Grounded

I just pulled all of my financial information together on mint.com, and basically, what I am being told (as if I didn't already know) is that I spend too freely, don't pay enough on my credit cards, and that I will be in debt FOR THE REST. OF. MY. LIFE.

Or, actually, until 2017, if I cut out all gratuitous spending. Five years seems likes a long time. A really long time. Or maybe, not really that long, considering I've lived in Utah for eight years....

This post is depressing me.

I've decided that I really need to be grounded. I need to quit charging plane tickets, no matter how much I want to go home for Christmas, (and I need to be more careful about making my flights and scheduling the right itineraries, etc.).

No more eating out.

No more eating period.

No more books.

No more weekend movies. No more full-priced movies.

No more Wicked tickets. Or theater tickets of any kind. And certainly no more extravagant gifts. No more new clothes. Or shoes. Or make-up. Or jewelry.

Back to coloring my own hair. (Shudder. Cringe. Full-blown tantrum.) No more getting pedicures, manicures, and definitely no more considering the idea of waxing, massages, or any other unnecessary beauty treatment.

No more doctor's appointments. And I better not get sick, either, because I'm not going to pay for meds.

Fewer cleaning products. (I buy a surprisingly large amount of these.)

No more dinner parties. Or throwing parties.

If I don't go anywhere, except to work, I won't have to buy as much gas.

I can't keep buying episodes of Suits and Justified on Amazon.com.

No more gym membership (that I don't use, anyway).

Continue to live in student housing, since clearly I can't afford to live on my own, yet.

Basically, I need to lock myself up in a room without internet access, and not come out except to go to work and to church, and then hope, that by 2017, I will be debt-free and not too past my prime that there still might be a chance that I'll find someone to marry. Because, let's face it, if I cut yourself out of 90% of social activities because I can't afford to participate; stop getting my hair done (hello, grays!) and buying my good make-up, and let my eyebrows grow out and my nails to look nasty; stop enjoying all the things I really love, because I don't want to pay for it or feel restless and unhappy because I hate being cooped up in one place for too long...

Once I've done all of that, I might be debt-free, but I'll be a pretty scary shell of a person. Can you just imagine? I'd be... hairy (razors are expensive too, so we might as well just throw them out) with long toe nails and gnawed off fingernails, wearing my $9 WalMart glasses (probably with the wrong prescription), long gray hair, no make-up, raggedy clothes, and completely out of touch with reality. Also, 32 years old.

Holy. Crap.

Yup, I'm definitely grounded. Maybe if I were to give up most of this stuff, then I could cut the five years down to three. The problem is: I know I did this to myself. I'm terrible about managing money. Budgeting is completely lost on me. So yeah, grounded.... No more. This has to end.

But first, I have to prepare for my trip to Hawaii. And I'm definitely going to need a new swimsuit for that. And a floppy hat...

Just Call Me Pandora

I feel a little like Pandora.... and now I've got to deal with the consequences.

This wasn't supposed to happen.

Dear Katy

Dear Katy, I just wanted to tell you that I think you are an amazing, wonderful person and I love you as my sister forever.

Love,
Shelli

Last week I found out that a dear friend of mine - my sister for all intensive purposes, as I have known her for over 20 years - lost her baby. She was nearly six months pregnant and due in March.

I felt like I had been hit by a truck, and instantly the tears prickled to my eyes. I can't imagine a worse loss than that of a mother losing her child - unborn or not - and so I knew that my grief only paled in comparison to what she and her husband, Jared, must be feeling.

I was at work, so I got all the news over a text. I was surprised at how calm and relaxed the texts sounded, and I just knew that my heartbroken friend was putting on a brave face and that I wasn't getting the emotional translation across the texts.

She had to go through the delivery process beginning Monday night, and delivered her stillborn, Baby Boy Self, on Tuesday morning.

I went to visit her last night. It had been a while since I've had the opportunity to hang out. She lives in Salt Lake and we haven't had the time to get together. Her apartment was filled with flowers, meals had been organized for the week, and Katy opened the door to give me a big hug.

I had expected to go over and mourn with her. I was expecting to cry and cry and hug and cry some more. But there was a peace in Katy's apartment that I was not expecting. The peace that comes with the knowledge that she and her husband were sealed together for eternity, which means Baby Boy Self is sealed to their eternal family. Katy and Jared both have a testimony of that, and I think that has helped them get through this tragedy. I really admired the strength and faith demonstrated by Katy as she related the delivery story and recent happenings with humor rather than self-pity or despair. I swear, we were laughing half the time I was there while Jared sat at his desk studying for Stats (shudder).

I know that the past week has not been an easy one, and I know that there are sad days ahead as they start to rearrange the lives they had been adjusting in preparation for a baby. They know that they will have the chance to have children again, and until then, they press forward with faith in the Lord and his plan and timing for them. I am grateful to have such excellent examples of how to face the adversities in this life. And I am so proud to call her my friend and thankful for her in my life.

I know that Heavenly Father is looking over their little family and will bless them as they continue faithfully through this trial. 

Irrational

Look, I know I am not always the most rational or logical person in the world. So when I admit that there are a few things that irrationally irritate me to death, well, just know that I do realize that it is irrational. I just can't help it.

Like faxes. I hate faxes. I hate when people ask me to fax them something and I hate even more when a fax shows up and is requesting for information. Seriously? Don't you know that there is a magical thing called EMAIL? And you can't get information just that much quicker and without wasting paper and without all the annoying beeping and sputtering and jamming my fax machine? Do you really think I am going to run over and jump to the fax machine when I hear it go off and it has already made me angry because it just sucked up 15 pages instead of the one it needed and then read your question and want to answer it? No. I want to ignore it. Because faxes are obsolete. And annoying.

Another thing: Snow in May. I don't care that it means that we aren't going to be in a drought this summer. Whoopie-do. It's MAY! I was enjoying the new, baby leaves and the flowers and the fact that we might just have warmer weather. Oh wait, we're going to be in the 70s by Wednesday. What the heck is that about? Should I be grateful that I got the opportunity to don my coat one more time this year? NO WAY. Man, I was ticked this morning.

And finally, my friend Meghan was telling me about this returned missionary who spoke in her ward yesterday that just really bugged me.

Meghan: anyway, he kept going on and on about this story about this guy and then he told about how 6 weeks before he was going home, the sister missionaries were teaching the guy's wife

and he went on this ramble/tirade about how sisters missionaries and sweet and nice (said very condescendingly) and made great cooks and stuff, but weren't "in-tune and forceful" enough to be missionaries...

...are sweet and nice

I seriously almost chocked him with my eyes

and Jared was going apoplectic because his lesson the previous week was about respecting women and all the YM had this horrible attitude, so he was like "great, now they're going to think it's ok to be misogynistic douches"

and we muttered the rest of the time with the people in the bench behind us

 Unacceptable. There are no...pleasant...words for attitudes like that.

"There's something wrong with your toilet..."

Also, see previous post... but this is what it totally made me think of.

Something Serious Better Have Happened

When I came home tonight at 9:30ish, I went straight to my room (after turning off all the lights that had been left on in the house) with the intention to work on Stats. I only got one quiz done, and it took me until about 12:00 a.m. And then I edited a friend's paper until about 1:00 a.m.

So when I headed to the bathroom in order to do my nightly bathroom routine, I was a little confused when I found the following:

I wondered if something really bad happened. Why is there no seat on the toilet? And why is the shower taped off and the curtain clamped shut? But surely my roommate would have let me know through text message or knock on my door or something.

 In case you can't tell what that is, that's the shower head taped off with electrical tape.

So then, I thought... this must be some passive-aggressive way of sending some sort of message. It was sort of confused when I found this:

That reads loud and clear....something? I can only think of a few things that would cause this drastic of a reaction to whatever I've done. So what could they be telling me?

1. Clean the bathroom. Well, I've been the only one to clean it since I moved in. I bought cleaning supplies for us to make it easier.
2. Empty the trash. Yup, check. Did that this week, too. There's barely anything in it now.
3. Replace the toilet paper. Ok. Done. I went out past midnight on Saturday to make sure we did not run out. I even bought the spare roll holder that goes on the tank. You can see the two new rolls I added before I took the picture. (When I got home at around 3 a.m. on Sunday, I deposited the toilet paper in the front room and forgot to take it out... so it got shoved away in some closet and not by me. So maybe she didn't know that was for us?)
4. Take shorter showers. Hmmmm.... maybe. But, I'm always the last one in, and I leave plenty of hot water when I get out. Also, I have mentioned to K that if she needs in the shower, she only needs to let me know so I can make it faster. (This is maybe the only one I can see being a potential problem, and I admit it.)

I even bought a new bathroom rug! And I wash the shared full-length mirror that I never use. I. Don't. Get. It.

And this is why I hate living with girls. As I say, I hope I am interpreting this all wrong, or something is going to go down in the morning. And considering that I'm going to bed with a full bladder at 2 a.m., I do not think it will be pleasant.

Maybe it's just an April Fool's joke? If so.... it's not funny.

BEWARE! You, too, can have sensitive teeth and overdraft charges!

www.premiumwhitepro.com
www.myidolsmile.com

Oh Facebook! So full of knowledge and useless information. Used for cheap shout-outs, desperate requests for sympathy and product endorsement. Facebook itself is not a scam, at least, it hasn’t gotten me yet. And when a friend of mine posted as her status:

Judy Starbright* :))) I got my free teeth whitener trial today and my teeth are so shiny and white!! I feel like a new person.. for those of u that are gonna ask were I got it at here's the link, www.myidolsmile.net use promo code: whitetoday.. you're welcome!

*name changed to protect the innocent.

I thought, “Hey! I could really use that,” and didn’t stop to question what I was getting myself into. So I typed in the myidolsmile.net. The promo code said that if you paid $1.95 for shipping and handling, the product was FREE. How can you do better than that? The website seems legit. I didn’t really question anything, especially because if my friend had done it without problems, I assumed I would be fine as well. So I ordered it and provided my debit card number in order to pay for the shipping. I got a confirmation email from premiumwhitepro.com.

The product came within three weeks. So far, so good. It wasn’t very good quality, and the gel that they raved about was nothing special, and actually pretty gross. But it was a trial, and so I wasn’t too upset…until I checked my bank account and saw that Ultifreshwell had removed $49.89 from my account. I wasn’t sure what it was for, but I thought that maybe it meant they were sending me a longer lasting package, that I could send back for a refund, or something like that. Nothing else came in the mail. A few days later, Sup*Smilebright removed $86.93 from my account. And I currently have $48.23 pending to be taken out of my account from Sup*Whiteteeth.

I’ve canceled my bank card and started fraud cases on all three transactions, and of course, have yet to see whether or not that is going to be enough. I did some research after it all happened, because the numbers that are provided on the statement for the company are completely bogus. The numbers took me to a few discussion boards that talk about the ads seen online for “A stay at home mom discovers the trick to whiter teeth!” The discussion boards also give several different company names such as Dazzle Smile or Dazzle White. But they all sound like the same thing and they all have reoccurring charges on their account. Some resorted to closing their bank accounts altogether. I really don’t want it to get to that point, but it might be the only thing to stop the charges.