Clips to cheer you (& me) up: Spinach/Spanish and I Don't Like You.

 

This is what my mother did today at IronMan Lake Placid:

A 2.4-mile swim in 1 hour, 26 minutes, 5 seconds.

A 112-mile bike in 6 hours, 45 minutes, 25 seconds.

A full marathon (26.2 miles) in 5 hours, 11 minutes, 53 seconds.

Including her transitions, that's a total IronMan time of 13 hours, 36 minutes, 32 seconds.

She finished 14 out of 43 in her age group.

It rained almost the entire time. Except during part of the bike, when she said it started hailing.

 

There is a story in today's NYT that freaked me out. So now I'm trying to straighten out my finances and come up with some kind of action plan for getting out of debt.

A friend and I had a talk about it on the phone the other day. Credit card debt is such an emotional issue, because there's anxiety mixed with a heavy batch of guilt. For me, it usually reduces me to tears. I think for my friend it is usually expressed as anger. Regardless, it pretty much sucks completely. She's in much better shape than I am, because she has assets and a good job and her debt is nowhere close to mine. At least I don't think it is. No one really likes to talk about the numbers.

Drew and I met through friends, but later he told me that he'd seen a personal ad I'd posted on nerve.com the year before. He didn't like it because I made a crack about credit card debt and he thought it was tacky and strange. He used the word tacky, although I'm sure when he reads this he'll say he never said that. But I recall him using that word, because it made me laugh. It probably is tacky to talk about things like that in a personals ad, but I really don't care. That ad led to me dating this kid Ted for about six months. Ted loved the fact that I'd talked so openly about being broke and in debt because he was in the same situation. By the time I met Drew I was working in television again and money wasn't as big an issue anymore.

But now, obviously, it is. And although I've been telling myself that my finances are going to be a disaster for years and I should stop worrying about it and focus on school, clearly it wouldn't hurt to face up to a few basic facts.

#1: I have two credit cards and I really should only have one. The second card has a very low limit, an extremely high APR (because I was late with payments a few times) and I haven't had it for more than 4 or 5 years. I should just get rid of that one. The APR is 31.99%. Ha! That is really, really awful. I'm paying that one off ASAP.

#2: I need to find a way to pay more than the minimum payment on the primary card. It's not too much to ask that I should do the minimum plus the finance charge. It won't be easy, but I'm sure I can get creative somehow. I can be a research subject at school (they're always offering $50-100 for students who qualify for different studies). I can't do much that will distract me from school, but if extra dough comes my way I should put it towards the card before I put it towards, say, alcohol.

#3: I have to figure out my student loans. I need to know what I owe to whom and look into debt forgiveness programs. Drew and I have discussed one option, but I should look into other stuff too. At the very least, I need to be aware of what's going on with these loans.

I'm sitting at our kitchen table right now. It's covered in piles of papers. It took so much effort just to make the piles and to write this post that I know I'll be tempted to abandon this project for today. But I really need to work on this. I'm going to do it.

 

Drew and I went on vacation.

I'm working for a homeless services organization for seven weeks this summer.

School starts August 11th.

More later. I have to pee right now.