i went and did it

someone sent me a credit card last week. can you believe it?! me, with my lousy credit rating! well. evidently, it's not so lousy anymore, although i'm sure that i'm not out of the woods yet. let's just say i've found a well-worn trail that should lead me towards civilization, or at least a dirt road of some sort. for awhile there, i was wandering through the wilderness financially, eating nuts and berries and whatnot like a caveman, and wondering if i'd ever get out of that situation. i hit a snag when i filed my taxes a few years back with the wrong social security number. without my knowledge, interest gathered on what little i owed. when i finally realized what happened, they made me pay it anyway. and it was far from pretty. that's when i started checking my credit rating regularly, correcting things that were inaccurate and all that suze orman crap. trust me, it works. reading her books forced me to rethink money and what it meant to me, how i treated it and how it was supposed to work. brilliant woman. she's helping jillions of fiscally irresponsible people like me reform themselves and get it together. if it weren't for her, i'm sure i'd still be in that cave.

and how did i find out about her? i hate to say it, but i saw her for the first time on oprah.

there were some other black marks on my credit rating that were quite unsavory. it takes two years to wipe that stuff off of my record and i want to buy a place eventually, so i rolled up my sleeves and made a commitment to fix my situation. so far, so good. i'm still making payments on my student loans but at this point, they've been whipped into submission. my dilligence about making payments and being fiscally responsible has paid off, thanks to the day job i just lost. i suppose that's why i'm getting all this fan mail from credit card companies now, when i'm at my weakest. and let's face it, i'm very weak right now. the band is starting to play out a lot more. i have at least two photo shoots coming up that are very important. and i just lost my day job, so i could really use some retail therapy.

for a long time, i looked at that card like i was a junkie and it was some premium skag.

i'm not going to use it, i told myself. and then i seriously considered shredding it. but then i thought, hang on a tic: why don't i use it responsibly? that's what it's for, right? this could be a golden opportunity to improve my credit rating. if i make regular payments, my score goes up. they'll think i'm responsible, whether i am or not.

i need a new laptop. i've never had a new computer of my own. i've always had machines that i had to figure out or dance around or something. someone makes an upgrade and i get the problematic troublesome faulty but functional cast-off. besides, i wanted something a little more tangible than my rent and bills paid in full to show for my time in that day job. so i activated the credit card and bought an iBook.

what does it feel like to have a new laptop computer, you ask?

it feels like i was hanging out on a beach in england thinking, this is great and then i moved to rio de janiero in brazil. like i was getting around on a bike and then all of a sudden, i got a motorcycle. like i was drinking ginger ale because i like ginger so much and then i tried some ginger beer. like i was eating butter and then all of a sudden, i got ahold of some devonshire clotted cream. like i've been eating scones all my life and then one day someone passed me a hot buttermilk bisquit.

it feels like the sun has finally come out and is shining on the rest of my life.

i'm going to pay off the entire amount that i owe within a month because i'm so freaked out that i actually did this, and also because i want the laptop to be mine. and until it's fully paid for, it's not. (have i learned my lesson with money and credit or what?) actually, i'm going to do that with every purchase i make. the credit card company is going to be so disappointed that they sent me a card. i'm afraid that i'm not going to make a very good victim...