Do I always have to be the grown-up?
Turkey with a side of ghostly death
Here on Sunday afternoon it's hard to believe that the last week is over. I'd been looking forward to my parents' weeklong visit for months, and now it's already over. It's a common sentiment, I know, but worth noting all the same.
Random thought: it sucks that the last time I see my mom, every time I see my mom, she's crying at an airport.
Not-so-random thought: I hate LAX during the holidays.
Excluding my wedding, this is the first time in I Don't Know How Many Years that I've spent a holiday with not only my parents, but with all of my dad's siblings at the same time. It's much louder than I remembered. My aunts are pretty funny ladies, and watching them (lovingly) belittle my father is a sight to behold. Add to that an excessive amount of drinking among many of the participants and I often ended up with a headache each morning despite the fact that I was once of the few non-drinkers. THIS ATTEMPTING TO GET PREGNANT THING BETTER BE WORTH IT.
With my parents and my aunts and uncles all being at least 52+, there was often a lot of just sitting around and talking and playing cards in the evenings. Lots of conversation. And lots of me snickering in my head because I can recall the some of the same specific conversations happening last year when we were all together for my wedding. Must suck to get old and lose the memories! The one that was the most enjoyable for me to rehear was the one where pretty much everyone talked about how they believe in ghosts and to recount their ghostly encounters. My parents insist that they have a ghost in their house--specifically, the ghost of a woman from the 19th century who most likely came from the graveyard that is down the street from their house. And the location that their house is on apparently used to be a horse barn so they think that she died in the barn and has been haunting the house ever since it was built, and she really likes my sister's old bedroom. My mom likes to make things up like how my sister used to wake up and swear that she felt someone choking her, and I'm all Mom. Please. That never happened. I would have heard about it at the time. And oh yeah, the ghost likes to open cabinet doors and then close them and turn lights on. Please. Ghost. Be a little more original. Of course the ghost talk led to all of them talking about how they all new the exact moment their parents died before they had even been told. Which was totally depressing. Coupled with the conversation they all had before going to the airport about how wouldn't it suck to die in a plane crash but even though you would be scared all the way down you would never know the instant of impact because it would be so fast. And I'm all HEY. OLDER PEOPLE. CAN WE QUIT IT WITH THE DEATH TALK? It's the holidays, be thankful you're alive.
Oh, silly adults.
Thankful
Much more to come on the posting front once the week is over and we aren't entertaining family anymore.
I will say that last year at this time, Edgar and I were in a very bad place. We were staring at a black hole. And now life is completely different. It's turned itself around. We're happy, we're healthy, and we're getting ready to start our own family.
Thanks, universe.
I don't do anal
Having gotten myself into a spot of debt problems (called STOP BUYING SHOES AND OTHER SHIT) I decided after Christmas in 2007 that I was going to go debt fee. Mind you, this was before all of the "Aaack! Oh my god, recession! Cut up your credit cards and run for your lives!!" talk and was prompted by my realization that I would one day like to own a house instead of renting an apartment and that if I didn't start working on a down payment now I would never get there. I've been largely successful (at the paying off debt part, not the saving part). I essentially stopped using my credit cards and paid off a few store cards, leaving me with one student loan and three 'real' credit cards with balances. One balance was small, around $600ish. The other two cards were higher; one tottered around $4000 and the other around $3500. I paid off the largest card in the summer of 2008 using part of a generous early-wedding gift that my grandmother gave Edgar and me. I paid the $600ish card off in April using my tax refund. I had planned on that tax refund to go towards the other large card, but Bank of America forced my hand when they increased the interest rate on the card (which I had never ever once paid late on). Not long after that I got a notice from the other card where I had paid the large balance off that they, too, were increasing my interest rate.
No problem, I thought. I have my one "big" card left and even though it's still got a high balance it has a limit of $6000 so if I ever have an emergency I'm fine. I happily went about my business. Happily going about my business has ended up increasing the balance on that card though; add up that day you realized that your wedding china was on sale with free pieces thrown in for purchasing a certain amount with that time in Solvang where your husband got you drunk and made you think it would be an EXCELLENT time to sign up for a wine club with that other time you needed to buy a new laptop, and it all equals Damn I Thought I Was Supposed to be Paying This Thing Off.
No problem, I thought. I pay more than my minimum balance each month, maybe not double but always more, and it's still not a big deal because I have a huge cushion on the card for emergencies. And a great interest rate of 9.99%. You see where this is going, right?
About a week ago I read an article online talking about credit card practices that some banks are pushing through ahead of all of the credit card regulation that's going to be happening in the next year. One of those detailed a certain bank that would be greatly increasing the interest rates of even their good customers, offering them "rebates" on their interest the next month if they paid on time and/or spent a certain amount every month. Didn't sound too great for me. I don't want to use my credit card anymore, and this article talked about how a person (whose description was very similar to mine) would have to put over $750/month on the card to break even on the "rebates." All in all, not a good deal. Seeing as this article was talking about the bank for my "big" credit card, I crossed my fingers and hoped that it would not apply to me.
I was wrong.
I got a notice yesterday from the bank that my interest rate would be increasing to 29.99%. YES, THAT IS TWENTY-NINE POINT NINE NINE PERCENT. I mentioned my current interest rate is 9.99%, right? That is TRIPLE my interest rate. Let me repeat, I have never ever been late on one single payment. EVER.
Oh, but wait, the bank says. The bank says, hey, if you pay your minimum payment on time, you can get a 65% rebate on your interest. We won't give it to you until the statement date of your next month's statement, so we're totally going to screw you up the a-hole for the daily periodic interest rate for two months, but LOOK. SIXTY FIVE PERCENT!
Hello, bank? It's me. Do you realize that I'm not stupid? Do you realize that you will be DOUBLING my minimum payment because of this? And that you're an absolute fuckhead because of the fact that instead of letting me opt out of the interest rate increase and just pay the account off while not using the card anymore, you're actually requiring the account to be closed if I opt out? Unlike any other credit card company where you can opt out under the agreement and pay your card off at your current rate but keep it open and if you ever use it again you automatically accept that higher interest rate? Do you realize that I know you know that I don't want to close the account out because it has a high credit limit and closing the card will slash my credit score because my available credit will plummet? Do you realize that I know you know I know this and that you've intentionally selected my account for this position because I have a good credit score and am obviously the type of person that would want to preserve it and you know you can play me?
I swore to myself when I started this blog that I was not going to ever mention by name my current or any former employers. To quote Chandler on Friends: Can...open. Worms....everywhere! Too much trouble can come of it. But I've decided to change my stance on this just this one time because I am so super pissed off and because I never intend to go back to the mortgage/insurance industry. I'm comfortable burning this bridge.
FUCK YOU CITIBANK! FIRST YOU LAY ME OFF IN THE MIDDLE OF A GODDAMN RECESSION AND THEN YOU COME BACK TO POUR SALT ON THE WOUND? WOULD YOU LIKE SOME FUCKING LEMON JUICE TOO?
And so it begins
Holidays are always great because you end up with a big group of family that is normally never together but for the reason of that specific holiday. Thus, we end up with Keene Family Thanksgiving Week 2009.
My dad has one brother and two sisters. The brother lives in a town called Simi Valley, about an hour away from Long Beach when there's no traffic on the 405. That's a rare thing, the no traffic on the 405 thing, but we can always wish. My dad and his two sisters, one that is married and one that is a widow, live in Indiana. This Thanksgiving the Indiana part of the family decided to come to California. It's gonna be an interesting week.
Their flight got in a little after 6 on Saturday evening. We managed to get out of LAX a little before 7:00 and headed up to Simi Valley from there. My mother, who is not a drinker, immediately started pounding the chardonnay. My aunt and uncle that live here are regular drinkers ( but alcoholics they are not), and I think my mom was trying desperately to keep up. She failed miserably. About three glasses in she started talking with her hands, and with every point here and gesture there the wine kept coming closer and closer and closer to slopping over the edge of the glass. And it eventually reached that point, resulting in a huge splash of wine onto her pants and her drunken vehement denails that she wasn't in fact drunk, that she just talks with her hands and it was bound to happen. Bound to happen BECAUSE SHE WAS DRUNK.
I was viewing this show from my non-drinking armchair. My parents and my California uncle and aunt seemed to be highly disappointed that I wasn't getting sloshed with them, my aunt even going so far as to say "I told you that you needed to wait until January to try to get pregnant so that you could enjoy the holidays!" That point of view makes me think that people must have a waaaaay different perspective of me than I thought. When Edgar and I were at his friend's birthday party two weeks ago and I mentioned that we weren't drinking anymore since we were trying to get pregnant, they were all shocked and "Wow, that's got to be hard for you!" Just because I'm the only girl of the group that ever drank I guess that automatically made me the group's alcoholic. And then my family thinks that I need to be able to drink in order to enjoy the holiday season. Ok, yes, I miss the wine and the bourbon (OH MY GOD THE GOOD BOURBON) but I don't need it to enjoy my holiday. And I actually discovered that I can enjoy myself plenty being stone sober and watching a bunch of 50+ year old men and women getting wasted.
The best part of the story came the next morning from my dad: my mom apparently had to crawl up the stairs to bed, be undressed and then redressed in her pajamas by my dead, during which time she kept falling over, and then once that was done she laid down on the bed and alternated between moaning and giggling until she went to sleep. Oh, mom.
Let the festivities begin.
More to come
My parents got in on Saturday, and of course I have tons of things to write about that happened this weekend.
For now:
My mom got wasted on Saturday night.
My 54 year old father is trying to grow a ponytail.
Chew on that for a while.
