Heath Ledger You Are Not, So Start Reading Labels

I made a horrible mistake last night, one that I won't repeat again. I've been fighting a cold (again) and last night I started my coughing phase. Dry, hacking, painful. I decided it was time to break out that prescription cough syrup that cost me $50. Yes, that's the copay. I was in shock when they told me the price but ended up getting it anyway.

So here I am. I take 2 tablespoons. I meant to take like 1 and a half but the syrup is thick and goopy, unlike any syrup I've ever taken and I can't get most of it back in the bottle so I take 2 tablespoons.

I spend the whole night in some weird trance. My mind won't stop racing. I can't stop the feeling that I'm half awake, half asleep. I've never done acid but if I had to guess what a trip (not a good one) feels like then maybe this would be it. Basically my cough is halted but I spend the night feeling like I'm on my way to meet my Maker from cough syrup poisoning. Is there such a thing?

I keep thinking that maybe by the time I have to wake up for work it will have worn off. So eventually my alarm goes off, my head is throbbing and floating at the same time, my neck and shoulders are killing me. I stumble to the bathroom where I can barely stand up straight. I play with my eyes and realize that my pupils aren't reacting to the light at all. I'm a total drugged mess and I'm not loving the feeling. Maybe a shower will do the trick. I get in the water and the next thing I know I'm sliding down the tiled wall and balling into myself on the tub floor. I feel like I'm seconds away from hurling.

I can barely stand enough to turn the water off and step out soaking wet. I only make it back to my bed by dragging my body along the long hall wall to my room. I crawl into bed, still dripping, breathing heavy and FREAKED. Eventually I muster enough sanity to call my boss and tell her I won't be making it in. There's just no way.

Mark swears that when I fall back asleep I stopped breathing for a second and he shakes me awake. Upon review of the bottle the amount to be taken is 1 teaspoon, every 12 hours. So 2 tablespoons at one time...not wise. I don't know what was happening when I did it but I clearly wasn't paying attention.

It's now 1:30 in the afternoon and I'm still in a pretty good haze. That was horrible.

This Weekend

In my attempt to get out of the house I went out with my parents. They were making a trek to a Wal-Mart in New Jersey where my dad can get cheaper prescriptions. With the cost of gas and tolls over the George Washington Bridge I'm not sure getting his meds in Jersey is really the smart economical choice but my parents use the opportunity to do something other than sit on the couch, buy cheap stuff, and of course eat at some restaurant they enjoy but can only get on the other side of the Hudson.

So here we are, sister in tow, eating at Fuddruckers. A family tradition though I've moved from burgers to chicken in a lame attempt to make "the smart choice". We eat, we schmooze, we all climb into the car to head to Wal-Mart. Somewhere on Route 17 South a massive bang occurs and the very noisy Geo Prism turns into the insanely loud Geo Prism that is dragging something. We pull into a Holiday Inn parking lot. Now everyone goes quiet because this of course is not what we want to occur and I'm thinking: Great. My dad is an awesome help when you need him but he's really not good in pressure situations. He gets too hot-headed and can't think and yells and screams at everyone.

My dad and I (because my mom and sister are princesses) get out of the car and onto our knees and some cylindrical part with a pipe leading all the way to the muffler is hanging onto the ground. I'm all about going to find some duct tape and wiggling under the car and taping that sucker up and just heading home. But it's not to occur. The car is insanely low to the ground and even if I could drop the 8 pounds that I'd love to be rid of I still wouldn't fit under this thing.

We call AAA. Of course they are "sooooo helpful". First they can't help us because we're in New Jersey and we can't tell them what county we're in to get transferred to a New Jersey operator. Then we find out what county we're in (I guessed correctly but we double check with a guy in the parking lot) and they can't help us yet because our membership is expired. Then we begin to renew it and the cell phone blanks out and my dad gets all pissed and curses and swears his phone just died.

Then we call back and go through the whole county transferring thing again and we're about to renew and the phone blanks out and my dad curses and screams and throws his phone onto the floor, all the while the call is still going on and the woman is like "Uh...Hello...are you there?"
So my dad gets fired from talking on the phone and my mom takes over.
You get the drift.

After three cell phones, a credit card charge, a call to the Aunt who lives in Jersey, a discussion with the friendly (no sarcasm, they were very nice) Holiday Inn front desk, a crack-head, insanely unhelpful tow truck driver, a lot of petty bickering between me and my mom, a couple of "oh my God he's so freaking cute" about my cousin Tony's adorable 2 year-old, we finally end up in front of our apartment building.

Big thanks to my cousin Tony, his adorable wife Yvette, and their son who really is the cutest thing ever. He didn't do any of the driving but he did provide some cute little 2 year-old babble.

Sunday morning I spent with my dad on the couch waiting for my mom's macaroni and cheese to finish baking. We ended up watching a Millionaire Matchmaker marathon on Bravo which was fun because my dad totally got into it. (He was a HUGE fan of that old show on UPN back in the day, Blind Date. A couple would go on a ridiculous date and bubbles of trivial information about them would pop up on the screen. Very VH1 pop-up video-esque.)

After stuffing my face I had to get out of the house but didn't want to set foot on the A train so I walked over to the Boogie-Down Bronx and hit up Marshall's. I bought jeans I'll probably return, an ankle-length dress only appropriate for the hot summer days but I also bought this AMAZING cocktail dress. It fit me perfectly (which just doesn't happen to me and my hips and tummy) and two people were like "Oh I love that dress! and it was the only one so I had to get it. Sadly, I have abso-freaking-lutely nothing to wear it too. At all. So sad.

I'm Not That Into It

I'm really not interested in seeing this movie. I may be female but I'm not easily convinced to see a chick-flick. And I draw the line on how much chick-lit I read. But another blog I read sent me to this video. I have to say while sometimes it may be a little too long it definitely made me smile. It also awakens the senses to how chick flicks really are that predictable.

The End of a Week

Well, it's a Sunday. And I'm suffering from a serious case of cabin fever. It's totally self-imposed as I lack any motivation to get dressed and do something with myself. Which is quite sad because I've been lucky enough to have the whole past week off. I did manage to go socialize with some friendly MoMA peeps last Monday and then spent lots o' time with Mark on his days off. That was nice. But otherwise I find myself scared to go out. Because when I do I am tempted to spend lots of money. Even though my idea of lots of money isn't probably as large as others. And I don't have to pay rent or anything. But I've already went there.

I did manage to finish reading the behemoth book The Story of Edgar Sawtelle (see Past Reads: 2009 list). It was my major goal for my week off. It was really good. Surprisingly it had a 'mystical' aspect to it. And it was way sadder than I thought it would be. Though I must admit it did start with a melancholy feel to it. I totally recommend it to you out there who enjoy curling up with books.

I thought about applying to other jobs out there but I feel the strong need to wait until after my San Diego trip in April. I mean what if BY SOME FREAKING MIRACLE a job called me in for an interview? I don't want to get so close only to be denied because I'm taking a week away in California. That would suck. But at the same time I'm fully aware that the chances of me being called in for an interview are minute. Tiny. Teeny. But I can dream about getting a new job, right? And then cry. It makes me sad because I know it will never happen. (Monkey? Heist? Anyone?)

Thanks Mr. Letterman!

I know we've moved on to what we hope is bigger and better things but isn't it fun to look back?

Guess Where I Live

Yeah...I've been meaning to talk about that.

After scrambling and dreaming and organizing and filling out forms we were totally rejected. And it hurt. But let me go back a few months when this nightmare started to peek out and tease me and I thought that I had whipped it into its place.
A number of months ago I started to get harassed by Mark to check my credit and get a credit card. If we were going to dip into the world of real estate, whether it be as renters or owners we knew that I was going to have to start working at building credit as I had never had a credit card.
So I went to get my free credit reports and was denied. But I had always been denied. For some reason they could never bring up a report on me and while this should have been a warning sign and something to worry about I just decided that I would continue to live without credit.

So then I just skipped the whole credit report thing and just applied for credit cards marketed towards people with little to no credit history. And I was denied! Then I started to get panicky.
By some miracle out of the three credit bureaus I was able to get one random report. And while you could see all the credit cards that I had applied to on that single report you could also see my name with my father's credit history. My name with my father's birthday. My name kinda like my name but spelled slightly wrong. A mix of my name and my father's. OH JOY!

For those of you who are unaware, I'm Jamie S. M_____. My father is Jaime M_____. I always use my middle name or initial because this name confusion has always been a problem. Especially since there is more than one way to spell Jamie and people almost always spell my name like my father's. He gets mail to Jaime S. M_____. He always gives it to me which annoys my because I don't get junk mail from AARP.

So here it is: My credit history is terribly mixed up with my dad's. I'd like to think that it dates back to my freshman year of college when my father took out a small loan to cover some of my tuition. And then in AmeriCorps I filed for a deferment of payment while in service. Then I came back and I paid it. And the name game probably was created. So anyway, I filed all the paperwork for it to be cleared up, fixed. I updated my birthday, had them correct name spellings. But I only did this through one credit bureau.

Then we applied for the apartment. I remember the night after we turned in the paperwork. Mark and I snuggled up in bed. I whispered "I'm scared we won't get it." He replied "There's no reason we would not get it." Deep sigh.

So anyway as you read in my last post they have tons of personal information and we get denied because when they check out my information they see that someone with the name Jaime M_____ has been in Housing Court. Which means something was up some time ago and this tenant and that landlord had a falling out. What pisses me off about this is that when I was filling out the application I was nervous to put my current address down because I knew that my dad's record with his landlord was not spotless. But I was told by the realtor "Don't worry. Just say it's your parent's residence." Well it didn't matter. They saw a similar name with the same address and they said no thanks. Even though we had my father's landlord write a letter that it wasn't me. That I hadn't been involved in any way.

At first the frustrating part was that I was told this information came up when they typed up my social security number. Great! Even more SSN drama that had tons of nightmarish loopholes to discover. But when I recently met with the realtor to get our application deposit back he told me that he thinks it comes up with my address search. Which means I'm getting mixed information.

However I was lucky enough to get a print out of the damning report and on that report the name on the court record is clearly not mine. Which leads me to believe it is the address that brings up that information and not my SSN. I hope. The problem is we will never know because when we decide to dip into the world of renting again I don't think we're even going to bother with putting my name on the lease. Because what if it is my SSN that brings it up? We could put my name and just list us at a different address but that doesn't guarantee this court thing won't show up, if in fact it's my SSN and not the address that causes the problem. Ya follow?

So yeah, major sucks balls.
I still have dreams of having my own place. I still walk the streets looking at windows that seem empty and available. I avoid walking down a whole street in my 'hood because I don't want to walk by the apartment that should be my new home. Bitter? Totally. Absolutely.

For Our Own Little Place

I'm tired. Yay three-day weekend!
Last week I began to search for apartments. It happened really fast that I haven't had much time to process everything. I had found a nice looking place on the Citi-Habitats website and contacted the agent listed with it. He emailed me back right away and said "Let's meet up Saturday" and I got excited. Nice price. Right down the street from where I am now. Lots of sunlight. He never called me again. I had Mark call him. No dice. Eventually, when the guy just disappeared and the apartment was rented away, Mark decided to write a letter of complaint to the agency and an agent called us to apologize and told us 'not to give up on Citi-Habitats'.

Then I registered online with a really small and local agency here in Inwood. Immediately she called me and next thing I know I was looking at 5 apartments one evening after work with my dad. My head was spinning. I liked the last apartment we had looked at. It was right next door to the 'lost Citi' apartment. It had an elevator. But a tiny kitchen. It was in great shape so the rent was higher than I had set out for. I went home, my head spinning with ideas of living in that apartment. But I had to calm down. It was the first time I looked at anything. And all I could think was 'if I'm going to pay higher on my bracket of ideal rent, I might as well have a bigger kitchen'. So I got over it.

One night before going to bed I was obsessively looking at more listings when I decided to visit the Citi-Habitats site again. I came across an apartment that had a different agent, same neighborhood, rent still reasonable, and in the pics it looked nice and spacious. I emailed and he emailed back.

The next day!! There I was being shown around my hometown 'hood. I looked at 4 places with dad again. (Mark's schedule and then Lasik eye surgery make him unable to traipse around with me). The last apartment I was shown was the one I inquired about. It faced the front of the building, the kitchen was nice, the bathroom nice, the rooms spacious. It's only real drawbacks? Small closets (can you say armoire?) and it's the top level of a 6-story walk up (can you say no armoire?). Mark squeezed in a viewing with the broker and he gave the place a thumbs up.

Well, we tried to get the rent lowered and we were probably laughed at behind our backs but Mark and I decided that the rent was still reasonable and overall the place had most of the things we were looking for. For days and hours I've been printing and collating and filling out paperwork. We've been running to eye doctors, post offices, and banks in order to get everything done before they close for the weekend and a federal holiday.

In NYC they demand so much personal information to rent an apartment it's just overwhelming but I'm not surprised. Here people rent and rent for decades. It's not so transient. My dad pointed out that in NYC the tenant has so many rights and it's hard to have them removed for any sort of infringement that landlords just want to make sure you're practically a perfect citizen before they let you move in.

Well now it's finally done. We wait to meet up with the broker this afternoon to hand over the stuff. Money orders filled out. Fees, Fees, Fees. But here I sit, next to a manila envelope with tons of financial and employer information. I wonder if I should throw in a urine sample for safe measure. But they might not like that.

Well...wish us luck. Oh, is anyone available to move boxes up six flights of stairs? Around February 1st? Dinner is on me!