Timeframes, Part I

At noon, Daisy told me that she'd not yet been to bed and that she was still cleaning the house before she comes down here to make our trip for Omaha.

For those of you who have not been reading the blog that long, yes, I have a car. It's a 1996 Monte Carlo Z34 with over 230,000 miles on it (it passed that mark last week). It needs an oil change, will need new front tires in another year or so, and its transmission occasionally gives me some issues. While I do my best to take care of it, and it's reliable enough to drive 200 miles a week back and forth for my teaching career on two different campuses, it is not reliable enough to drive to Omaha and back. Well, okay, it may be, but I don't trust it -- and neither does Daisy nor her parents. It was decided long ago (and not by me, but by Daisy and her parents) that for any trips to Omaha, Daisy would come get me and bring me back. It's incredibly inconvenient, yes, but her car also gets double the gas mileage mine does, it isn't figuratively falling apart, and I generally pay for the gas used when I can afford to do so. So, that's what we do. It's a lot of driving, yes, but it's also about the only reliable way for us to travel. We considered flying me up there and back, but the flight costs as well as the costs of leaving my car in long-term parking at the airport were extremely prohibitive to do so. Until we're married and have a steady dual-income household so that I can get a more reliable, worry-free vehicle, this is what we have to deal with.

It sucks, yes, but it would also extremely suck were I to have my car blow a major part on the side of the road on the way to or from Omaha, in the middle of a straight stretch with nothing around me but wheat and corn fields for as far as the eye can see, when I don't have AAA, I don't have towing coverage, and I don't have the money to repair it or get a new vehicle. My car is my livelihood; without it, I can't get to and from work, I can't make any money, and I'd be homeless within a month or two. That's why I hold it together like the Millennium Falcon and keep it running as best I can. I can afford nothing else, and it's not like I have a wealthy benefactor somewhere who would be able to swoop in and pay for car repairs or buy me a new one. It's what I've got.

Over the past day or so I've been trying to take care of what needs to be done in the house before I secure everything, lock it down, and go to Omaha. This not only includes laundry and minor cleaning, but getting as much of my stuff graded as possible so that I don't return to a mountain of work to do when I get back home (that's probably going to be inevitable regardless). It also includes getting supplies for the trip so that the cats will be well fed and watered, and taking care of paying all of the bills I have as I won't return until Friday. Here's what I've accomplished so far:

• Finished grading all of the 210 final projects, at half an hour each (roughly) as they're all 15 pages or so
• Finished grading all of my 101 and 011 students' journals
• Did all of my laundry and packed 80% of the stuff I need to bring with me on my journey
• Cleaned out the fridge, both in eating and in tossing old stuff, so that there's nothing that sits there and goes bad while I'm gone
• Fed the cats
• Told my mother the travel timeframe (as well as got a rough confirmation of it from Daisy, as she's Daisy, and operates on Daisy Standard Time)
• Paid the rent and electric bill, officially leaving me with less money than I had before I got paid on Friday
• Took out the trash so that it doesn't sit in the cans for another week

And here's what I have left to do between now and when I leave...

•  Go to Walmart and get supplies for the trip (sinus meds, cigarettes, more litter for the cats, etc)
• Secure the house, put car in garage, lock garage doors
• Ready the cats' room (give them extra food/water/litter)
• Finish packing the rest of the stuff for the trip, including dress clothing for engagement photos, my laptop and other electronics, deodorant/toothbrush, and phone/charger
• Shower and trim up the beard
• Empty the coffee pot, so it doesn't sit there with half a pot of coffee in it all week
• Turn the furnace down low so that it doesn't run 24/7 while I'm gone (the cold snap these last two weeks or so made my electric bill double this month)
• Clean the kitchen and scrub down the stove/wash any dishes I have left

Daisy's original plan was to come home from work, sleep for a few hours, and then come down here around 3PM -- arriving here at roughly 8 or so -- then we'd come back up there tomorrow morning after a night of rest. This plan has been modified twice since then; for one, she's still awake and cleaning/tidying up her room and the upstairs bathroom for my arrival (even though I told her it wasn't necessary at all) and says she'll take a power nap before she leaves, though she should still leave around the same time...and for two, we have to turn around and come back tonight, not in the morning.

Daisy has a job interview tomorrow at her current company; she applied for a higher position there, and with her track record since she's been working there, she's likely to get said position. They scheduled the interview for tomorrow, so we couldn't feasibly stay here tonight and go back up in the morning -- we'd have no time to get there and have her be able to make it to the interview. Because of that wrench being thrown into our plans, we're a bit rushed in our travels today. I'm also concerned about Daisy's lack of sleep -- she's been running herself ragged, and hasn't been sleeping a whole lot. I told her that I'd drive us back up there if she needed me to due to the amount of exhaustion she'll be dealing with by the time she gets here, and I'm happy to do so, but we are now operating on a timeframe that can't really be altered any more than it already has been because of that interview, so it's a get-up-and-go sort of thing we'll have to deal with between now and tomorrow morning.

As mentioned before, we have a lot of plans while we're there. Adding tomorrow to that, with her interview, we are having at least two different sets of "engagement pictures" taken, we have to go to thrift stores and the like to see if I can find a jacket for the wedding, she wants us to go to Dave & Buster's again (which believe me, I am perfectly fine with) and then on Thursday we have our Thanksgiving dinner -- for which Dad and I have to make the turkey since Mama will be out of commission with her knee surgery the day before (I have no idea how to cook a turkey). Then, on Friday, we're probably going to do some sort of Black Friday shopping, have the second set of pictures taken, and we'll be coming home that night. There is so much to do and so little time to do it. We have to come home on Friday because Daisy goes back to work on Saturday night and because I have to be able to have some time  to finish grading through what I have left (drafts and rewrites of papers I have for all three classes, probably fifteen or so of them in all).

I am glad, at least, that I'm not still sick. Well, I don't think I am, anyhow.

I slept fine last night; while I still have congestion in my nose and face today, it's within normal parameters for any given day (given my allergies, of course, coupled with the dry air in the house from the furnace), and while my face will occasionally still ache a little, I feel normal. My ears aren't clogged up, and everything seems to have drained out for the most part. I still have the antibiotics on standby if it all starts to come back with a vengeance, and I'll be getting more sinus pills when at Walmart this afternoon/evening. However, I seem to be perfectly fine, or at least as fine as I get when it comes to my normal state of health. Am I still tired? Yes, of course. But that's more due to stress and being burnt-out overall than anything else. How I can't wait until after finals week when I can sleep as much as I want and won't have to set my alarm for 5AM for well over a month. The spring semester doesn't start until January 21.

I haven't heard anything else about my classes next semester other than what I knew last week about the ones I'll get; obviously I'm more than likely not going to hear anything else about anything school related until I return to campus on the 2nd. As for my forbearance stuff with my loans, my account balance has been updated on the website, and I figured out what was wrong with it before -- it was indeed because I was in grace, and I requested the forbearance to start before the grace period ended. They can't and won't do that according to their directions. The payment is due on the 11th, and they need up to 10 business days to process the request -- so I either need to mail it today, or I need to be able to fax it ASAP from Daisy's parents' house if their machine is up and running. The new forms are printed and ready to go, and they do it on my gross income, which my loan payment is 34% of every month -- again, much more than the 20% I need to qualify for it.

[EDIT] Fax machine at Daisy's house isn't up and running; printed copy mailed no more than five minutes ago, with seconds to spare before the mailman came. 

So, for the moment, that's taken care of.

"If you bring an extra copy, we can fax it, too, just in case," Daisy told me, referring to going somewhere like a copy center who had a fax machine.

"I have extra copies of all the documents," I told her; "if I need to, I'll fax another copy from work when I get back on the 2nd just to be safe."

The timeframe is pretty close; they need ten business days to process it. I doubt it'll get there before Friday the 29th (conservative estimate, plus Thanksgiving mail holiday), which means they'd have December 2-6 and 8-11 to process it; that's nine days. My payment is due on the 11th, so I'm hoping that they don't take those full ten business days to get everything taken care of. I'll more than likely fax a second copy on the 2nd when I get back to campus just to be safe so that they have it in their possession and can be working on it then. It's still going to be really tight and really close to the date, but I can't help that when they wouldn't even update my account until this week. It took two weeks for them to even receive it in the mail last time, and then another week or so to process it. I don't have that time this time around because they gave me less than a month's window between grace ending and the request to be sent/received/approved...which yes, is a shitty thing to do.

It is important that you continue to make payments until we approve your forbearance request. If your loan(s) is or becomes delinquent, collection activities will occur until the forbearance is approved.

Well, that's nice, but I can't really do much else than I already have, yo. I'm poor. That's also why I'm faxing a second form when I get back to campus. I want to make sure that it's in somebody's hands and that they're working on it before that due date.  Nothing else really matters right now but that.

For now, however, I've done all I can and it's taken care of on my end -- I now just have to wait and see, and in the meantime, try to relax somewhat. With no more roadblocks in the way, there is no reason I shouldn't be approved this time around.  I also have the option to postpone a month's payment if I request it three business days in advance before it's due -- which would be on December 5 or so at the latest, as the payment's due on the 11th and the 8th, 9th, and 10th would be those business days. I hate cutting it so close, but I have no other real options if I don't hear anything back by the 5th. My next paycheck comes on the 13th, and I don't have enough in my bank account right now to cover the first loan payment -- not to mention that I'll actually need to use some of what's in my account right now for groceries and bills. That's sort of how life works. Also keep in mind that my car insurance comes due again in December as well, and I have to pay that with my credit card (and pay it off slowly) because I'm so poor. I don't get any more paychecks after December 20 for at least a month, I'm guessing, perhaps longer. Here's hoping I get a lot of money from various sources for Christmas, because I will need it in order to survive between semesters. I have to eat, the cats have to eat, and if it remains this cold, the furnace has to be on. There's only so much money I can actually save -- I still have to pay bills and the like; I can't get out of those no matter how broke I may be. I'm basically living paycheck to paycheck as it is.

Anyway.

I just asked Daisy for an updated timeframe, as it's now been two hours since I last heard from her on any of that, and she replied "Still workin' on it," implying that she's still cleaning.

"Honey, seriously, there's a point where you just need to give up on it, throw shit under the bed or in the corner, and worry about it later -- especially because I don't care and because we're on a schedule because of your interview and you haven't slept," I told her. "If you left now you wouldn't get here until almost 9, and even if we turned around immediately to come back we wouldn't get back until 4AM or so.

Why can't you reschedule the interview so you're not awake for like 30 hours, and why can't you just stop cleaning?"

I so absolutely, desperately don't give a shit at all about the state of Daisy's room or bathroom. At all. Really don't care. Don't care in the least. I don't understand why she wastes the time on it. It's me. She's seen my house. I don't clean anything I don't have to because I don't care, and I live here. I don't "gussy it up" for guests or when she's going to be down here for a few days. I don't understand her mindset or how she thinks she can stay awake indefinitely, because she can't. I've seen her sleep-deprived -- she can't function. Like, literally can't function; she breaks things, runs into things, falls down, etc. She can't drive down here like that. And when she does sleep after an extended period of wakefulness, she sleeps for fourteen hours straight. I'm not making that up. I've seen her do it. None of that is conducive to her having an interview tomorrow. And the clock is ticking.

It's really the fault of her scheduling that interview for tomorrow more than anything else; if I were her company, I would never schedule an interview, ever, during a holiday week -- especially not during a holiday week in which my interviewee had already requested days off from for travel purposes. Why she agreed to that day/time is beyond me. I know she's trying to better herself and our collective lot in life, yes, and I know it may sound selfish to bitch/moan about it, but it's not -- it's about her. She's running herself ragged to try to do everything in a set timeframe without sleep, and she can't do it. Something has to give. I've told her multiple times that the cleaning isn't important at all; kick shit out of the way and be done with it. She could've been down here already and we could've been on our way back to Omaha at this point had she just given up on the cleaning long ago.

"I haven't surpassed the time told you I was leaving by and I'm just going to slightly pass it. My room is done."

"I know, but you will not have slept. And let me tell you, even if you need me to drive some or most of the way back, there's no way I'll be able to stay awake until 4AM, love," I said. "I'm just worried about you."

"I know. I'll be fine."

[EDIT] She left the house bound for Kansas around 4PM, with an estimated arrival time of 9 or so.

I still worry about her, of  course. I would imagine I'll be making most of the drive back up there, at least until the I-80 interchange (as only she knows what exits and the like to take after that, and Omaha's highway system is really weird). In the time between now and then, I have to do the rest of the stuff around the house that needs to be done, such as the cat stuff and the trip to Walmart. I'd rather not put that off much longer.

I will update you when I have the chance; I may or may not blog from Omaha as I have a new OS on my laptop, and it depends on how fast said OS/browsers/etc run on the home network there.