So I’m driving home from campus, a-listenin’ to the radio. Got a fistful of errands to run before I can come to light back at the Funny Farm, so I need the radio to keep me company for a while. Seemed like half the day that NPR had been moaning on while Rome burned (again!).
Enough, already, of the stürm und drang! How much of this can any one human being listen to without losing its mind? A click of the button sent the radio dial surfing across the airwaves to the cowboys. The Cistern (that’s “City Western”) station tuned in just in time for the start of this:
And you thought cowboys have no sense of humor?
Y’all come over for some of that home-made wine, y’hear? We’ll be needing it…
Didn’t do much today but am just about wiped out with exhaustion. Compiled the Best of Money Carnival and scheduled it, but it was halfway done before this. Went with M’hijito to return the redundant dog crate to Walmart (His Maleness to haul the damn thing), there to collect a $90 refund. Ran over to Ace to pick up some new Danish oil with which to repair the puppy scratches on the kitchen cabinetry; got it home before I realized it was “walnut” stained; drove back through the heat-crazed traffic to get the “golden oak” flavor. Did the laundry, including the sheets. Fooled with the pool some more. Did battle with a difficult student who deserves a C-minus, is getting a B, and believes she should have an A.
Never did get around to cleaning house: too hot to function. Decided to put the puppy crate in a cooler part of the house, since the area where I’d like to locate Doggy Central is significantly warmer than any other rooms. Put the Navajo rug back on the wall where Pup tried to pull it down. Watered plants.
Finished off the day responding to a student who got a zero on the last paper (for not having done the assignment in spite having been warned at the draft stage) and threatened to go to the chair. Forthwith this development was topped off with the discovery that the washer overflowed and flooded the garage. Just spent a half-hour sweeping a lake down the driveway.
More gawdawful pretend news on the idiot box now, at 10:00 p.m.
Am I the only human in the country who’s bored stupid with the “what does the S&P credit downgrade mean for YOU?” pretend-news stories?
The answer:
Nothing.
There’s not a damn thing any of us can do about it.
• Are we going to lose our shirts? Not likely: our shirts are already lost. You can’t lose a shirt you don’t have anymore.
• So our credit-card interest is going to go up? This matters to people who can’t afford to charge anything on credit cards in the first place?
• Our variable-rate mortgages are going up? How many more houses will go into foreclosure? Does this change things one way or the other? Real estate is already so profoundly trashed that a few more hundred thousand foreclosures will mean nothing.
• Our student loan interest is going up? Will this make any difference to those of us who are going back to school because we can’t get work? Will it change the plans of college kids who couldn’t get jobs if they tried?
Speaking of going back to school to retool for new work that represents underemployment, I heard from a client who’s a medical doctor in response to my questions to him about medical transcription as a possible new income generator.
He said that indeed a medical transcriptionist can make a decent wage. And while it’s true some of the work is being offshored, most jobs are still here in the U.S. But, says he, “The job is tedious and low intellectual in my opinion. You and Tina are way overqualified for the job. I hope you can find a better option to use your talents.”
So true. However, there seem to be no better options. Tina’s already waiting tables two or three evenings a week, after she gets off her full-time editing job. I’m a little old for that kind of strenuous work, though I suppose I could clean house, another trade that pays more than I’m earning at adjunct teaching. Exactly how “intellectual” it really is to teach people who think Arizona is a “Great Plans” state, Wisconsin is a Rocky Mountain state, and World War I happened in the 19th century remains to be seen. And as for tedious: dealing with people who don’t pay attention in class, refuse to address the assignment, and then threaten to complain to your boss when you flunk them…that defines tedious.
If I can earn the same or more transcribing doctors’ case notes, actually get paid for all the hours I work, engineer an income all 12 months of the year, and not have to put up with a lot of bullshit, I’ll take a new form of unintellectual tedium.
Looks like we may have found JackDaniels’s real name: as he was clambering around the backyard yesterday it struck me that his name is Charley.
Asked M’hijito about that idea. He seemed to like it; said he wasn’t crazy about “Jack” because it’s too close to “Jake,” the name of his childhood pet.
Walking the dog this morning, I passed a neighbor’s driveway where a car displayed a political bumper sticker. The driver’s candidate for public office?
Annoyingly enough, I’ve taken to calling my son’s dog, tentatively named “Jack,” by my idea of his name: jackdaniels.
My poor son. Will there ever be any relief for him?
Jackdaniels is quite the active puppy. He’s been keeping me and Cassie the Corgi busy every living breathing minute between the time I get home from campus and the time M’hijito comes to pick him up, which is often quite a while, because my son regularly puts in 12-hour days.
This has been putting a crimp on my blog-scribbling and paper-grading activities. Clearly something had to be done to distract him.
Today I decided to celebrate the end of my Eng. 101 summer class with a trip to Whole Foods. Though I can’t afford Whole Paycheck, I was hungry and wanted something good to eat and there’s precious little left in the pantry. They had none of the stuff I craved: the sale on $4.50/lb wild crab doesn’t start til tomorrow and they were out of my beloved tuna and salmon poke and I can’t afford their cheeses. So it was on to the Trader Joe’s in the same strip mall, where I snabbed a very fine chunk of ripe brie and some exceptionally nice baby artichokes. And across the parking lot, what should I spot but…a fancy pet store!
Mais certainement!
Jackdaniels has taken to chewing on the kitchen cabinetry, which will never do. So I dropped by to ask if they didn’t have some sort of chew toys that will not choke the dog, and (as I’ve read elsewhere) the salesdude said all the vets were recommending bull pizzle as relatively safe. The product is also called bully sticks. Right. For the sake of our male readers we will not discuss what these objects actually are.
Suffice it to say that the fancy pet store was the Whole Paycheck of the dog world. Bull pizzle is selling for just slightly under the price of gold, which in these panicky times is fairly high. No joke: $45 for a package of the damn stuff!
Well, I did find some six-inch pieces selling at an astonishing $4 apiece. To prevent mayhem and bloodshed, I realized I’d have to get two of them, one for the pup and one for the Queen of the Universe. And remembering how Anna the Gershep could polish off a large chew stick in about 30 seconds, I figured I’d better get two apiece: $16 for four six-inch pizzle sticks.
Hence, across the city with two bags of groceries and the gold-plated dog chews in tow.
Well, it was $16 worth of dog joy! And interestingly, neither dog has been able to destroy one yet. They must be pretty sturdy, because both pooches have been chewing happily on them for the past two hours, and neither has made much progress at consuming them.
So it looks like even though these things are stupidly overpriced, they may at least last longer than your average pig’s ear.
Cuter than cute!
Meanwhile, we’ve been dwelling in Stress City for the past few days. Oh god.
It’s effing hot here in the kitchen, where the dogs and I are penned in to ensure that jackdaniels doesn’t demolish the rest of the house. With the AC set at 80, which is about what I can afford in the summer, it’s 88 degrees here in the kitchen. And humid…sticky, sticky, icky humid. This is August. You don’t need a calendar to know that.
So this is a bit draining and does little for my enthusiasm to grade papers or clean house or work on a blog carnival or do much of anything. But…much must be dealt with.
Tomorrow morning the Mr. Lutz the Trustworthy Plumber is coming over before it gets too, too hot to climb into the attic, there to examine what I expect is a half-assed repair job on the water heater vent. He said he would inspect the other vents, too, although he thinks they’re probably OK because those are hard pipes rather than aluminum ductwork. I wouldn’t put it past the roofer’s bunch, though, to have screwed those up, too.
And I’ll have another little chore for him: at 5:00 this morning when I went out to shovel back the results of last night’s violent windstorm, what should I find but this nice little damp spot off the east side of the patio slab… The spot above it is dog pee, but the large puddle is neither dog pee nor rainwater. Though the north valley was inundated, we in the rain shadow of the North Mountains saw nary a drop last night.
Soooooo….one might reasonably ask, “WTF??? Where is that coming from?”
Well, there’s a hose bib on a standpipe coming off a line that runs (where else?) underneath the KoolDeck-swaddled slab that covers about 550 square feet out there. Uh uh.
Visions of jackhammers dance in my head…
One of my students is an architect, interestingly enough. I asked him what he thought fixing that would entail, and he thought that if it was actually a leak (and what other than a leak could explain yesterday’s HUNDRED AND SEVENTY-DOLLAH WATER BILL!!!!!?????), the water would not have moved in that direction.
Well, we’ll see what the miracle plumber says, assuming he can think through the sound of the cash register jingling in his head.
Damn. I’m beyond being able to cope with any more zillion-dollar emergency bills.
If I have to have the pavement jackhammered out, the plumbing dug up and repaired, the paving relaid, and the hideous KoolDeck smeared all over everything again (what is the appeal of that stuff?), it’s going to cost every penny I earn this summer plus several thousand more. Oh…damn, oh hell, oh damn!
Really. I’ve worked like an animal all summer, devoted weeks of unpaid labor to creating my own CMS in WordPress and Google Docs to get around the flicking NIGHTMARE that is Blackboard, and I’d planned to use the munificent three grand I’m earning to fold into survival savings to delay having to draw down from retirement savings another three months.
And as we see the market swooning once again, we can see that said delay is no longer a “want” but an absolute, positive need. The last time this happened, grâce à our fine political leaders, I lost two hundred grand from my savings. That loss was just about recovered, and now, thanks to the FLICKING STUPIDITY we’ve seen from what passes for our elected leadership, the money is going right back down the drain again.
And so, believe me, the last thing I want to do is pour my summer earnings into the literal drain.
Nor do I want to do what I’m about to do, which is to take off my clothes, go out in the blast-furnace midday sun, and work on the pool; then come back in and start grading student papers.
Recently, a particularly lively young friend proffered a post for Funny. It couldn’t have come at a better time: Students bouncing off the classroom walls as the summer term draws to a close, a new puppy bounding from room to room sampling the houseplants, all things mechanical falling apart, and a sleazy roofer trying to persuade a crew whose language he can’t speak to repair their screw-up. I particularly liked this serendipitous offer because the authors give a hint, near the end, about what consumers should watch out for in seeking their services.
Generally speaking, people repaying unsecured debts fall into two categories.
First, there are those that can afford to make their monthly repayments and may simply benefit from some advice on how to maintain control of their debts. Secondly, there are people who find they can no longer keep up with their payments every month, and therefore might decide they need to look for help regaining control of their finances.
Of course, it follows that different circumstances require different approaches…
Can you afford your monthly repayments?
If the answer is no, it’s important to take action to address your problems, rather than running the risk that they’ll get worse.
As there are many potential debt solutions available, it’s important you seek professional advice or help with getting out of debt. A debt management company could help you choose the most suitable approach for your circumstances, and give you expert guidance along the way. For example, a debt management plan could help you—for more on this, simply skip to the next section.
If the answer is yes, you might still want to get some advice on how to clear your debts as soon as possible. Regardless of how comfortably you’re repaying your unsecured debts at the moment, being in debt is always potentially risky—your circumstances could suddenly change, so that keeping up with your repayments every month suddenly becomes difficult.
There are many unexpected changes that could potentially cause your repayments to become unmanageable. For example:
• You may become unemployed • Your income might drop • You may face an unplanned cost, such as repairing your car.
Still, the sooner you can pay off your debts, the sooner you’ll be in a situation where you’re no longer running the risk of running up extra charges for missed or late payments.
How could a debt management plan help me?
If you can no longer make your monthly repayments to your unsecured lenders, a debt management plan could help you regain control of your debts.
How does a debt management plan work? It’s an informal agreement between you and your unsecured lenders, in which you—if you decide to draw up a debt management plan yourself—or your debt management company ask the creditors to accept reduced monthly payments that you know you can afford.
If your lenders agree to your debt management plan, they may also agree to freeze or reduce interest on your debts, which means the debts won’t continue to grow as you’re repaying them. However, you should bear in mind that agreeing to smaller repayments will result in a longer repayment period, which could cost you more in interest overall if your lenders don’t agree to freeze interest.
Be aware, too, that making smaller payments will remain on your credit history for six years, which can affect your ability to get credit during that time.
I’ve already learned to stand at the end of the counter that divides the kitchen from the dining/family room with a puppy toy in one hand and Ball in the other to perform the Two-Handed Toss: throw Cassie’s ball down one side and Jack’s toy down the other. This causes each canid to go after his/her own toy and keeps the corgi’s dogicidal tendencies at a low ebb.
Saturday, when Cassie first met Jack the Infant Golden Retriever (we might call him L’Infante), she gave him a jaundiced look that said, clear as English, Chinese or Athabascan: This one is going to take some training.
Today being Jack’s first day of doggie day care, the training has begun:
• Grab the Ball: you die. • Come anywhere near the food: you die. • Mess with the human at any time when the human can’t stare me down: you die. • Mess with the human at any time when the human can stare me down: watch your back. • If you’re a human, don’t even think it, whatever you take into your addled cranium.
Pup is asleep on the kitchen floor. Cassie is lobbying for Ball tosses. I had a supremely bad night’s sleep and think it would be good to lie on the floor, too, on those cool, cool tiles, and take a brief snooze, battle having been done with not one but two useless vendors.
Friday the Leslie’s guy cleaned out the pool filter, heavily laden with mud from the late great Dust Bowl storms.
Yesterday (Sunday) the pool filter quit working, its pressure down to zero.
This afternoon when I got home I called Leslie’s and said someone needs to come over and fix whatever the guy who was anxious to leave on vacation didn’t fix (he was a bit of a turkey). She said they could get someone over here a week from today. I said waiting a week while my pool turns green in the hottest month of the year because Leslie’s broke the system is not acceptable. She hung up on me. I called back and complained some more. She said they’d send someone over tomorrow afternoon (right! We’ll believe that when we see it).
Around 10:30 last night I discovered the moron roofers, the very ones who trashed not one but two of my trees for no discernible reason, had disconnected the vent that runs from the water heater through the attic to vent through the roof. Last night rain poured in through the loose, hanging duct, seeping down through the garage ceiling, drizzling down the heater, and puddling on the garage floor, ruining several slabs of drywall (plus god knows WHAT inside the attic) in the process.
Before I left for campus this morning—6:00 a.m., to be specific—I called the roofer. He said he’d send someone over this afternoon. Right. We’ll believe that when we see it.
The overseer at the Costco gas pumps, where I was forced to buy gas after class this noon, is a big hulking small town boy, the kind of guy who OUGHTA BE LIVING IN YARNELL WHERE I IOUGHTA BE LIVING. He likes to chew the fat. I told him I need a resident male voice and why, and then said I’m thinking of having my plumber, who I actually do trust, come fix the thing and then trying to get the roofer to pay the cost.
He uttered the golden words: small claims court.
Ah.
Said he: Don’t let any other workman or contractor anywhere near the mess until the roofer does whatever he’s going to do. Then if he hasn’t fixed it or won’t repair the water damage, then take him to small claims court. But if anyone else even so much as exerts the pressure of his eyeballs looking upon it, he can claim someone else did the damage and he had nothing to do with it.
Got it.
So. That looks like it could have the potential for a protracted headache. I hope not. But could be. Anyway, there’s nothing like a small town good-ole-boy transplanted into the fumes of a nasty inner-city gas station to reset your view of reality.
Students, wrapping up the semester, are chaotic. Several having fucked up magnificently are begging indulgences. It’s as hard to turn them down as it is to turn up your nose at an adorable little puppy. They are so earnest, they are so sweet, they are so young and fresh. We do love them as we love our own babies.
