It's that time of the year again. Time to start panicking about bills. Every year I do the same fucking thing. Come mid March my tax refunds come in and everything is hunky dory. I have extra money in the bank, bills are paid off and all is well in the Odessa/Jake household. A few years back I made some major computer upgrades with my refund and the money dissipated. But for the last two years I haven't done jack shit with it. Yet somehow the money still ends up gone by the new year. A few months back I decided to take a large chunk of it and put it into a online savings account. The interest rates blew my local bank out of the water so I couldn't resist. Still... I kept some in the checking for emergencies. No emergencies happened and here I am, panicking. I have money in savings. It's not like I'm down to the wire. But if I am ever going to move out of this shitty little apartment and into something nice I have to forget those accounts even exist. I think it's the idea that I can't just go out and buy something for two weeks. I can't pay any bills (except rent) and it's going to be tight. I worked hard not to live like that. It was something I did a long time ago and still cringe when I think about it. Robbing Peter to pay Paul and begging Mary for an extension.

My other issue is that I look to Jake and want to start grilling him on his finances. Truth is, I'm afraid I'll never move forward and it kills me to think about it. I don't want to live like this. I want to be comfortable. I'm not talking rich, just enough to be able to eat out when we like and buy a video. I want my sites to work. I want to travel. I want to see my friends in Georgia. Little things that are just out of my reach right now and it's killing me.

Then there are the big things. Marriage. I want a ring. A nice ring. My friend and I talked about this earlier in the week and she said that engagement rings are pointless. I disagreed. Not just on the traditional meaning of the ring, that it signifies commitment, but that it also proves he is able to save up for something he really wants. You save for what you want. No excuses, no 'next week'. If you want it then no one has to remind you to do it. I don't want to ask about if he's been saving up because any answer but 'yes' would kill me.

Money makes me crazy.

After an exhausting weekend of cleaning house we decided to go to Best Buy to drool at the big screen TVs. After wandering past the 50" movie screen sized TVs we started looking at the *smaller* ones. By smaller I mean 40 - 42". We walked pasted the a few and noticed one with a pretty decent pricetag. Decent for someone in a higher income bracket, that is... For me it was reachable. The 12 months of no finance charges made it doable. After two more walk throughs we bought it. I paid the guy and he left to get our brand spanking new TV we didn't really need. Five minutes later he came back... empty handed. Apparently the three in stock weren't in stock. Since it was new they didn't have many. I was told to come back on Thursday. So Sunday we put the new stand together and dreampt about it. By Tuesday Jake was going nuts. After pointing out the slip said nothing about picking up we started calling the store. After 30 minutes getting hung up on, transferred to a voicemail that was full and being put on terminal hold I panicked. We threw on some clothes and headed to Best Buy. Luckily the salesguy was there.

We waited for him to finish up and then recounted what happened (no way was I letting that much time slide). He did the usual "Really" with the head shaking and lead us to the counter in back. He assured us everything was fine as he looked for my order. No dice. He finally found the shipment... which was coming in Friday. He tried explaining how they were a store within a store, which is why I was bumped back to their phone. He mentioned it was for higher end equipment and better service. I scoffed and pointed at the telephone gal. "She put my boyfriend on terminal hold for 30 minutes while she checked for the television. That's why we came in." Again he did the head shaking. I was not amused. I just placed myself in debt for a TV that wasn't going to be there. He asked me to wait and disappeared into the back. I thought he was hiding until he came out and asked if we wanted to take it home now. Hell yes! With a few clicks we were on our way home. Now we have a huge TV to mess with. Which is good because we wont have the money to do anything else. :P