how much it's stressing me out. At this point I've really done everything I can to take control of it. Without confirmation of the receipt of my application, I could call them day and night and they'd be like "who are you? Oh, we still need those forms to come through. Buhbye."

She also mentioned that she wants me to take control of the situation with my car as well, which she also knows is greatly stressing me out. I told her that I'm not going to be the person who, just like the callers we deal with at work, call to berate someone for not doing their job. I shouldn't have to, and I'm not the person that gets aggressive with someone who obviously doesn't care about my business or want it -- I have requested the U Pull It people to call me twice now with any sort of offer (or even acknowledgement that they care about people trying to contact them), and I'm now done with them. I told her she could call if she wants to; otherwise this weekend I will more than likely just list the car on Craigslist and sell it to the first person who can haul it away and pay in cash.

Because today is payday, I was able to pay the stack of bills I had sitting next to my desk this morning, mostly invoices for Christmas gifts I've ordered for the family from Publisher's Clearing House over the past month or so. I was also able to finish Christmas shopping for Daisy, using Amazon as my greatest tool/weapon of choice there, and within an hour of ordering her gifts, one of them had already shipped. I am now completely done shopping for Daisy unless I find one or more little things while we're out over the next two weeks or so. I'm pretty sure she's done for me as well, so all we have left now is to get whatever we're getting for my parents and finish up whatever she has left for hers.

Oh, and wait for the other stuff I ordered to arrive in the mail, because I have orders from November 7, 8, 9, and the 26th that haven't arrived yet. One contains gifts for the nieces/nephews (who we won't even see on Christmas anyway, so it's okay if it's slow, I guess), one for Daisy, one for Mama, and another for Daisy. As I'm beginning to lose hope that they'll arrive before Christmas with the large volume of mail orders that come in around this time of year, I doubled down today for Daisy and got her six different things, with a seventh that both of us can enjoy. The first shipment arrives on Sunday. No, seriously, on Sunday. Amazon is doing Sunday deliveries now.

Since I've now gone through more than an entire book of stamps in sending out the first...oh, third or so of my Christmas cards to friends and family, I also ordered two more books of Rudolph stamps (because why not?) this afternoon, and was told point blank on the USPS website that it would take them at least two business days longer to process because of high mail volume this time of year. Yeah, that doesn't surprise me, really. Hopefully they will ship them quickly and I'll be able to use some of them on the actual Christmas cards I'm sending out. I do have to mail bills too, you know. There's at least three or four bills every month (not counting the orders I have to pay for) that we still have to write checks for.

In a short while, I shall go to work to face what I call "the wrath of Friday." Fridays are historically bad there as we tend to get slammed with lots of issues that need to be taken care of before the weekend.

Tightness, Part II

Shit, I'm so going to need some more stamps.

Total card count thus far: fifteen. Not anywhere even close to halfway done. My digital address book is eight pages long, in twelve-point font. Granted, not all of those people are getting cards (for one, many of the addresses are outdated, more than likely) but it's still a daunting task to go through it and keep track of everything and everyone who's getting a card. Right now I'm still on the "five a day" plan, but as tomorrow is two weeks until Christmas and most of the people I'm sending cards to live on one end of the country or the other, well...I may have to up that count as the days go on more just to make sure everyone who's getting one is getting one.

I bit the bullet this morning and paid my first quarterly installment of my car insurance through Geico, on the card I usually pay it on, as it's due on Friday and I don't want to get a cancellation notice. It just looks bad, you know? Normally I pay the entirety of the insurance all at once, but as I don't know if I'm ever going to drive the damn car again, why would I do that? The status of the car is still up in the air; I can't get the U Pull It people to call me back, and I can't drive it as it is (obviously), so for the moment it just has to sit there in the parking lot. I do not have the time to otherwise fuck with it until who knows when.

Still nothing from the loans people on my status for forbearance, either; tomorrow is the day the loans come due and there's nothing I can do about that -- they haven't even yet told me they've received, much less are processing, my request for further forbearance, even though I got the confirmation sheet from the fax machine that said the document was successfully sent. That was over a week ago now, and yes, I checked the number -- it was the correct fax number. There's really nothing else I can do; if the systems let me log in tomorrow and I can actually change my payment plan (as it won't let me do so while I'm in forbearance), then I will do that and will have to make a payment, with money we don't have, on loans I shouldn't have to pay back yet in the first place. If it won't let me change my payment plan for the first month, then our savings account will immediately be cut in half -- because it's not like we're flush with cash or anything like that. These last two months have been terrible financially, with so many things happening all at once, bad things, that require money to fix -- money that we don't have or otherwise can't afford to spend.

Last year, the day I faxed the application for forbearance in, I immediately got a response in my email that said they'd received it. However, I'd also faxed it three times by that point and had mailed a paper copy of it to them as well, so I'm guessing they got the paper copy and sent the confirmation of that -- as I don't remember getting confirmations via email from the other faxes. I mean, shit, there's really nothing else I can do right now. There's just not. If I have to pay on it tomorrow, I have to pay on it tomorrow, and re-send the forms again via fax and probably mail to get these people to do their fucking jobs in a timely fashion. The entire situation really, really pisses me off.

Anyway.

The group at work is doing a Secret Santa drawing, as our Christmas potluck is a week from tonight. I'm already done, of course, with getting the gift for my person (who knows I got her in the drawing, so it's not exactly secret), but I have no clue who got my name or what they'll get for me. Again, everything looming over my head since before Thanksgiving is really putting a damper on the Christmas season for me this year. Even more so than usual. There are about ten or so checks I have to write out and mail away once we get paid on Friday, for bills that need to be paid and/or otherwise taken care of. I just got the email that said my Citi Card statement was on its way as well, so that'll be here by the weekend and I'll need to pay it down too. And, of course, there's the matter of Daisy's presents that I still need to get for her either in stores or online, and get it all shipped here if online. We only have the one car now, so it's not like I can sneak off without her to go shopping. Well, I could, but I hate doing that unless it can't be avoided. I don't even like going to Walmart without her unless I'm picking up cigarettes and not much else.

I tend to repeat myself here in this blog almost with every post. I realize this, of course. It's because the things that bother me don't go away. If they do, I stop writing about them, because after that, what's the point?

So now we wait and wait some more.

Tightness, Part I

I have begun the long, drawn out process of sending Christmas cards this year -- I sent my first ten yesterday -- and have come to the conclusion that Daisy and I know and actually care about far too many people.

No, seriously.

For those of you who have been following this blog for a while, you'll know that I really haven't been able to send out cards for a few years due to, y'know, finances being excruciatingly tight in December most of the time. However, don't get me wrong, there are about five or six cards I will send out every year regardless -- to family members like my parents and grandmother and to close friends like April and Jane. But, really, that's been about it for the past two or three years. Hell, stamps alone are more expensive than the cards most of the time.

Obviously, however, it is not lost on me that this is the first Christmas where Daisy and I have been married, but it is the first one in a long time where I've not been so incredibly destitute at Christmastime to where I can't afford stamps or cards. I planned ahead; about two weeks ago I ordered two sheets of the new Batman stamps from the USPS website (because, of course, if I'm going to order stamps, obviously they're going to be Batman stamps) in preparation for the onslaught of cards I'm going to send out. In addition to this, after it took about three months or so of living here for all sorts of charities and other groups to get my address, within the past 90 days or so I've been getting bombarded -- almost every day -- with charitable junk mail for all sorts of causes. Almost all of these requests either come with a stack of free Christmas cards, Christmas stationery/address labels/gift tags, or something else Christmas-related. So, I've been putting those to use. Before I started yesterday, I had a stack of about thirty Christmas cards that I'd already gotten for free from these sorts of places. Some of them are nicer than others; some of them are really nice. But, obviously, this means that since I now have the means and have the time (as it doesn't take a really long while to write out cards and stick them in envelopes), I'm planning a huge card blitz this year. I purchased another box of them while we were out shopping this weekend, as I'm sure I'll need more.

Of course, Daisy wants to be involved as well, and I admire her for that; we're saving the nicest cards and the like for close family and friends so that she can include her own messages in them along with mine. Most of my extended family and friends, the ones I haven't seen in years and/or only see briefly (if at all) when I visit home -- those ones went out yesterday to get a jump on the season and to make sure all of them had our new address here in Omaha in case they wanted to send a card back (most of them won't, I assume). Some of the family on that list I'm not even sure if they know that I've gotten married in the past year, as I did send out invitations to them but never heard a damn thing from any of them. The friends on that list from yesterday know, of course, and need our new address, so it's a win-win there.

My goal is to send out five or so cards every day (give or take, anyway) until we're done. And that's just for my own family and friends, too; Daisy needs to send her own cards to her own friends and family if she chooses to, and she's never been big on cards, really (which is why the stack of thank-you notes for our wedding gifts are still sitting on the counter in the living room -- addressed and written and ready-to-mail, but unstamped and gathering dust right now). Obviously that's going to require even more stamps (possibly more Batman stamps) than I have now, so I'll have to order more stamps over the course of the next week or so at the most. Doing a quick count, I have 35 (yes, thirty-five) actual cards right now ready to be written out, stamped, and mailed. I'll more than likely use them all, or at least the vast majority of them.

In other news, it briefly got warm here (into the mid-50s yesterday) before plunging back into the 20s with more cold wind. As you probably know if you've lived here for any stretch of time, midwestern weather is bipolar; it's supposed to be nearly 60 again by the weekend. Usually I don't have to worry about my allergies giving me fits in fucking December, but this year, apparently, I do.

I return to work this afternoon just wanting to put my head down and get through the week; I have still heard nothing about my student loan forbearance, and they've had the forms now for a full week (I faxed them last Tuesday night from work). Still waiting. The same goes for the U Pull It people here in Omaha, as apparently they pay no attention whatsoever to their quote requests. If I have to get them on the phone to haggle with them about anything, I will not be happy.

Daisy has asked me why I don't want to get the car fixed, as we could take the money from our savings account to fix it (things like this are what that money's for). The main reason is because of my shitty luck more than anything else. I could have it fixed this week and have it back on the road in tip-top shape, yes, only to have another major part blow on it the day after, or two days later have it broken into again at work and have the same damage caused once more. I love the car, I do, but I don't love it so much as to keep throwing money at it when I've already put far more into it (over these past almost four years I've had it) than it's worth. What I need to do is to sell it, get what I can out of it, and then use some of that money from our savings to get something else that I'm not constantly worried about getting broken into, stolen, or breaking down every week.

Out Of My Hands

It's been cold and damp here in Omaha over the past several days. Not rainy, mind you, and not freezing, but in the mid-30s with near-constant wet fog -- the kind that will keep the pavement constantly wet and will leave your clothing damp if you're outside in it long enough (say, 10 minutes or so). It's like we live in a shittier version of Seattle.

After a brief reprieve from bullshit last week at work (because of the Thanksgiving holiday and the weekend after), the stupid returned full force this week -- I had one of the busiest, most stressful weeks I've ever worked there at that job. I mentioned about a month or two ago now that I did not yet, at that time, dread going in to the office five days a week. Yeah, that time has passed. It passed some time ago. I know now that every day I go in, I will have to deal with stupid people and assholes -- not people I work with, mind you, but the people we are supposed to be the advocates for and the voice of -- and it seems like each day they're dumber and more dickish than the last. No wonder most people don't stay at that job any longer than they have to.

Unfortunately, however, I have to. As I actually chose to follow my dreams and get two degrees in a field I actually wanted to work in, I am now saddled with no job prospects whatsoever and a crippling amount of student loan and credit card debt that I am near-constantly reminded of every time I get a bill in the mail or an e-statement.

My student loans just reminded me today that "hey, uh, you have a payment due, and it's going to be every month, and it's more than you paid for your car" via email, and while that is true, the due date isn't for another four days and I faxed my re-upped forbearance paperwork to them on Tuesday, so, uh, how about YOU get on that, loans people? My loan servicer's website is a pain in the ass to do anything with anyhow; yes, it's still telling me the loans are in forbearance now (because they are, until the 11th) and they're asking me for a payment immediately on the day the forbearance ends, or beforehand, without any window or, y'know, time allotted for billing. It's such bullshit. Bill-shit.

I did, as mentioned briefly above, fax my new forbearance request to them on Tuesday night during my lunch hour at work, and according to the fax machine it sent successfully and I got a confirmation that it had sent. It's basically the same thing I did last year at this time -- fax and wait. Apparently they're supposed to take up to ten business days to review and approve/deny the request. Yeah, well, I don't have ten business days; they sent a bill less than two weeks before it was due, and as they're in forbearance (as mentioned in my last post) I can't even change my repayment plan until they come off it -- by which time it won't matter, since I may still be waiting to hear whether it's been approved again.

I do indeed still qualify for forbearance, just barely -- the loan payment would have to be about $100 less per month than it is now for me to not qualify. I did the math on it. It was easy for them to approve it last year because the payment was something like 60% of my monthly income. You only need it to be greater than 20% to qualify.

In other news, the situation with my car still hasn't changed, and it's still sitting in the same spot in the parking lot that it's been in for the past two weeks or so. I've put in another request with the U Pull It people as it's quite clear at this point they've ignored the first one, and requested that they email or call me to discuss it as I'll take any reasonable offer on it. I really don't have much of a choice. This time of year is really bad for money and we just can't afford to fix it. As I mentioned in my previous post, the way December's paychecks fall on the calendar completely fucks us for having any available money when we actually need it, and when we get it, it's gone immediately to bills and rent because of the calendar. We get paid on the 12th and the 26th. So, almost two weeks before Christmas and then on the day after Christmas. Because of that, I'm trying to get rid of the car now before I have to pay my insurance on it again, which is due on the 12th. Why would I pay insurance on a car that can't be driven, especially when I have a ton of other bills to worry about anyway? I can sell the car before the re-up date I'll just remove the car from my policy with them; Daisy already has me insured on her car as she has comprehensive coverage, and has had me insured since we were married.

We have Christmas shopping mostly done -- the parents, sisters, and nieces/nephews are done, and Daisy is done for me (at least I think so). However, because I have no money to spare, I have only gotten Daisy two things, and have ordered two more which haven't arrived yet. Therefore I am nowhere near close to finished for her, and it's depressing to think of what else needs to be done because I don't know where the money is going to come from. Even though we get paid next week, all of that money needs to go to bills for this month, as well as if I can't get forbearance again on my student loans or they're not processed by that point.

There is that part of me that tells me yes, everything's going to work out one way or another, but until it actually starts working out that way I am consumed by the stress and depression of it all. It's part of why I hate the holidays; for many years, December has been a terrible month for stress and finances and I cannot get any enjoyment out of anything until I am no longer worried about the things I can't control. The damnable misery of it is that the only way I won't be stressed or worried over those things would be for me to gain control over them, and it's all out of my hands for the moment. That's just the way my mind operates, don't mind me.

I have been approved for my paid time off (PTO) for both my birthday and for Christmas Eve, as I put in for it a while ago but never had the actual time to request until after my first 90 days at work. I'm not sure we have any actual plans whatsoever for my birthday, and Daisy has it off too. I partially requested it because I am not working on my fucking birthday, but also partially because it's the last Saturday night before Christmas and I have a really, really good hunch that work will be crazyballs nuts that night as all of our accounts will want to get everything they can possibly take care of before Christmas done. I will only work on the Tuesday of Christmas week (the 23rd) and then the two days after Christmas, and expect all three days to be rather silent -- if Thanksgiving week was any indication, of course. Thanksgiving is an American holiday; Christmas is worldwide. I expect 90-95% of our daily workload to completely disappear before/after Christmas, have it pick up a little for a few days leading up to New Year's, and then drop off again for another few days. We have both Christmas Day and New Year's Day off. They're two of the six or so paid holidays we get every year at that job.

Daisy and I have to do our shopping tonight, despite the fact that we're being frugal and only really getting what we need to survive for another week. I desperately need a new pair of sneakers, as the entire sole of the pair I have now (which I've owned and worn for five years and were a hand-me-down from my ex's brother) has separated from the rest of the shoe and it's falling apart. I'll be looking for more shoes tonight at Walmart, as that's where we have to get our groceries (again, we're poor, and it's also the only place which sells my cigarettes and the cats' food). I obviously don't look forward to spending more money, but it can't really be avoided. As it gets closer to Christmas, our shopping trips will more than likely become less and less frequent as I'd also rather not get into fistfights with assholes crowding the aisles and clogging up the stores.

Crickets

Our Thanksgiving was nice.

On Wednesday night, we had eighteen people (I think) in the office, with about sixty issues total to be worked on. That's a really low number for that amount of people, and the night remained really quiet for the most part. All of us, of course, had Thursday off, as our company closes on holidays. The only people on site on Thursday were the on-duty managers, four of them -- one for each eight hours of the day -- and only one at a time.  Everyone, even our overnight staff (including my wife) got off at midnight on Wednesday night.

On Thanksgiving Day, I slept until around noon, Daisy until around 3. The parents went out of town to Daisy's sister's place for Thanksgiving, so we had nowhere to go. We instead stayed home in our pajamas, and Daisy cooked us a vegan Thanksgiving dinner. The only quasi-nonvegan food was the box of Stove Top stuffing I made, and even that (after extensive research) we couldn't find out whether it was actually vegan or not, so Daisy didn't have any.

Our dinner?

• Vegan chicken tenders (y'know, to simulate the "turkey" part of Thanksgiving)
• Corn
• Homemade mashed potatoes
• Green bean casserole made from scratch with onions that Daisy battered and fried herself
• Daisy's homemade vegan gravy (it's to die for)
• My aforementioned stuffing
• Steamed carrots
• And finally, a homemade-from-scratch vegan pecan pie -- which is possibly the best pie I've had in my entire life.

We're seriously considering making most of these foods again about once a month. Daisy is a wonderful cook.

After we ate/digested while watching Gilmore Girls (because, yes, I love the show as much as my wife does), Daisy turned to me and asked "So do you want to go out Black Friday shopping?"

I'd like to pause for a moment and state that if you've been reading this blog since its inception in 2007, you'll know that I've gone Black Friday shopping before -- I did light shopping in 2006, and went full bore in 2007 and 2008 with the mother of my then-girlfriend. It is not an experience for the faint of heart, nor is it an experience that I want to repeat any time soon, if ever.

So, we decided against it. Daisy ended up getting several different gifts online over the course of the weekend, as Black Friday was also our payday. After paying our bills/rent and doing said shopping, we don't have much left now to last us the next week and a half or so, and will have to budget accordingly. December is going to be a slim month for us, as the paydays in it are poorly timed considering the due dates of bills and the like, and the added cost of Christmas presents is a burden we don't usually have as well. I've never had to worry about the burden of Christmas presents for more than, say, two or three people at the most. Also keep in mind that up until this year, I've never been married at Christmas, so I've never had a ton of nieces and nephews to get stuff for. My Christmases in the past several years have been pretty hermit-like and quiet, for the most part. Plus, December is usually a really bad month financially for me as not only does my car insurance come due, but when I was teaching it meant that I wouldn't get paid for a month due to the holiday break. This year it's just as bad, though due to different circumstances. Yeah, we're both getting paid, but we also have many more financial responsibilities now as well. Daisy has very different views on money and on Christmas than I do, obviously, and it's not like I can make her change her views on either one.

Of course, there's still the issue with my car and the insurance for said car, as well. My car insurance comes due on December 12. The car is, of course, undriveable. I've put in a request for a quote from the U Pull It people here in town, but have yet to hear back from them on it; if I hear nothing back from them by tomorrow night I will call them and ask if they even received my request. I'm doing this because I can't afford to get the car fixed and keep it insured right now. I just can't; Daisy and I do make decent money, but as soon as our paychecks come in, it all disappears to the bills we have to pay and the necessities we have to purchase in order to, y'know, eat. Therefore my only real option right now is to sell it before the insurance comes due on it in a week and a half, and be done with it. I don't want to do this, obviously, but there's really nothing else I can do with the car as-is. And the money I get out of it will have to be immediately socked away and untouched so that I can put it towards a new vehicle, no matter how much we may need to use that money for other things.

Also, to add insult to injury, my student loans are now coming due as my forbearance has ended. While I still technically qualify for forbearance (I checked, and I baaaaarely still qualify) their website is doing the same bullshit it did last year, where it tells me I have a payment due and gives me the date for it/the option to pay it, but won't let me change the payment plan/schedule because it says the loans themselves are still in forbearance. Well yes, I suppose they are...until 11:59PM on the night before the payment due date. Which is a really, really sneaky/underhanded thing to do. At this point I have two choices -- send off the forbearance form to them again with my updated information, via fax, and hope it's accepted (but will probably be denied since the loans are still showing as in forbearance even though they're asking me to pay on them) or cut our savings account in half to pay the full bill and then change the payment plan after this month. Or change it on the due date and pay what the new, lower amount would be. If it'll even let me do that. I don't know what the hell else to do here.

Daisy is in the same boat as well, as her own loans are coming due again. She does, however, have much, much less than I do, and her projected payments are actually pretty reasonable (all things considered, of course).

However, all of this coming together all at once just makes me nothing but one huge ball of stress, ready to snap/yell/scream at basically anyone or anything that inconveniences me or makes my life harder than it already is. Daisy does her best to help me feel better, but these are problems she can't fix. Nobody can fix them, really; to fix most of these problems would require a winning lottery ticket to solve -- short of that, not much else can be done. It's all so tiring and depressing, and it makes me feel worse to even attempt to write about it here. Perhaps that's because I know that writing about it won't fix anything; it won't magically pay my loans/bills, it won't magically double or triple my paycheck (or make more money appear in our bank accounts), it won't magically make a new car appear for me in the driveway or fix the steering column and ignition of the existing one. I'm upset, I'm floundering, and everything keeps going wrong -- I wanted, I needed all of this bullshit to end when I left Kansas and got married, and none of it ever just stops or goes away. It's still there, and old problems are replaced with new ones, sometimes worse than the old ones were. When do I get to the point where I just get to live, the point where I just get to be, and come to some sort of semi-permanent contentment? I look around and see so many people -- so many people -- happy, content, and mostly carefree, living their lives on their own terms.

When do Daisy and I get to do that? Do we ever?

Downgrading

I will start this post with the email I sent to my parents this morning regarding my car, as I don't want to re-type and/or rehash everything again:

So here's the latest update on the car -- we got the estimate yesterday from the steering column repair guy here in town, and it's pretty much along the lines of what I was expecting. Yes, the parts for the steering column and ignition/switch themselves are pretty cheap and are in stock (maybe $100-125 total) and the labor isn't incredibly bad for it either. However, it looks like they damaged the entire turn signal array/mechanism as well, which means the wheel needs to be replaced (another $12-15 or so for a compatible wheel). The problem, however, isn't in getting the parts but in getting a key that goes with those parts. Since my car's anti-theft device is in the ignition switch (which, I might add, is the first thing the thugs ripped off/cut out) and corresponds with a security microchip in my ignition key, we'd have to get a steering column and ignition that already had the key with it ready to go -- otherwise the car would need to be completely re-keyed and that would add another $150-200 to the total. It's substantially harder to find one with a matching key set for it, so the estimate for everything is anywhere between $250 and $450-500.

The other option, of course, is to sell the car. The people who the used parts come from (U Pull It Omaha) buys vehicles to add to their used parts inventory. You can fill out a form online and they'll make you an offer, come to you, tow the car for free, and write you a check then and there. They're a really reputable company and we have friends who have used them before not only to get parts, but to sell their cars. Therefore, over the holiday weekend, I'm going to see what they'd offer me for the car as-is (since the rest of it is in good working order and it has two new tires with less than fifteen miles on them). If their offer is more than it would cost to fix it, or at least comparable, I'll just sell it to them and put the money towards something else as long as it has four wheels, doors, and a heater. At this point I really don't care as we're going into winter and I need a car.

This pretty much sums it all up, to be honest with you.

Daisy has told me that we can do whatever I wish; if we want to try to fix it regardless, we can, if that's what I so choose. If not, we can get me something else. If I do have to get something else, I am being honest -- I really don't care what it is as long as it runs, has heat, and I can drive it to and from work. If nothing else I'm sure I could find a Sunfire or Neon or something like that which I could purchase relatively cheaply and drive it until I can afford something else. At this point it's not about what kind of car I'd want, but what I could get. Believe me, I have wants, but none of them are anywhere near our available price range, and because of our current credit card debt we don't qualify for a car loan right now. We checked. 

So. Those are really our options. Before all this happened, we'd originally planned to get me a new car sometime in the spring once it warmed up, as we would've been able to save enough money by then and have our credit cards paid down more, enough to where that would be a feasible option. Now? Yeah, it's been bumped up and it's no longer feasible to wait. Obviously, this puts us in a rather tight spot. Plus, there's the issue of my student loans coming due in about two weeks as well, so...yeah.

I'm not messing with any of it until I'm off for my "weekend," as I don't have the time or patience to otherwise fuck with it until then. We'll wait and see what happens.

Middle Fingers, Part IV: Holding Patterns

I've made it no secret here in my blog over the years how much I love my car. She is like a child to me, the one thing I have that nobody can take away (aside from the cats, of course). The Monte Carlo is the first vehicle I've ever had that I've owned outright, name on the title, no payments, leases, or anything like that. Therefore, when anyone touches the car aside from me or my wife -- and especially when a group of thugs tries to steal it (not once, but twice) and ends up heavily damaging it in the process -- it's a huge violation. I basically feel like my car was raped. To an extent, it was, depending on how one looks at it. That may not be the best analogy, and I would imagine that rape survivors may scoff or be offended by that analogy, but look at my ignition:

This took time. This took effort. Wasted time and effort, of course, since the first thing they did was cut off the one electronic piece that would actually let them start the car, but still. That's like beating a dead horse.

Anyway, to continue from where I left off last, the car is undriveable (of course) even with its key. I texted my coworkers on Friday afternoon to make sure that the car was still there before I went to work, and they confirmed that it was -- so the first thing I did when I got to work on Friday was schedule it to be towed back home to our apartment parking lot. The scheduling of this was perfectly fine -- AAA allows you to do it online, type in details of what you need, etc etc, and they give you a timeframe estimate there on the website once you schedule it. That was easy; however, getting the car out of that lot was, well, not.

I'll remind you that the one part of the car that makes it able to do anything was completely destroyed. Without being able to even turn it on, I can't shift it out of park. It was parked with its nose up against a treeline, so it's not like the truck could've gotten up in front of it to just lift it and pull it out. It had to be towed from behind, which is a much harder job that requires the car to be lifted and an extra set of roller wheels attached on each side in the front in order to get it out of there. Daisy thought I was being irrational by having it towed home immediately after I got to work, but the fact is that I get to work at 3, and we only have daylight until 5-ish. Not only would the tow driver need to be able to see to get the car out of there, but I wasn't leaving it there after dark again so that the thugs could possibly come back and try to get it a third time. No, I was getting that car home safely ASAP, and at that moment I didn't care who it inconvenienced (read: Daisy, who had to be awake early that afternoon to not only get me to work, but to tell the tow driver a space to put it in once it got home). So no, at that time I didn't particularly care -- if the thugs came back a third time for it, I'm sure they would've found a way to get it out of there even if they had to tow it themselves. The damage on it already isn't covered by insurance, and neither is theft -- even if it can't be fixed, if it's actually successfully stolen, I can't even sell it and get something out of it. So yeah, pardon my "irrationality."

The car was towed home safely and put back into our apartment parking lot. I thanked the tow guy profusely, and he told me that he didn't think the damage looked incredibly bad -- it looked pretty fixable. Once it was home, Daisy took the pictures of it, one of which I shared above, in order to get them sent off to a shop who specializes in ignitions and steering columns here in Omaha. We've been told by multiple sources that the mechanic there is the best in town for that stuff, both on quality of work and price. We've yet to hear back from him yet; however, I have looked up replacement parts for the car to have an idea of how much these things would be to replace outright -- from U-Pull-it Omaha's site a new steering column with airbag is $69, without airbag $49. An ignition switch is $12. A new steering wheel, if the mechanics in mine is too damaged to use, is $11 or something like that. All of that is do-able, even with whatever labor costs the mechanic may charge. It may suck, but it's do-able. Better than that, all of the parts appear to be in stock.

Right now we just appear to be in a holding pattern more than anything else; as we've not heard back from the mechanic yet, Daisy is going to call him this afternoon once I go to work to see what he says. And since the car is "safe" at home, I'm not too concerned about it right now. I say "safe" because, as you'll recall, it was also broken into once here in our parking lot. Not that there's anything left in it now to take out of it, of course, unless a thief wanted half a bottle of radiator stop-leak or a two-year old air freshener tree hanging off my rearview mirror, I mean. I took the insurance card and registration out of it and brought it back upstairs for the time being as well, because not only was I relieved that it was still there, but because one can never be too safe.

As an aside, when I had my car towed home, the other car the thieves had stolen (and left there running with a screwdriver in the ignition) was still in the lot next to mine, though it was no longer running at the time. I didn't get a good look at it, honestly. It was a red, mid-90s SUV like a Blazer or Jimmy or something. I don't know if the cops turned it off when Daisy gave her report, or if it just ran out of gas in the hours between -- but it was still there when Daisy went to the gas station the next night, and when she got back twenty minutes later it was gone. So, it appears the thieves did come back to get it. No tow truck would've picked it up at 1AM, and Daisy says she was only gone for 20 minutes. Because of this, she apologized for snapping at me over my "irrationality" earlier, and told me she knew I'd feel vindicated. Ironically, the one thing I did notice about that car next to mine is that it had two AAA stickers on the back glass, one on each side.

With nothing else that can be done for the moment (and no more money to afford anything else repairs-wise until after we get paid on Black Friday, paying rent and bills first), we wait. We go about our lives as per the usual. Despite the stress caused by this bullshit, I've actually been in a decent mood all week (for the most part). Last night we went to see Big Hero 6 and did a little Christmas shopping -- and to some extent, it was therapeutic. Our work schedules this week are altered from the usual, of course, due to Thanksgiving -- one of only five or six days per year that our business actually closes down -- and I get Thursday off. We all have to clock out before midnight on Wednesday night, to be honest with you, as it'll screw up the time system otherwise. Most of us will be working on Black Friday, including Daisy and myself, on what is historically one of the craziest days for the year or the most silent. It's a flip of the coin, really. If a major retailer's systems go down on Friday? Oh, we're boned. Otherwise? Crickets.

"Here's the thing," I told one of our coworkers on Saturday, "if it's busy, good; we'll be there, we'll be working, it'll be a normal Friday afternoon. If it's quiet? Well, then we're there and we'll get paid to get a reprieve from the normal Friday onslaught of craziness. Either way, there's only going to be so much we can do anyhow on a holiday weekend with most of the workforce being gone."

If Saturday (and, from what I heard, Sunday) is any indication, it's going to be a fairly quiet week in the office if only because of the holiday. My boss is out of the office on vacation through the beginning of the month, which puts Daisy as the next in line on the chain of command most of the nights she's there working.

The cold has let up, at least a little bit; it was probably in the low 60s on Saturday, and though it's been cold and windy since, it's not so brutal that you're frozen to the bone. Tonight, however, we're supposed to get a rain-to-snow mix that's going to hit the east coast on Thursday, including back home in West Virginia, so I'm waiting to see what's going to happen there. I've been getting to and from work with Daisy's help as well as with the occasional ride there or ride home from a few coworkers when they offer. It's going to remain that way, sadly, until I get a vehicle again that I can drive myself -- whether that be my car or another, newer car. We'd originally planned to start looking for a newer vehicle for me once it started getting warmer in the spring, but it appears that timeframe may be bumped up somewhat depending on what we can do with the Monte Carlo.

Middle Fingers, Part III: Death Knells

I would like to preface this post by saying that for the moment, none of this matters anymore; the car is currently dead. But there's a definite lead up to how it got there.

So.

We got the car towed to Firestone Monday afternoon and had to leave it there overnight. On Tuesday morning they called me and said that it was done -- two new tires and an oil change for $218. There were other miscellaneous little issues with it they told me about as well, but it wasn't anything I didn't already know about, nor anything I haven't known about for years -- wheel bearings are loud, "service engine soon" light on (it's always been on since I bought the car), etc. I picked it up, paid for it, and it fired up perfectly fine. The drive was smooth like butter on those new tires, and the oil change helped out the engine quite a bit, as I could already tell. And I went to work and came home with my stress levels already lowered compared to the usual.

This was fine for two days -- Tuesday and Wednesday. And this was my normal pattern of work (which, for the record, has been awful this week). Yesterday, I went to work as I normally do at my normal time, and because there's never any parking in the main lot, I parked in the overflow lot, in the same spot I park in every day when I have to park down there. The overflow lot is about 100 yards from the front of the building, and I park under the treeline at the end of it. It sucks in the cold sometimes, but otherwise the lot is fine. I walk back down there at the end of my shift and get in, fire it up, drive home.

Last night at the end of my shift -- to my absolute horror, of course, I found that the car had been broken into. In the work parking lot. But it wasn't just broken into, oh no -- it had basically been destroyed on the inside. The entire dash had been smashed in, the rearview mirror ripped off and down, the glove compartment bashed open, stereo (obviously) ripped out and stolen, and (worst of all), the entire ignition assembly had been torn out and was laying in pieces on the floor, the assembly housing completely trashed and even the metal scarred and torn up.

Now, the Monte Carlo is old, but it does have an anti-theft system. That system is a chip embedded in the ignition key of the car. Without it, or if that chip is malfunctioning/doesn't complete the internal circuit, the car won't start. I've had my fair share of complaints about the engineering at GM on that car, but this feature is more than likely why the car is still sitting in the parking lot at work.

However, the would-be thieves had already torn out the tumbler assembly of the ignition switch, severing the wires and everything. Which means there was nothing for the key to connect to. While I could still stick said key into the hole, it would only go in about half an inch, as the chip assembly/key rotator switch was torn out, wires cut, and that's what makes the car start. My car would ding at me as it recognized that the key was in there, but it couldn't turn or turn over the engine (obviously), so there was nothing I could do. It appears that they tried to jam a screwdriver in there (or some other metal tool) in an attempt to get it to turn. Yeah, wasn't happening with my car. At some point they left, and I came back to my car at midnight when my shift was over with it all fucked up.

So. Daisy called the police and found that we could do a report via phone; however, the people who did that weren't in until 7AM. With the car rendered undriveable and no other recourse at midnight after another soul-crushing day at work, we left it there in the parking lot and came home; me for the night, Daisy on her lunch hour. We discussed our options. The first thing I had to do, of course, was file a claim with my insurance company (Geico) in the morning for the attempted theft, and then we'd go from there. Realistically we'd be using our AAA membership again to get it towed home or to a junkyard, as I figured a report of damage would total it out since it's so old and half falling apart cosmetically anyway.

This was not the case, but I'll get to that.

When Daisy got back to work after her lunch hour, she immediately called me.

"Was there a car parked next to yours when we left?" she asked.

"Nope," I said.

"Okay, I didn't think so. I'm calling the police. I hope they're still fucking there."

What transpired after that is nothing short of mindblowing. I shall defer to Daisy here, as her description of it she wrote is pretty spot on as-it-happened:

Brandon's car got broken into yesterday, Thursday-- they fucked it up, pulled the ignition out, etc. He discovered it as he went to go home from work. I took my lunch and drove him home and then went back to work. As I drove by I had a feeling and looked to the left in the overflow parking lot where his car was parked. There was a car parked next to his. We'd called the police earlier and were going to file a report later today. I called 911 again because there was no reason a car should be parked next to his in that lot at this time. While waiting for the police, another car arrived, a grey truck, and parked behind Brandon's, facing the exit and ready to drive away. Forty minutes later the police arrive-- not the officers' fault, they were sent from SW Omaha because of another incident that had taken police attention in the area. The grey truck drove away as the police drove by. The police circled back, not aware the people they were looking for just drove off, and discovered they'd left the car next to Brandon's-- the one I originally called to report-- still running, hot-wired, with no one in it.

I watched a crime from my work window cursing the delay it took for police to arrive. The damage has possibly totaled out Brandon's car. But, on life turns. Things could always be worse and I'm thankful that we're both okay. I'm also thankful for my amazing people I work with who walked me up to police and held my hand to make sure I was okay.

Yeah. That's the brief rundown of it all, anyway. According to my wife, it was ongoing; they came back -- apparently hell-bent-determined to steal my near-worthless Monte Carlo, and continued to try to hotwire it for forty more minutes before the police showed up. How do I know this? Because Daisy and at least three coworkers were watching it as it happened. 

Daisy gave our police report to the officers in person, and got our case number -- which I have and gave to the Geico people this morning -- but told us not to expect to hear back from them (obviously) because there's nothing really the police can do here. I have not yet seen any further damage they caused to the car, of course, because it happened after I was home and asleep for the night. The car remains in the lot.

So.

This morning when Daisy went to bed, I was just waking up and she gave me the rundown of what was going on. My first job, of course, was to report a claim with Geico. I did so, online, and then missed a call from an agent who gave me a number to call him back...a number that went right into Geico's phone tree and took me nowhere. I got another number for the claims department from an operator in some department in Texas, and called back in. This time I got an agent on the line and explained my situation, and she gave me a list of questions about the incident -- which of course I answered truthfully -- before looking up my policy and telling me that theft, attempted theft, and vandalism/damage is not covered by my insurance plan, as I do not have "comprehensive coverage."

For fuck's sake.

My car is almost twenty years old, and to put it under comprehensive coverage (I later found out) would cost me $1000 total per year to insure the car. I only paid $500 for the car to begin with. There is literally nothing the insurance people can do for the car as it is -- this is all on me, out-of-pocket.

"What we'll have to do is file this as an informational claim," she said.

She was, for the record, very sweet and very helpful -- as much as she could be, anyway -- but it still means I'm boned. They can't total out the car; nothing can be done with it now other than to A) have it towed home so that it's no longer in the parking lot at work, and B) have it towed again to a scrapyard to sell it for scrap, or conversely, to an auto shop to see if the entire ignition assembly can be repaired for a somewhat reasonable amount.

Again, I am thankful Daisy signed us up for AAA earlier this week.

More information as it comes in.

Middle Fingers, Part II: Tire'd

The cold has been unrelenting.

Since last week when I last wrote here, it has not been above freezing. Not once. Most of the time, temperatures have struggled to get into the 20s, and there's been a near-constant 15-30mph wind at almost all hours of the day and night. And, to add to the mess somewhat, on Saturday we got our first snowstorm of the season, which produced whiteout conditions for chunks of an hour or two at a time until it finally stopped and moved off to the south and east.

On top of all of this, my car had to go in for surgery.

Let me explain.

Last Thursday when I drove to work, I got out of my car and saw that my tire was low. Hmm, I thought, I should go pump that up tomorrow on my way to work. When I left work that night, it was even lower -- to the point where it was difficult to steer/the tire was producing drag when I was on my way home. Of course, as it was midnight and midnight is fucking dark, I couldn't see how low, only that it was super-low.

By Friday morning when Daisy got home from work, it was completely flat. Rim-sitting-on-the-ground flat. I called Dad, who brought over his portable air compressor (which plugged into the socket of his new truck) and in the absolutely blistering cold, we ran it for over a half hour to see if the tire could be re-pumped. While it took some air and there was a slightly noticeable change in the tire's appearance, it lost it almost as quickly. My tire was flat, it was fucked, the car was unusable.

Mind you, throughout all of this I had no clue what was wrong with the tire (I never found out, actually, but I'll get to that). There was no visible punctures, no nails or anything sticking out of it that I could see -- it was just flat. I asked Daisy, very sweetly, if she would pick me up a can of Fix-a-Flat on her way home from work on Friday night, as I couldn't exactly do it myself (on Friday and Saturday I was picked up and taken to work by one of my coworkers). Daisy picked up said Fix-a-Flat, and the plan was to put it in the tire on Saturday morning while she was sleeping, and if it pumped it up enough to drive on, to then take it down the street about two miles to the local Firestone Auto Center, who I would just pay to replace it before work. We'd gotten paid on Friday, so this wasn't a huge concern for me.

Except...well, remember how I said we got our first snowstorm on Saturday? Yeeeeah. About that...

The forecast for this storm kept changing on Friday night -- both for accumulations and for start times -- and both kept moving up. Originally they gave the estimate of 1-3 inches, which briefly changed to 3-5 before settling on 2-4, and originally the storm was supposed to start at noon or later in the afternoon. They updated that to 9AM with the heaviest snow starting around noon.

On Saturdays, I'm not awake before 9AM and I have to be at work at 3.

By the time I woke up, it was already snowing. Spitting snow, anyway. By the time I woke up enough to function, it was already coming down hard. My coworker had already asked me if I needed a ride to work on Saturday as well, since she would be running errands in the morning before work/before the snow hit, so I told her yes. The plans for working on the tire on Saturday were scrapped, and my poor baby Monte Carlo sat through a snowstorm with one flat tire and one low tire, helpless and powerless against its onslaught. Because of my tire situation, our Saturday manager (a dear friend) gave me permission to work 2-11 and get out of there when I could.

Of course, this didn't help Daisy, who works overnight Saturday nights and is the overnight manager, and Daisy doesn't come in to work until the evening, sooo....yeah, it was not a fun drive in for her. Or for us to come back home when I got off work and she took her lunch. Or for her to go back to work after lunch. Or for her to come back home in the morning.

By midnight or so the snow had completely stopped, but the cold would remain. We gave up on even attempting to look at/work on the tire on Sunday, as the snow was deep and blowing, most of the roads were still at least somewhat nasty, and it was freezing. Instead we made the plans for Monday to get everything done with the car we could, as I had to go back to work on Tuesday afternoon.

Monday came, and with it one of the coldest, windiest mornings I've ever experienced in Nebraska. Daisy and I woke up, bundled up, and went downstairs to put the Fix-a-Flat in the tire to see if that would help. I cleaned all of the snow and ice off the car after she (miraculously, I might add) fired up and I put the heater/defroster on full blast.

There was a method to this madness, of course -- for those of you who have never used Fix-a-Flat, it's pretty simple. It's an aerosol can full of hyper-expanding, sealant foam that has a hose on the nozzle. You connect the hose to your tire valve and pull the trigger, holding it until the entire can has emptied into the tire. If your rim is off the ground, even if tire is still super-low, you're then supposed to drive the car 2-4 miles to get the foam to evenly distribute and expand. In that even distribution and expansion, the sealant plugs any holes of punctures (if they're not huge, of course) and you can take the car to get the tire replaced -- apparently Fix-a-Flat can be driven on for up to 100 miles, according to the can. Stuff is tough.

Well, that didn't happen. It was so cold that the foam froze. In the hose. In the can. While trying to get it into my tire. Daisy and I were near-frozen too, of course. To add insult to injury, when it froze, the hose exploded, which sprayed the rim of my tire with the foam. Twice.

We'd had enough. We went back inside, freezing and frustrated, and looked up towing places. Daisy had already made us an afternoon appointment with the Firestone place down the street, and if the car was getting fixed that day, we had to get it down there somehow.

"They do everything else there," I told Daisy. "Why don't we see if they can tow me down there too? I mean, since that's where we're going anyway."

Daisy called. Despite the fact that we were less than three miles away, the tow down to the shop would cost an extra $80. Eighty dollars for a three-mile tow. We declined, and considered our other options.

"What about AAA?" Daisy asked.

"I don't have it."

"No, but we could sign up today. I know they do free tows with their roadside assistance stuff."

"Could we get a free tow today, on the day we sign up? I don't know if they'll do that, babe," I said.

She looked into it, called AAA to see what they could do, and about twenty minutes later we both had a full AAA membership for a year...for $60. Total. This included free tows anywhere in Omaha within a 10-mile radius. We scheduled the tow truck to come get the Monte Carlo that afternoon. Due to the weather, however, they were backlogged and we had no clue when they'd arrive -- the lady on the phone apparently gave Daisy a five-hour possible window.

Middle Fingers

I don't have enough middle fingers for this weather.

Let me explain.

On Monday morning, I was sitting on the porch enjoying the cool breeze, drinking my coffee and smoking my cigarettes per the usual, and it was a nice and tolerable 60 degrees or so.

By that afternoon, it was barely 40. By dusk, it was about 20. In the overnight hours, it began snowing. Hard. And it didn't stop for hours. By yesterday morning we (officially) had 2.3 inches of snow, and everything was covered by said snow and ice. Everything was a mess. No, quite literally, a mess. People were getting into accidents all over town, cars/vans/buses couldn't get up or down hills safely (compared to living in Kansas, Omaha has many, many hills), and people were getting stranded.

Yeah. In 2.3 inches of snow/ice. Yes, I know.

We weren't supposed to get anything, honestly; the storm was supposed to track north, and the official forecast said there was a 20% chance of flurries, with maybe a trace to a dusting. Yeah, well...

Anyway. It snowed like hell again during the evening hours last night while I was at work, but this time around it didn't stick to the cars, structures, or roads. This is good, because with the sharp dip in temperatures (it was 12 this morning when I awoke) it's already miserable enough. It's 21 outside now, but the temperature -- highs and lows -- isn't supposed to get back above freezing for the foreseeable future. And we're supposed to get more significant snow accumulation on Saturday. How much? Who knows. The weather people haven't released numbers yet, but if they're predicting it this far in advance it's usually a bad sign.

My car does not like the super-cold snap. Don't get me wrong, the Monte Carlo usually loves and/or craves the cold most of the time, but not this time around. She wanted to fight with me a little both when I left for work yesterday and when I came home last night when I started her up, and because it's a short five-minute drive from the house to work and vice versa, she doesn't even really get a chance to warm up unless I sit in the car before I move for five minutes or more. Part of it, I'm sure, is because when I lived in Newton, I could put the car in the garage when it was this cold, or at least pull up really closely to the garage under the balcony so that the house itself would give some shielding and protection from the elements -- here in Omaha, at our apartment, I park in a wide-open parking lot with no protection whatsoever. Same at work, too, unless I have to park across the street under the trees.

Work, by the way, is work. We're getting a new third shift person, and she's in training now; I met her last night. We now also have the help we need on the weekends (for the most part) again, so unless we have some sort of crazy, unbearably busy days, we should be able to manage just fine without performing mock triage on the issues we have to work without being able to give said issues the attention they need since we're so swamped. I've also been told that the winter months are the quietest months at that job, to the point where people can actually breathe and function without a 20-point blood pressure rise due to stress.

Not a whole lot else has been going on as of late; Daisy and I purchased and set up our Christmas tree, and yesterday she even hung up the Christmas Board, keeping that tradition alive. Daisy, again, is waaaaaaay into Christmas. She's doing everything she can to make the holiday season (I hate saying that this early) festive and bright, and I'm just sort of along for the ride at this point. We don't even know what our plans for the holidays are as of yet; I know I'll not be working on my birthday or on Christmas Eve, but that's about it. We have no clue what our Thanksgiving plans are or what we'll be doing on Christmas Day aside from more than likely spending the vast majority of it with the parents/family. There's literally nothing else on the docket as of yet. Looking at the way the holidays fall on the calendar this year, I'll work the 23rd, 26th, and 27th that week, and as it's the week of Christmas I'm guessing it'll be stone cold quiet on those days, which I'm totally fine with. I've heard Black Friday is dead quiet at work as well unless a major retailer goes down/offline. I will be working on Black Friday, of course. It's a Friday. You didn't think I'd ever get a Friday off, did you? Oh, foolish mortal...

Anyway. To the grind again, out into the tundra. Wearing flannel today because I need it. I'm not looking forward to the cold again. Let's just say that I've drained my vapor pen in the past two days because I really, really don't like going outside in this.

Hell Weeks

Where do I begin?

I haven't been sleeping much lately.

Well, no, let me correct that -- I haven't been sleeping well lately. As I've previously mentioned here, almost every time I sleep, even if it's just for a nap (which is rare these days due to lack of actual free time), I dream about work. Doing work, being at work, performing the processes of work. I can't escape it. The problem is not that I don't like my job; I like the job fine, and I take pride in the fact that I can (and do) do said job better than a lot of other people there. No, the problem is that I spend far too much time there doing the same repetitive shit. Being good at my job and not hating it is a curse in itself, for it means I'm given extra responsibility and do efficient work. I just can't leave it there.

I can leave it there physically, even consciously, but I simply cannot leave it there unconsciously, which is why I haven't been sleeping well and dream about that building, my cubicle, and the programs I use at work every. single. night. I don't know if there's anything I can do to stop this, nor do I know if it will ever stop. I don't dream about the people there, just the work. I'm afraid that eventually, it will drive me insane. It's not like they make some sort of drug that can change your dreams, after all. It's not like there's any sort of analyst or therapist (or, heh, an analrapist) one could go to in order to combat this problem -- it's just there.

Part of it, I'm sure, is that the entire month of October at that job was fucking hell. I don't say that lightly -- our average everyday workloads have doubled since/compared to September, and as the company is cracking down on overtime, we don't have as much help as we did before on the weekends. Add to those two things the fact that a lot of my coworkers have had out-of-town or other activities/vacation days/etc that made them unavailable for large chunks of the month, and the stress levels involved with working there have become astronomically high.

Case in point: on Saturday night I had a migraine by the time I left the office...at well after 9PM...when I'd been there since shortly after 11AM. Said migraine had been building all night long, making me nauseated and dizzy for a good portion of the evening, before opening up (almost) full force once I got home. I've had many migraines which were worse, yes, but all migraines suck regardless of intensity. I came home, ate, and went to bed. My days at work since have not been much better; it appears that November is shaping up to be a hellish month much like October was.

Another case in point: our six-month wedding anniversary was on Halloween, and we were so insanely busy at work that we didn't even remember it until earlier this week.

Despite that, today I'm actually in a really good, really productive mood for some reason. I don't know why, really -- I just woke up that way. I've been working around the house all day, cleaning and doing laundry. I took a shower. I cleaned the cat box. I drank almost a full pot of coffee. I've been keeping busy while Daisy is asleep and while I prepare for another two nights in a row of work -- I'll leave here in about forty minutes for my shift tonight.

And, after all, the bills are being paid, there's food in the house, the lights are on, and there's gas in our cars. The job does end once we clock out for the day and come home, and usually the next day we're not going back in to the office to deal with the exact same issues, only similar ones.

Over the course of the past few weeks, and over the course of the next few, there's a lot that's happened and even more that must be parceled out and dealt with. What's coming up is that I have to figure out what's going on with my student loans, as my forbearance is supposed to end this month (yet I've heard nothing whatsoever from my loan servicer yet).

Update: I have checked with the loan servicer and my forbearance doesn't end until December 10. So I have a little more than a month of forbearance left. That's comforting. I more than likely won't qualify for it again as my new job pays much, much more than I made while teaching. I'll have to check on that when the time comes. I'd imagine I'll be getting some more paperwork in the mail for it at some point soon, so it's likely to be at the forefront of my mind for the next few weeks.

Daisy has already started her Christmas shopping; I, meanwhile, have already finished most of mine over the course of the past few months that I've actually had spendable money. I'm done shopping for her parents, and I've gotten two or three things for her as well. I have to get one more big item for her (which I already have planned and ready to purchase, of course), and we'll do shopping together so that we can finish up for the nieces/nephews and the parents, but even in the first week of November we're almost there already. I'll get something for my parents as well, and have it shipped back home to them, but the bulk of what needs to be done is done. I also have a buttload of Christmas cards I've collected/received from various charities and as free gifts with certain Christmas present orders I've put in, so in about a month from now I'll begin sending those out to a lot of friends/family friends I have addresses for.

The gravity of the fact that this will be our first holiday season as a married couple is not lost on us; Daisy is perhaps the biggest fan of Christmas on the entire planet, to the point where she is insanely happy that one of the radio stations here in Omaha (102.3) has already switched to 24/7 Christmas music, and has declared that every time we are in the car together we must blast it and sing along to it together.

I am very glad that my car doesn't have a working radio.

Ahem.

Anyway, the biggest task she wants us to take care of over the course of this next week is to go buy a tree. Artificial, of course -- we can't get a real one because A) they're not out yet, and B) I have used pine-based cat litter a lot in the past, and if the cats smell something pine-y, I'm pretty sure they'd piss all over it. We looked for trees this past weekend, but let me tell you that buying a fake tree is no longer as cheap as it once was. My mother and I got a fake tree about 25 years or so ago from Big Lots for $20. While you can buy a tree for $20 today, it's also about four feet tall and looks like green pipe cleaners. The cheapest one we found that Daisy is marginally interested is $90. And yes, while we are not suffering on money and/or scraping by anymore, it's still really hard for me to justify spending $90 on a fake fucking Christmas tree. And that's the most inexpensive passable tree, at that. The ones at Lowe's start at about $200 and go all the way up to about $950 or so.

Oh yes, I know this; we drove around town to three different stores and called a fourth. On the weekend after Halloween. Looking for fake Christmas trees.

Do I want to put up a tree during the first week of November? Do I even like Christmas? No. I think both are a huge pain in the ass and more trouble than they're worth. But, as I've come to realize after being married for more than six months now, pick your battles.

So. We'll be getting a tree soon.