Calculations

Spring semester: day fifty-five

A little rain sprayed through the area a bit earlier, and the forecasters are calling for storms -- some possibly severe -- to pop up from tonight all the way through Wednesday or so. In order to avoid the Monte Carlo getting pelted by hail, I moved her into the garage -- where I also refilled her coolant tank and gave her another quart of oil. Preventative maintenance, you know. I haven't checked or added any new fluids to her engine since the huge double-snowstorms in February, which was the last time I had her inside the garage for any stretch of time.

This is the most truly productive thing I've done all day, and that alone makes me feel marvelous. Even if it means that yes, I'll just have to take the car back out of the garage again on Tuesday morning.

It feels incredibly good to be done with comps and studying for them, as you know, and that alone has removed a ton of stress from me. I've been trying to decompress this weekend and do as little substantial work as possible. I did, however, have to take care of some chores around the house yesterday and today. I took care of all of my laundry yesterday and last night, and this morning when I awoke, I ran the dishwasher. I also went out late last night and did my grocery shopping at Walmart, this time remembering to pick up a lot of the stuff I'd previously forgotten on other trips, as I was so frazzled during said trips that I didn't want to mess with anything other than the basics for survival. These items included Bisquick (which I've forgotten the past five or six times I've gone to Walmart), new pens to grade with, and a new electronic cigarette, amongst other small things that have plagued me every time I come home without them. I also got some actual food to cook over the next week or two as well, so that I don't have to subsist on sandwiches and crackers because I am no longer too busy or tired to do some shopping.

I slept a very long time. I got up, I cooked lunch (yes, cooked a meal) and watched the rest of Red Dwarf X. Tonight, I switched out my wardrobes from winter to summer clothing. I was excited. Well, sort of excited. Believe me, mundane chores like this are much more exciting than reading thousands of pages of poetry or hundreds of pages of notes again and again.

I have not yet received my comps results; I would imagine their grading is taking place over this weekend. Yesterday afternoon was the graduate MFA reading on campus. Yeah, didn't go to that either. Again, as I wrote here a few weeks ago, poor planning/scheduling there. I would have been more than happy to attend and participate if it was on a day I would be on campus. As it stands, I was at least half-correct in my predictions: I wasn't conscious. I claimed that I planned to be neither conscious nor sober during the time of the reading. In reality, even though I feel like I should be celebrating, I haven't even had a beer since I finished my comps. As you folks know, I very rarely drink, even in celebration. I do love beer, but there are very, very few situations in which I imbibe in any sort of alcohol anymore -- and living alone more than twenty miles from most of my drinking friends and colleagues is not usually one of those situations unless I am ungodly depressed. Parker wanted me to go out to watch the basketball game on Saturday night, but I woke up too late to be able to go do anything with my group of friends who went out to watch it.

Today is Monday -- it is one of only two free days I really have for the next week, the other being Wednesday. This is because I teach on Tuesday and Thursday, as you know, and on Thursday I collect my students' next big batch of papers. This means two important things; first, it means that if I want to avoid coming to campus on an extra day this week or next (such as next Friday or next Monday), I must get the go-ahead, ASAP, to print out the two copies of my thesis to deliver to the library, since the day it's due is a week from today, Monday the 15th. Second, since Monday is indeed the 15th, I must do my taxes sometime this week. I have everything for them, and it takes a few hours to do them, but I need to get them done and mailed. I've already paid all the bills I have as well, and will need to get stamps beforehand, so I have to make a run to the post office on one of my days off. Next weekend not only will I be completely swamped with student paper grading, but I just won't have the time to do them and mail them out. That means I either do them today (once I sleep and get up again) or I do them on Wednesday.

I don't like taxes. I don't like math. There's a reason I have an English degree (and am in the process of getting a second); I'm bad at math. I'm bad at taxes, too; frequently I'll get a letter telling me there's been an adjustment made to my forms and that I'll be getting more or less than I calculated myself due to some sort of weird ass loophole I missed. Daisy says to file my taxes online, but I never trust that. The one time I did, because I did it the quick and dirty way, I ended up owing the feds $48 or something like that. And, in Kansas, the state charges you money to file your state tax return online (or at least they have in the past). The past few years, though -- at least for 2010 and 2011 -- I was able to get everything filled out relatively quickly and correctly, which is a trend I hope to be able to continue this year. It's just the matter of doing it -- and it stresses me out. I've had enough stress over the course of the past few months, so going through more doesn't necessarily make me happy.

I told Daisy I was concerned about one of my credit card bills, for the Citi card I used to purchase her work clothing for her last month, as it has not yet arrived in the mail. Mind you, all I've used said card for was that clothing, but still -- I should have gotten a bill by now.

"Why haven't you set up an online account with them?" she asked me. "You should be able to see what your balance is anytime, just like your bank account."

I've not done this because I rarely use my Citi card. For a long time, it was my "emergency" card, the one only to be used when I had no other option. Because I never use it, the last thing I put on it was my car insurance in December. It was the card that I used most of the summer to be able to get groceries and eat. Now, I have my Discover card for "emergency" use, as it has a massive limit and the Citi card doesn't, and occasionally I'll use the Citi card for once-in-a-while things (like Daisy's clothes) and will continually keep it paid off. When it's paid off and I don't have a balance on it, I don't get a monthly statement. Remember this, as it is important.

As I've been wondering why this bill hasn't come in yet, since Daisy's been working her job for a while now and I haven't seen nor heard anything from Citi, I began doing calculations and looking stuff up. I took Daisy out for her clothes shopping one month ago today, on March 8 -- the last weekend she was here. On February 17, I paid the last Citi bill, paying off the card completely. That billing period went from the beginning of January to the beginning of February, and the bill was due on March 3. They cashed that payment sometime before I took Daisy shopping on the 8th, so I began thinking.

Okay, so if I paid it before it was due in March, that means that I didn't have a balance going into March. The billing period ran from 1/8 to 2/7, which means that the next one would logically run 2/8 to 3/9 or something along those lines, maybe longer because February is a shorter month, and it would have been due on 4/3 or thereabouts. I paid the last one before the due date, which meant that when the billing period flipped over, I had nothing on my balance. I didn't get Daisy's clothing until 3/8, and it wouldn't have been processed or on my records until the next day even if it ended at midnight 3/8...which means that I basically skipped a month of billing periods, which is why I haven't received a statement in over a month. That means that this latest billing period just ended or ends within a day or two from now, and it's on that where I've bought Daisy's clothing...so I should be getting a bill soon.

I had to think about this pretty hard, because (as you know) I am meticulous about paying all of my bills ASAP once they come in. I tried to set up an online account with them tonight in order to double-check things, but they wouldn't let me -- apparently I needed some sort of code that they sent me in an email well over a year ago, and I don't have that code anymore, so it says that my info doesn't match what's in their system. Sigh. This sort of bullshit is why I don't do any sort of monetary stuff online -- bill pay, etc -- unless I have no other choice.  I'd rather just write a check and mail it than be forced to jump through all sorts of hoops. I can track checks physically.

Regardless, I'm not really concerned now that I think I've figured it out. When it comes in, I'll pay it, and if I don't get it this week I'll call them and see what's up, though I'm guessing it's what I surmised. They send out their bills/statements at weird times anyhow, usually with a ton of time in between to pay the bill.

Daisy asked me last night if she's going to get to come down here again before I graduate, and I told her probably not; her work schedule is so contradictory to my own that if she did, she'd only be able to come down very briefly and would have to turn around and go back home within a day or so, and while she was here I would barely be able to get any time with her because I'd be on my work/sleep/school schedule. We both want to spend some time together because, as you know if you've been paying attention, it's been a month -- but it doesn't look like it's going to happen before I graduate. I have too much to do in the end of the semester with my students (basically, every weekend from now until finals week I'll be grading something else of theirs), and she works Thursday through Sunday nights (read: the entire time I'm off). This means that while she'd be able to go to bed and get up on Monday afternoon to drive down here, she'd arrive on Monday night (probably late-night) and would be wired when I would be forced to sleep in order to be able to teach on Tuesday morning. She'd sleep all day on Tuesday while I was at school, and we'd only get part of Wednesday together before she would have to go back home to work again on Thursday night, as I teach again Thursday. And, of course, that's barring anything I would have to do on Wednesday as well, a day where I don't necessarily have to go to campus, but a day on which I do take care of work for my students and/or stuff around the house that needs done. Basically, even if she came down on her days off, because of my own schedule, we'd get less true quality time together than the amount of time it takes her to drive here and back. That's not even worth it. As much as I love her and want to see her, it's a waste of her time and gas money if we'll barely be able to interact, and there's no point to it. Once I graduate next month (ahem, if I do), this will no longer be a problem, as I'll be done and will not have to worry about money for at least a few months -- but right now it's a major pain in the ass, and neither of us can do anything about it. We just have to wait. To even be able to take off the weekend to come down here for my graduation, she had to pull major strings and basically set up her schedule to work the four days in a row preceding it, which means that while yes, she'll be here, she'll also be exhausted.

My mother sent me a message asking how I did on the comps. I told her I thought I did fine, though I wouldn't know the actual scores until later. She said she texted me as well, but it's not like I've gotten any texts since my phone has been turned off for weeks. I turn on my phone maybe twice a month, and any text messages sent to me more than 24 hours before I turn the phone on, as it's a prepaid phone and always has been, I never get. They vanish into cyberspace, or phone space, or what-have-you. I don't know if I'm charged to receive them if I never get them or not. I've never asked because, really, I've never cared. I hate the telephone. I avoid using it whenever possible. I don't want to own one -- I don't like being accessible. Daisy wants to upgrade me to a smartphone and add me to her plan, but I have no use for a smartphone, nor a want of one.

"You say that now," she said, "but once you have one you'll wonder how you ever lived without one."

"I sincerely doubt that," I replied.

It's not just about the capabilities of smartphones; it's the principle of I don't want to be accessible. I don't want people to contact me unless I ask them to. I want the ability to contact others, if necessary, but only when necessary -- that's why I still carry my phone with me every day, even though it's always off. It's not about making myself "reachable." I don't want to be reachable. I want to be in reach of someone else if I have to be, in the event that my car blows up halfway to school or if I've survived a tornado and need to call family to tell them I'm okay. Anything else? Fuck it; there's Facebook and Twitter -- I barely even check my email, except for my school email (which I have to check as students contact me frequently).

On that note, I'm going to bed -- I have a long day/week ahead of me, and even though comps may be over, that doesn't mean everything else stops. Fare thee well, friends.