2012

My stress level is pretty much off the chart right now to begin with and will be for the next ten days or so.

What does not help is long, rambling 25-minute phone calls from my dad, strategically placed at the precise moment when I’m trying simultaneously to deal with work, a busted computer monitor, and the fact that apparently everyone who’s ever worked in mortgage lending at Bank of America is either an idiot or a flake who can’t return phone calls or email. Or both.

I liked my dad much better when he hated using the phone. And I liked Bank of America much better when…well…I never liked them, but at least I used to never have to interact with them either.

Yes, I realize this is a completely pointless rant, but I needed to yell about it somewhere before going to bed after not getting a damned thing done all night. It was a really bad day. I may need another Portlandia.

So I keep hearing these radio ads for some Walmart/T-Moblie phone plan. For $35 or something (I can’t be bothered to look it up) you get “unlimited talk, text, and web.” A few seconds later there is reference to “unlimited web for the first 250MB.”

Correct me if I’m wrong but doesn’t that constitute…well…a limit?

While working on the refi, I discovered that my credit report suggests that I maintain a current address in San Francisco. Of course, the address is Mark’s, although I’m not 100% certain how it became associated with my name. Actually, his last two addresses are associated with my name.

Anyway, it’s becoming a bit of a task to get them eliminated. Experian states that one of them  “was provided by a creditor or public record” and won’t even let me begin the online dispute process, which will necessitate a phone call on Monday. It’s just a little nagging annoyance and it will eventually get straightened out, hopefully without screwing up the mortgage paperwork. I can deal with it.

What’s really offensive, though, is the insinuation that I would ever live in San Francisco again. Blecch…

I was thinking earlier this morning about how I used to always feel younger than my years and how that’s no longer as true as it used to be. As you might guess, I was viewing this development rather negatively at the time. But now that I think about it, maybe it’s a healthy thing–a much needed reality check.

I’m forty-seven years old. That’s not ancient by any definition. It’s not like I’m ready for Medicare or dinner at the cafeteria at 4:45 (unless I’m with my dad) or Wheel of Fortune. Granted, I’m also not an annoying twenty-five-year-old hipster fuck but I think that’s something of a positive. And I wasn’t really an annoying twenty-five-year-old hipster fuck even when I was twenty-five, although I may have been closer than I care to admit.

I’ve obviously been subject to Peter Pan Syndrome in the past; I spent thirteen years in San Francisco, after all. And I’ve fetishized being a curmudgeonly old coot on occasion as well, which is easy to do in Winston-Salem where everyone is an old coot so there are lots of role models. Neither approach seems particularly satisfactory.

I think maybe I’ll just try being forty-seven for a while. It’s a good age, if not one that gets a lot of good press. I’ve reached a certain level of comfort with my surroundings but I’m not willing to settle for the status quo either. I’m past the whole “fashion victim” stage but haven’t reached the point where I no longer care about my appearance. I don’t have to jump on every trend but I also don’t feel that all technology and new ideas are inherently evil. I can’t drink a lot but I don’t want to either. Cute boys don’t leer at me very often but I also don’t care all that much anyway. So how bad can forty-seven really be?

At any rate, it’ll be over in six months when I hit forty-eight. I’ll reassess then.