My Christmas Letter 2010

I hope this letter finds you and your families well.

My 2010 started off fantastic with a new job in January, after having been laid off for 18 months and only working sporadic contract positions for about seven of those months, it was my light at the end of the tunnel. Eleven months with no work at all does wonders for a person’s credit card bills! January flew by and I learned quickly that there was still going to be more month than money.

Of course February dragged on with no Valentine to keep me warm, and an average temperature of 11.3 degrees. Gotta love winter in Minnesota.

It became apparent in March and April that I’d need to stop paying my credit card bills all together in order to semi-make-ends-meet. Either that or stop paying my mortgage. An attorney recommended the former. So in May I stopped making credit card payments. And as bad as I felt about leaving Chase and my credit union high and dry, I have to say I felt a sense of relief because I could suddenly afford to buy a few spring tops and continue with patio happy hours. And, oh yes, pay my mortgage.

June was delightful. As most of you know, my one and only son graduated from high school. I was a proud momma. Not only did he graduate at the top of his class, he had selected the college he wanted to attend and had been accepted. We visited the college and got a great feeling from the admissions rep and the baseball coach. He was an outstanding student and was going to play baseball in college.

His high school graduation ceremony itself was boring, but even among the sleet and chaos of finding a seat, we managed to sit on the right side of the arena so we got to see him every time he yawned. We got pictures. I look fat. Pictures don’t lie, but whatever. I was looking forward to his open house celebration the following weekend.

However, the Friday before the graduation open house, the day I’d taken off work to make food and prepare, I got vertigo. Please allow me to insert a “WTF” here. Vertigo? Why not the flu or something normal like a stuffy nose or sprained ankle, my period, a zit!?

I don’t even know how it happened. But Friday morning I started to feel “funny.” It was a light, floaty feeling that I ignored because it was tolerable and I needed to deliver an order. I stopped for a cup of coffee first and got back in the car, heading from Cottage Grove to White Bear Lake. Along the way I noticed things around me starting to “float” or move sort of. I got scared and made a few phone calls to people to ask them what was happening to me. My brother told me to drink something, so I grabbed a Life Water at the gas station but kept driving toward White Bear. I didn’t get very far from the gas station when I realized this strange feeling wasn’t going away. So I turned around. When I got home to rest for a few minutes, I called Katie to let her know I was still planning to make food but I needed to rest for a bit due to my current confusing condition.

When I woke up, I gingerly made my way back to my car and then to Katie’s to fry 30 pounds of hamburger. After browning and seasoning only about 12 pounds of ground beef, three pounds at a time, we took a break for Lucas’ baseball game and would brown the rest later. Instead of going to the game with everyone else, I decided that I needed to rest more. I went back home and laid down for a couple of hours.

This time when I awoke, my head was spinning terribly and I could only walk by holding onto furniture and walls. I called my dad in a state of panic. He didn’t know what to tell me. So I called Katie because she’s worked in the emergency room as a surgical tech and I was afraid to call the ambulance (because I was totally and completely broke and didn’t know if my health insurance would cover it -- sad but true). Katie came to my house to help me. When she got there, I was laying on the living room floor crying and confused but I had managed to get dressed and grab a plastic tub. I greeted her with the dry heaves. I spent that evening in the emergency room with my parents until midnight. The doctor prescribed something that made the dry heaves stop and also some valium, which I was happy about although I didn’t understand why I needed it. I stayed at my parents house over night. The next day even though I wasn’t throwing up, I still couldn’t walk because the room was spinning. I laid in bed on my side for something like the next three days and missed Lucas’ graduation open house.

You know that he is my only son, right? I've made three payments to Katie and still owe $174 for my half of the food and supplies.

Missed a few days of work too but was back to normal after that. Once in a while I feel a little floatiness coming on but now that I know what it is, it doesn’t freak me out. It just pisses me off.

July 4th we got great seats at the Liffey to watch fireworks with my friends. Yay us! Yay July!

I’ve become quite the volunteer. I continue to volunteer at YPC this year on the board, as the board secretary now, and also help to build and strike sets and promote and attend the shows. It’s given my life a little purpose. My thumbs have taken a beating. Not sure if that’s due to manual labor or arthritis. Either way, Aleve and I have become good friends this year.

In August, about ten or 12 of us from Go East volunteered at Great River Greening to cut down (with loppers) sumac that is overtaking the prairie (that no one, including Laura Ingels, knows is there to begin with). Please allow me to insert a “WTF” here as well. Apparently this “sumac” (I don’t really know what this is either) grows in such abundance that it chokes out the other . . . uh . . . uh . . . plants (?) that need to grow way out there and we, as the educated species, are the ones to make the call about what should and should not be allowed to flourish in the fucking boondocks.

So on the hottest day of the blessed Minnesota summer, we twelve got in three or four motor vehicles and made our way like pioneers along the Oregon Trail, to an awning on a plateau in the middle of nowheresville, where we donned our self-selected ABC workman gloves and loppers. And I think we got granola bars too. Seriously I think I remember that. Then, we twelve thoughtful (stupid) volunteers, stumbled along the incredibly narrow path between the bean field and tree branches poking the right sides of our heads, to what became no-path-at-all and then finally uneven, tortuous weed-infested paradise. We had arrived, unbeknownst to us (or as God is my witness I would *not* have agreed to this), to our intended destination.

For the next few hours, as we avoided the *poison ivy* and lopped the evil sumac, we sweat. From our heads, our brows, armpits, backs, butt cracks, etc. Luckily for us and perhaps because we voiced (and maybe over exaggerated a teensy bit) our disbelief at the heat, humidity and incredible difficulty of the daunting, unpaid task, our shift ended early.

We were not left unscarred. Several of us contracted poison ivy. However, I was a lucky one. I didn’t get poison ivy. Instead, when I got home, I undressed on the ghetto patio and threw nearly every piece of clothing into a hot, soapy washing machine :-) Being smart, I decided not to ruin my delicates in the hot, hot water, so I ran warm water in the bathroom sink to soak them overnight and hand-wash in the morning. Yay me. I was soooo hot and tired. Completely pooped! I showered and scrubbed thoroughly, put on my jammies and plopped down on the couch upstairs to watch a little TV before turning in for the night. But I didn’t sit there long. I was too exhausted. I turned off the TV. Turned off the living room light. Turned off the kitchen light and walked downstairs. As I approached the lower steps I heard something. Something like my toilet running? Something like my faucet leaking? Of course, they always do that. Then as I stepped off the bottom step, my foot squished into the carpet! OMG! I LEFT THE WATER RUNNING IN THE SINK AND IT'S FLOODED THE ENTIRE HALLWAY!!

I grabbed bath towels, hand towels, a fan . . . the phone. I called my insurance agent/brother and he calmed me down. He’d take care of it. As it turns out, the hallway, 1/3 of my bedroom and about 1/4 of Lucas’ bedroom carpeting were covered with standing water. Thank goodness for home owners’ insurance. I only had to pay my deductible. Allow me to insert a “thank you God” here.

Later in August we took Lucas to college. Overall it was a good experience. Proud mom (with dad and step-mom) drop off son at college. Again, it was hot and you know me and heat, especially in a 10'x12' dorm room where we set up and took down the lofts twice before getting them right. Plus I carried about 20 12-packs of Mountain Dew from the truck to the dorm room (like what, there's no pop in Iowa?). But we got him moved in and I managed to make it back to Minnesota. Barely.

The road construction posed a slight problem immediately upon my departure. I turned around once within the first 20 minutes, but I’d be *dammed* if I’d call for help or turn around and ask for directions. I knew I’d be OK and could find my way back to Minnesota if I had a full tank of gas and if I kept South Dakota to my left. And actually, since this was agri-desolate, farm country, if I really *had* to I could pee on the side of the road. Notta biggie, I was fine . . .

. . . until about four hours into the trip when I noticed a sloshing sound coming from somewhere in the car when I applied the brakes. Was it the gas in my tank? Couldn’t be. Was it the 16 ounce water bottle that was on the passenger seat? I wasn’t sure, but maybe. So I kept unnecessarily applying the brakes at random intervals and looking at the water bottle to see if the sloshing sound matched with the movement of the water in the bottle. Couldn’t be that. But it kind of correlated. Was there a jug of washer fluid. In. The. Back. Seat? I. Couldn’t. Really. Tell.

No, there wasn’t. Oh well.

Made a few phone calls to pass the time on the long drive home. What would normally be a four-and-a-half to five hour drive took me almost seven hours. It wasn’t that bad though because there was no one chomping at my ass to do this or that. All in all, nice drive. Over the years, I’ve learned to enjoy my own company.

For the next couple of weeks, I noticed a humid feel and musty smell when I got in my car. Not really strong like soiled milk or a dead something or other, but just plain musty-smelling. And I heard the sloshing sound again. So of course I kept unnecessarily applying the brakes at random intervals to see if I could solve the mystery. Then one day it dawned on me that there *had* to be water somewhere, thus the humidity (I mean my windows fogged at times). Hello, I finally checked under the floor mats and the carpet was soaked in both the front and back seats! For the MF LOVE of a MF SOB, how could this be? Had someone been washing delicates in my car?

Soaked carpet again.

The Toyota dealer discovered it was something to do with the air conditioner thingy that a passenger must have bumped (yea because I have *so* many passengers travel in my car. And when I noticed it, I had absolutely zero passengers with me, but whatever). It was covered under my 36,000 mile warranty. After they fixed it, all I had to do was pull the carpet back and put a fan in my car to dry it out for the next two weeks every night when I got home from work.

Eventually it dried. And I put the floor mats back in. Had to be mid-September by then and I was still receiving hospital bills from my June vertigo visit that I hadn’t paid, collection notices from two credit card companies and barely making my mortgage payments and other bill payments. I discovered that dealing with Excel Energy is great! Love them for real.

Bank of America is a joke. I started the process of modifying my mortgage in late October because I figured I finally made enough money to qualify to reduce my mortgage, since I actually have a job now. Yes, you heard me. When I was unemployed I didn’t qualify because I didn’t make enough money. Please allow me to insert another WTF here. I’m *so* confused. If I made enough money to qualify, why would I need my mortgage modified? I’ve had this mortgage for something like 10 years and all had been well. Never made a late payment. Sometimes paid early. Had a 725 credit rating. In fact, I paid all my bills on time -- credit cards included. Then all of a sudden the earth started crumbling around me. I was laid off from two jobs in one year due to “this economy” and received only unemployment benefits (which isn’t considered “income” FYI), which forced me to rely heavily on credit cards to live for 11 months. At that point, when I really, really needed it, I tried to modify my mortgage but I didn’t qualify because I didn’t make enough money. No shit. Why do you think I want it modified? Perhaps if I won the lottery you’d consider modifying my mortgage? Talk about back fucking asswards.

In the meantime, I managed, on my own, to get both credit card companies to settle for about 40 percent of the balance I owed. Yay me. Except when credit card companies agree to this, they agree on the terms that you will pay in a lump sum, which obviously I didn't have or I wouldn’t have been in this situation to begin with. The only option I could imagine for coming up with this amount of money was to request a “hardship withdrawal” from my 401k.

On November 16, 2010 I started this process. I don’t feel like getting into the minutia of this process because I’m *so* done with 2010. The long and short of it is I emailed my contact at the benefit company on December 9 to check on the process and learned that the payment, which I should have had by that date, had been delayed due to an error by the investment company in the amount disbursed. OMG. I’m dyslexic and even I can write a check for the correct amount. (Whether or not there’s money in my account is a different issue.)

I’d made an agreement with one credit card company to take the lump sum out automatically on December 23 because I figured a month (more than a month, actually) was enough time to get a disbursement of my own money for my own self to me!

Luckily, they were willing, upon my very direct request, to expedite payment via UPS. And things are good. Both credit card accounts are settled :-) My mortgage modification is still in process and should be determined any day now -- 4-6 weeks from the time they receive my documentation, which was mid-November. I strongly advise you not to hold your breath for the result on this one -- I'm not.

Because even if my mortgage does not get modified and even though my association dues have already increased, and gas is at an all time high and expected to continue to rise, I should be able to make ends meet in 2011. I’ve switched my health insurance to a new plan effective January 1, canceled my life insurance policy, changed my internet speed at home from 12mbps to 4mbps, and *can* cancel my landline and cable (and internet) if needed. Plus Mercury will only be in retrograde three times this coming year. How bad can it be?

I’ve got new tires on my car and I’m ready to face 2011 just like my tires: well-balanced, safe and mounted (pretend I didn’t say that out loud).

So there you have it friends and loved ones, my 2010 in a nutshell. I wish you all the most Merry Christmas and a Joyful and Prosperous New Year!

Much love,
Paula