One day before orientation
I was in the shower earlier, and I found myself singing Dio's "Holy Diver." Why, I'm not really sure, but this in itself wasn't that odd. I sing some weird things in the shower. No, the weird thing was that I found myself singing said song, after two verses or so, in the "ERMAHGERD" voice. Yes. For those of you unfamiliar with this meme/running joke/concept, you can look at this.
Anyway, my "singing" translated to something like this:
GERTER GERTERWER, GERTERWERRRRR, HERLER DERVER!
I'm thinking that it's quite possible I may need professional help, folks.
Ahem. Anyway.
This was not, surprisingly enough, the strangest part of my day.
Today was an odd, busy day. I'd like to attempt to tell the story, because a lot happened and it's fairly interesting (at least to me).
When I woke up this morning (around 7, and I forced myself to get up so that I could go to sleep at a decent hour tonight), I wasn't feeling that well. I came upstairs and made coffee as per the usual, and logged into my email and my bank account to verify that yes, my money had come through just fine. I knew it had last night before I went to bed, but by the time it did, I was too tired to go out and do any grocery shopping -- so I left it for this morning.
The first thing I did was log in to Amazon and buy a couch.
No, that's not a joke, I'm not kidding. A couch. This couch, in fact:
I'm not sure how well you can see it on the black backdrop of the blog here, but it's a brown microfiber convertible sofa. Basically a futon, really. It folds down flat into a bed, but as you can see, it's about the most "basic" convertible sofa/futon thing one could get. I got it, simply, because I need an actual couch in the living room here at the house -- it's the one thing I've really been "missing" since my ex moved out a year ago and took her futon with her. Since then, I've been sitting on a very uncomfortable, +/-35 year old twin-size hide-a-bed loveseat in the living room, one that was left behind by the ex and weighs about 300 pounds since it's all steel and wood. I'm guessing at some point her mother purchased it at a garage sale, and it wound up here with us. Regardless, it's small, highly uncomfortable, and most importantly, it's too short to lay down on. This is one of the main reasons I don't spend a whole lot of time in the living room anymore.
Anyway. I got a good deal on said couch above (about $130 or so), and it arrives via FedEx on Friday. I'll put it together then and will be rearranging the living room so that I can put it where the old couch is now, moving the heavy-ass loveseat thing in front of the window so that the cats can sit on it and look out.
This also means that when it's cold in the winter, I'll be able to sleep upstairs again, where it's much warmer than in the downstairs bedroom. Of course, I'll probably have to put a blanket or cover on the new couch, lest the cats decide to tear up its supple microfiber.
So yeah, there's that. I bought a number of other small things on Amazon that I've been needing to get over the course of the past several months, as well, but nothing big. I have enough financial responsibilities right now; I'm so not going to spend any money needlessly, at least not until I cover all of my bills and the rent for the month, as well as pay back my parents the loan they gave me earlier this summer.
As an aside, I briefly mentioned above that I've not been feeling that well today. Keep this in mind as I continue my story.
I sent a few messages to Zedral, talked to Daisy for a bit, and then emailed both my mother and Lady to tell them about the couch (hey, I bought a piece of actual furniture; I'm proud of myself because it makes me feel like an adult) before, while sick to my stomach somewhat, I got dressed and got ready to make my shopping trip to Walmart. On the way out, I dropped my parents' and grandmother's birthday cards in the mail.
Those of you who have been reading this blog for a while know that this wasn't going to be a simple, in-and-out trip to Walmart, no. I have been in great need of a great many things for most of this summer, and for the most part have forced myself to just "do without" in order to pay the bills and barely feed myself and the cats. Now that I have the means to do so, I can get some of those things and slowly build up my stock again -- this entails everything from commodities like bar soap and paper towels all the way down to the basic necessities of life, such as bread and milk (the latter of which, actually, I forgot). I had made not one, but two very lengthy shopping lists over the course of the past several weeks, and today it was time to take care of the first large chunk of items on those lists.
Over the course of about ninety minutes, I unleashed myself upon the Newton Walmart. I took my time. I went up and down every aisle, scanning for things I needed but I knew I had forgotten to write down, as well as looking for clearance items and other things I would or could use. My shopping list slowly began to look like morse code -- dots for things I would get later (and believe me, there are still a lot of those things), and dashes through items that I had picked up already.
At the end of my journey, cart piled high, I went to the register. All in all, I spent $211 on food and other necessities, the latter being things like cat food and litter, tissues, soap, etc. I got $40 cash back so I could order pizza for dinner, and went home. It took half an hour to put away all of the stuff, and I still have a lot more to get next week. I am getting everything I need in a piecemeal fashion, a little at a time, instead of spending $600 at Walmart on one trip and not being able to fit everything in the car.
You may be asking yourself how a single guy living alone with his cats could possibly need so much in groceries and commodities. I will remind you, again, that I have been very poor for a very long time, and have been out of many things for a very long time as well (hence why I'm using Palmolive in my washing machine, and coming up with other creative fixes like that). At this point I truly am out of basically everything. And restocking a house when one is out of everything is really, really expensive. It takes time and a lot of money. Again, there are many things I have not yet gotten because I thought to myself eh, this can wait another week or so. Mind you, I now have a shitload of money in the bank, yet I still think things like that -- I am still thrifty, I still only purchase what I need to survive.
Once I got home, I was still feeling a little ill. My stomach was churning; I had to eat something. I was going to wait until later to order the pizzas for dinner, but I was hungry, so I ordered them -- two larges, one double pepperoni and extra cheese, and one called "The Big Bonanza," which was Canadian bacon, bacon, beef, extra cheese, onions, and roma tomatoes with barbecue sauce instead of pizza sauce.
It was new and sounded interesting, okay? And it was certainly interesting. Not necessarily good, but interesting.
Still -- I believe this was mistake number one.
Anyway.
So I ate the pizza, and watched the last disc of season 2 of Community again (to prepare me for season 3, which was purchased this morning on Amazon along with the couch), and relaxed. I finally felt somewhat...at peace, I guess? Sated? Normal-ish again? I examined my life a little bit.
Over the timeframe of the last three months, I thought, I survived financial ruin no less than three times, sometimes even running myself down to single digits in my bank account. I've survived teaching a summer course and survived driving my beat-up car in the 110-degree heat without it blowing up or blowing a tire yet. I've survived that 110-degree heat without having to run my air conditioner that much, too. I've survived skipping meals a few times a week, using dish soap as laundry detergent, and using napkins for tissues. I've lost weight. I've kept the cats happy and healthy. I've been blessed to have true friends and family stick by me and encourage me to keep going, keep trying, even if that trying means I have to sell a lot of my important possessions just to make ends meet. I've been blessed to have people like Daisy and Zedral and Lady in my life. I've been blessed to have family who can help me out of a bind, who will be understanding and supportive.
While pondering all of this stuff, I realized that my mild illness that I'd felt for most of the day wasn't getting better as I digested my food, but seemed to be getting worse. Rapidly worse. Like, going-to-be-sick worse. Hrm. This is not a good thing, I thought -- right before I ended up yacking out the contents of my stomach.
I'm sure you didn't exactly need that mental image. I apologize.
Afterwards, I slowly (very, very slowly) began to feel better. I cleaned the toilet (now that I actually have the cleaners to be able to do so) and talked to Daisy for a short while before she went to the gym. Over the course of about three hours or so, I began feeling normal again. I don't think it was the pizza, but rather the fact that I've been so poor this summer that I've been eating much less, and therefore I think my stomach shrank somewhat, along with my weight. Because of this I ate too much and I think that contributed to me getting sick. Either that or barbecue sauce on a pizza doesn't agree with me as much as I thought it would. Oh well. Who knows. The point is that I'm feeling just fine now. Don't know why I felt ill all day. Perhaps it's because I didn't get a lot of sleep, either.
So, continuing the story of my day, I sat down at my computer this evening to find an email from my mother, telling me that a bank had called for me wanting to ask me important questions about my debit card usage, and that they'd left a number for me to call back. Okay. That's odd. She said she didn't know if it was a scam or not, but reminded me not to give out my numbers or anything on the phone (duh) when I called them.
I checked out the number (Google is a wonderful thing, folks) and found that it was a legit service that many different banks use, a company that monitors banks' debit card transactions for unusual purchases and the like as a lookout for fraud. It's a damned good idea, if you ask me. As I bought a couch and other stuff on Amazon this morning, then spent $251 at Walmart later in the day, I immediately knew why they were calling -- that's a shitload of money to be coming out of my bank account via my debit card when I haven't had any big purchases in a long, long time.
I immediately called them back, turning my phone on for the first time in a month and using two or three of the maybe ten minutes I have left on it, and the guy who answered said "Okay, so what's the phone number we left the machine message on?"
I gave them my parents' number, as they left a message there.
"Okay Brandon," he said, pulling up my info immediately, "we're calling to verify your transactions."
He ran down the list of my last five debit purchases, including Amazon and Walmart, and I approved them all (as they were all purchases I've made, obviously).
"Yep, all of those are legit," I said. "All me."
"All right then, thank you for verifying," the guy said cheerfully.
"Hey, thanks for checkin' up on me," I replied. "I appreciate it." And we hung up.
I do appreciate it, actually. Especially as they don't ask you for any sort of information like card numbers and the like. My bank back home is on top of their security stuff. Once, about four years ago, I had to cancel a rent check and write a new one because the one I'd sent had gotten lost in the mail -- my bank called and asked "So, you just canceled a check written to these people, and then you wrote another one to them on this date -- is this correct? Is there something wrong here?" They were just checking up on me because of the oddness of the transaction. That means a lot to me when it comes to my banking experience. And likewise, whenever I've come to them if I've needed any assistance -- for example, when I was a victim of identity theft in 2006, and someone in Colombia or Korea or somewhere stole my debit card number and purchased $50 worth of "eGold" for some video game with it, they took the charges off immediately and issued me a new card/number within a week. It's little things like that which will really make me respect a company or a bank or anything along those lines -- customer service. Watching out for their clients.
After all of that was settled, I sat down here at the computer again and received an email from the English department telling me that our orientation session in the morning would probably run about an hour or so longer than originally scheduled, and apologizing for any inconvenience that may cause. Hey, whatever works, I suppose; I'll be on campus anyhow, what's another hour? As long as I can get home before the football game in the evening, I don't really care. But again, I have no idea what they could possibly want or need to tell us returning GTAs that's going to take them not only three, but now four hours. I just know that the car is full of gas and has new oil and coolant in it, so my drive down there and back will hopefully be a rather smooth one. Hopefully.
So finally, it is 11PM, and I should be getting up around 5 or 5:30 in order to caffeinate myself and wake up enough to drive to campus. What a long, really strange day. I've finally worn myself down enough to go to sleep, I think. I will, of course, update you more over the next few days, including telling you the story of the four-hour orientation and the assembling of the couch when it arrives.
