evil trolls, gah.

i just got off the phone with the credit card people again. seriously, they're unhelpful. i'm happy to pay them however much i can each month, i would gladly do it as an effort of good faith--but not only do credit card companies not understand a good-faith effort, they employ trolls to answer the phone. mean trolls who don't understand that i actually do care about paying off this stupid card, i just can't afford the minimum payment right now. so i've quit paying. from my conversations with the troll people, i have gathered that (somehow) it is better to pay nothing than to pay less than the minimum each month. this really makes no sense to me. i'm like, take my money! and they're all, not unless you can come up with x amount!

the first person i talked to was nice--cheery even--and she told me that in the current economy they're very interested in helping out customers by setting up a payment plan before they miss too many consecutive payments. so i was like, sweet! this sounds good. and then she transferred me to troll-man, who apparently didn't get that memo and was not at all interested in helping me with anything. i told him what was up, again, and he said to call back and set up a payment plan later when i have enough money to pay them. when i asked what would happen if i couldn't meet the minimum on the payment plan, he laughed and TOLD ME I WOULD BE IN TROUBLE. can you say that to an adult? is this in a script somewhere? i wonder if the sinister laugh part was also written into the script.

as an aside, my interview monday went very well and i'm hopeful that i'll get the job. i was told they have more interviews scheduled this week but will make a decision and call me by next week. i took it as a good sign that they scheduled my interview on the first day of interviews, and i'm choosing to ignore the part about more interviews. mere technicalities. they loved me, i'm pretty sure.

after today's phone call i really need to get this job because if i don't i'm afraid the mean credit card troll people will send in the mafia, or maybe tonya harding, to break my kneecaps with a crowbar. at least that's what i imagine YOU'LL BE IN TROUBLE translates to.

ode to despair.*

i wrote a long post about my dying grandmother but decided that several paragraphs about death? was way too depressing (so i'm opting for a couple of not-too-long paragraphs instead because that's clearly better). my original post was amusing in a very tragic sort of way, but still. it was hard to write and was making me sound and feel like a horrible person when i said things like this: SHE NEEDS TO JUST DIE ALREADY. see, that sounds awful now, too, but that doesn't make it any less true. sometimes sick people need to die because the alternative is much too painful. she's old and ill and is only getting worse but she's stubborn as hell. the doctors and my family have suggested this is the only reason she's still alive. in this case that's not a good thing because this crap is just dragging on and getting worse and oh my god i don't want to get old. when i tell my mom this she says, let this be a lesson. take care of yourself now so you don't have to go through this later. word.

my grandma, she refused to go to the doctor for years (she didn't want to know if anything was wrong) and then once she went to the doctor she refused to take her medication (she didn't think she needed meds) and on top of that she smoked for 50 years (and spent the last 10 of those years sneaking around smoking because she told my grandfather she had quit). see? kinda funny but tragic in the end! i mean, it's almost unforgivable to take an ailing old person and be like, you did this to yourself. that's not right. no one says that to her. this was all avoidable though. i love my grandma and she's had a good life--the first 80 years treated her well--but now the situation is reminiscent of this:



just sayin'.

so i have an interview on monday for a job that i have mixed feelings about. i'm confident i can get the job because i have more than adequate experience for it, but it's doing something i don't really like doing. it kind of sounds like i'm alluding to stripping or prostitution or something equally demeaning (but profitable!). but really this job--which is sort of demeaning only because i hate paper and inefficiency and this is a government job so there are excruciating amounts of both--involves lots of paper and moving it around and then spending time, in between dealing with the paper pushing, thinking about my life slipping away. i know this because i've done it before. it drove me to grad school so i wouldn't have to have jobs like this anymore, and grad school ended in divorce and you know what that means? JOBS LIKE THIS TEAR FAMILIES APART.

but the thing is that i can't really be irritated about having an interview for this particular job because i was the one who, um, applied for the job in the first place. i think at the time i was thinking, i'm qualified to do this! and not, i want to do this! a couple of weeks ago i changed the direction my job search was going and actually started applying for jobs i wanted to have. novel, that. something finally clicked and i realized i didn't have to have a job i disliked. well, except now i really do need a job and if i'm offered this one it would be rather stupid to pass it up. it's a permanent job with benefits and i can't argue with that. also, the salary is negotiable so if they offer me the job i'll ask for more money than they're offering. can't hurt.

and this because it sums up the above quite nicely:


*ETA: as in the website, not the feeling. i'm not that histrionic.