My wife's financial foolishness is killing me.
I have been talking about in recent posts some of her insane debt-incurring actions that also drag me into the mire, since most of the credit accounts we have are of a joint nature.
She even revealed early this week that she owes some of her friends money that she had borrowed to help fund her casino gambling ─ when I asked how much, she allowed that the debt was around $6,000.
And she practically begged me to foot her a $5,000 loan through my VISA credit card. I owed less than $300 as its balance, and have a ceiling of $30,000 that I hope never to come anywhere near using up.
I decided that I would make an RRSP redemption of $5,000 rather than make a cash advance from my credit card, and so on Tuesday I hiked the near-mile (I do not drive) to the financial institution where my small RRSP fund of what was around $35,000 is managed.
I signed the necessary document, and came back home. The redemption would not be immediate ─ I knew that. In fact, I was cautioned that it could take as much as a week. But I hoped that it would happen considerably sooner, since my chequing account was down to something over $740, and the monthly mortgage is due to be debited from it this next Monday.
The mortgage is just over $1,600, so the chequing account was decidedly short.
Meantime, to facilitate provision of some relief to my wife, I loaned her my VISA card on Wednesday.
Of course, I kept tabs online of its use, and eventually saw that she made a $900 cash advance.
I was somewhat prepared for that.
When she came home from work that evening (she works in a Thai restaurant, so has to work into the evenings on her days of work), she asked if she could retain my card for another day.
I somewhat reluctantly allowed for that extension.
After she went off to work yesterday, over the course of the day I saw that she used the card several times ─ once to shop at an Asian supermarket, and also to probably fuel up her car.
As well, she had some other 'minor' transaction I cannot now recollect, but she also made another cash advance.
In total, her additional use of the card that day came out to $992.17, including a $5.00 cash advance fee.
Then that evening after I imagine she was finished work, she made a $500 withdrawal from our chequing account ─ reducing it to something over $240, and notwithstanding the $1,600 mortgage coming up on Monday.
I almost felt sick.
I had gone to bed earlier in the evening, and only found out this crushing discovery afterward when I rose after maybe 2½ hours.
My fear was that my wife was probably drinking with her friends, and had lost whatever limited financial sense and restraint she would otherwise have been possessed of.
And time wore on as I awaited her homecoming.
My younger brother had come home while I was sleeping earlier, and he was downstairs drinking alone as he watched T.V. He is privy to none of my problems, so I avoided him as I awaited his retirement for the night.
Finally, he went to bed around 12:15 a.m. as I bided time impatiently in my bedroom.
My youngest stepson was still up, and I had wanted to bring him in on this latest transaction by his mother, for he is very cross with her for her gambling and credit debts.
When I brought the transaction to his attention, he said that he was going to phone her. But I expect that she never took the call.
Ultimately he went to bed.
I was so uptight and distraught by everything that I could not sleep. Reason told me that my wife was probably not in the casino, for she had just recently enacted a self-exclusion contract with them that ought to be binding province-wide wherever gambling is legal.
Even so, I did not really know how desperate she might be to gamble once she was drinking ─ perhaps she would gain access to the casino somehow.
Anyway, even if she was just partying with her friends, matters could be expensive if she was playing the Big Shot and practicing an extravagance that she had no business assuming.
Finally I could take the tension no more, and at 2:23 a.m. I set off on what was to become a walk of just over 5¼ miles.
My wife phoned me around 3:00 a.m. after she had gotten home and realized I was not present. She sounded contrite; and although I laboured at conversing in a normal tone, I suspect that my choice of words allowed her to understand that I was upset.
She offered to come and get me, but of course I waved that off.
She said that she would eat something then, and soon afterward get to bed ─ she would have to start her work shift today at 11:00 a.m.
It was almost 4:30 a.m. by the time I was back home.
I am concerned about how sensitive my feet are. I have not done too much walking this past week, but the effects are telling ─ especially for my toes where they press up against the ends of my boots.
I want to again be capable of walking many miles, but it almost does not seem within my reach any longer. I have lain off from the activity for far too long, and now I am 70 years old.
I had a few interesting experiences this a.m. however.
Early into my walk as I was approaching a corner convenience store that had long-closed for the day, I noticed what appeared to be a hooded figure of a man seated on a large box or other structure near the store's door.
He was facing ahead as I approached ─ the store would be to my immediate right as I walked the sidewalk, so he was not directly facing me.
Still, he could have been looking at me without turning his face toward me ─ I was essentially doing the same thing, basically looking askance, for I did not want to make any direct eye contact with the strange figure.
He seemed oddly pale beneath the hood.
Then just as I was passing the store, still wondering if maybe this was actually only a Hallowe'en representation and not anyone real at all ─ the 'man' would have been seated about 15 feet to my right at the very most as I was passing ─ his head turned and faced directly my way.
I was only looking his way peripherally, but the experience was phenomenally eerie. He seemed so pale.
In fact, after I passed the store and he was out of sight, I had to look behind me a few times to be certain that this strange figure was not hastening after me to catch me unawares ─ the creature in the Jeepers Creepers trilogy was all I could think about.
It took a long while to gain any ease thereafter.
The next interesting experience I had was after I was perhaps three-quarters of the way through my walk.
I was walking along a street with considerable wooded and undeveloped land across the way, and was in need of a pee. So I started to cross the street to avail myself of the dark bushes on that side ─ there were hardly any vehicles in operation at that time of the pre-dawn.
As I crossed, I wondered if I was seeing a bicycle leaning against the bushes ─ it certainly appeared to me to be a bicycle's wheel that I was noticing in the gloom.
I was about to go directly there, when suddenly I made out another human figure in the dark ─ seated on the ground by the bicycle. This person's knees were drawn up, and he or she basically was hunched over with his or her chin on those knees.
Was it a homeless person somehow sleeping ─ or trying to? It had been raining rather hard earlier in the night before I had set off on my hike.
Whatever the case, I detoured from my path and did not cross the street until considerably farther on.
This was also a very eerie experience.
A third and final encounter worth mentioning occurred maybe a mile from home.
I was walking along a very residential street with homes stretched out all along it on both sides. Then ahead of me, one home had an elevated front lawn ─ that is, there was a brickwork wall of maybe three or four feet in height next to the sidewalk, and the lawn was raised with the wall as its bulwark to keep the lawn at that height.
At the lawn's far end ─ alongside the sidewalk ─ was what initially appeared to be some very small shrubbery or other shape. There even seemed to be what looked like a thick furry tail somewhat elevated.
As I got nearer, I realized that I was looking at a skunk rooting about in that corner of the lawn ─ had I continued along the sidewalk, I would have passed within two or three feet of the skunk, and it would have been chest-high to me due to the elevation of the lawn.
No thanks!
So I detoured out into the street without breaking my slow pace, and passed safely by. The skunk displayed absolutely no interest in me as it continued with its busy excavation of that corner of the lawn.
After arriving home, I did not waste too much time before returning to bed. My wife seemed asleep, and the odour filling the bedroom was proof that she had been drinking earlier.
I got to sleep fairly easily, but was awake again by 8:30 a.m. and got myself up for the morning.
I sleep so damnably poorly.
My younger brother anon rose, and soon had the T.V. on. I waited until near 10:00 a.m. before joining him after I finally fixed myself my very first hot caffeinated beverage. I had enjoyed no sustenance since last eating by around 5:30 p.m. the previous evening.
My wife managed to get herself up shortly after 10:00 a.m., and came downstairs before having her shower. She tried to explain something to me ─ from what I could gather from her sleepily garbled speech, she had loaned a friend of hers some money for which I would get paid back when the friend got paid.
Was that where the $500 had gone? Or was it the larger figure that was the major part of the credit card debits my wife had made yesterday?
I still don't know.
Eventually after she went to work, I logged into my chequing account online and ─ to my enormous relief ─ I saw that the $4,500 of my $5,000 RRSP redemption had been deposited.
A withholding income tax of $500 had been taken off the top ─ but I realized this would be done.
I also noticed that a further $200 had been taken from the account by my wife before that deposit had been made ─ she had dropped the account to just over $40.
I have since texted her to leave the account alone, reminding her that Monday will be mortgage day.
She responded simply with, "Yes."
I didn't say aught about the RRSP money now being available.
I hear my drunken brother arriving home now at 7:09 p.m., so I shall say nothing further in this post.
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