SUSPICIOUS BANK WITHDRAWALS AND SLOVENIAN FOLK MUSIC

         I hate dealing with banks, don’t you?  I hate them so much that this is the second blog posting I've written about them.  (The first one--DON'T BANK ON IT--can be found in the July 2013 archives if you care to read that, as well.)

At any rate, my husband, Stij, had a major run-in with Bank of America this morning.

He’s lying down now, with a tumbler of Jim Beam on an adjacent table and a cool washcloth on his head.

The reason? This morning, he got a notice that his account ATM card…his BUSINESS account ATM card…had been frozen due to “suspicious activity.”

Stij called them.   It went something like this:

STIJ:  Hello.  I have a question about my account.

BB (Bank Bimbo—the blonde with 100 pounds of hair, a perpetual rictus, the latest fad design in fingernails, and a brain by Mattel):  Let me put you through to our Accounts Manager.  One moment.

While on hold, Stij listened to the entire Beatles catalog—twice.

TLTYTMAMWVHCY (The Latest Twelve-year-old They Made A Manager, Whose Voice Hasn’t Changed Yet):   What can I do to…I mean FOR you today?

STIJ:  You might tell me why you froze my business account ATM card.

Then, the kid made the nearly always fatal error of trying to be funny when Stij is upset:

TLTY: (Chuckles) But surely you know that nothing ever freezes in Arizona!

STIJ:  Don’t call me ‘Shirley.’ (He’d been waiting for the opportunity to use that line ever since ‘Airplane’ came out.)

TLTY:  Why would I call you ‘Shirley?’  You say your account has been frozen?  Gimmie the number and I’ll look it up for you, dude.

The TLTY is too young to even get the joke.  Fade back in pissed off mood.

Stij gave him the number and was put back on hold to listen to, ‘The Ride of the Valkyries’ many, many times, followed by The Complete Works of Emily Dickinson, translated into Chinese and read by a 100-year-old constipated employee at a one-hour dry cleaners.

TLTY:  According to our records, your account isn’t frozen, man.  Oh, and do you also go by the name of ‘Buster Lifshitz Horowitz?”

STIJ:  Not now, not ever. You must have mistyped it.  Try re-keying the number, please.

TLTY:  Oops, sorry, my man.  Just a sec.  Partied kinda hard last night, y’know?

STIJ:  No, I do not know.  I work my ass off ten or twelve hours a day to put money in your bank in order for you, Mr. Party Boy, to tell me that I can’t have it when I want it!

TLTY:  Yeah, I know—bummer, man, huh?  But you really need to take a chill pill, babe.

STIJ:  Listen, you human cabbage, just find out what’s going on!  I have lumber to buy today and I need that card!

TLTY:  Wow, man, sounds like you didn’t get much sleep last night.

STIJ:  I am coming down there—right now!

TLTY:  Hold it, there, Hondo—your account just came up.  Stij?  Is that right?

STIJ:  YES!

TLTY:  Your account’s frozen.

STIJ:  I KNOW THE ACCOUNT IS FROZEN!  I WANT TO KNOW WHY IT’S FROZEN!

TLTY:  Says here ‘Suspicious Activity.’  Been doing anything suspicious lately?

STIJ:  Nothing unusual—just depositing and withdrawing money.

TLTY:  Oh, well, there’s your problem right there.

STIJ:  WHAT?

TLTY:  The withdrawals.  I see here you withdrew nearly $100 over the past week.

STIJ:  I have a business.  This is a business account.  I needed the money to buy building materials! Let me ask you something--why do you never consider DEPOSITS suspicious?  They could be from people selling drugs or stealing cars and reselling them, or…FROM ROBBING BANKS!  You could actually be laundering money and not even know it.  What about that?

TLTY:  Uh…let me find out about that…hold on…”

STIJ:  Nooooo, not hold ag…

Now it’s Slovenian folk dancing music, followed by Rod McKuen reciting from Stanyon Street and Other Sorrows, followed by Richard Nixon singing the Carpenter’s greatest hits.

Now Stij hated the British, Wagner, the Chinese, Slovenia, poetry, and Richard Nixon—singing ANYTHING!  And to top it all off, there was somebody at the door.

It was the police, who arrived to arrest Stij for threatening to rob Bank of America; but they left without him when they came in, saw the kitchen half-melted and smelled the chili I was attempting to make for lunch.

I guess they decided he’d already been punished enough.

VACATION--THE AFTERMATH

        Did you ever come back from a vacation only to feel that you need another vacation?

It happened to me.

Stij and I went up to Sedona for another gander at those wild red rocks, and left my brother-in-law, Marius, in charge.

I left said brother-in-law extensive instructions about trash day, plant watering (both indoor and out), garden and flower watering outside, care of the four pets who live outside (rabbits and turtles), a full refrigerator (beer included), the use of my computer, a paid-up Netflix instant streaming account, and the remote.

What could go wrong?

I’m so silly sometimes.

What we came back to, after a week of resting up, reading, hiking, and lots of good food, fairly closely resembled Hieronymus Bosch’s concept of hell.

Let’s start with the front door.  We rang the bell and expected to be admitted by B-I-L.

We weren’t.

We rang again.

Nothing.

Cursing, I put down every bag I had carefully balanced so that I could get all my crap back into the house in a single trip, fumbled for my keys, and finally found them at the bottom of my handbag.  They were covered in some sort of a sticky substance that was so full of cat hair that it looked like some deranged knitter had created a cozy for them.  I do not have a cat.  Nobody I know has a cat.

I cursed again, scraped the keys off, and unlocked the door.

Now, please understand that I am no Martha Stewart when it comes to housekeeping.  My house will always be cluttered.

But this…

“It looks like Marius bought us some unique throw rugs,” I remarked.  There were passed-out bodies littering the floor.  We quietly stepped over them because if they woke up it would require talking to them before we killed them.

We made our way to the kitchen to find the refrigerator completely empty—even the vegetable crispers had tooth marks—and the door missing.  The floor was such a mess, it looked like a Jackson Pollack painting.  I didn’t even want to think about what all those stains were.

Then there was the odor coming from the living room.  It smelled like a mouthful of rotten teeth on a three-week-old cadaver.       

From the remnants of the dishes covering every available surface, the take-out Mexican food was probably behind “Team Flatulance.”  I opened every openable window and the front and back doors.  At the back door, I I glanced out at my garden and…

“Holy…oh, holy…oh, my god, oh, crap!”

My beautiful garden had been dug up and there were three tombstones in it!

“Funny, isn’t it?  I thought you’d get a laugh out of it,” came Marius’ voice behind us.

“Which one of those is yours, bro?” Stij inquired.

“Why?”

“I want to be sure I put you under the right one.”

“Oh, get a load of this!” I cried.

The dog and the iguana were drunk and sleeping it off in the corner.  

“Pissshitcorruptionsnotfourhundredassholestiedinaknot!  Rah, rah Lizard shit! Fuuuuuuuuuucccccckkkkk!” 

“Oh, Stij, hear that?  Marius taught Renfield some new words!” Renfield is my African Grey parrot, who, up to this point, did not say anything worse than, ‘Darn it!’ 

I made a quick tour of the rest of the house while Stij was sharpening up the kitchen knives.  Main Bathroom—the tub was filled with Doritos and there was steaming chili in the sink.  Master Bathroom—where a freezer unit, removed from my chest freezer, was running.  The floor was covered with ice and there were several pairs of skates in the shower stall. Freezer—warm, dripping, and the spoiling food contributing to the general miasma.  Master bedroom—a big pile of poop was nestled in the center of the quilt it took me four years to make.  Guest room—couldn’t get the door open, and by this time, didn’t care why.  Garage—now contained a 20 gallon fish tank with a lid on top and a really pissed-off looking cobra inside.  I was afraid to look in the closets.

I returned to the living room, where Stij had his brother pushed up against the wall and was screaming at him in Quebecois.

Marius saw me over Stij’s shoulder and pointed.  Stij immediately calmed down, probably not wanting me to see a full-on, pushed-to-the- point-of-no-return Stij. That Stij can melt a window with a mere look.

“About that crap in the middle of the bed…” Marius began, and was quickly cut off due to Stij’s arm compressing his windpipe.

“Crap in the middle of the bed?” Stij echoed.

“Yeah, babe, and not crap as in ‘stuff.’  We’re talking actual gift from the colon here,” I clarified.

 “IN THE MIDDLE OF THE BED?”

Marius was turning purple and could only gurgle.

“Ease up, sweety,” I said.  “I would very much like to hear how our runt-of-the-litter Boston terrier managed to scale the heights of our bed without a great deal of help and leave behind a poop equal to his body mass.”

“Oh, it wasn’t your dog.  It was Bobby.  He gets a little confused when he does Meth.”

Stij released Marius.  “Bobby, right.  First to go.”

“Now wait a minute, Stij…”

“Point him out, or you’ll substitute for him.”

Marius pointed.

Stij picked him up and heaved him out the door, where he slid down the driveway, and knocked over three garbage cans before coming to rest.

“A strike!  Nice throw, hon,” I said.

Stij, however, was in no mood for levity.  “What else to I need to know about?”

“Uh, Rockefeller Center in the master bath, dinner in the main bath, 200 pounds of rotten food, and a new friend for you in the garage—don’t go out there without armor.

“Holy Christ on a pogo stick!”

“Makes my cooking mishaps look pretty tame, doesn’t it?”

At any rate, we sobered up the iguana and the dog, piled all the unconscious strangers, like cordwood, by the trash cans at the end of the driveway and bundled Marius into the quilt with the big pile of poop and pushed him out the door, and then took a breath—a very shallow breath—and surveyed the wreckage.

“I think this house is cursed,” Stij said.  I’ve rebuilt it twice when you and your cooking burned it down, and now I’m going to have to do major remodeling just to make it habitable again.  All told, I figure I’ve already sunk at least a million into a $180,000 house.  This place won’t let me live.”

“So what do you want to do?”

“Get me the matches.”

“Then what?”

“Then I’ll go to a psychiatric hospital to treat the nervous breakdown that I’m going to have in the next ten or fifteen seconds.  It will be nice.  I’ll relax, catch up on my reading, finally be able to sleep at night.  You’ll visit once a week and smuggle me in a reuben from the deli downtown.  Yes, I think that’s definitely the way to go.”

And now, dear readers, I’m living in the tool shed right next to the blackened crater that used to be our house.  It’s a little cramped with the parrot, the dog and the iguana, but the cobra out front keeps the inquisitive away.

And it’s only for another year or two.  The doctors tell me that Stij is making remarkable progress.