ack!

I have had a very sucky day.

Last week, I called my bank, which is in Washington State (I live in CA).  Well, fuck it. I don't want to write my story of woe.  I want to cry about it out loud and hear someone murmur sympathy. Like that is going to happen.

One time, when I was living in Ann Arbor, near my sister and niece, my sister had a crap day.  We often had dinner together when we lived in Ann Arbor so I was at her house putting dinner on the table when she came in, bringing the delight (Isabelle, then age three) home from day care. Sis bursted in and bursted into tears, telling me all about all the things that had gone wrong.  Nothing serious. All was well.

Sometimes you just have one of these days, when many things go wrong. On some days, the most trivial snafus can overwhelm me. And my sister.

This particular time my sister did her crying act was a revelation to me. She is fourteen years younger than me. She grew up two states away from me. Plus I left for college when she was four.  She has only the most fuzzy memories of ever having lived with me when she was a toddler. And we had no memories of being grown up persons.  I have lived alone, or with my daughter, most of my adult life. I've never had roommates, although for a few years I had a husband. 

I had no idea people could behave the way my sister did that day, that they could fall apart a little, cry and get sympathy.  I have still never had that experience.  I don't talk to anyone when I have a sucky day. I tend to bitterly blame myself.

Well, I will whine a little.

I needed to do some life administration work. I needed my September bank statement and it has to be in the right office by Monday, Nov 28th. So ten days ago, I called my bank in WA State and requested my September bank statement. I know, now, that I could have spoken with more precision. By 'September bank statement' I meant the statement the bank mailed to me in September. Today -- talk about the ever slower u.s. mail service! -- the October bank statement arrived. The statement was dated October 5th, it posted my October income which is automatically deposited into the account. Why would anyone consider a statement dated in October as a September statement?

In a panic, I called the bank and asked them to FAX me the correct statement. The October statement was two pages. The September one, presented in computer print-out format instead of the kind that comes in the mail, was five pages. I pay a buck a page to the little Chinese man who runs a strange business across the street from my building.  He rents mailboxes, ships UPS, acts as a notary. He does not packaging, like the modern shipping stores for UPS and FedEx. His UPS shipping is not computerized:  you get a handwritten receipt with a tracking number. The tracking number works just like the ones spit out by computer but he gets them from a book of receipts. When the truck comes for the packages, it scans the number into the system. All the equipment is old and looks like something out of a great movie from the forties. Everything is very worn. The floors have shallow dips where pedestrian traffic has worn it over the years but we are talking about a kazillion years.  I have patronized this shop about a dozen times in the past three years or so. I have faxed a few medical releases, shipped a couple items via UPS. The old Chinese guy sits in the back, with a green tinted visor shading his eyes but I wonder from what: it is dingy dark. He looks as his computer all day long. If he owns the building, then I could see it being some kind of income for him. If he pays rent, I can't figure out how he could get enough income from renting mailboxes.  I think many homeless and 'drifter' types use his post boxes.  There are other, modern stores with mailbox services, shipping, etc. 

He is a nice guy. He charges a buck a page for faxing. Once I faxed nine pages for a medical thing. He only charged me five. Today, with five pages, he charged me three. He used to allow his church to distribute sack lunches on Saturday, free to anyone who wanted one until they were all gone. That doesn't happen anymore. I wonder if hungry people in Berkeley have somewhere else to line up for free sandwiches on Saturday. I always liked seeing that line. I have a nice feeling about this odd little business.

My bank agreed to fax what I needed to the Chinese guy. The bank clerk wrote down the wrong phone number. She dialed 848 instead of 845. So I had to call back. The only number on my other bank statements is a 1-888 main number that had kept me on hold for twenty minutes the first time. I looked up the direct dial number online, for my particular branch, but my prepaid phone service kept telling me the number was no longer in service. So I dialed the 1-888, for the second time, waited on hold for what felt like way too long cause I was on my pay-as-you-go cell. It's not really a waste of money because I virtually never use up the minimum minutes I am required to buy every month to keep the phone.  I hardly ever use the cell because it is so expensive but it is one of life's many weirdo things:  I have to spend seven bucks a month to keep the phone line. I tend to pile up the money. I think I have about eighty bucks on the phone right now. So what the heck if I spent five bucks on hold today?  The money is spent, cannot be returned to me.

Last spring, an old friend from Minnesota visited. Her traveling companion remarked "There is no such thing as a cell phone without a camera anymore!" I pulled out my three-year-old freebie phone -- I only had to pay $20 to get this free phone but then I got $20 in phone credits, good to keep the line working for three months. Every three months, I have to pay $20.

God, this is a boring rant, huh?

All these stupid little things went wrong. I am sick. I am very aware that everything wears me out much, much more when I feel sick.  I have been feeling very sick for what seems like forever and which is, I am able to trace, based on doc visits, dates back, at least, to last spring.  No wonder old people get crabby. When you feel really lousy and very weak much of the time, it shows.

So.  I finally get through to my bank gal a second time. She had fax'd the thing to the wrong phone number, which means my bank statement is sitting in someone else's fax machine right now. They could use that to steal money from me. Once in the past year, someone used my bank account to pay a $200 cable bill. Of course my bank corrected the error. I guess there are people in the world who would not notice $200 missing from their checking account?  I will have to watch my bank statements carefully.