Coffee heat rising

Jack Daniels and the Swizzle Stick

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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.

Debt Management: Keeping on Top of Your Personal Finances

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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.

Soggy, cranky day

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Bleyach! Wet. Hot. Miserable.

Air: it’s a gaseous sponge.

Students: they’re a bit gaseous, too.

Puppies: gaseous but cute.

Middle-aged corgis: cranky as cats.

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.

God, but i’m tired!

Busy Weekend

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A minute to 9:00 p.m. and rain is pouring down. Lightning is lightninging and thunder is thundering. The back porch is already starting to flood.

Weather has been hot and humid, not cooling much below 90 degrees at night because we haven’t had any real rain. But the teasing clouds have given us the occasional spectacular sunset and sunrise:

 

Our illustrious leaders have been busy all weekend and supposedly have come up with some sort of compromise solution for the deficit issue. From what little we’ve had time to hear, it sounds like a lash-up that will please no one, other than maybe Wall Street: the Asian market has already soared 10,000 points on the news. But that assumes the lash-up will hold together at all. 🙄

Since we and our country are doomed, let us consider what remains to matter for us; to wit, il faut cultiver notre jardin.

Not much literal cultivating going on in 110-degree heat, but within the metaphorical garden all sorts of things have been going on.

Friday we drove out to the far side of the galaxy to pick up M’hijito’s adorable new puppy, an eight-week-old English golden retriever. This went smoothly enough, though we were told he has a ….oop! just lost power! thank goodness for lithium batteries… Campylobacter infection and is on antibiotics. And he truly hates going in a crate.

Ohhhhhkaayyyyy…

A little investigation revealed that various types of intestinal pathogens—the sort that cause what we humans call “food poisoning”: Campylobacter species, Salmonella species, three variants of E. coli—have been spreading steadily through the ranks of show dogs because of the growing popularity of the BARF diet. Adherents to BARF feed their dogs raw meat and bones in the mistaken belief that canids are immune to pathogenic bacteria. As a practical matter, this is wildly untrue: all dogs are susceptible to the food-borne pathogens that cause the same kinds of sickness in humans, and puppies and old dogs (like small children and elderly humans) can die from these infections. Puppies pick up the microbes when they suckle and climb around on their mothers, whose fur of course is contaminated with the bugs.

Yea verily, one of our breeder’s pups did die and another was seriously weakened: not from our pup’s litter but from the much fancier concurrent breeding engendered by a dose of doggy sperm expensively imported from Sweden.

So we were concerned.

At any rate, we made it back to M’hijito’s house uneventfully. Pup was awed and stunned to find himself in an alien environment, and he succeeded in keeping M’hijito awake most of the night.

LOL! Doggy parenthood.

In the morning M’hijito called to opine that nothing is wrong with the dog: all systems appear to be functioning quite normally.

By Saturday afternoon, M’hijito had Pup persuaded that the crate was OK to walk into, as long as the door isn’t closed. He’ll go into the crate and loaf around but still doesn’t like to be closed in. That is, I think, very significant progress in one day.

M’hijito’s friends, who have been dying to see this miraculous beast, descended on his house Saturday night, children in tow, for hamburgers and dog admiration. Apparently Pup took all the partying in stride, the result of which was he only woke up twice last night.

Today they—the dog and his human, that is—showed up at my house, here to be introduced to the doggy day-care where he’ll be spending his weekdays. M’hijito put the old, well-scrubbed dog crate together and persuaded Pup to walk into it and then it was off for more exploring and partying.

Cassie is not impressed. She’s taken an attitude reminiscent of Garfield’s toward Nermal the Disgustingly Cute Kitten. She remains fixated on the Ball, although she would like to deconstruct Pup’s stuffed toy.

M’hijito decided to go swimming and of course was followed outside by Pup, who was called by the water like Odysseus by the sirens. Before M’hijito could step into the pool with both feet, Pup tumbled/jumped into the water—it was hard to tell which—and took off swimming like an otter. M’hijito had to dive in and swim after him to catch him.

We steered him over to the steps where he could climb out, but it was pretty clear from his first experience he didn’t get that concept. This dog is going to have to be watched every. single. minute he’s in the backyard. In fact, I’m thinking he’d probably better be on a lead when he’s out there.

In another couple of months, he will have figured out how to find the steps and get out of the water. And his waterproof retriever coat will be growing in. But for the nonce there’s no hurry to be diving into that thing.

After Friday’s $150 bill from the Leslie’s repairman, the pool is on the fritz again. So tomorrow I’ll have to hassle with those clowns again. Yay.

Pup loves to lounge in the breeze from a fan. After the water frolics he curled up under the kitchen counter and dozed off with his little ears flapping in the wind…

If you’ve ever had a kid, you know that babies do not lay still while snoozing on the bed. They rotate on a private internal axis. So, it appears, do puppies. This one came perilously close to rotating down the step, so we propped him up:

Awwwwww….

M’hijito has yet to settle on a name for this beast, though just now he’s considering “Seymour” or “Jack.” I’m for “Jack Daniels,” myself. 😉

Holy mackerel! It’s getting rambunctious out there! Lightning just struck right outside the house—probably hit a palm tree. Cassie’s getting scared. Think it’s time to post this and go hunker down somewhere with the Mistress of the House.

 

Dog Days of Summer

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Now before this goes any further, let’s get to the important stuff: A bright star just rose in the otherwise hot and muggy summer.

Jacob over at My Personal Finance Journey has announced the final results of his first Tour de Personal Finance blog competition. And who should the winner be but (who else??) our own favorite PF scribbler, Donna Freedman! She won with her eloquent post, “This Isn’t Your Grandparents’ Recession.”

Argh! I remember when she first put that piece online. It’s one of those things that makes you go damn! why can’t i write like that?

A close runner-up was Paula’s thoughtful and smart piece from Afford Anything, explaining how and why she would go into debt if she had a million bucks. I’m not going to recapitulate everything on Jacob’s competition post—be sure to go there and check out all the winners for yourself!

Dog days, indeed: last night it was 95 degrees outdoors at 9:00 p.m. The pavement would still have burned Cassie’s feet and the air would have dessicated both of us, had we dared to go for a doggie walk. So the dog and the human spent another day and another night flaked out on the tile floors with the air conditioning blowing on us.

Do not even ask what the power bill will look like this month. Try not to think about it.

This evening after work M’hijito is going to make the trek to Mesa to pick up the new pup! The little guy is tentatively named Prince. Or maybe King. The breeder had planned to add the name “Prince” to his fancy pedigree moniker but apparently that name was already claimed, so now he’s going to be a King. M’hijito says he’s a prince now and soon will be a king. 😀

Anyway, he invited me to come along to help him transport the little dauphin back to Phoenix. So that will be a joyous moment.

We bought a big wire crate at Walmart, and shortly thereafter one of M’hijito’s friends volunteered to lend him a similar one, at least until the friend needs it again. So we’ll need to take our purchase back this weekend and retrieve our 80 buckolas. While there, we must remember to latch onto a few packages of those plastic plugs you put into electric outlets. Young dogs are fond of kissing electric outlets, the outcome of which is not good.

At my house, I also have a crate, which M’hijito disassembled, scrubbed thoroughly, and now needs to reassemble. Pup (Prince? King? Louis XIV?) will have to go in there while I’m at class, which mercifully is only a couple of hours a day. Next week I’ll be home by 11:30 or noon, but since he won’t get here until around 9:00, the wait to get out will short. And it gets even shorter the following week: the 101s finish their five-week tour of duty next Thursday, and so after they’re gone, I’ll have only the 102s, who meet at 7:00 a.m. Their class is out at 8:50, so I’ll be home by 9:00 or 9:30, leaving Pup in his crate no more than about a half-hour. Two more weeks of that, and then fall semester begins, with classes that start at 11:30 a.m. and meet only three days a week.

Thursday the 11th, however, I’ll be gone a bit longer. I have to toss the surviving 102s out the door by about 8:15 and then fly downtown. Beeeeecause… Phoenix College is offering a new online certificate program in “Medical Transcription.” You can get through it in a year, and voilà! Now you’re magically certified to earn something between $12 and $30 an hour typing dictation from doctors.

Apparently, in the Phoenix area pay is halfway decent (which, in these parts, comes under the heading of pretty darned good). I’ll bet that with a Ph.D. and 20 years of editorial experience, I can come in at least at the median and maybe better than that.

Median pay for a medical transcriptionist working half-time is $2,000 more than I can earn teaching the maximum number of courses allowed for community college adjuncts. And whaddaya bet a glorified secretary for doctors doesn’t fill hour after hour after freaking hour of her time with unpaid labor in the form of “course prep”?

Two thoughts on this:

First, it could be the answer to the conundrum of what on earth I’m going to do when I’m too old to dodder into a classroom and too old to hold my own against a pack of restive 19-year-olds or when I simply can NOT stomach reading another inane student paper ever again. This work can be done remotely. As long as I can still wriggle my fingers, I can transcribe digital content. And I’m good at that kind of thing—I type as fast as most people can speak.

Second, this type of work, while low-paid compared to what Tina and I can command as technical editors or project managers, could be a convenient addition to The Copyeditor’s Desk’s repertoire. If we can pick up some work doing medical transcription at a hospital or big medical center and then let it be known what we really are, it could open the door to medical editing work. And that’s just the sort of thing we do best.

Thus on two fronts I can see this certificate program as worth the cost, whatever the cost may be. I think the S-corp can afford to pay my tuition, but I’ll have to check with the accountant to see if it’s OK for the corporation to foot the bill for its slave’s voc-ed training.

On other fronts, a notice came in the mail that as a member of a broad class I’m eligible for a $7.50 settlement in a class action suit against New Horizon, late the holder of a small HELOC I paid off and canceled some time ago. Well. $7.50 (less the cost of the stamp, less the cost of the envelope) is better than nothing, I guess. It’ll buy a cup of café Americano at Starbucks, anyway.

Exactly what the cause was, I can’t discern well. Apparently it had something to do with the way New Horizon told customers the due date for payments was later than the actual date by which payments had to be posted to avoid finance charges. I never borrowed much on it—it served as a line of credit. When I was thinking about using it to finance the improvements M’hijito and I made on the downtown house, I called to confirm that the impression I’d been given, to the effect that the variable interest rate was capped at around 8.3 percent. Wrong! The not-very-friendly customer disservice rep I reached informed me that it could go as high as 21 percent!!!!!

Holy mackerel. Think of 21 percent interest on the $30,000 we needed…. What a rip! I canceled the line of credit and took out a second from the credit union, which I paid off from the proceeds of the noonlighting jobs I took up when it became apparent the university was about to shut down my office and can us all.

I don’t think I pulled that 8.3 percent figure out of the air; indeed, I distinctly remember asking the broker, with whom I’d done business before, how high the interest on that HELOC could go. So IMHO a certain amount of misrepresentation was going on there. But it must be admitted, I did not take off my glasses and hold each and every one of the eight or ten pages crammed with 8-point type up to my nose and read it. So: my bad.

La Bethulia left for California this morning, whereat La Maya already is encamped.

Naturally, one of La Bethulia’s brand-new tires picked up a nail yesterday afternoon, so she had the privilege of spending an hour or two after work at Discount getting that fixed. I ran over to the eyeglasses place, which closed at 6:00 p.m., to pick up La Maya’s new pair of prescription shades, which she will need on the beach, and La Bethulia came by on her way home to snag those.

Remains to be seen whether they ever get to the beach. La Maya left for the Imperial Valley a week or ten days ago, on news that her mother is dying. The entire family has been gathered around the bedside for all this time. The old gal rallied, after a fashion, but now she can’t walk at all. She’s stopped eating and drinking, and they expect her to pass any time. They’ve called in hospice, which is a mercy, and now they’re all just waiting.

La Bethulia and La Maya had, long ago, arranged their vacation in San Diego.  So La B went over to set up shop in the condo they’re renting, and La Maya probably will join her there. Maybe. It’s only about an hour and a half from Brawley, where the Maya family homestead stands, and so she figures that if things stabilize, she’ll be able to spend at least a little time in San Diego.

Pool guy just called! He’s on his way over right now, craving to get done with work early so he can head off for his own vacation at Huntington Beach. So…he will lighten my load by about $150 to $200. Let’s hope it’s not more than that, which it certainly could be.

The beach. Gosh. Think of that. I will never see a beach again. Too bad: I love the ocean, having grown up next to one. Oh well. Keep saying it: that’s a want, not a need.

Sooo cranky in the heat and the humidity and the short, short nights of sleep. Each day seems full of don’t-wannas: don’t wanna grade papers, don’t wanna be at work at 7:00 a.m., don’t wanna stand in front of classes four & a half hours straight, don’t wanna wrestle with the pool, don’t wanna do the yard work, don’t wanna clean house, don’t wanna drive around the city in the heat, don’t wanna  listen to Cassie yap, don’t wanna diet, don’t wanna spend any more money on expensive little “emergencies,” don’t wanna don’t wanna don’t wanna be in Phoenix in the summertime…

Spent a good 90 minutes or two hours as dawn cracked this morning, hacking away at the cat’s claw vines that have made good progress in their campaign to consume the pool equipment. They’d recovered, with a vengeance, from my last attack on them, earlier this spring when the Leslie’s guy came round to clean out the filter for the summer season. What a job!

Well, this will be convenient: I’m running low on food and had planned to race out to a grocery store this morning. Since the guy was scheduled to show up between noon and 5:00 p.m., that would have given me about two hours to do the several hours of running that awaits, and so I figured I wouldn’t be able to get all the stuff I really need. Now I should be able to pick up food and gear and finish grading most of the stoont papers today.

And so…to quit procrastinating.

Still Pouring Out There…

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Geez. It never rains but it pours. So they say.

Paycheck for these past two weeks posted (but not received by my bank until tomorrow): $200 less than expected.

Bill for car repair posted on American Express: $786.58.

I don’t have that much left in emergency savings, so about $90 of it will have to come out of cash flow. But it doesn’t stop there:

Rip-off to register the car: $72.56.

Rip-off for car emission test: $27.75.

Fortunately, exclusive of the unexpected car repair bill, I came in $55 under budget this month, for the first time in recorded memory. So despite the $787 car bill and the $140 in repairs on the pool equipment and the $95 to the electrician to repair the shorted, overheating light switch, and the $140.76 in medical bills not covered by Medicare, I have yet to overdraw my checking account.

Barely. Give it time, though. Today is only the 27th. This month has 31 days. Plenty of time for some new expensive fiasco to occur.

It’s clear now that we won’t be receiving next month’s Social Security checks. Bloody lucky thing I managed to land these two summer classes; tomorrow’s paycheck is just about the amount of a Social Security payment. It will tide me over August.

September, however, is a different matter: I stashed enough in my son’s and my joint account for mortgage payments to cover the summer, but in September I have to start coming up with $717/month again. And if those bastards in Washington haven’t gotten off the dime, I won’t be able to pay it.

Well. I will, but it will mean my savings to survive on for the next year will quickly disappear.

Damn it. Even when I manage to keep day-to-day spending well within the budget, I’m still swimming in red ink!

Image: Rain from a thunderstorm over Fogg Dam. Bidgee. Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license.