You've got to give me credit...

I have a new credit card, my second. This is a major milestone for a couple of reasons. As a divorced woman, I had to develop a credit rating separate from my ex-husband's. This took awhile. When I left my marriage for a "trial" separation, I had several department-store credit cards that I'd gotten when I was married. I could still use them to buy clothes for myself and the kids. My credit rating score showed that I was responsible for half the mortgage payment on the house we jointly owned, so I never met the qualifications for any major credit cards even though my ex picked up the tab for the whole thing.

One day I was in the Gap with my daughter, and I decided to see if I qualified for one of their credit cards. I was so tickled when I was approved! It was the first card I had ever gotten on my own. It's been easy to keep that one paid off; I have a great pair of Gap jeans, but let's face it, I'm a little old (not to mention a little large) for most of their fashions. Last summer my daughter got her own Gap card, so I haven't used mine at all recently.

Eventually my ex and I sold the house and I bought the place where I live now. I was able to get a mortgage, and I feel very lucky that I didn't let anybody talk me into an adjustable-rate mortgage! One realtor referred me to a mortgage company (I think it was Countrywide) where the guy did just that - told me he could get me a monthly payment about equal to the rent I was then paying. Uh, sure. What happens a few years down the road when the payment suddenly balloons? I went somewhere else and got a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage at a rate which seems very low compared to what's out there today.

Anyway, the first time I applied for a credit card I was turned down; my debt-to-income ratio wasn't good enough.

Last summer, I was very close to paying off my car loan, so I applied online for a MasterCard and was approved! I was delighted. I promptly put a fairly large sum on it getting my car fixed up so that I could drive my daughter down to College Park, MD, where she's going to grad school. Our hotel bill went onto the card, too. I had to replace my computer last Christmas (life without a computer? Unimaginable!), and that went onto the MonsterCard (as I always call it, even though it probably isn't as funny as I like to think it is). Pretty soon I was a lot closer to the credit line than I wanted to be. I'm trying to pay it off, but it's not going to happen right away, and what if the bumper finished falling off my car, or the refrigerator quit? I wanted to have enough of a cushion to absorb any unpleasant surprises.

Applying for this second credit card was an outgrowth of the decision process about whether we should move, or I should buy a new car... that whole thing I discussed earlier in this blog. Once I had another car loan or a higher mortgage, my debt-to-income ratio would be out of whack again. So I decided to get a card now, while I still could.

I activated it this morning. It's still empty. I'll enjoy the feeling while I can.

Apple season

Today I had a Ginger Gold apple with my lunch. The apple season is officially underway!

Here's what I should have written yesterday.

My original goal with this was to write something every day. Obviously, there are going to be glitches. I was much too busy at work to do anything quite this personal, and when I finally got home, my internet connection was down. (Comcast, as my older son loves to say, was being Comcastic.) Besides, the Red Sox were playing the Yankees... Yeah, we lost, but tonight we'll show 'em!

I hope that one of these days, I'll be able to sit down and write commentary on some odd item that I saw in the news. I'm always seeing things I want to write about, but I never had a good place to do it before. This is where being fearless comes into play. I've always been afraid to express opinions, because somebody might disagree with them and be nasty to me. I want to conquer this fear. I want to express my opinions freely and fearlessly.

Yankees Suck! Johnny Damon is a turncoat!

See, now, that was easy.

Why I don't have a personal ad any more

Awhile back, I took down all my personal ads. (or at least all that I can remember putting up. I probably have a couple on obscure websites I've forgotten about.) Why? Because I wasn't meeting the right kind of guy, mostly. I was tired of the crazies, the volatile ones who would talk to me online and then vanish if I didn't say or do exactly the right thing. I never met any of these guys, fortunately - and there were a string of them.

And the guys I did meet! One of the last dates I had was with a guy who sneered at me when I told him I'd like to remain just friends. "I have enough friends," he said witheringly. Yeah, he was a jerk. But he was typical of the kinds of guys I was meeting through the various online sites. That's when I gave up on online dating. It was January 2004. I haven't had a date since.

What I'd like to say in a personal ad:

No smokers, no SUV-owners, no drug- or alcohol-abusers, no cat-haters, no Yankees fans. Must be employed. (I dated a couple of unemployed leeches who were looking for a woman to sponge off of.) I'd prefer a divorced guy with kids. Must pay attention to personal hygiene. I'd prefer somebody who doesn't drown himself in cologne - I like a light, pleasant cologne, but I've known guys whose scent lingers after they leave a room. Must be intelligent and enjoy conversations more than arguments. Must have a sense of humor and be able to laugh at himself. Must be liberal in politics and religion. Non-religious is fine. (I'd like to put myself into the "spiritual but not religious" category, but these days I'm not even especially spiritual.) Must be looking for an equal partner. No one-night stands.

And what would a guy get if he dated me? Well, I'm middle-aged, middle-class, divorced, and overweight. Cute, though, and smart, and good company. I'm looking for an equal partner, not somebody to support me financially. Emotional support is always welcome! I haven't even gotten into what we might have in common - a fondness for reading, especially sci-fi; love of all kinds of music; things like that. I don't want somebody just like me - that'd be boring. I'd like somebody who I could learn from, and who would be happy to learn new things from me.

And that's why I don't put up an ad. Too many negatives, too specific, I don't know. I'm painfully honest and won't lie about my age and weight just to get attention. Yeah, I'm old and fat. Deal with it. I look, feel and think like a much younger person, so there!

Book reviews

I succumbed to a come-on from Amazon.com a couple of weeks ago - buy two Random House books and get the third free. The books arrived last week, and I've finished two of them (the ones I paid for?) and started the third (the free one?). I'm going to attempt to review the two I've finished. I want to write book reviews for amazon.com; haven't dared to yet, although, let's face it, some of the ones that are up there are terrible. I could certainly do better than that!

A Walk in the Woods; Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail, by Bill Bryson.
I love to walk in the woods. One of the reasons I've been going to physical therapy for my arthritic knee is so that I can hike again. Reading this book made me wonder if - maybe wearing a knee brace - I could walk part of the Appalachian Trail... I really enjoyed this book. I've never read anything by Bill Bryson before, although apparently he's written other travel-related books. I preferred Part 1, where he and his out-of-shape and overweight friend, both in their 40s, hiked from Georgia up to Virginia, camping out and roughing it for the most part. It was inspiring, hilarious, entertaining, and it brought me right onto the trail with them. Part 2 wasn't quite as much fun. For the most part, Bryson did day hikes without his friend, and I missed the sense of continuity of the first part - every day, they'd get up and go on, no matter how tired and grumpy they were feeling. I'd recommend this book, and I think I'll be looking for more of Bryson's work.

The Plot Against America, by Philip Roth.
I haven't read any of Philip Roth's work since Portnoy's Complaint back in the 70s. (I didn't like it.) But this one intrigued me. It's an alternative history: What if Charles Lindbergh had been elected President? No, in reality he didn't run. In Roth's alternate universe, though, not only did he run, but he won in a landslide. He kept the US out of World War II, and managed to ally himself with Hitler. Roth told the story from the point of view of an eight-year-old boy named Philip Roth growing up in a Jewish neighborhood in Newark, New Jersey; I expect it overlapped his own history. It was frightening. I think it was worth reading, and I will probably read it again.

Homeowning

A little bit about me:

I'm a single mom and homeowner. My house is small (two bedrooms); I share it with my younger son and two cats. I have a tiny yard where I can grow a few tomatoes and herbs.

But I want to move back to the city.

I live where I do because that's where I could afford to buy a house on my own. I'm in a very poor city north of Boston. I commute into Boston every day for work; I drive to the subway station, take the Orange Line into the city, and take a bus to the stop nearest my job. It takes over an hour most days, and then I reverse the process at the end of the day to get back home. By the end of the week, I'm exhausted.

When my marriage broke up, I moved to a perfect gem of an apartment in Somerville, near Davis Square. I could walk or take public transportation almost everywhere I needed to go. I had only one cat then; my kids stayed with their father in the exurbs until they finished high school. I still have lingering feelings of guilt over that. But I loved my home and my neighborhood. When my daughter graduated from high school, she moved in with me. (Older son had gone directly to college without joining me in the city.) She loved it, too. She went to college in Boston, and has "the hub of the universe" in her IM profile to this day.

Four years ago my ex and I finally sold the house we owned jointly. I took my portion of the proceeds and bought the house where I live now. My younger son joined me here last year, and around the same time, I adopted a second cat. We were crowded for about a month, when my daughter moved to Maryland to attend graduate school. She gave the bedroom to her brother, who had been sleeping in the living room.

Financially I made the right choices. I bought a reasonably-priced house, and I have a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage at 5.5%. I couldn't get that today. My car is paid off. My son kicks in some of his income to support us. Why rock the boat?

Because I don't feel any connection to the city where I live. Because I'm homesick for my old neighborhood (where I can't afford to buy anything but a tiny condo). Because the commute exhausts me. And because I have no social life and no energy to seek one out.

This summer, my son and I decided that we'd consider moving. My older son lives outside Boston in Arlington, so we started looking at condos there. But the more I thought about it, the less inclined I was to take on the additional financial burden. I'm barely squeaking by even here; I'm not rich by any means, but I'm comfortable. I've got my broadband Internet connection, my family cell phone plan, my Boston Globe and Netflix subscriptions. We can eat out in one of our favorite restaurants once a week (Panera, Chili's, Uno). I've even started buying lunch at work a couple of times a week, instead of bringing it from home. Luxury!

So I considered improving my commute by getting a new car. I currently have a 1999 Saturn SL1, standard shift, and I love it. I also have arthritis in my left knee, the result of an earlier injury and arthroscopic surgery. It'd help me a lot to have an automatic-shift car. A couple of weeks ago, drawn in by the end-of-model-year sales, my older son and I went out car-looking. He succumbed, and now has a brand-new (2007) Honda Civic. He sold his old car (a 1998 Saturn SL2, almost a twin to my car) to his brother; now there are two Saturns parked in my driveway. I decided that once I added on the options I already have (keyless entry, cruise control, just to name two), I couldn't really afford a new car. I also love the control I have in a stick-shift car. It shifts when I want it to, not when some computer inside the car finally decides it's time.

The end result? I still live here, and I'm still driving my old car. That's the way it'll be, at least until next spring, when we might consider putting this house on the market again...