Chapter 269: Strong Enough

Okay, so I didn’t do anything today. I did laundry. I washed dishes. I watched a really crappy B-movie horror thing called “Killer Movie,” which had a bunch of pre-fame performances from actors like Paul Wesley from “The Vampire Diaries” and Leighton Meester from “Gossip Girl,” as well as post-fame performances from people like JC Chasez from Nsync and Al Santos from that old show “Grosse Point.” It was lame but actually pretty entertaining. I was going to write tonight’s blog all about a bunch of old music I downloaded last night on a little musical trip down memory lane, by artists like Blaque and Stacie Orrico, but something has come up that I have to deal with more urgently. You see, I just happened to take a look at my bank account and found that I had much less money than I was supposed to. I couldn’t figure out why but through some crafty detective work I figured out where things got screwed up… and did they ever get screwed up! I am totally fucked right now. It’s ridiculous. You see, for my birthday my Mom bought me an Ulta gift card and I attempted to place an order on Ulta.com for just slightly under the gift card balance. The next day I got an email telling me that the order was cancelled. No big deal, so I decided to go into the Ulta store that weekend and just use it there instead. In fact, you may remember me bragging about picking up the Stila Backstage palette for only $2.66 with the gift card in the blog last weekend. Well, it turns out that the $2.66 was the remaining balance on the gift card that was used and I was charged $31.56 at the store. I have come to realize just now while reviewing the order cancellation email that it said it would take 72 business hours for it to the payment from the website order to be refunded. The thing is, as any cashier would do, the girl who checked me out at Ulta just tossed the card out. So, apparently, this card that still has $27.34 on it now is in the trash somewhere. I have sent an email to Ulta.com to see if there is anything that can be done about this situation. The thing that sucks, though, is that I did a little extra spending this week. It was extra spending that would have been completely fine if it weren’t for this extra charge on my debit card and the fact that Netflix charged me this week, as well. I’m about to be left with only $2 and some change in the bank. I could live with that but unfortunately I have another little issue – I have an item on Ebay that I am bidding on, which I regretted bidding on almost immediately but REALLY regret now. This item only has about 90 minutes left to go and I am praying to be outbid on it in that time. I am the only bidder at this point, though, so it’s not likely that anybody else will outbid me. Still, I am praying that it will happen. If I do win, I won’t actually have the money to pay for the item. I haven’t had this problem in YEARS and it is really making me sick to my stomach right now. I am trying to get a hold of my Mom to maybe see if she would let me pay for this item with her PayPal account and let me pay her back next week. Otherwise, I would have to overdraft on my bank account, which I am really not willing to do. I mean, the other option is to just not pay for the item until Friday when I get paid but the seller has the item description page all marked up with stuff saying that if payment is not made within 3 days they will report you to the Ebay fraud department or Ebay police or whatever it is that happens when you don’t pay for something you’ve won. It is so shitty. I HATE being worried about money stuff, especially really stupid money stuff like this. The worst part of the whole thing is that it is my own fault – if I had paid closer attention to the email they had sent me and actually checked on the balance of the gift card I would have known not to go and use it so quickly. Of course I didn’t, though.

It is funny, though, how all of this money drama I am talking about here all centers around my makeup obsession. I guess this should be a sign to me – I need to stop going crazy buying cosmetics. It is too much. I have PLENTY. I need to really slow it down and focus on other things. After all, there are plenty of other things that I would like to spend my money on. I’ve been saying for months now that I really want to buy myself a Nintendo Wii. I’ve been talking about saving up money from a couple of paychecks in order to save up to go out and buy one. This would be the perfect month for that considering the fact that I don’t have to pay for piano lessons this month. It would make more sense, though, to try to save money for something much more important, like driving lessons or voice lessons. The thing is, I have long been saying that I want to take voice lessons in addition to my piano lessons but have always said that I couldn’t afford it. If I didn’t spend so much money on makeup all the time, I could probably afford it a lot better. Actually, that’s not entirely true – I still couldn’t afford it, I don’t think. I mean, maybe I could. I don’t think I spend $100 a month on makeup. Maybe I do. I don’t really know. I suppose not knowing if it costs me more than $100 a month or not is a good sign that I am spending too much money on this stuff. So, like I said, after the disastrous purchases I made this weekend I think I am going to set a goal for myself. I am going to try to go through the month of August without buying any cosmetics. Of course, there have to be some exceptions to this. For example, if I actually run out of a product that is necessary for day-to-day use, like mascara or tinted moisturizer or something that I actually use on a daily basis, then I can go out and pick up that product and only that product. Also, skin care products are not included in the term cosmetics so if I need any of those I will get them. Of course, I think I am more than stocked on my skin care products for a month, if not longer. So, there you have it – no new makeup in August! I think I can pull that off. I don’t know what I am going to wind up doing with the extra money but I’m sure that I will figure something out along the way. Since I am not buying makeup in August or paying for piano lessons, I kind of feel like I should try saving up money for something big. I don’t know what that big thing will be but, like I said, I’m sure that I will have no problem figuring something out. So, that’s kind of exciting.

You may have noticed that my general tone of writing changed pretty quickly there – the main reason for this is because I finally heard back from my Mom and she said that she would have no problem letting me use her PayPal account to pay for this dumb item that is ending tonight if I actually wind up winning. I am still hoping to get outbid. We’ll see, though. Either way, my Mom also made me feel generally better about the whole thing. She has been kind of hard to get a hold of today and I’m not entirely sure why. When I talked to her just now she was saying that she hadn’t had that great of a day. Neither did I, really. It was really good to talk to her. I was feeling really emotional today and kept having these really dark thought about something really devastating happening. I don’t know how to explain it really but every now and then I will get a random thought in my head about something extremely devastating happening, like my Mom being involved in some sort of horrible accident or something. That was the thought I had today and, for some reason, I got really stuck on it. Then when I was having trouble getting a hold of her, I got really worried. It’s so dumb. I know nothing is going to happen to her. I don’t know why it happens but every now and then I will get these horrible thoughts in my head and they will lead me to sitting there playing out all kinds of crazy scenarios in my head and such. I’ve done that ever since I was a little kid, actually. It’s strange. I have been reading the “Gossip Girl” book series at work recently, as I have mentioned here several times, and one big aspect of the books is Blair Waldorf’s fantasy movie world. Blair Waldorf, in the books much more than the TV show, lives out her entire life as a movie in her head. As I have been reading the books I have found myself kind of wishing that my head worked that way but now I can see that it actually does – my movie is just a lot darker than hers. I mean, I do sit around and picture myself in all kinds of different situations – they aren’t always crazy devastating things, of course, but they do have more of a tendency towards bad things happening and me trying to find a way to overcome them. I guess Blair Waldorf does that, too, actually. So, maybe I am more like Blair Waldorf than I thought. I like that idea.

Anyway, it is 11:05pm now and, as I mentioned, I am feeling a lot better about the world. I feel like I should go ahead and get to bed before anything happens to spoil that good feeling. Nothing is going to spoil it for me, though. I have to stop being negative about the world. I have to stop expecting good feelings to go away and expecting the worst out of situations and people. I need to start thinking positively again. I used to think positive thoughts and nothing but. Even if I had a negative thought I could always find a way to turn it into a positive thought. I really need to get back to that place. I think the first place to start is the way that I got there in the first place – while I go to bed tonight, I am going to listen to my audiobook of “The Secret” by Rhonda Byrne. This would be a very good step in the right direction, I think. So, I am going to go get to that. Goodnight.