Ronald McDonald, Deportation, and Identity Theft

   The other day, I got a phone call while I was at work. I wasn't there to take that call, and we aren't allowed personal calls at any rate, emergencies only, but my coworker who took the call told me all about it between bouts of laughter. Apparently, someone was trying to collect a debt, and apparently, this fool of a crook was calling himself Ronald McDonald.
   Hello, crooks! We didn't all fall off of the stupid train yesterday. There is no way (please let there be no way!) that any person is ever going to agree to pay off a supposed debt to someone named Ronald McDonald. That has scam written all over it.
   About two years back, I had information stolen. Everything; my entire identity, but while I have stopped one attempt at booking a hotel in London with my debit card, what these people mainly did was try to get me to pay off false debt. The biggest trick they used was to say that I had taken out a payday loan and never paid the loan back.
   I knew that this was false from the first time that the first person contacted me, but I couldn't figure out what was going on, because this woman was insisting that I owed her company $500. When I argued that I had never taken out  a payday loan, she responded with, "Well, you can fight this in court, but you will need two senior lawyers from a prestigious firm to fight this, and it will be very expensive. You will save money if you just Western Union us the amount." No joke, this is what she said, I remember this clearly, because I was just dumbfounded. I started demanding that she send me paperwork, showing what I owed with all the company information listed, and she refused. "We do not have to send you paperwork. The time for that is past, now you must pay."
   That was my first run-in with false debt collectors. When I had taken this call, I was not at home, I was out with my sister. When I got home, the first thing I did was to Google the phone number that she had called from. That's what Google is for, right? Linked to the phone number was a long list of people complaining that this was a bogus number, run by people trying to get you to pay for fake payday loans.
   That was the start of a year full of threatening phone calls. They called a million times a day, at home, at work, my family, all the while claiming that I owed different amounts of money to different payday loan companies. Every time I would Google the number and the company, and I would see page after page of testimonials claiming that these numbers and companies were fake, and pleas not to send them money through Western Union like they always requested.
   These calls were not pleasant however. I had stopped answering the phone, but they would leave messages saying different things; sometimes they were lawyers, sometimes they were policemen, sometimes they were FBI, and they would say things like they were going to drag me kicking and screaming to the courthouse if I did not comply, that they had my house under surveillance, and even more alarming, they would spew off my entire social security number and they would tell me my bank account numbers, all in an attempt into bullying me into sending them some money.
   All this time, I had been looking into what my rights were as a consumer, and trying to find out what actions that I could take against them, and I decided that I needed to gather more information about these people who were constantly calling me. Which meant that the next time they called, I decided I would answer the phone and try to pump them for more names, personal, company, ect.
  Waiting for them to call wasn't long at all, as by this time they were literally calling me about twenty times a day, and before long I had one of them on the phone, a guy this time, using some generic sounding name. Of all things, he claimed he was with the United Nations (of all things!) and that - wait for it - I was going to be deported if I didn't pay the debts that I owed. I was gobsmacked. Deported? Really? To where? I am, and always have been, a citizen of the United States. Where exactly where they going to deport me to? After that wonderful conversation, in which I lost my temper, causing our 'conversation' to devolve into a shouting match, I filled out reports to both the FTC (Fair Trade Commission) and the Attorney General, both of which have online forms specifically for false debt and identity theft.
   The amount of information I got from talking to the scammers didn't really justify the headache, and only gave me a few more false names to add to my report, as well as the new threat of deportation. If you know that the person trying to collect money from you is scamming you, honestly I recommend not talking to them at all. The conversations only get stupid and go around and around in circles.
   I've been battling false debt claims for quite a while now, and have changed most of my personal information, including bank account numbers, phone numbers, and even a change of address (although that was not prompted specifically by these issues). I've even been looking into changing my social security number, because I have been told that this is an option. Fighting this has made me really leery of anything done over the phone - I will not give nor even verify any personal information over the phone or through e-mail, not even my home address. If I happen to take a call from someone pulling this, I demand that they send paperwork through the mail - legally, they have to if you request this. Also, a real debt collector will always say, "This is an attempt to collect a debt. Any information obtained will be used in this attempt." Or some variation thereof. If I don't hear those words, I hang up. Most of them call me at work now, because my work number is the only thing that I haven't changed over the years. Not a lot I can do about that, I've had the same job for going on seven years, and I have no plans to quit.
   Throughout all of these years, no Ronald McDonalds have ever gotten any money from me; not a cent, not even the time when they actually attempted to use my debit card information. I keep an eagle eye on all of my finances, including my credit report. You would think they would give up, but they just seem to keep pegging away. I think they are hoping that they can aggravate me so much that I will just give them some money in the hopes that they will go away and leave me alone. That's optimism at it's finest, there. 

"Boop, boop, boop! Mom, I booped you!"

   My daughter is twelve; since my daughter is twelve and about to hit those preteen years, and is already showing an aversion to all things considered uncool, there are certain things that I just thought we were past. I thought there were certain annoyances that I thought she would not partake in, because they were childish, and heaven forbid acting childish when you reach those preteen years, and you want to be seen as an adult.
    Three days ago, I was proven wrong. Three days ago, my daughter called me to her room, "Mom, can you come here?" So I came, because I thought she was working on homework and needed help. She was working on homework, but she didn't exactly need help. As I leaned over to look at what she was working on, she reached up, bopped me lightly on the nose, and cried out gleefully, "I booped your nose!"
    Apparently the face I made was awesome, and inspired her to greater heights. For the past three days, the kiddo has been sneak attacking me, bopping me on the nose (never hard) and screaming, "I booped you!" Sometimes she manages to bop me a few times before I jerk away, especially when I am doing something, like cooking dinner or emptying the trash. These are prime times to boop me.
  I can be silly at times, but after three days of being booped, my nose is sore. I'm cranky. And so today when she goes into boop overdrive, while I am trying to get ready for work, I snap at her, "Would you knock that off already?" ... ... ... You would have thought she just found out her favorite grandma died. Her shoulders slumped, her head drooped, and she slowly shuffled off to her bedroom, leaving me feeling like a jackass.
  I waited a few minutes, then went to her room to check on her, to make sure she wasn't doing anything that would make me feel like an insanely horrible mom. As I opened the door, her hand flashed out, and she hollered gleefully while bopping me on the nose three times in succession, "Boop, boop, boop! Mom, I booped you!"
   There comes a day in every parent's life when you realize that you are standing on the jagged edge of insanity, and though you are desperately trying to hang on to the raggedy scraps of your sanity, you realize that maintaining that sanity is merely an exercise in futility. 

Cherry Blossoms and Mist Monsters

   I walked my daughter to the bus stop this morning, and I actually got to do this in daylight. For almost the entire school year, we have been trooping out to the bus stop in the dark of night. Let me tell you something about these dark early mornings in Washington: rain or fog. Those are your choices for early morning, predawn walking to the bus. Rain. Fog. Rain is wet, and for the majority of the school year, it's freezing. I walked my daughter to the bus one morning, with slush rain falling on us because it was too warm to completely freeze, but it was too cold to just be liquid, so we got a shit load of semi-liquid dumped on our heads and we were miserable.
   Fog is a whole other story. We have had some incredibly thick fog this year - fog so thick that you can see only a few feet in front of your face. So you are standing at the corner closest to the bus stop (because your daughter no longer allows you to stand at the actual bus stop - geez, Mom, that's not cool), anyway, you are standing at this corner, and you start seeing weirdly shaped figures emerging from the pea-soup-thick fog, and you start thinking about every foggy horror movie or book scene that you have ever read or watched (think Stephen King's The Mist) and you are cursing the day that God ever thought of granting you that over active imagination because these kids, with their bulky outer wear, overstuffed backpacks, and slumped shoulders looked effing creepy shambling out of the fog. Now you want to grab your kid and run home before the mist monsters eat you - at least, you do if you are me.
   But my over active imagination loses the power to scare me in the daylight, and now it's spring. The days are starting to get longer, and when I take my daughter to the bus, not only to I have the power of daylight to burn off fog and negate the mist monster effect, I also have a gorgeous walk to the bus stop. Washington is a beautiful place to live, my friends, and at this time, all the cherry trees are in bloom, so we have pink blossoms everywhere.
  Nor am I walking out in weather that is frigid. People laugh because I complain about both the cold and the heat: I want neither. What I want is a steady stream of 70 degree days with an occasional hike to the 80's and an occasional drop to the 60's. That is the perfect temperature for me; and the other day, we actually got a day in the 60's. Spring is here. Also, cherry blossoms. Enough said. Spring is one of the two best seasons of all - the other being fall.

   Note: All of these cherry trees are on the way to my daughter's bus stop. There are even more on my way to work and down the walk to my mom's apartment. The only thing prettier than cherry blossoms is the fall leaves, when all the trees turn to brilliant red and yellow.

A Rant About Parenting From A Pissed Off Marie

   A child needs both a mom and a dad in their life. Where is the father? This is something I am getting so very sick of hearing. Especially when someone is saying this to me. I get so mad I see red. I get so mad. There is no other way to put this besides: I get so mad. 

  If a child has two good parents, and both of those parents are good and loving parents, then yes, that child needs them both, I will agree to that, wholeheartedly. But what about when the other parent is not a good and loving parent? What about when the other parent is abusive? What if the other parent engages in criminal activities that could put said child at risk, or at the very least, teach them some very bad life ethics? What about then? Does the child still need that parent? What if the parent in question is a harmful person to be around? The thing that infuriates me is that there are people who will say, unconditionally, yes, the other parent needs to be in the child's life. I am not placing a gender to this other parent, because bad parents can be either male or female. In my personal life, the parent in question is male, but I know of extremely harmful females, and this goes both ways, in my mind. 

   A child does not need a person in their life if that person is hurting them. The pain can be physical, the pain can be emotional, the pain can be from neglect, or any other harmful thing you can think of; if that parent is not willing to correct the negativity that is harming the child, the child does NOT need that parent. Period. Doesn't matter what gender that person is. A child does not need a father who is going to hit them, tear down their emotions, teach them bad morals and ethics; a child does not need a mother who is going to hit them, tear down their emotions, teach them bad morals and ethics. A child does not need this, but so many people get so wrapped up in their desires for everyone to have the perfect little nuclear family that they stop worrying about what is best for the child. They only worry about people conforming to their ideal of what a family should look like. 

   For myself, I hear, "Oh, your daughter needs a male role model. Even a poor father is better than none." I call bullshit. Do you hear me? I CALL BULLSHIT. I hope that was loud enough for you. I am not saying a child needs a perfect parent, because none of us are perfect, but a child does need a parent who is trying to be the best parent that they can be. A child needs a parent who is willing to be there for them. A child needs a parent who will take care of them, to protect them, to be a role model for them, to guard them against things that they are not yet capable of defending themselves against, to teach them morals and ethics so that they can grow to be productive and respected and respectful, but a child does not need a parent who is not interested in doing these things. A child does not need to be around someone who will hurt them. A child needs to be around someone who cares for them, not someone who just thinks that the child is so much dead weight. 

   Whatever gender the parent might be, if that parent is not giving that child the love and care that the child needs, then that child does not need that parent. The child in question is better off just being with the parent who can give the child the love and care needed. The parent who cannot or will not do these two simple things are the ones who are so much dead weight, and no child needs to be burdened with that dead weight. It's that simple, folks. Sorry, but not everyone is going to fit into the same shaped box, and it's past time to stop trying to force that. 

   In any case, people might want to stop saying these things to me, whether my rant has changed their minds about parents or not, because my temper is wearing mighty thin on this issue. I don't tell people how to live their lives, I am mighty tired of people trying to horn in on my affairs. Look to your own children, leave mine be. Fair warning. 

My Super Power Is Breaking Shit

   So I went to vacuum the other day, and found that my vacuum wasn't working. Not even a little, which was pretty terrible because my daughter, niece, and nephew had been running in and out of doors all day long. And not one of them were taking their shoes off to come in until I noticed and started screaming like a banshee. But too late, the damage was done, and my carpet looked like the forest floor.
  I waited until the kids were all done playing before I tried to clean up, because the damage was done, and although they were now taking their shoes off, I figured clean up at the end of the day, get it all done at once. This turned out to be a good thing, because my vacuum, as I have stated, wasn't even working a little bit. Which turned me into a dragon, I mean, I was breathing fire and everything, the whole works. No one wants to see that in the middle of the day. You want to see that at the end of the day, so that you can go to bed and forget you ever saw it.
   I don't know how many vacuums I have broken in my lifetime. I can't keep count; there are too many. And when you add all the computers, microwaves, toasters, and other various appliances, you start to see a disturbing trend. I break electrical shit. I break it. If it is electrical, coming to my apartment is a death sentence; I am gonna end up sending them all to that little electrical playground in the sky. (Except for gaming consoles. Immunity? Whatever the reason, thank heaven for that.)
   Anyway, I was talking to my sister, trying not to be a braying banshee, although I turn pretty rabid when things stop working -especially when they stop working right when I need them most - so I'm not sure I managed to keep my raging inner bitch in check. In my defense, however, my carpet really did look like a forest floor. The kids had tracked in every speck of dirt and pine needle that they could manage.
   My sister, who happens to be a vacuum whisperer, told me that the belt was broken and that I just needed a new one. I insisted that I just needed a new damn vacuum, this one was a piece of shit, and I wanted to kill it with fire. My sister, the brave soul that she is, listened to all this calmly, and then told me to get out my screw driver, and that she would be over to look, and that she was willing to bet money that the belt was just broken.
   Further investigation revealed -- the belt was broken. Easily replaced, and at $3.99 for a two pack, much more affordable than a new vacuum. However, this is me that we are talking about. Things don't turn out as they should around me when electrical gadgets are involved. Either I broke the belt, or the vacuum heard that I wanted to kill it with fire and it's plotting revenge because now, whenever I vacuum -- it smells like fire.