How to pay your bills
Paying your bills is one of those things that can be difficult whether you have the money for them or not. It's a very serious activity and it's best to prepare a few days in advance. If you are smarter than me, you will begin preparations six days before they are supposed to be sent out, not the same day they should be in the mail. You can't just write checks and send them out. See, that's where most people go wrong. They find themselves overwhelmed with the thought of having to sift through all the offers for clocks that don't work and magazine subscriptions that accompany credit card statements. Separating the actual payment coupons from the enormous wad of trash that protects them takes up a lot of energy.
The first thing you need to do is clean your bathrooms if they are not already scent free. If you have a little boy, there is no way you can skip this step. Go on, a trip to a bathroom with pee dribbles on the wall behind the toilet can set you back quite a bit due to the fumes and the time it will take to recover (several days in extreme cases).
Once the bathroom is clean you may think it's time to sit down and tear those envelopes open- but wait! It's super important that your office is really organized first because you will want to file stuff when you're done and you know it's been months since you last looked at your filing "system". While you're at it you need to dust and vacuum it. Because paying bills can be very intense and what if someone comes over to your house unexpectedly while you're in the middle of it? You don't want to give the wrong idea to them.
Once you've reinstated your filing system, you need to file everything that you piled up in neat little stacks all over the house. It's painful to go through those thirteen month old papers, but you have to do it. Face it now so that your mind is really sharp for the bill paying, you need all your wits about you so that you can at least pretend to examine each bill carefully to look for errors as all responsible bill paying adults do.
Now, normally you would maybe get down to business at this point, if you're not me. But you know you're going to be thinking about that trail of receipts and half chewed gum you've left lying all over the dining room. You really ought to clean it all up. It may take a few hours to figure out what to do with all the pocket scum you've been dumping on the buffet for the last several weeks, but don't worry, eventually you'll discover that your child will view each and every scrap of ephemera as incredible treasure.
I guess if there's nothing else you can clean to distract yourself you may as well pay your bills.
The first thing you need to do is clean your bathrooms if they are not already scent free. If you have a little boy, there is no way you can skip this step. Go on, a trip to a bathroom with pee dribbles on the wall behind the toilet can set you back quite a bit due to the fumes and the time it will take to recover (several days in extreme cases).
Once the bathroom is clean you may think it's time to sit down and tear those envelopes open- but wait! It's super important that your office is really organized first because you will want to file stuff when you're done and you know it's been months since you last looked at your filing "system". While you're at it you need to dust and vacuum it. Because paying bills can be very intense and what if someone comes over to your house unexpectedly while you're in the middle of it? You don't want to give the wrong idea to them.
Once you've reinstated your filing system, you need to file everything that you piled up in neat little stacks all over the house. It's painful to go through those thirteen month old papers, but you have to do it. Face it now so that your mind is really sharp for the bill paying, you need all your wits about you so that you can at least pretend to examine each bill carefully to look for errors as all responsible bill paying adults do.
Now, normally you would maybe get down to business at this point, if you're not me. But you know you're going to be thinking about that trail of receipts and half chewed gum you've left lying all over the dining room. You really ought to clean it all up. It may take a few hours to figure out what to do with all the pocket scum you've been dumping on the buffet for the last several weeks, but don't worry, eventually you'll discover that your child will view each and every scrap of ephemera as incredible treasure.
I guess if there's nothing else you can clean to distract yourself you may as well pay your bills.
Yeah, I know it could be worse. But with a messy head like mine this kind of mess makes it impossible to find my own feet. I get easily confused when there is too much lying around.
Since a clean-up like this happens about once a year these days, you'll understand how come I spend so much time trying to purge trash from my brain so that I'll remember to feed the kid.
Here's another view. That's my new kick-ass filing system I bought the other day. Although my bills are still unsent, all my papers are now filed.
Ahhhh. Hey, it's no Martha-land in here, but at least I won't have all those hairs and crumbs sticking to my feet tomorrow morning when I do absolutely nothing but lounge around.We've been drinking modestly (for us) for the last few days. Wine. Two glasses each. We've been going to bed before twelve. It's been good. But I put on "Closing Time" by Tom Waits to clean to because I left my Madonna CD at work, and I got the sudden strong urge to drink large quantities of beer. So I'm going to. Anyone who knows Philip knows that he is a huge Tom Waits fan. He has (I think) every single album that's ever been made, or remade, or re-remade. I love this album. ("Closing Time") I'm pretty sure this is Philip's least favorite because it isn't so experimental and off the wall. It is one of his most melodic and commercial of all his albums. I love it for that very reason. A lot of Waits' work is too dark for me, too discordant. I like it, but I can't listen to it much because it puts me in a mental state that isn't comfortable. Like being in an overstuffed junk shop. But "Closing Time" hangs in the air of my mind like a happy-melancholy rainy day. It makes me think of the stormy Oregon coast as seen through water streamed Ford van windows.
It makes me think of my parents. Recently I had so many revelations and breakthroughs and then such dark memories. The kind of stuff it's hard to shake off. It's easy to see the hard side of life with my parents. It's easy to point and say that they made so many mistakes, that they went down so many pot-holed roads to hell dragging all of us three kids behind them. But when I hear this album I remember something different. I remember them in such a wonderful light.
My parents were always the kind of parents that other kids wished they had. Both of them loved to have fun, they had a wonderful sense of adventure. We went on so many road trips up the coast of Oregon. They took us to strange historical sights, the kind that maybe fifteen other people have been to in the whole country. The kind you accidentally find when you're antiquing in strange small coastal towns barely touched by time. We went to a beach in Coos Bay once right after all the smelt fish were washing up the shore, where opportunist fishers were catching them and loading them into trucks. My brother had the best time catching them up. I remember my Dad cooking them. Smelt are not large fish. I don't think they're particularly known for being delicious fish either, but my dad cooked them because my brother caught them.
There was always a soundtrack to our trips. We listened to a lot of Simon and Garfunkel, Fleetwood Mac, Linda Ronstadt, and Tom Waits. I grew up listening to him. My parents loved Waits. They were so much cooler than I knew. He's such a barometer of cool now, you almost can't admit you hate him if you want to be taken seriously in any artistic crowd. That's like saying you think Jesus was a drunk. Back then I just listened to him with my parents and over time he came to invoke a mood, and certain memories. I would call them bittersweet, but they're too good for that.
It makes me think of my parents laughing. Discovering everything that I think is cool now, back when I was the least cool person on the planet. They grew food, planted trees, kept chickens, and took cooking good food seriously. They harvested our concord grapes and I remember my dad with the lightness of a kid's excitement orchestrating the great crush in our kitchen. I don't think my mother loved the crush, but I remember the hot juice bubbling on the stove and my dad coming in with fresh pots of grapes to clean, wearing a purple button-up shirt askew and dark with sweat; I remember the way he wore a mustache then. Like Magnum PI.
I remember coming down I-5 from Portland with my mom where she had been attending a book signing party for the cookbook she wrote that my dad produced. We were almost to Medford when I recognized the road and heard "Ol' '55" come on. I was overcome with the feeling I was where I belonged. I love I-5, every inch of it I've travelled from Seattle Washington all the way down to Los Angeles. It was raining and getting dark but I felt I knew every rock, every sign, every inch of that road home. I remember watching the head lights and tail lights come and go, reflecting on the wet highway like bright neon signs, and then the darkness as we went through lonely stretches of road. I remember not really wanting to get home to Ashland, not yet, not while the music was playing and we were all listening, not arguing. Listening and dreaming. Because you could feel all of us dreaming. Maybe my little sister was sleeping. I don't remember. Maybe my brother was plotting his next bicker with Tara and I, but it was a peaceful moment.
Most of the time I lived in California, after my parents split up, I couldn't listen to that album without feeling an intense urge to pack up all of my belongings and drag Philip with me back up to Oregon. It made me miss home. It made me miss my parents' laughter, the lighter side of each of them. People with creativity, with a hunger to live, to travel, to have a good time. To smoke pot. Even though they ended up not being able to find enough laughter together, I still see them as being so much alike in the way that opposites can be. They both have a marvelous childish humor, silly in a way that you can only be if you really let go. Silly in the way that can make you laugh so hard your stomach hurts and your bladder strains. I learned to laugh like that from them. It's funny because I learned to cry from them too.
I wish my parents could remember more of that. I wish I could express to them how I've met a hundred different families and there isn't one I would trade them in for. It's why no amount of family turmoil or dark family skeletons can undo my love for them both. Together, and separately. They are incredibly wonderful messed up people.
Listening to this album is travelling the road home. Now that I've come back to Oregon, I can hear it and be taken back without that convulsive pain it used to inflict. Ghosts have retreated, even if they have not yet been laid to rest.