Staring into space

Once again, me plus copious time alone proves that I am the most boring person on the planet. I fall asleep early, talk with nobody, do almost nothing, and can't even be bothered to cook anything. It's as though I just go on 'hold' until something or someone comes along to jump-start the life engine. Otherwise, I get stuck on idle (metaphor, beware!), just gently reverberating while waiting for something to push me forward.

Shoot, the past 2 nights I didn't even bother going to BED to get my night's sleep. That recliner is proving far too comfy, particularly when there's a blanket and a cuddly cat at hand. It's a rule that once a cat falls asleep in your lap, you're not allowed to move, right? You're stuck there until the cat decides it's time to get up. Cats are like that, the little tyrants.

Today's the day though that things will get done, as Biff returns home tonight (at nearly midnight. I might have to take a nap before then!) and I really ought to vacuum up the potato chip crumbs in the living room, do some laundry, wash the dishes, take a shower, sort the mail, and follow-up on all the little things I've not done in the past couple of days while I was practicing being a flesh statue. It's just that bad, folks.

It's always been this way. When I was single and living alone I would let things go a dreadfully long time. There were weeks when I couldn't find the time or energy to even put sheets on my bed. I'd just sleep right on the mattress with a comforter or 2, and usually more than 1 book. I'd eat apples and cheese and bagels almost exclusively because they required no dishes. I wouldn't even use a knife on the block of cheese; I'd just tear off a hunk and go at it peasant style. Housekeeping was similarly spare - it was only when there were, say, more leaves in the living room that on the ground outside that I'd break out the broom and tidy up. I'd just spend a lot of time hanging out, reading, watching the sunbeams move across the room, waiting for something to happen.

I am a person who needs outside influence in my life. Self-motivation and me don't really even have a nodding relationship. Without pressure to perform, I simply don't. It would be nice to think that I'm not alone in this, and that when y'all are on your own with not much to do you don't go whizzing around creating chores or hyper-dialing friends to do stuff like 'go out' or 'get together' or whatnot. Maybe if I was single I would do that, because I'd be forced to make my own entertainment, but for me, right now, a couple of days of nobody around equals me being ultra-boring.

I have, however, paid the bills today, so that's something. And I'm about to get all crafty and holiday-ish with wreaths and lights and whatnot, and then I have to crank out a bunch of stuff for work, not to mention the aforementioned housework and showering, so today's shaping up to be The Day I Should Have Been Having All Along.

What are YOU planning on accomplishing today?

Dear Bank that just cut my credit limit by 75%

So, Hi, BTJCMCLB75,

I thought I knew you. I thought that, because I've dealt with you and you many fine offerings of loans, mortgages, and insurance over the years and have happily availed myself of them for a very long time to what I would like to think is our mutual benefit, you would at least give a sister a shout-out before pulling the financial noose a little too snug for comfort.

I thought that because I didn't carry a balance on your credit card, and because, in fact, you right now OWE ME 20 bucks because I overpaid a month or so ago, that you would look kindly upon me as a responsible citizen and one of your best customers, who should be allowed access to a certain amount of credit if something should go horribly wrong, and not like someone who needs to have their hand slapped because of what some bimbo reporting agency has to say about me and who doesn't even know me.

I do, after all, hold a mortgage with you that I pay EXTRA on every month. I do, after all, insure my home with you. I do, after all, hold a credit card account with you that, as mentioned, carries a zero balance and has done for at least a year.

I thought that meant something.

But no.

I was wrong.

Because, based on what some BITCH named Experian told you, you no longer hold me in as high regard as you did. No matter that what that bitch told you is wrong on at least 2 of the 4 counts (what the fuck is 'level of delinquency on accounts' mean? I'm current on everything that I know of! And seriously, 'time since delinquency is 'too recent' or 'unknown' '? WHAT? If you don't know something for a fact, then you're just spreading rumors.).

Never mind that 'amounts owed on revolving accounts is too high.' Did you not notice that in the last year I've paid down that debt over 12 THOUSAND dollars? Did you? Do you now know how much sweat and sacrifice has gone into that paydown? Just look at my paltry savings account to know where my financial cushion has gone, it's right under your bloated corporate ass!

Never mind that 'proportion of balances to credit limits on bank/national revolving or other revolving accounts is too high' - do you know why this is? I do - It's because another bank last year dropped my credit limit to exactly what I owed on it, therefore making it look like I was 100% in debt to them. No fighting that one either. Just nose to the grindstone, and pay out, pay out, pay out.

OK, bank. I know I owe too much on credit cards. I know I did it to myself. I know that financing not 1, but THREE moves and new households on you and your kin was a lot to ask. At the time there was no choice. At the time I was in dire straights and needed to use you, and for that I suppose I should be sorry. Nobody should ever feel like they've been used, I suppose. I know that carrying a LOT of debt on those cards isn't a good idea, and you can believe right now that I have woken up in a cold sweat more than once under the weight of that obligation, and even CHANGED JOBS to get more dough to hand back to you to get out from under, but you clearly haven't taken that into account nor have you noticed that YOUR card is at a zero balance and the others were decreased by 1) HALF and 2) a THIRD from last year.

By the way, assholes, I now make about 30K more a year than I did when you were handing out all that debt. I'd think that that, coupled with my decreased debt load overall, would make me a more attractive target for your cards, not a less attractive one. Also, notice just how much I've charged on you in the last 2 years. That's right, a big fat fucking nearly NOTHING. I have, in fact, paid down the debt on your revolving merry-go-round of grim despair, while also paying off 2 cars and buying another, WITH CASH (thanks to my wonderful husband Biff for the help with the car thing. You, I love). Irresponsible to do those things? That doesn't seem to be the case to me.

I have played your game, took the interest rate hits when I knew I deserved them, coughed up the cash time after time, and now you tell me that it wasn't enough, not nearly enough, not by a long shot, and you're through with me.

Thanks to you, my credit rating just took a nosedive. Thanks to you, I probably can't get a loan on a bad idea, much less anything of worth. Thanks to you, and that other bank that robbed me of creditworthiness, I now look like a total no-bill-paying douchenozzle who games the system and steals candy from babies.

I hate you, I hate all of you, I hate feeling powerless, I hate being stomped on like this.

So thanks for nothing, you soul-sucking beast. I thought I knew you, we had some respect, and that no matter what, that whole 'respect' thing you tout as a draw to your company was a real thing, and not just some wisp of advertising meant to what the appetite of the people hungry for a decent relationship with their bank.

Guess not.

There was something about flying monkeys, and then it got weird

Hey! So it's been a while since I posted anything, eh? Over 2 weeks, which is something of a record for me, but of course I'm far too lazy to look up my previous all-time high posting gap.

What's been happening in your world since a few days before Hallowe'en? Doesn't Hallowe'en seem like a long time ago already? It does for me. The candy was gone within days, thanks to the hard work and effort put in by the Things, who didn't even go trick-or-treating (too old for that sort of nonsense anyhow I guess) but did find the bag stash and applied themselves to ridding the Tiny House of candy, one handful at a time.

I think I was something like 14 the last time I trick-or-treated. Is that too old? It didn't seem too old at the time. Certainly 15 was too old, but 14 seemed OK. Thing 2, who is 14 this year, hasn't made the rounds in like 3 years. We had parties in '08 and '09 but not last year, and if memory serves we MIGHT have gone door-to-door in 08, when he was 11, but I can't remember.

This was an off Hallowe'en to be sure. Oh, we decorated and put up the giant spider and such, but I didn't have a costume (no reason for one) and very few kids came by the house. Biff did dress up to hand out the treats, which did make the evening somewhat more festive, but the drizzling rain and the early dark just took the wind out of my sails, and I normally LOVE Hallowe'en.

Maybe I'm saving energy for Thanksgiving? Don't know. We are travelling ot NoVa this weekend for a quick family visit, as my older brother is going to be up there and my younger borther lives there near Mom and so my Mom wanted to see if we'd like to come up for a pre-Thanksgiving Thanksgiving. We, naturally, said yes. Then we realized that Biff is playing out on Friday night, so the quick trip turned even quicker, with possibly just a one-night-stay at Mom's. So, OK, fine, that's cool, because that will be a nice time and with the turkey and all we'll be coma-ed out and time will pass more slowly thereby making it feel like we'd been there much longer.

Then Monday I put Biff on a plane so he can go eat turkey with the MI family. The Things and I will turkey it up here Thursday, then I send them back to their Dad's and I come home to sit and stare at walls until Saturday when Biff comes home again.

I'm sure he's rather be flying his own airplane, but as he doesn't HAVE one yet it still makes more fiscal sense to buy a ticket to fly on someone else's plane. Too bad, really, as when you fly your own plane you can do exciting things like play 'spot the airport!' on dark nights.

Like so - Spot the airport in this picture I took coming back from Richmond Sunday evening (hint: this is Louisburg, NC)!



Did you see it?

No?

How about now?

See? Fun game! You'll have to take my word for it, I suppose, that not only IS there an airport down there, but it's in approximately the position circled and that it is remarkably visible the closer to you get to it. From about 15 miles out though it can be tricky to spot, even in the daytime. And this airport is reasonably sizable, compared with some others we've flown into! :)

Flying at night is great. The air is way less bumpy, it's so much easier to spot other aircraft, and the little yellow blobs on the maps signifying where towns are really DO look like that at night. Very helpful navigation aid, that. I'm a fan of the umbumpy air, which was a very lovely perq and really helped me, after a while, to not feel like I was about barf from sheer terror. This was, you see, my very first night flight, and I had no idea what to expect. Shit, I don't even like driving a CAR at night, and Biff's talking about being 4500 feet in the air at night, for over an HOUR? Someone hand me the Ativan! As it was, once I shook off the 'ohshitohshitohshit'-edness of it all and talked myself out of the crazy tree, everything went great. I'd do it again, is what I'm saying.

Now, some of y'all are probably thinking I'm nuts to get in a small aircraft in the first place (Hi Mom!), and you might be partially right, but here's the thing: I do NOT intend on being in the old folks home and not having interesting things to look back on. In other words, as I told Biff the other night: "I'm not going to look back on raking the yard in 30 years and think 'Oh, what a special moment that was.' " I will, however, look back on a semi-spontaneous trip to Richmond to have dinner with one of my oldest friends VERY fondly, and be proud of myself for conquering something that had caught me in a mental rictus of fear. We need to keep challenging ourselves in this life, I think, or we just kind of fade away, becoming a very uninteresting obituary at the end. While my being a passenger in a small aircraft on a short night flight won't likely make it into any memorials that might be had for me after I'm gone, at the very least it keeps the adrenaline flowing and opened up a new experience, one I found I liked and would do again.

Can't say THAT about raking the yard.

Tiff out.