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Lish strikes again...

HAP has created herself a monster. Now I am walking around with blogs in my head and only one place to put them. I apologize to those of you who want me to step aside and get my own damn blog, but I like guesting instead. All the joys of blogging and none of the responsibility. My personal motto.

It’s only fair of me to give you hardworking and stressed out moms a break by bringing you into the crazy-sexy-cool life of the cougar in the making. What I should be doing is telling you all about the sex (with young prey), drugs (caffeine pills mostly), drinking (no wait, that’s reserved for you guys), and Top 40 radio in the life of a hip divorcee so you can feel both envy and pity. And I want to tell you all about it SO BADLY! But I have learned my blogging lesson. I once had a top secret blog detailing my wild exploits with young foreign men but discovered that when most people type the words ‘Per__n boy’ in their blog and then google it, cats, rugs and even the current political state of Ir_n comes up. When I personally type those same words, my blog would come up FIRST on both Yahoo and Google. (If you can’t understand the words with blanks, get a map of the Mid__ E__t.) And let me tell you a secret. Those kinds of boys do NOT like their privacy exposed. Most American men will be angry, they will yell, they will threaten, they will give you the silent treatment but in the end, they know you will do what you want more or less as that is your God given right as an American woman. These other boys are much scarier than the average American dude. Luckily when I discovered my error in judgment, I pulled that blog so fast that I didn’t even get a chance to say buh bye to my readers. No one ended up being the wiser, and more importantly, no one got hurt.

So, today I’m going to tell you a little story about a credit card (boo hiss everyone has a credit card story). One day, I had the bright idea to go on a shopping spree at JCPenney’s. (Now before you judge me about shopping at Penney’s, EVERYONE at work told me how much they loved my new clothes before I told them where I purchased them. I enjoyed every gasp of surprise and admiration at my cost savings in these dire economic times). You need to understand that I do not ever use credit cards. I have one emergency Visa that I never use. I couldn’t even tell you where it is. But I had so many clothes hangers balancing off my arms and legs that I opened the immediate credit solely for the discount.

I also need to explain that I live in an apartment building built in 1933 that has four cute precious old mailboxes that do not lock. And I hate picking up my mail. I admit there are times the post office has picked up my mail and kept it because they couldn’t fit any more flyers into my box. I’ll rummage through it for anything important (ie; birthday cards with checks) and leave the rest behind. My mailbox is my personal filing system as it’s more convenient than my coffee table. The day the JCPenney credit card arrived, I noted it for pick up at a later date. When that later date came, there was not one stitch of mail left in my mailbox, not even the two dozen political flyers I planned on reading in the bathroom. I did not panic yet as this was not unusual. But imagine my surprise when the Post Office told me – nope, we have nothing for you. Shee-it.

I called JCPenney’s, and they informed me that my card had been maxed out at – wait for it – Rite-Aid. Did you know you could use a JCPenney’s card at Rite-Aid? I didn’t either. Penney’s generously told me they would try to take care of the extra charges and would immediately send out a new card with a new account number for my convenience. I roared – I don’t WANT another card. The last one was STOLEN out of my MAILBOX! WHY would you guys mail me ANOTHER one? I don’t want a NEW account! Had the world gone crazy?

The young girl on the line got huffy and defensive, I don’t know why. Just because some JCPenney’s executives making three figures a year sat around in a conference room one day and decided that if a customer had a credit card lost or stolen that in order to save potential business, they would immediately send out a new one no matter what the customer actually wanted and then they would put young people on the phones to be yelled out with no recourse while paying them nothing per hour. Or that’s how I imagine it, because the young girl told me she could put in a special request to not have a card sent out and someone would make a decision on it.

In the meantime, I put my mail on vacation hold which can be from a couple days all the way up to a month. Absolute bliss and celebration. I forgot I even get mail. Since all my bills are paid automatically, I’m not even thinking about mail. This mail vacation thing has been a little slice of heaven, and I’ve already been one or two weeks without mail. Except, if you can believe this, I did get mail on one particular day. And guess what was in it. That’s right. The new f’ing credit card that by the grace of God, I got to before it could be maxed out again.

As a good citizen, I called the police department to report the theft. The automated message went something like this (and I’m not kidding) – If you are calling to report a murder with a baseball bat or an ice pick or a stabbing or a wounding or an armed robbery or an armed robbery with a machete or a rape or a rape with a weapon or a rape with two or more men or a kidnapping or a kidnapping with a van or a kidnapping with a rope, crime, crime, crime, endless crime in progress, please press one now. (At this point, I locked all my doors and shut all my windows.) If you are calling to report your mail stolen, you are small potatoes and need to go onto our website to report it. (I was never so happy to have had just my mail stolen).

I also reported it to United States Postal Service. There are also a number of possible complaints to be filed with our US postal service but my absolute favorite, the one that makes me laugh out loud and email to friends is:

Medical quackery. And just a tip. Do not try to explain why this is funny to new immigrants. They will look at you blankly and ask you to explain “quackery” which is nearly impossible and you will end up just saying – “Trust me. It’s funny”.

As I only have a month of vacation from my mail, I decided I would need to break down and get a PO Box. I always thought only businesses and people having affairs had PO Boxes, but I was wrong. Victims also get them. So yesterday, I stood in a long line at my local Post Office (for some reason, there are a lot of very tiny people visiting the post office) to rent a PO Box. In the PO Box literature they threaten that if you do not pick up your mail from your PO Box, you may be forced to rent a bigger one. I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.

I turned in my application, handed over my debit card and asked the clerk – The PO Box area is open 24 hours, right? She looks at me and says cheerfully – Oh we used to be but I think we’re going to start closing at 9:30 pm. The PO Boxes are being broken into.

Sigh…