Right now I’m sitting on my couch listening to voice mails. My new phone service was assigned a number that previously belonged to someone with many outstanding bills, so there are now 120 impatient voice mails from bill collectors in my box. I have to listen to each one and mash 7 in order to clear out the box. A picture forms: unpaid bills, a car with failing brakes, pseudonyms (including one obvious stripper name, ‘Angelica Champaign’ and a Vietnamese name which the robots don’t even try to pronounce and just spell out instead). Late in the game there are calls about filled prescriptions.
The only reason I’m out of bed at all is because I’m waiting for Animal Control to show up and remove a rabid bat from my bathtub. In a couple of hours I hope to have an empty tub and an empty phone, at which point I will bathe and make another attempt at starting my day.
