So, another 3-day weekend, another chance to PAINT MY BEDROOM!!

That’s right, folks.  First I painted it way too dark brown, turning my little 10×10 room into the batcave. So then, in an effort to lighten it all up, I found Desert Sand, which turned out a little too pale and blah for me (plus, it had this odd sort of plum undertone).  Desperate to find the right color, and dreading emptying out the room again, I forged onward.

To Lowes, where I brought home dang near every single paint square thingie they had !  After narrowing them down to the 5 best contestants, I taped those squares up on my walls, and lived with them for a week, noting how each one looked in the light, at night, during the sun, on a cloudy day.

Finally got that grouping narrowed down to 3.  Then, tossed one out because it was so close to the other two.  So I had it down to 2 colors, and got this crazy notion to do the entire room in one color but then do one wall in the other, like an accent wall.  And since it was the darker of the two, I needed the accent wall facing the window.

So, on Friday, I emptied out the room AGAIN, prepped on Saturday morning, and got busy.  This time (I must be getting better at this) I managed to paint with clothes ON and didn’t get paint all over me.  With the help of my sister, she did the cutting in, I rollered on this new color – Cinnamon Brulee – and fell instantly in love.

FINALLY, this was the color I’d been searching for all this time!  Then when it got time to paint the darker wall, I poured it out, ooohed and ahhhed over the pretty color, rollered it on one patch, and hated it.  Luckily it was easy enough to paint over, so my entire bedroom (all four walls and ceiling) are now Cinnamon Brulee.

And it’s fantastic!  No more painting for me!  Who knew it could be SO hard to find just the right shade of color.  Especially when you had this idea in your head of what you wanted, but couldn’t find a sample square anywhere that matched it.

Cinnamon Brulee = Happy Camper.

I’ve been reading a lot lately about the recession (you know, the one no one wants to admit is here) and the economy in general – banks and interest rates and credit, oh my! And I can’t help but feel one of my rants coming on about spending more than you make, using credit cards to “get by” and the false idea that gets passed around suggesting you need credit cards in order to have a good credit score.

Writers don’t make a fortune, with the tiny insignificant exception of the very very few who make the news, most of us ain’t gettin’ rich doing this. So it’s time we got smart.

First of all, let’s tackle that last one – the Credit Score.

Did you know that the idea of credit cards being necessary to keep a good credit score is a Lie fed to us all by the very people who invented credit cards ? You’ll hear it all the time, from all sorts of places. Your hairdresser will tell you she heard it on the news. You’ll read about it on Yahoo. That guy in the next office swears he was told by his banker that it’s true.

It’s a lie.

Your credit score is based on your ability to pay your bills on time, incur no late fees, and have no collection agency reports against you. That’s it. It has nothing to do with being loaned money and paying it back, which is also misleading. Do you pay rent or have a mortgage? Do you pay the power bill on time? Do you get a cable or satellite bill every month? How about your internet, or natural gas, or maybe you pay car insurance or have a car payment.

You pay those on time, never bounce a check, and not one of those companies has sent you to collections? Then you have an excellent credit score. And by the way – they’re loaning you money by way of services. You got a month of cable before paying, same with electricity, the internet, all of it. You used their service for a month, now you’re paying. So they’ve loaned you service, trusting you’ll pay it back.

Another pitfall that I see all too often, and was starting to notice in myself before I was able to change my life around, was the Emotional Spending.

It’s not limited to women, in case you were thinking that, but I’d be willing to bet we lead the percentages. You’re upset about something, usually it’s the fact that you have no money because you have too many debts, so in order to make yourself feel a little better, you go out and buy yourself a “treat”, and you charge it.

Huge Red Light people. Huge red light.

This is exactly what they mean when they say Money can’t buy happiness. It’s not a saying geared toward making you stop buying Lotto tickets because suddenly becoming a millionaire won’t add pleasure to your life. No. What it means is – if you’re depressed – spending money ain’t the cure. Buying a new sweater with your VISA isn’t going to cure what ails you. Pulling out that Mastercard so you can walk home with new candlesticks for the dining room table will not make the depression go away.

It’s a trap that will quickly become a death spiral if you don’t recognize it and stop, now. Imagine how much happier you’d be if you didn’t have all that debt that was bringing down your spirits in the first place?

Getting out of debt is hard, and it won’t happen over night. Like trying to drop 50lbs, it took you years to gain the weight, it’ll take some time to make it go away. It requires a change in attitude, some determination, and the will to stick to it.

But the biggest change is Spend less than you Make. Like eating less and exercising more, if you spend less, you can save more.

So what are you going to do with your Economic Stimulus money? Do you see it as the down payment on a new computer? Maybe an HD TV, or that nice riding lawn mower you’ve always wanted? If you use your government cash as a down payment, you’ll end up spending more than you were given. If you run out and spend it, are you buying something you honestly need, or just want?

Mine’s going into a savings account that I set up to be hard to get to – it can’t be accessed via ATM, and if I really want some of that money, I have to fill out a slip and go IN to the bank. I can’t transfer funds electronically or simply spend it on an impulse, and that’s the whole point.

Sometimes we need to set up road blocks for ourselves, for the better. Other times, we just need a change in old habits.

Think about it. Educate yourself on the difference between Need and Want in your life, and remember – Writing is free. It doesn’t cost us a thing to create novels, and aside from a little postage for some queries, and some blood, sweat and tears, it doesn’t cost a thing to get published.

So get to writing! We want at least some of that Economic Stimulus money spent at the bookstore, after all 🙂

So, y’all remember not too long ago when I thought someone might have messed with my ID, tossled my credit report hither and yon, and I wound up doing weeks of research and investigation while waiting for my credit reports?

Turns out, I was fine.  But now, just last night, I learned someone HAS done this to my Mother.

She’s managed to report it to her bank, who put a stop on the use of her debit card – and she’s not responsible for the money this person has spent.  Now she’s calling the credit reporting agencies because, apparently, one thing this thief did was open up a charge account in Mom’s name.

Thankfully, there are ways to fix this.  Stopping it quickly was a help, they’d only managed to spend on the account for 3 days before they were found out. And knowing what to do next is helping.

So for once, I’m glad to have had a scare myself. It taught me what to do, and how to do it, if anything like this should happen.  I’ve been able to help my Mother take the proper steps, and hopefully keep her calm, until things can be fixed.

What a world, eh?

So today I get the new router/modem, which means tonight I go home and take two aspirin.

This is like when I need to build a new Access database at the start of a new year, and relearn all the calculations and commands that I only have to write once a year – but since I only have to write them once a year – I have to read up on how they’re done again, which takes a week, a bottle of Bacardi, and a short temper.

Sure, usually I just copy from last year, but there are always changes that have to be made. It’s not too bad, really, so long as I remain calm, take notes, and start early.

Tonight I’ll go home, get out a nice big notebook, and start writing down all the settings from everything, everywhere. I’ll write them all down, meticulously, before unplugging anything or deleting any profiles.

Then I get to plug in the new router/modem, install the software, remember that I forgot to bring home an Ethernet cable, try USB instead, have a drink and put it off till Thursday.

On Thursday evening, I’ll remember an Ethernet cable from work, then try again. Setting up all the high security that will make my virtual home my own little Fort Knoxx. Then forget to give my other laptop permission to enter, and do it all again. Then I have to call Wavecable and give them my new MAC address, so their signal can find my new router.

Then, since that won’t work as easily as it sounds, I’ll go watch baseball and forget it for the night.

Sometime Friday night, after a few drinks, I’ll try again. I suspect it won’t work, then it will work because I’ll have finally remembered that one SIMPLE thing that I’d been over looking – something like plugging it in, or turning something to the ON position.

If all goes well, I should be online at home again by May 14^{th, 2009 😀}

Or, yanno, this weekend.