Sh*tting away money, and my hatred for Budget Car Rental….
March 9, 2009
Filed under Damnit, I'm really tired.
Tags: Budget Car Rental Can Go To Hell, cats, money
We have 5 cats. That’s alot of cats… I know. I never meant to have 5 cats. It just kindof happened. People getting pregnant over and over and having a billion babies doesn’t “just happen”… but finding yourself with 5 cats does. (I’m so tired right now that I’m giggling for no reason, so just go with my nonsense).
With 5 cats comes many wonderful things… like when you wake up and all of them are sleeping all over you. It’s the things 5 year old girls dream of… a bed made of kittens. But then there are the ridiculous things… like the amount of shit that 5 cats can produce.
5 cats produce an overwhelming amount of shit. Seriously. And these aren’t big cats, and they don’t eat massive amounts… so I don’t know how this much shit is created. If it was something other than shit… like if they crapped out money, or apple turnovers- then it would actually be awe inspiring. But it’s not apple turnovers… it’s mountains of shit. So all awe is replaced with my gagging. (And please allow me to note that I’m the only one changing the litterboxes… my boys won’t go near it. Pure awesomeness.)
I’m obsessive about keeping their litterboxes under control because I REFUSE to have a house that “smells like cats”. My cats respect that, and have never strayed from their litterboxes when doing their business. And for that, I thank them.
I got a call from Brad tonight after he was leaving Cosco with the multiple 30 pound containers of litter that we have to get because of our speed-shitting cats, and the thought hit me…. Brad just spent almost $50 for gravel for our cats to shit on, and then we throw away. Our cats are literally wiping their asses with our money. And what do we do about it? We just go out and buy more litter, and let them keep on doing it. How did this happen? How is it that I spend more money in a month to buy rocks for my cats to take a dump on than I have spent on visits to the doctor for myself in 5 years? How did these guys get such priority? I’m a total sucker.
Speaking of suckers…. do not ever rent a car from Budget Car Rental. Seriously. Ever. If it comes down to a choice of walking 10 miles barefoot through streets of broken glass and lemon juice or renting a car from Budget… grab a shit-ton of bandaids and start hiking.
Here’s my story…. When I was visiting my parents for the holidays, the night after Christmas a tree fell on my rental car (I guess this was the baby Jesus’s way of telling me that he didn’t appreciate my making fun of him all year long. That loser needs to get a sense of humor). My car insurance said they’d pay all of it but $500, and my additional insurance through my credit card said they’d pay the rest. Awesome!!… right? Nope. The tale goes on….
It’s now March. I’ve gotten weekly emails from my credit card people saying they’ve been aggressively trying to get a hold of Budget to resolve this thing- but they haven’t heard a word from them. Well, on Friday I did. I got a letter in the mail saying that I owe them almost $2,500 for the car damage, and if I don’t pay them in full by Friday they’re going to send me to collections. No 30 day warning. No contacting me in advance. No response to my credit card company. They think they are just going to either charge my card, or take me to collections. They have messed with the wrong lady.
1. This is illegal. They have to have exhausted all efforts before taking it to the “collections” level…. AND they have to give 30 days for me to either contest it or come up with payment. That’s the law.
2. They state the car was totalled, and my car insurance paid for the totalled car. Now they’re trying to charge me for the time that the car wasn’t able to be used- even though they’re claiming it was totalled. You can’t claim “Loss of Valued Use” if you valued the car at being worth nothing. The Geico lady and I were laughing and openly mocking the idiocy of Budget with their obvious scam (BTW- I love Geico… they’ve been 100% on the ball with all of this).
3. After I “lawyered up” with the Budget lady, she refused to talk to me any more. I stated that if I was taken to collections on Friday, they would be hearing from my lawyers, and we would win. After that, she has refused to respond to me, Geico, or my credit card people. Which is keeping this from being resolved.
I have all my financial bases covered for all legitimate charges. Geico happily paid all the costs of the car damage, my credit card is happy to pay the additional insurance costs… but Budget wants more. And is illegally trying to get it. They’ve made me mad. Which means they’re fucked.
What Budget doesn’t realize is that I have a husband who doesn’t go on tour again until the summer- which means he has free time. Free time to repeatedly call them. And call them. And email them. And call them some more. And call their supervisors. And call their corporate offices. And email them some more…. ya get the idea? We’re really good at this kindof stuff. We’ll make it so that they actually pay US to leave them alone. And we’ll be laughing the whole time.
So that was my day today. Phone and email tag with Budget/Geico/American Express, and realizing that my cats are shitting away my hard earned money that Budget is trying to steal.
YAY FOR BEING A GROWN UP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Destructive kitten forces vs. Psychic Premonitions, and some icky dream imagery to boot….
October 25, 2008
Filed under Damnit, I'm really tired.
Tags: cats, dreams, nightmares, premonitions
I have lots of sick and disturbing dreams. Lots and lots of them. Usually I’ll wake up from them and have to laugh, because I’m not sure how my brain comes up with this stuff when it’s trying to rest. And other times I’ll wake up completely disturbed, and wondering if there is something truly wrong with me.
Last night I had a dream that our old and befuddled Oscar cat got out (all our cats are indoors cats). I looked out into the backyard (which wasn’t the backyard we have now, but a huge lawn surrounded by woods), and I saw a bunch of kids torturing Oscar. Pulling out his fur, poking his eyes… horrible stuff. But here’s the part of the dream that made me sick to my stomach…. I grabbed a huge hammer off the kitchen counter, ran out into the backyard screaming like a warrior and killed the children, then grabbed Oscar cat and ran with him back into the house. In my dream, I killed children with a hammer… and not in a cartoony way… but in a really bad way. I didn’t like this dream. I woke up feeling like something in my brain had totally crossed a line, and it really needs to apologize.
So this afternoon, I went into the kitchen to make Sully lunch. We have big windows and a sliding glass door that lead into our backyard. I glance into the backyard- and there are all the cats…. minus Oscar. I look at the sliding screen door, and it was off it’s sliding track and lodged open. I run into the backyard and start swooping up cats. One after another until they’re all safely back inside… but still no Oscar. Sully starts searching the house while I search the backyard for him. Nowhere to be found. Oscar is really old, totally senile (he gets disorientated and confused easily), and has really bad joints so he can’t jump or run anymore. He’s the one that CANNOT get out because he wouldn’t be able to defend himself.
And then I remember my dream. And I hear the sounds of the neighborhood kids playing in the culdesac, and I get a little freaked out. Sully and I are running up and down the street calling for him, I’m repeating over and over in my head “no matter what, don’t get a hammer”. We eventually find him down the street in a neighbors yard unharmed. But I found the lost-cat-dream and the lost-cat-a-few-hours-later interesting, and I was glad that horrid neighborhood children being smashed into jelly wasn’t a part of the dream that was played out.
After we got all the guys back inside, we found out how the back door was opened. It was Daisy. Our 4 pound tiny cat was repeatedly taking a running start and jumping as hard as she could onto the back screendoor until it got knocked off it’s track. She’s crazy smart. I’ll come home to find all my drawers opened and emptied onto the floor, she can open doors and scale anything. We already had to replace one screen door because she figured out how to pull the screen part of it out and climb through the opening it made. She’s a crafty little asshole. And today she organized a prison break.
But senile old Oscar is back at home, safe and sound…. and no children were killed in the process.
And Daisy is under strict supervision.
Old man Oscar and his best friend Sluggo during daily cuddle time
Daisy, the destroyer of everything
My cat had better get herself a goddamn dayjob….
April 1, 2008
Filed under Damnit, I'm really tired.
Tags: cats, dorkies, kittens, poverty, resentment towards kittens, vet
Last night, my kitten Daisy had to be rushed to the emergency vet hospital.
A few days ago, her and our fat Lila cat duked it out (the battle being instigated by Daisy- who weighs barely 5 pounds against Lila who weighs about 11 pounds), and Daisy’s inside eyelid got torn by Lila’s massive talons. Within a few days, even with medicine from the vet, it got so infected that Daisy started to “shut down”. Stopped eating and drinking, could barely move, her eye swelled up like crazy, matted fur… the whole bit. It was when she started trying to do the “crawl away to die” thing that I said “I don’t care how much it costs, she’s going to the emergency room”. I raised this little kitten from when she was so tiny her eyes weren’t even open… so my maternal defenses kicked in and took over. This was Daisy at about 7 weeks old when she would sit on my head for hours every day while I worked……
After 5 hours of pacing the vet’s waiting room, at about 3:30am I was handed a bill for $450.00. Yes… that’s right. Four hundred and fifty fucking dollars. When I boldly stated “I don’t care how much it costs”…. I didn’t really mean for the fates to take that to heart and rape my wallet for their own entertainment. Fuck you, fates.
There was a really nice guy in the waiting room with me the whole time who was there because his dog had gone into labor and there were complications. The mama dog was a Yorkie, and the papa dog was a Dachshund (weiner dog)… so he was waiting for her to give birth to a litter of Dorkies. Yes, that’s what they’re called. Dorkies. And she was popping out 5 of those little Dorkies… so he had been there for a VERY long time. Thank you, kind sir, for keeping me entertained while my stupid kitten was cleaning out my bank account.
To sum it up: I am very tired. I am now broke. Daisy is an asshole. Lila is now going to get her claws trimmed every 10 minutes. And Dorkies rule.
