Ugh.

     So, my day has sucked.

    I had to unfreeze my credit with one of the credit reporting monstrosities so I could try to get a new cell phone carrier because my old one is sadistic and evil and wants to force me to spend hundreds upon hundreds of dollars for a new phone, and what happens?  

    They say my credit score is too low.

    For a non-contract, $35-a-month phone service.

    $35 a month.

    You can't eat on that little.  But they think I can't cover it because I have a low credit score.

    Seriously?  Because I'm not beholden to some credit card company and spending umpty zillion dollars on credit, they won't let me have a freaking cell phone?!

    Because yeah, I don't have any credit cards.

    Not one.

    Because back when I was in college, I did have one.  And I spent money I didn't have.  And I learned my lesson.  (After telling my parents about it and getting them to pay back said money, a luxury that most people sadly don't have.  So, yes, I realize that much of this rant is deeply based on my situation within white privilege, which is not cool on any level.  There shouldn't even be such a thing as white privilege, but unfortunately there is.)  Because I didn't want that to happen to me again, I decided never again to have  a credit card.  As long as I'm spending with my debit card, I can't spend money I don't have.  And if someone gets hold of my card?  Well, they can't spend money I don't have, either.  Yes, it puts a slight risk on me that they could spend all the money in my bank account and maybe they'd get away with it on their end, but so long as I could prove the theft (which would not be hard given how limited my range of usual purchases is) the bank would reimburse me at least some of it, if not all of it.

    But that doesn't repair my credit history.

    So now the only way I can get out of the hellhole cell phone service I already have--the one where the guy in the store knew the age of my phone was the problem, but insisted on first transferring me to a more expensive service plan (with a service charge for the "privilege"!), then on having access to my Apple id and password, then on updating my IOS, despite that there is no *$#%^ing way that my IOS was causing his computer to reject my phone for a new SIM card, before finally just laughing and saying that yep, I was gonna need an expensive new phone, just like he'd known from the start--is if I either find another shifty, shady company that will try to force me into overpriced new hardware at the drop of a hat, or if I get someone else to go in with me on the phone line so the company will run their credit score instead of mine.

    I cannot express how much this pisses me off.

    It makes me really glad that I'm currently playing a post-apocalyptic video game, because suddenly I'm not so sorry that the world is about to end.  Because it's people like this who are the reason the world is burning.

    ...and now I'm crying.

    &$%^.

    Right, so, anyway, I don't really care right now, but I need to record this for my own sanity and because I'm not officially participating in NaNo, so where else am I gonna put my NaNoWriMo daily word counts?

    Yesterday's total word count was 74,927.

    Today's total word count is 78,368.

    Which means today I wrote 3,441 words, thankfully before the cell phone company dropped that particular bomb on me.