The Insanity Continues

I skipped Thanksgiving with the extended family this year for reasons and a text I received from my daughter tells me I made the correct choice.

My family is all from East Texas and of Irish/Scottish descent. I know my parents are die hard Republicans (my mother has said numerous times that Obama is the anti-Christ and that the initial protests in Ferguson are signs of the end times).

According to my daughter my father and another family member (the family is so large that she only knows those that are closely related to us) were talking about the grad jury decision. She said that the man my father was talking to said that Michael Brown deserved what he got.

To restate: this white man from rural Texas said that an unarmed black man who was begging for his life deserved to be shot six times by a white cop.

And this is why I no longer vote for any person who runs on the Republican ticket.

I'm going offline for a while again.

The reason is extremely rant worthy and will be under the cut because I'm sure no one cares.
( Feel free to skip )

So, my ex came by to check on Vic. Everything was going fine until Vic asked about her half-brothers. He said one was playing/sleeping and the other was playing. She asked which was which and he said, "Christopher was on the floor playing with your mom." I went o_O and asked, "Did you just call April her mother?" He nodded and said, "I did." I told him, "How dare you come into my house and call another woman my daughter's mother!?" He tired to say it was the first time but I know it wasn't. There's no way it would have fallen from his lips that easily if it was. Not to mention there was a time when Vic would get punished if she didn't call April 'Mom'. It would be different if I wasn't around but I am, and I have full custody. Rob only has visitation rights.

Not sure which icon works best: despondent Danny or ‘ticked off’ Speed. Why, you ask? I’ll tell you why.

Back on April 11, my old car decided to finally give up the ghost and announce that fact by having the ‘O/D OFF’ light blink at me. When I got home I called my parents and got what amounts to a shoulder shrug and them telling me they don’t have any suggestions.

So I made the best decision for me, since neither one was willing to adjust their morning schedule even slightly to avoid me having to sit in the dark in the parking lot at work with absolutely no security, and decided to get a rental car. Only this wasn’t decided until after 7 because neither of them returned any of my calls until then. Because of this I had to rent at DFW Airport which means I had to pay a higher tax rate. Go here and here to refresh your memory of how that went.

Avis put a hold on $652.08 of my money and I was told that $250 of that was because it was a debit card (it’s actually a check card, but whatever) and that it would be refunded once the rental was returned.

I went to work Thursday in pretty good spirits because I was expecting my next check to be fabulous (read that in your best drag queen voice) due to five hours of overtime the week before and three and half from the previous Monday and Tuesday. Then I got an email from my manager telling me I had to get rid of that extra time. I was bummed but not completely because that meant I could take Friday off, sleep in and take my time dealing with the car issue.

Friday, KIA called and told me I need a new transmission. I authorized them to put a hold on/take $500 for the deposit on the new transmission so they could order it, apparently they don’t just have transmissions lying around the shop, again making what was in my opinion the best decision because I couldn’t get either of my parents on the phone. Here's how that went down.

Now that I knew that I’d have to wait until, well, today to get my car back, I went to Avis (at a different location) and (stupid, stupid me*) extended my rental. They put a hold on an additional $491.32 for the next ten days.

Fast forward to last Monday, KIA called back and told me that with all the things that need to be fixed, it’d be better if I just bought a new car. My parents agreed.

So, this past Saturday we went and bought me the KIA in this post. I returned the rental on Tuesday, go here to be reminded of why I had to wait.

Avis told me that it’ll take about three days for the funds to be released back into my account. At this point I still had between $100 and $300 available to use. I checked my account Wednesday and it showed I was negative. I was floored! I have been more than careful about that. I called Avis and they said that I shouldn’t get any NSF fees but that if I do to just call the bank and explain. Then yesterday I checked it and it still showed I was in the negative and that I have two NSF fees. I called the bank first and was told to have Avis fax over a letter on their letterhead explaining about the hold and requesting they (the bank) reimburse me for any fees assessed while the release of the hold was pending.

I called Avis and was basically told they don’t do that. I had the guy call my bank and we talked to them together. The agent at the bank told him the exact same thing I did in the exact same way and he was all, “Oh, yeah, we do that all the time!” So we hang up with the agreement that he was going to do that right away and that my account would be back in the positive today. When I checked it this morning it was still in the negative and I’ve assessed two more NSF fees.

ETA:Just checked, and everything's good now, except for the additional NSF fees but I don't think I'll worry about those, too much hassle in my opinion.

*What I should have done was get the rental for a day or two, or even taken Thursday off, then returned it to the location closer to my house and then re-rented it at the lower price. *shrug* Live and learn. Back to text

My parents have finally talked about the decisions I made today. Instead of calling and telling me they're proud I finally acted like an adult they yelled at me for not talking to them first.

I don't get them. In one breath they're telling me I need to do these things on my own but then in the very next breath they're yelling at me for not talking to them first.

I mean, c'mon! Make up your fucking mind about whether or not I'm allowed to be an adult.

I don't get it, I really don't. They say they want me to stop relying on them so much but whenever I do they get upset that I didn't get their opinion. I tried calling them both several times during the day and they either didn't answer their phone or it went straight to voice mail.

I made the decision to have the repair shop go ahead and fix the car, requiring me to pay them $500, and to extend my rental from one week to two, which has me paying another $500 to Avis.

My mother called while Vic and I were out getting dinner and she flipped when I said that I told the repair shop I couldn't pay for two more weeks. She's under the impression that they won't hold my car for two weeks. Well, they will. I know this because I asked, while making the fucking decision on my fucking own!

She also freaked over my having to have the rental for another week. Is she going to change her work schedule so that I don't have to go to work an hour early? No, I don't think so. So since neither she nor my father are willing to sacrifice so that I don't have to sit outside in an area I'm really not comfortable in while it's dark outside, I made the best decision, or so I thought, and extended the rental since I'll need a fucking car.

If they had only answered their phones or if she had fucking called me back on her lunch (when I called earlier this morning I left a message, her phone rang and then voice mail picked up so she would have seen she had not only a missed call but a message) then we could have avoided all this because she would have offered to buy me a car and I wouldn't be in this fucking mess.

*growl* I swear my mother doesn't know when to stop.

Last week when she was killing me to get my house cleaned she said, "I'll stay if I can come back and inspect any time I want." She then left about ten minutes later.

She just now called and said she doesn't feel like coming to inspect tonight and I told her she doesn't have to check up on me. She threw the above statement at me and I reminded her that she didn't stay. She then said that I can no longer clean her house.

Not sure how that has anything to do with my not wanting her hovering over my shoulder but it looks like I'm going to have to get rid of cable for real now because I use the money she was paying me to pay my auto insurance which allows me to be able to use my child support for other things, like the electric bill and gas in the car and incidentals. And yes, the cable bill.