Cerebellum Chic

Here’s the thing, I really don’t know how.  I’ve had the last one for approximately a week.  I’ve got one more to activate, or I should say ‘unblock’ which happened when I was trying to activate it.  In fairness, I discovered a glitch there.  I was led to a page where my only options for continuing the process were to answer this question “are you sure you want to cancel?”.  Well, no, I don’t want to cancel.  I want to activate. Then it proceeds to give me two options “yes” or “cancel”.  Huh?! I don’t want to cancel!  So, given my options I chose ‘cancel’.  Some may think that was the more obvious risky choice if I didn’t want to ‘cancel’ but I thought it was at least ambiguous as to what I was cancelling.  Can I cancel this pop-up box please? Let me cancel cancelling. (Is this going to bring some anti ‘woke’ types to my page thinking I’m talking about cancel culture, possibly). If I had clicked ‘yes’ that means I’m definitely agreeing with the ‘yes I want to cancel’.  Right?  No.  You’re right.  I can see how the argument works both ways now.  So I remain blocked for suspicious activities on that account.  Honestly, screw em’ – they lost an impulsive spender.  If their online system works like that, do you really think I’m going to chat further with an automated robot trying to explain the above?  I have other replacement cards coming in…which leads me to the next card loss.

Quick question; why do you even have 6 cards? I hear you ask.  I don’t! I had a nice stable one for years and years with such little activity that when I did what the tube advert advised me to do and see what my credit score was, I was apparently off grid, no record of me, too financially insignificant to calculate.  To be honest I thought that was kind of cool.  Like, I had dodged being tracked somehow.  You *think* I’m off grid, but let me tell you, I’m hustling in a way you don’t foresee (not crime). Throwing off your data, mucking up your targeted marketing. (Like I said, not illegal). Anyway!  Card number two equaled us going the joint account route shortly before marriage.  I prided myself on not using it for a fair while.  Yet, I pulled it out the bag (metaphorically, I don’t keep my cards in a bag, evidently) in a moment of tension where I felt particularly aggrieved.  “Ugh! I’m going out.  You know what.  I’m getting cigarettes…on the joint account!” For some reason he loved it.  Like a demonstration of knowing my worth.  That’s my girl!

Then there was the third card that was introduced to me a few months ago.  Here, can you please put anything you buy on this credit card.  Apparently if you pay it off each month you’ll get a free gift in about 15 years.  So, I start adopting the habit quite readily.  The grid begins catching me up and I start coming to terms with the data indicating that I am not living on a houseboat on a canal or spending half the year in Thailand at an elephant sanctuary, indeed I am quite suburban.  I even catch on that other people love this game too, like catching Pokémon.  I have a podiatrist check me over an ingrown toenail that I don’t have (so neurotic) and following my instructions proceed to ask if I can use this blue card to pay.  She’s delighted “Well YEAH! Of course I’ll help you get your points!”.  At a party I hear about a pub crawl designed around getting these points.  I do that too now! I exclaim.  Perhaps someone should put me on a houseboat and set my sails to that elephant sanctuary, I digress.  Final word on the credit card, although it’s saying far more about me then the credit card, is when I find myself together with my husband this week and I’m going to buy a book.  He waves me off to the till, but I don’t move.  But, um, this is shopping.  Shouldn’t I use the blue card?  Meaning, your blue card, as I’m still blocked? And you know what happens?  I see a little hesitation, a little flash of doubt in his eyes, a stifled nervous laugh erupt.  And he says “you do know that we still have to pay for the shopping on the blue card, right?” and I don’t think he was entirely joking. This is the kind of confidence you inspire in people when you lose 6 cards in 6 weeks.  Don’t you want to know how?

Seriously though, my reputation is temporarily tarnished by my poor safeguarding of all these bank cards. What does he think I’m doing with them?  Mistaking them for legal tender?  Handing them over to the checkout assistant when I pay and expecting them to hold on to it and put it inside their till until they hand it back as change to the next customer?  That could be a fun lottery.  To be fair to him, I haven’t told you what happened next.

Cards 4 and 5.  His cards.  Yes, the cards he had left with me because I was without cards.  I lost those in the space of 3 days also.  Yes, both of them (I like to think they were together when it happened).  He couldn’t quite believe me when I passed on the news.  Back in the early days of our relationship, he liked to ponder what psychoanalytical poetry was driving me.  He looked at me like I was trailing flowery, unconscious metaphors and symbols behind for a peak into my interior world.  What did that forgotten bracelet really symbolise? Now, he was looking at me like he may have married an ape (a sophisticated one if I say so myself).  Was he going to return home one day to find his shoes half eaten because I couldn’t find my Deliveroo password?  These days he accepts my flaws more readily at face value. He let out an “argh” and didn’t deliberate on if my kind heart was trying to be more like Jesus, “please, find and use my bank cards.  Use my overdraft, not yours”.

I assured him both of the cards were lost lost.  Yes, lost.  Really, lost.  Again, yes. Lost. He apologised as he proceeded to search every pocket I’m in possession of, the pages of the books I have laying around, my shoes, the fridge etc. etc. While, I promised him he need not waste his time – I have looked in the fridge already.  “I’m sorry my love, but you understand…” he fairly ascertained as he continued his fruitless search.  I did understand, I did.

So, here we are.  A couple days after I lost card number 6 in as many weeks. I have one that remains uncancelled, it’s balance and correlating risk of being spent is so low that I just can’t conjure up that ADHD adrenalin, concentration shot, in order to call the bank.  Honestly, if someone finds it at this stage they probably deserve to spend whatever remains on it.

Coincidentally, on the same day as it’s disappearance I went into the bank of this replaced-now-lost-again 6^th card and got a printed statement for proof of address.  I know I didn’t lose my card there as I made it in and out of Sainsburys with a bag full of shopping after (this is the part of the novel where you start to question whether I’m a reliable narrator, you see details misleading you yet you are not sure why…can we really trust that that I used my card to exit Sainsburys with the bag full of shopping? At this stage, I’m not even sure). 

The beautiful reality of beginning to accept myself and be realistic about who I am and the things I struggle with means that I may finally be releasing myself of continually failing projects, based around ideals, that I never really wanted to spend time on anyway.  Things that aren’t of particular interest to me and require concentration, organization and impulse control are some of my struggles.  The reality of me trying to do an in advance, weekly, shop based on some optimized meal planning just results in new species of mushrooms developing over rotting vegetables in my fridge, whilst I end up looking like Cocaine Bear on the floor surrounded by biscuit crumbs and empty Beuno wrappers.  Shivering, curled up in a ball while my blood sugar cries to me “what did you do?” and I grunt back through a clenched jaw “I’ll make that kale smoothie tomorrow, in the Vitamix I used once before, remember that time?  Remember those good times?”.  I actually did use the vitamix to attempt milkshakes and ice cream in my excitement when it arrived, to which my gluten free, diary free, sugar free, wi-fi free, nutritionist friend said made her want to vomit just thinking about them.  Failed attempt to bond over shared Vitamixes.  Noted. 

So the plan for the night was to celebrate my spontaneous desire to cook and my re-(non)-commitment to an as and when shopping routine.  When I returned home, I ignored a call from an unrecognisable number.  The internet would tell me it was the bank I had just been to, trying to call me.  Huh, that is some sophisticated scamming I thought.  They know I’ve just had activity there, so it gets flagged up as the most realistic time to try and scam me…they possibly are this sophisticated but now I think it was just a good Samaritan who had found my dropped card and handed it in.

Oblivious to my latest loss, I begin cooking my singular go to recipe, the only thing I know how to cook by memory, yet there will always be one or two ingredients that whilst making it I realise I have forgotton to buy.  So, I still claim I know it buy heart, as I remember it at that point in the process.  As we get to the choice where I must chose between making it a little bit under par without the coconut milk, or the basil, or whatever else…I decide I have the capacity to withstand the interval to pop back out to the shops for the missing items.  Not always the case, for example I recently needed a ‘time-out’ to take some deep breaths after a particularly tough battle chopping a butternut squash.  He sits half chopped in a container waiting for roasting and wondering if the squashes that come after him will ever fulfil their destiny to becoming soup…

This is when I realise.  It’s happened again.  The replaced-but-lost-again card is gone. This is where you see the benefits of therapy and the incredible resilience of the human spirit kicking in.  Was I going to berate myself for the rest of the evening? Wasting a partially cooked meal, because of record setting inattentiveness? No, no, no.  After turning the place upside down, I turned it back over again and got hunting for either cash or some other emergency card kicking around that my husband had begun to keep.  That’s when I came across the card we set up for my deceased father-in-law when he was under our care.  Um, is there still money on this thing?  Could I? I think he would want me to finish the meal too.  Should I try it?  It worked! You may be worried about the when/if my husband would get notified about his deceased father’s new spending habits, but it couldn’t be as bad the time he gifted me the phone he inherited from him to replace my failing one, and I started texting him from it before changing our contact names over.

That reminds me, I’m still answering to the equivalent name of ‘Peter’ when I jump in Ubers.  One time I used my phone, as Peter, to take an Uber and then took my Mum’s (she was with me, has uber on her phone, but needed me to take the reins to arrange the lift) whose also called Pam, and the same guy pulls up to me for our second ride with him of the day. Given that this was in a small Midwestern USA town, I think he possibly thought we were up to something suspicious and faking our English accents. We discovered he was a philosophy student and I dove right in and asked him his view on free will and we had a good discussion about A.I.  I asked my Mum if she remembered him once and she said “I think about him all the time.  He had such a great voice”.  Five star ride.

So there you go, that’s how you do it.

Dinner went well that evening, husband wasn’t too disturbed by me and we had started reflecting on ways for me to reduce my capacity for losing things.  I came up with more elaborate ideas like getting a hallway table, that always has roses on it, so every time I come in, I smile and run up to them give them a little sniff and then see a post-it note on a bowl saying ‘put your card and keys here and then follow the petals to your reward’.  Or finding the perfect gold strap for my little gold bag so that I can make the little gold bag practical and start using it and then have a more effective way to store my cards.  My husband rightly pointed out I manage to not lose my phone (that would be true self destruction ay’) so I should get ‘google pay’.  I feel we are edging closer to a solution but keeping the phone charged could become the issue.  I do remember a clever tutor in one of my secretarial courses pointing out the number of students that were losing their entry passes to the building yet making it through with their phones.  ‘Tis a fine point they are observing.

The mystery remains as to where they are going, however.  Husband refuses to believe I am just ‘dropping’ them.  But, I am intrigued by the image of me leaning towards the card reader, hearing the beep, and then just releasing the grip of my fingers and letting the card drop to the ground. Drop the boom-mic style. (Ah, the correct way to say that is ‘Boom. Drop the mic.) That would be kind of gansta of me. I agree, far more likely to be little fairies trying to help me tidy up.

Okay, okay I better go now.  Who needs cards and keys anyway? I’ll just adopt an anti-consumerist lifestyle and be sustained by the generosity of others who are supporting my spiritual journey, as ultimately they know the greater good that will come back to humanity and all life forms from my eventual enlightenment.  It’s not too far from my current reality (Love you, Baby G). Also, why does it seem universally accepted that dogs and cats are welcome to stay inside your home, with the occasional walk, ask for food when hungry with nothing offered in return and that’s cute and interesting but 32-year-old humans get called a liability?  I give good cuddles too and have some fur on my head.

Until next time, au revoir!