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2004-08-24 @ 12:33 a.m. |
So I was laying on the couch tonight listening to my mother talk on the phone. I had the Olympics on, but it was on MUTE. It was the women�s beach volleyball competition, so the images were playing in silence. My mom was droning on and on about how unfair life has been to both of us. And I started to notice something. Now I�m not a lesbian or anything, but man, those girls are hot! And as my mother was talking about the nanny guy, it was churning up some anger in me, and than her comments seemed to strangely coincide with the volleyball girls smacking each other on the ass. I guess they were scoring points or something. For instance, my mom would say, �That nanny guy was really an asshole� and then the onscreen Volleyball Girl #1 would smack Volleyball Girl #2 on the ass. SMACK! Or �Its pretty bad when your own kids don�t even want to live in with you.� Volleyball Girl #2: SMACK! Or even �He sure sounded like a freak with all those cameras�. �Volleyball Girl #1: SSSM--ACK!� Yeah, baby.  I was actually getting a little turned on, although I don�t remember volleyball being all that sexy in high school. I just remember always getting hit in the face or getting my index finger broken. So I had a major meltdown in public today. Yeah, it was pretty embarrassing. I usually try to limit my meltdowns to 1) my bedroom, 2) �A�s office or 3) my car, but I pretty much lost it at my insurance office today. I think I scared the two female insurance agents. I guess they got scared when I uttered the phrase, �I�m about to go postal� and my eyeballs rolled back into my head and flames started to shoot out of various orifices. Ok, there were no shooting flames, but I actually did say the �I�m about to go postal� thing. I guess its always best to announce things like that, rather than just to launch into them. That way you can just yell and scream rather than actually doing anything really dangerous like smashing everything in the entire office and killing Elaine and Susan, two of StateFram�s most dedicated agents. That would just be wrong. Why all the anger? Well, I think insurance companies rip people off. At least the people who have clean driving records. I haven�t had a speeding ticket in probably 20 years. I haven�t had a major accident since 1977. I had that little fender bender in January, and got 4 massages out of it for my neck. But that�s only because Married Guy got on my case about it. He was the one who convinced me to pursue massages for my whiplash. It didn�t even occur to me to do that. He benefitted, of course. At least financially. I guess I did massagically. I pay a lot of insurance for an old clunker car. I only paid $500 for the car, yet I pay $48/mo. to insure it. And I have the bare minimum required. And the rates have risen steadily since I�ve been with the company. I used to pay about $34/mo. Why the rising rates? Sure ain�t because I�m a lousy driver. I think its because I�m paying for all the lovelies who don�t have insurance or for those who are ripping off insurance companies. My sister is one of them, God love her. She had some minor damage after a hurricane in Florida...probably about $300 worth. She lied to the insurance company and got about $3000. Its like...yay... free money. And then people like me, pay for it. People who can�t afford it. Well, the last couple of months have been hard for me financially. After buying the car, I have been pretty much in the hole ever since. Why? Because the insurance company had this little extra �charge� on my bill. The insurance bill went from being $48/mo. to being $70/mo. and because of this tiny little additional charge everything snowballed. I lost control of my bills. I got behind on my electric bill. I started only paying partial payments on my insurance bill. I skipped my phone bill completely. I tried to keep up somewhat with the insurance, since my car is really the only independence I have. I had been taking the partial payments to the insurance office each month explaining that I was unable to do the whole amount, blah, blah, blah, and the woman had been saying it was okay and that she would write a note to the company explaining the circumstances. Well, the circumstances finally caught up with me at the beginning of August. I got a termination notice on my car insurance. Pay or you�re uninsured and then you will be fined on a daily basis by the DMV. Groovy! Just what a poor person wants to hear. A daily fine for not being able to pay a bill, because well, you can�t pay the bill, because, well, you don�t have any money, which brings you right back to... Is this mic on?? So I rushed to the office on August 3rd, which is fortunately the day I get SSD, and paid the damn $35, thinking I was finally caught up. Elaine the Wonder Agent nervously confirmed that she thought so too (I think I make her nervous because I virtually always bitch about the insurance rates when I go in.) But damn, if 4 days later I didn�t get another insurance bill for that damn pesky $70. amount. Fuck! That�s like $105 worth of car insurance in one month (and I�m sure if you own some luxury SUV, you�re saying gee, that�s cheap, but I only have a crotchety old �93 Ford with rusty mud flaps, so for me that�s expensive). So what has been causing that nasty extra $22/mo. for the last three months? Well, it was extremely complicated. It seems that ol� Witty Kitty did the unthinkable. She sold one car and bought another. And some poor shlub down at State Fram had to delete �92 Chevy Corsica and type in �93 Ford Tempo on some computer screen. But it was difficult. It took hours and hours and hours to do. Several supervisors had to be called in. A think tank had to be organized. I think tides were affected somewhere in the South Pacific. And they had to charge me nearly $58 for the change of policy. $58!!!!! For like 12 keystrokes on some computer screen in Ballston Spa, NY. So what set me off today? Oh, its coming. So I had been holding off paying the $70 until as far into the month as I could possibly go, because I�m getting down to nearly having nothing at this point. I went to the bank to make sure I had some money. A whopping $109. And I got out $60 and took $50 to the insurance office. I figured, well, I�ve been behind before. I�ll just pay the $50 instead of the $70 and then have a little over $50 left until September 3rd. That�s about 10 days away, and if I�m really careful and don�t drive too much, I can probably do that. So I put the $50 cash on Elaine�s desk and she looked at me and said, �I�m sorry, but we can only accept the full amount.� Well, hell�s bells, she�s been accepting partial payments for the last three months. What gives? So I lost it, and I lost it rather quickly. I told her I didn�t understand why she couldn�t accept cash. That was stupid. And what was this thing about a full amount. And how stupid their �extraneous� charges were. And how stupid this was and that was. And then I made the famous �I�m about to go postal� remark, because I truly was ready to scream. I�ve been doing that alot lately, like when I�m talking to my mom. I�m not necessarily screaming at her, but I�ll just let loose vocally and start yelling and swearing. Its so cool swearing in front of your mother. I feel like such an adult. I think �A� also got a recent sample of Witty Scream-Pie, right �A�? Wasn�t much fun, was it. Its not really fun for me either. I�ve always been very in control of my anger, but now it just sort of pours out of my earlobes like lava. Its very uncomfortable. And I don�t know if its good that I�m �doing� anger now, or rather I�d just like to restuff the whole damn thing. But the anger thing wasn�t quite over yet. And I did something that I think will probably make me never go in there again, if for no other reason than sheer embarrassment. After saying I was going to go postal, I said, �You want more money? You want more money???� and I took my wallet out and dumped its entire contents all over the woman�s desk. Pennies, nickels and dimes went spraying out everywhere. A five dollar bill landed near the edge. Coupons went flying everywhere, since I keep them in my wallet. I said, �You want some coupons for cat food??� That�s when the insurance agent�s co-worker came scurrying over. I guess I looked sufficiently dangerous. I then kept repeating, �I can�t believe you won�t take a cash�. And then the insurance agent started denying it. She said she didn�t say that she�d only accept the FULL payment (�bullshit�). She then graciously said she�d take whatever I had, and would just write a note to State Fram about it. Well, why didn�t you just do that in the first place, wingnut? Honestly. So did anger work in my favor? I�m still trying to think back to the few anger management classes I went to. Supposedly anger is suppose to be a positive thing, in that it lights a fire under people, to get things done in a quick and efficient manner. I guess the secret is, just don�t let the fire erupt into a 10 alarm blaze and burn down a mini-mall. Yup, that's the secret. Also make sure the insurance is paid, if you're planning on burning down the mini-mall. You wanna make sure Witty's extra $22 pays for something worthwhile.
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Lyrics by Lennon/McCartney. All angst copyright by awittykitty |
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