fredlet

“It’s so easy to give into paranoia, but think twice before dashing off that
frantic email or sending that text message.”[Leo 4/19/06]

Oh, yesterday was icky.
Really tremendously bad.
I had to work really, really hard not to just spew random vitriol at everyone. I just about lost my tiny little mind.
I think the term is ‘conniption’.
The situation with the substitute mailman sending back ALL my mail with ‘recipient has moved’ finally made me insane. Every time my regular guy goes on vacation or has a day off, I just don’t get any letters. This last time, he went away for two weeks. You can imagine how great that was.
I’ve spent hours and hours on the phone with various agencies, bill collectors, etc. convincing them that 1. I haven’t moved, 2. I am not avoiding their letters (and when they get them back in the mail they tend to get irritated, too) and 3. No really, please send important things to another address or use ANYONE but the USPS.
And the kicker is that I have ABSOLUTELY no recourse.
That faux government agency will kick my ass til it bleeds if I tamper with the mail, but they feel free to destroy my credit because they are too stupid to figure out where my mailbox is (on a building that has been in place since the 1920’s…its not like this is a new situation. I’m not sneaking up on them or anything.)
Jeebus.
So, with that bit of background, I went to REI to get a mistake corrected. I wasn’t so cranky about that, but I did have to pay $3 in bridge fare to get back to this particular store. So I took the opportunity to bring a check to pay for another purchase so that I would get my full member dividend (they take 2% if you use a credit card. Its reasonable, so I just write a check whenever I buy their stuff that I can get a dividend back on…) However, their system refused my check.
If I wanted my stuff, and I did, I had to use a credit card.
So I got all cranky and called my bank to see why they refused my check when I KNOW I had plenty o’ dough in there. They didn’t even see an attempt to run the check through. So they assured me I was a good person and they loved me and said go badger the store.
So I did (all of this from the car as I was driving back to work-my lunch hour wasted. I’m your worst nightmare at this point: a (allegedly) PMS’ing angry, hungry fredlet on her treo (with headset) in a black SUV. It wasn’t pretty. ) and they said that it was probably the check company and tried to give me the phone number.
This is when I really lost my shit.
I told her that I couldn’t take the number because I was driving and that, really, it was too much work to try to give them my money, so goodbye.
About 10 minutes later (and many many bad words in various languages) I called REI’s home office and talked them through my frustration and the reason I used a check in the first place. (“Oh yes, very good idea”, she sad ” You get the full %10 back that way”)
Point to note: Even though I am cranky on the phone, I really do try to make the point more than a few times that “I know it isn’t you doing it, but I’m really upset”. Having done tech support before, I know that its crappy to get an irate person on the phone who just wants to blame it all on you like it was personal or something.
So, after the tenth time of reiterating that everyone in the store was nice, that I was having a crap day and that I wasted $3 (small potatoes in the grand scheme, but merely the straw that broke that poor camel) that I was losing it.
The people promised to call the store and figure it out.
The store manager called back and said all very reasonable things and was nice to me, which makes me love REI again (it would be like me not loving Target…just wrong.)
Unfortunately, this left the whole ’substitute mailman screwing me over’ business to deal with.
Impotent rage is not fun and not good for my blood pressure. I could feel my eyeballs trying to pop out.
This is not news, but I have a terrible temper. Granted, its a bit more controllable as I get older, but when it finally gets to the boiling point, I am a scary-ass harpy.
Yesterday was it.
Happily my regular mailman was home (and it looks like there was a week’s worth of mail on the step from when the other lazy sod didn’t bother to deliver it), but I was able to talk to him and see what I could do to fix this.
Arg.

And all this time I meant to tell Eden that she looks like one of my friends… so, email me if you have a chance girly.

I’m not so scary today. Just tired from the effort of conniptivity

One last thing, Kramer sent me a picture yesterday morning before any of this shite went down: a picture of chocolate chip cookie dough.
He is *so*good..