I HATE surprises, yet one more time...
Of late, I've been in financial straits, even more than usual. Thanks to my chuckleheaded tenants, and the asswittedly-soft laws of this state that make it possible to rob me with virtual impunity, I've been running on fumes. Even my usual weekly trip to Ames, IA has been impossible, although that's partly due to this idiotic gas price spike (which we could cure, IMNSHO, with a better foreign policy and by telling the hippies and rich ecofreaks to STFD and STFU, but that's another, long, rant) and I am Seriously Not Happy.
I've begged some help from my poor long-suffering brother, yet goddamn again, and he Paypaled me some cash. The money came last Sunday, and I promptly transferred it to my checking account. Unfortunately, Paypal all of a sudden wants three or four business days to make that sort of transfer, and it's not even on-record as "pending" at my bank. GRRRRR!
This...displeases...me highly. I wrote a check yesterday in good faith, figuring that, okay, the money wasn't on-deposit at the bank yet (Ghods, how I LOATHE Sundays!!! "Six days shalt thou work and do all thou art able, the seventh the same, and sweep out the stable!" Having the world come to a screaming halt every seventh day annoys me, not least because, as bloody ALWAYS, it doesn't apply to me! I am "on-call" 24-7-52, and have nobody in the whole world who can "spell" me so I can go on vacation with an easy mind, so why should everybody else get this? Or, if they must do things like this, would it be THAT much trouble to, oh, stagger the "days-off?") but that it'd be there today. However, it isn't.
Paypal says that it sent the money. Unfortunately, it isn't there, so I'm going to have yet another goddamn overdraft payment. Bang goes thirty or so dollars that I can ill-afford to spare.
This is the sort of surprise I detest, even more than most. I'm violently touchy about anything even remotely to do with money, mostly from never having had enough of it to be able to relax on that front for one goddamn second. The worst of it is that there's no goddamn excuse for this, at least from what I can see. Credit cards, debit cards, other online money transfers---hell, my other times using Paypal---are, or should be, all but instantaneous. What, I want to know, ails Paypal that they can't at least notify my bank that money's on the goddamn way?
I know a lot of people who don't understand my attitude about surprises or the unexpected. Maybe, just maybe, if I hadn't had so many unpleasant, frightening surprises in my life, I might have a different outlook on such things. As things stand, all I can say is that you startle me, or surprise me, at your direct peril. If it's inadvertent or harmless, I'll be properly apologetic if I overreact, but deliberately doing things to see me jump is...not advised.