What did you to today?
I FOREVER DESTROYED MY CREDIT RATING AND BURNT DOWN THE FAMILY COTTAGE.
This is what I was thinking to myself as I sat hunched in the back of a cab driving home from my parent's house. I spent the weekend at the cottage with my parents, Bean, Malcolm and Jeremy.
I brought up a bunch of unopened mail that I had been ignoring, figuring I would go through it at some point when we were all just sitting around.
Not suprisingly, I didn't even remember that I had it until I was waiting in the front hall of my parents house for my cab to show up. I had three pieces of mail. The second piece informed me that I had not paid my complete Rogers bill because my last roomate had made some long distance calls I didn't know about. I was supposed to pay it by June 1. It's June fucking eighth.
I remember an incident early in law school where my dad found out that I had paid a few bills late (by days). He explained very clearly to me how, if I ever paid a bill late again, my credit rating would be "shot to shit". That was, if it wasn't already. And here I fucking go, paying another bill late.
I'll never own a car or any sort of home now.
I tried to digest all of this as quickly as I could, and I hugged my parents goodbye. As I turned to leave, my dad asked me, "did you remember to turn off all the fuses at the cottage?"
HOLY FUCK.
I specifically asked my mom to get him to turn off everything at the cottage because I hate doing it - I'm never sure that I have done it properly because there are different instructions every time, and then I worry that I have burnt the cottage down the entire drive home. I had a great drive home today because my mom said she would turn the stuff off. So how was this happening to me? I had a plan to avoid this.
No, apparently for some reason they decided to tell either Malcolm or Jeremy to tell me to do it. Who knows if those guys even knew what my parents were talking about. They probably thought my parents were asking them to put away all the bread that was up there (which we did - we froze it).
I escaped to the cab, where I sat in the back contemplating my future miserable experience as a creditless arsonist. It took me all the way to Parkdale before I started thinking logically about how I could possibly have burnt down the cottage by leaving a few fuses on. I was putting my stuff away when my dad called me to let me know that I shouldn't worry about the cottage, and that after he calmed down he remembered that it was just going to cost us another $1.10 to have the stupid fuses on all week.
Sweet. So now I am just creditless. I feel like I can vaguely think of a few old movie stars who had bad credit. Maybe, I think, in time it will become a charming and quirky thing about me that people mention when discussing me; "oh, Kate? That super fun girl with the shitty credit rating?" I figure I can walk that off. I'm almost 27 and I live in undergrad-quality housing. When was I ever going to buy a house?
Later, after I had accepted my fate as a charming-but-creditless-apartment-dweller and taken a shower, I was talking with Liz and I mentioned how things were going to be with me. She explained some things to me and I felt even better.