The Last Two Weeks

Super cute text boxes on my new phone

    I wasn’t sure what I wanted to write about, because I have a few things.  I think I’ll just write about all of them.
    First, I got a new phone (I’m going chronologically here).  I got it about two weeks ago.  It’s a Galaxy S4, and so far I like it.  Everything is relatively easy to figure out, and the screen is nice.  The graphics are nice.  Taking pictures is nice.
    I got it because I went to the mall with my dad to look at phones for him, my mom, and my brother.  And I ended up with a phone.  Anyway.  My Dad wanted to look at the Windows phone AT&T has.  He did, it’s nice.  So far only AT&T has it, and my mom hates AT&T.  So he asked the guy questions when we were buying my phone (because it’s never as quick as you think it’s going to be).  I’m now officially on the JUMP “plan” T Mobile has, which means that (with some restrictions, of course), I can get a new phone every 6 months without having to pay for the rest of my phone (ie, $240 phone = $10/month for 24 months.  Cancel after 6 months, do not need to pay $180).  That’s nice, because being stuck with a phone for 2 years usually ends up sucking.  You don’t do it, and you suck it up and pay a bunch of money (or, like me, have phones that break through no fault of your own and thus do not cost money to have replaced).  Now, when a phone starts to shit the bed, if I still like it I can get it replaced, I suppose, but I could go find something I potentially like better.  It’s pretty nice.
    So nice, in fact, that last weekend, my whole family went to the T Mobile store and got new phones.  That’s right, I finally won them over after all these years of telling them Verizon sucks.  I mean, every carrier has problems, but my ex boyfriend was always complaining about Verizon, and I honestly haven’t heard really anyone complain about T Mobile.  I have service gaps where it appears almost everyone else has service gaps, and as a whole they just seem like a less ghastly company.  And apparently JUMP insurance covers phone theft.  So after a few hours of my Saturday, my mom and brother also have Galaxy S4s (my mom and I have white, my brother has black), and my dad has a black Galaxy Note 3.
    This is kind of a nightmare.  Up till now, they all only had flip phones.  Now, they can text, and they need to program things and use a touch screen.  And who knows how to do all this already?  Me.  I’m so sick of toggling with Galaxy settings.  Good thing mine was all set first, or I’d be suffering through life with a phone not set the way I like it.  Which leads me to: the text message settings are super cute.  As you can see from the picture.  But it’s also a nightmare because now my mom is texting me.  It hasn’t actually been too bad yet, but I have a gut feeling it’ll get scary at some point.
    In other news, I worked over vacation, which meant all three of the programs in my town were at the same school.  I had that kid that freaked out last time, and he freaked out again.  Every. Single.  Day.  Well, maybe not, because we were closed on Monday and I was sick on Tuesday.  But all three days I was there he did.  The nonverbal kid from my program also bit the director of another program, which is unheard of from him.  This week, one of the most well-behaved kids in our whole program freaked out and had to go home on Wednesday.  Then yesterday, the nonverbal kid freaked out really bad, and my director and I spent a good forty five minutes restraining him, during which time he bit both of us.  Not hard, but still scary.  He was asked not to come to the program today.  My director is meeting with his mom to talk about things and set up an arrival routine that more closely mirrors his arrival routine at school, to see if that helps.  I still like my job, but this is making me afraid to have children.  What if one of them is nonverbal and starts biting people out of the blue?  What if one of them is a ticking time bomb?
    On a positive note, I ordered these hawt pumps from Amazon and they came yesterday.  They’re ivory with turqouise heels and they have a peacock feather design on them.  I don’t know when yet, but I know I’m wearing them to a school thing this summer.  If the mountain won’t come to Mohammad, Mohammad is going to give the mountain blue balls and make it rue the day it turned him down.

hawt

Happy Singles Awareness Day!

    I’ve only started thinking about Valentine’s Day that way recently.  I’m actually a bit sad because I haven’t really been single since I was fourteen years old.  That’s eleven years ago.  Yeesh.
    I’m not that upset, but I am a little bummed.  Valentine’s Day has never been super important to me, so I’m not sure why I feel like it is now.  I honestly don’t remember what I did with some of my boyfriends for Valentine’s Day, but a memorable one was the year I was sixteen, my boyfriend got Chinese food and a blanket and we had a sick picnic inside and watched The Notebook.  I know, right?  A boy suggested we watch a romantic comedy, and followed through with it.  It’s nice when boys do things you know they don’t want to do because they know you want to do it.
    Which brings me to The Boy.  I suppose he’s technically a man, because he’s thirty, but it feels weird to say that.  I’m interested in a man?  I’m usually a bit of a cougar.  Out of the five serious boyfriends I’ve had, three of them were younger than me, and the other two were less than seven months older than me.
    So there’s the boy.  I don’t want to say his name, so I’ll call him...Eddie.  That sounds good.  Everyone can see me dating someone named Eddie, right?  Eddie and Eileen.  Here we go.
    So I’ve known Eddie a little over a year.  He’s had a girlfriend for three?  four?  years.  I’m not completely sure.  But the whole time I’ve known him, she’s been there.  I’ve never met her, despite the numerous times she could have been at things we were both at, school events and otherwise.  He hardly ever mentions her, and it was like pulling teeth to get him to tell me her name.  So I know her name, her age, her job, and that she likes to read.  And she doesn’t do anything with him in public, apparently.  I’m pretty sure he knows more about my ex than I know about her.
    Every so often, he’ll text me, usually about school stuff.  Nothing he says is ever crossing any sort of line, and maybe I’m just jealous and untrusting, but if I found out my boyfriend was texting someone this much (it equals out to about one half hourish conversation a week), I’d be annoyed.  I’d think something was up.
    He hates things/people in general the same amount I do.  Almost every damn thing we hate at the same level.  And he likes to read, and he writes.
    He mentioned over the summer that he likes to “have someone on the horizon” before he breaks up with his current girlfriend, and I had given him a note, because I’m super mature, saying he could have someone on the horizon if he wanted to.  He said nothing about it, but continued on like nothing happened, which is better than not talking to me ever again.
    I’m usually not good at this type of thing, but I really don’t think I’m misreading signals here, and everyone I’ve talked to (which is probably the entire audience of this blog), thinks there’s nothing mixed about his signals.
    He read four chapters of my novel to help me figure out what to submit for workshop this past residency.  And this was a workshop he wasn’t in, so it’s not even like he was getting some reading done ahead of time or anything.  He also did it about .5 seconds after I emailed them to him.
    He doesn’t like to touch people, but he willingly hugs me.
    When we have to get up in front of people and do things, it’s understood that we will high five each other when we finish.
    He recommended a book to me on Good Reads.
    When I asked him for his number, he said no you give me yours, and texted me about a minute after I emailed him.
    At a thing we both went to, he only went to presentations I went to, with the exception of the first one, where he was waiting for me when I got out.  He also went on a bad weather day because I went.
    He eats lunch/dinner in the gross school cafeteria because I ask him to.
    When I was nervous about a public thing I had to do, he sat with me because he didn’t want me to be alone.
    He has hung out with me alone a total of four times.  As in, so alone that absolutely no one but the two of us can verify what did or didn’t happen.  And nothing did, of course, but I wouldn’t believe that if I was his girlfriend.
    He’s made concerted efforts to connect to my favorite person at school, even though their volume is a bit high for him.
    He bought me a beer.  Haha this one probably means nothing, but after four years of everything split down the middle exactly and when it wasn’t split down the middle, it benefitted him and not me, not having to pay someone back for a beer is really nice.
    He told me he’ll get me a good deal if I decide to get a new laptop.  Which he’s offered to do for other people, but I’m counting this anyway.  I sent him a picture of this cool one I want, saying I wanted it, and he checked to see if his work had it in stock.  I was honestly just fangirling about it because the screen flips.
    He has offered to eat iffy food for me if we’re at food places together, and he actually did it in one instance.  When I tried to half-hug him (you know, when you put your arm around someone and put your head on their shoulder?) he held his hands up and backed up.  “No, this is seriously too raw for you.”  And later that night he offered to eat the tomato off my burger.  It ended up not having one, but still.
    That same night he let me have a sip of my drink.  He was also going to share a mushroom with me, until we realized there were enough for us not to have to split them.  Which reminds me, he also let me eat a mushroom off his plate at a different time.
    If I text him/tell him in person that I hurt myself, he’s like, “Are you ok???” and only after I say yes does he make a joke about my clumsiness.  Which is a real thing, and an embarrassing yet admittedly humorous thing.
    There have been a number of times when we’ve been sitting together, and our legs or our arms touch, and he doesn’t move.  He just sits there, large portions of our bodies touching.
    And yet when I told him recently how I feel, just to make sure that I was as obvious as I could be, he rejected me.  He said, “You want me to break up with my girlfriend?”  And in a decidedly skeevy move I said, “Not necessarily?”  This is not what I really meant, and certainly not what I want.  But he insisted that it was what I meant, and he said he would not break up with her.  Interesting wording.  He never actually said that he didn’t like me.  At first I was sad about it, but then I decided that all my friends were right, and he did like me, he was just stuck.  So, since I’m sadistic, I decided to make life difficult for him.  I think I did. :)
    My favorite moment with him is one that I already mentioned, sort of.  It’s the hugging thing.  When I went to drop him off (one of the alone times), I hugged him before he got out of the car.  I started to let go of the hug when I thought it was over, but he tightened his grip.  It was a pretty tight grip before that.  Also, another time, when we both got out of the car to hug, he hugged me so hard he made a noise.  I love those long, strong, grunty hugs you get when you’re merely trying to drop someone off at the T.
    So what’s my point with all this?  I’m bummed that I’m single for Valentine’s Day, even though it’s kind of a lame holiday.  I’m also upset that he’s still with his girlfriend.  And I’m upset that these things upset me.  Every time I think I’ve managed to curb my feelings for him, he’ll text me, and my entire body will feel like your foot does when it falls really asleep.  A tingling that is muffled but at the same time very painful.  I want this to be a thing, and I’m a bit aggravated that I seem incapable of having a normal relationship.  Why can’t I like someone who is in a position to act on their feelings for me?  Ugh, whatever.

Fuck today

    And the horse it rode in on.  Fuck today and fuck you, internet.  PayPal in particular.
    Tuesday morning, I was minding my own business, watching some Bad Ink on my DVR, when I notice I have two emails.  One is from PayPal, thanking me for my J. Crew order made through them.  Um, what?  The next email is from J. Crew, thanking me for my order...I made no such order.  I go to the real computer, where I prefer to do my in-depth emailing, and I see that a fucking $500 e-gift card was purchased at J. Crew on my PayPal account.  What the fucking fuck?  (Side note, my parents say that someday this will be the quote I am remembered by.)  At this point, my face is burning, and my heart is pounding in my ears.  There’s no music, but I wouldn’t be able to hear it anyway.  I go to PayPal, and see that there is an easy way to file a claim to dispute a charge.  I do this.  They say it will take 10 days, and I calm down a little, knowing I’ve done what I can.  I also email my bank, asking them to please not let the charge go through, as it is fraudulent.  I think maybe this will be the end of it.  After all, in no universe have I had $500 in my account ever.  Only in my savings account after taxes, and only for about half an hour in late December/early January when I gave my dad money I owed him.  I figure the charge will bounce due to insufficient funds, PayPal will fix it, end of story.
    I discover an email from PayPal alerting me to suspicious activity on my account.  It prompts me to change my password and security questions if this is indeed activity to be suspicious of.  I do so.  I check my account several times Tuesday, and once last night.  (Yesterday was a snow day in my town, so I spent a lot of the morning reading and waiting to be called in to work, then the afternoon working.  My job is normally a 2-6 gig, but on snow days it’s 7:30-6.  I was lucky enough to just get the regular 2-6, but you never know.)  All is well.  My account is not negative.
    I check my account this morning.  The fucking charge went through, and not only did it go through, but the customer service person who responded to my message said that unfortunately, they can only stop charges where the account holder has given three days prior warning, and it appears I have only given two.  I notified you about five minutes after I knew myself, you fucker.  I call customer service, and they tell me I can fill out an affidavit, but it takes as long as PayPal takes, and it’ll be quicker if I go to a branch and do it rather than do it over the phone.
    Fuck.  I now have no choice but to call in reinforcements, aka real adults who will know what to do.  I go to the living room and get my mom.  I explain it all to her, and she tells me to print out everything I can, make a list of what happened and what I did, and she’ll go to the bank to fill out the affidavit with me.  I’m freaking out.  The guy on the phone told me there’s no way to stop the overage charges.  I only asked because I don’t get paid for another week.  Even then, I don’t think I would get the $431 my account is now negative, and that’s before any overdraft fees.  I’m envisioning an ever growing gulf between the money needed to be in the black and the money I get in my paycheck.
    The lady at the bank was fabulous.  She had me fill out the paperwork and emailed the person in charge of reversing unauthorized charges.  She gave me her card, and told me to call after 11 tomorrow (when she gets in), and she’ll do what she can to reverse the two fees I’ll get, and she says even if she can’t do it tomorrow, they’ll be reversed eventually.  I go home, and feel funny until I go to work, but I now have around $5 in my account, and I should have even more tomorrow.
    I know I’m relatively lucky, but when I told my mom, I felt so bad.  I felt like I had done something wrong (which I guess I sort of had, linking PayPal to my debit card instead of credit card), but I mean I felt like I was confessing to something horrible.  I also felt like I’d never have money again, due to the constant overdraft fees, or else that I’d have to borrow what felt to me like an atrocious amount of money from my parents until this whole thing got cleared up.  My body got so worked up that it thought it was supposed to be doing lady things that it is not supposed to do yet, so that just added to the joy of the day.  I considered calling out of work, because I legit felt awful, both mentally and physically, but I decided that all I’d do here was sit and wallow and not even get any schoolwork done, so I might as well do something I’m getting paid to do.
    The moral of the story is: hackers/identity thieves suck.  I’m going to be ok, and once the paperwork all goes through and everything is sorted out, I’m going to link PayPal to my credit card, and hopefully everything will be swell from here on out.  But fuck the people who ruin people’s days, and sometimes people’s weeks or months, all because they’d rather be sneaky than get their money from a legit channel.  I now understand a fraction of what actual identity theft victims feel, and it’s horrible.