Crapple Pie

Well, I'm sorry to say the crapple pie lived up to its name.  Strangely enough, it wasn't the cranberries-simmered-in-mystery-liquid that did it in.  In fact, I'd say the cranberries were the highlight of the pie!  Having just skimmed my last few posts, I realize that I haven't spoken about the pie before, so I guess a little rewind is needed.

Somewhere between Thanksgiving shopping at Publix last weekend and pie baking on Thursday, I decided to change my plain apple pie into a "crapple" pie with the addition of cranberries.  Those of you who have been reading for six years, (DEAR LORD, when did six years go by??!?) or who were at that fateful Thanksgiving dinner, might remember when I proclaimed that cranberries have no place in civilized desserts, and wonder when I changed my mind.  I didn't - I just forgot!

So I started by simmering cranberries (just 1/2 cup) in some apple juice, brown sugar, and sherry.  I wanted brandy, but apparently we were out, and the sherry caught my eye before the rum.  After 45 minutes, they had popped open, sweetened, and were absolutely delicious.  I took them off the heat and left the pot on the stove to cool, and every time I walked into the kitchen, I'd pop one in my mouth.

Self control?  What's that?

And then I made cornbread for Scott's stuffing dressing, pizza crust for Thursday's dinner, and then considered the 2 1/4 cups of AP flour I'd need for the pie crust.  And that's when the pie started going south - when I realized the crust was going to include 1/2 cup of whole wheat flour.

Scott was helping me core and peel apples when I realized I should probably find an apple pie recipe to modify, rather than just winging the whole thing.  "Two teaspoons of cinnamon?  That couldn't be enough!  I'll use a tablespoon."

...and then the time came to roll out the crust.

I'm blaming the whole wheat flour, mostly because the crust just looked healthy with those dark speckles.  Really though, the fault lies somewhere between the temperature of my little baking corner (which, have I mentioned, is the spot right next to the damn oven?  nice choice, Jamie!), my own temperament - woah, crazy lady! - and my hesitance to use enough self-rising flour on the rolling surface because I thought it might somehow make the crust puffy.

The first horrible attempt to transfer the crust to the pie plate, during which I let out a string of f-words, I'm pretty sure caused Scott and both cats to hide behind various pieces of furniture.  I did, in fact, scare myself.  On the second attempt, the crust still refused to release from the pastry mat.  So I took the whole mat and flipped it over onto the pie plate.  The crust (mostly) transferred, but I made a powdery explosion of flour all over every surface on that half of the kitchen - stove, counter, wall, floor...  It was a mess.  And Scott agreed to clean it up, probably out of fear.  Seriously, picture "There is no Dana, only Zuuuuuuuuuulllll" only without the cool gold dress and wildly-blowing hair.

With the apples transferred into the pie, I arranged the cranberries over the top.  And then I started on the top crust.

I had already decided on a lattice, because it's so much easier to transfer the small strips of crust than an entire disc.  Unfortunately, the entire disc of dough cemented to the counter.  I declared defeat, then declared "rustic tart!"  I didn't have enough dough to fold up the edges all the way around, so I decided to just drop torn chunks of dough willy-nilly on the top.

It became #UglyPie. 

Surely, something that ugly would at least taste good, right?

Sigh...

The apples were too firm, the filling was too liquid, there was WAY too much cinnamon (and lemon! I just used the lemon to keep the apples from browning, but I'll be damned if my first bite wasn't predominantly lemon and cinnamon), some of the crust chunks on the top were burned...but the cranberries were still delicious.

So that's the tale of the crapple pie.  My apple pie last year sucked, but in different ways, so I'm thinking that maybe it's just time to move on.  I make a mean peach, I enjoy cherry and blueberry.  Maybe it's time to learn pumpkin or some sort of custard.

...and then she remembered to breathe!

My car is fine. I think I'm going to owe them something insane like $900 when I go pick her up tomorrow, but that includes a 15,000 mile service, 4 new tires and removal of a rogue piece of metal that was clanging around in my oil thing. Yep...that's the technical term.

Funny story from Hyundai: the first person to greet me when I pulled up was a sales manager who told me he could get me into a new Accent "for cheap." How desperate must they be to be pulling that? The second person to greet me was the service manager, who told me to pop the hood - right there in the drop-off zone - because my engine was clicking. He was like the car whisperer - put oil in right there, and then leaned in close to listen. He thought I might have a valve problem, but it turned out to be the mystery metal bit, which apparently would have blown my whole engine if it had left the oil thing and hit a gasket or something else. Sort of like a blood clot, I guess.

As it turns out, I'm fine too. Scott was nice enough to escort me to the Credit Union so that I could beg in person. It turns out nothing new has hit my credit report (yet) and I have a stellar credit score. I guess it was good enough - I was able to get a $6,000 unsecured loan with 48 months to pay it off. The girl who was helping me walked me through a bunch of options, was able to get me an ok interest rate, and was able to extend my credit card limit another $500. Oh yeah - and I found out that my credit card has a fixed rate of 7.4%. How sweet is that?!? Of course, I had originally applied for a loan big enough to consolidate all of my school debt, so it wasn't quite a home run, but the other collection agency seems content to take my $100/month. No crisis state there quite yet!

I have armed myself with some information from the FTC (thanks for the hint, mom!) and feel like I'm prepared to take on the skeevy DCH tomorrow. I think I know enough to keep them from bullying me any more. *fingers crossed*

Of course, there was no happy ending for ZoePig. I feel terrible that I didn't go with Scott to the vet, and that he had to be the grown-up in this chapter. It's a horrible thing to have to go through alone, but I think I would have never made it through the rest of the day if I'd gone. Scott knows that. Plus, friends of ours had a bad run with guinea pigs, and have one still living, so we're going to pack up her food (brand new giant bag purchased a week ago!) and a few other unused things for them. They told Scott that their little girl said that her two guinea pigs would show Zoe all the fun things to do in Heaven, which is maybe the sweetest thing we could have heard.

Well I think it's time for me to go cuddle with my kitties, and then with my hubby. We've had a helluva day. Plus, I've got to get myself psyched up for the final(?) battle tomorrow.

[insert favorite curse word here]

So here's a brief run-down of everything wrong in my world right this second:

• Scott is on the way to the vet with ZoePig. She hasn't eaten in two days, didn't drink at all last night, and isn't quite mobile. I don't think she's coming home.
• I got a collection call at work last night from some company saying I owe them $8,000.
• I found out this morning that I have a balance of $2,520 with PSU Housing & Food Services for my Spring '00 room & board.
• Maybe my car - I have an appointment at the dealership today.

FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK

So...Zoe. Yeah, that sucks. We've been horrible caretakers to her and while I'm sad that she's sick, I'm sadder that she had a crappier life than she deserved.

The money? I nearly threw up at work last night. I sobbed at my desk for at least an hour. Aside from the stafford loans that I completed paying off a few weeks ago (enter a feeble "yay me" here for that), I've been paying down an account of $4,900 since January when a collection company said they were collecting on a PSU account. And now I find out that there was another $4,900 account that somehow ended up in the hands of Debt Collectors from Hell (DCH).

It turns out that the original amount I owed was a bursar account, for tuition. The one I'm just finding out about is a defaulted Perkins loan. Apparently the government guarantees Perkins loans, and when I didn't pay back the school, the Dept. of Education bought back my loan. The DoE, of course, has the right to garnish my pay, take my tax refund, etc. The worst part? They've probably already dropped a collection record into my credit report. That's the worst part because you can't qualify for a FHA loan unless you have no new entries in your credit report within 12 months. That unfortunate situation last April was just about to drop off Scott's report, and now my 7-years-clear report has THIS.

DCH is also being really douchey. They are refusing to put me on a payment plan. They're willing to take about $2,000 off the fees and interest if I can give them $6,095 by next week. They may as well ask me to shit a golden egg. When I called the DoE, they said that I have the right to be put on a payment plan, and told me to call another company that acts as a mediator between me and the DCH. I did try to get a loan through the credit union (of which I have been a member for nearly 12 years with no incident at all). The automated system couldn't pre-qualify me, so I anticipate a rejection letter some time in the next 2 weeks. I guess I owe it to myself to call and beg to a human being.

I called PSU this morning to find out why they employ different companies to do their bidding, and whether I could expect another company to contact me in a few months time with yet another thing I owe money for. That's when I found out about the money I owe to Housing. The only silver lining to that cloud is that now I know about it. I asked the 19-year-old work study girl to send me a bill and she replied, "I can send a copy of the bill you've already been sent." "Fine, thank you, that would be lovely."

And before anyone out there feels compelled to leave me any comments that are remotely snarky, I would just like to say I KNOW. YES this is my fault for defaulting. YES this is my fault for not informing everyone I ever owed money to that I moved/married/changed phone numbers. NO I'm not asking anyone else to take responsibility for any of this. NO I'm not asking for a hand-out. (and possibly to my detriment, NONE of the money in our house fund will go towards this debt. if we have to wait another year, we'll deal with it, and we'll have more money for a down payment...which we'll need because the market isn't going to offer $100k houses forever.)

The timing just sucks. I sure could use a freaking break. Hopefully when I take my car to the dealership today, whatever they do won't cost more than a couple hundred bucks.

UPDATE (11:15): Zoe isn't coming home. sigh...

Catch Me!

It's possible I threw a temper tantrum at work. It's actually possible that I threw multiple tantrums, but the first one was a doozy. I may have yelled a bad word or two and slammed my hands on my desk. I may have accused a co-worker (who wasn't there) of drinking on the job, being unconscious, or having a stroke... after all, what other rational explanation could there be for the complete lack of anything done correctly over my days off?

I may have scared my boss. I assume so, since a few minutes later he came back into the office with a cup of chamomile tea.

And then, after the tea, I might have had a meltdown in the kitchen. That time there was no yelling, just despair and frustration, and me being near tears. It was determined (by someone other than me) that creme brulee might help.

To be honest, I absolutely needed to be handled today. It was bad. And yet it wasn't so much a wake-up call as the last snooze alarm.

Since there's a hiring freeze in place, I can't leave this job. But I've had a few days recently where I come home miserable or I dread going in the next day. I've been contemplating going back to my psychiatrist so that I can pay him to listen to me whine, he can kick me in the @$$ and tell me to get over it, and maybe teach me some deep breathing or something, and then I can get on with my life.

Today, when I found myself yelling for the third time (this time about another coworker, in the direction of the other manager, that went something along the lines of, "WHY AM I THE ONLY PERSON IN THIS OFFICE WHO DOES THEIR DAMN JOB CORRECTLY???"), I actually stopped and told him I thought perhaps I needed some type of anger management intervention.

So that was the snooze alarm. I'm going to make a call on Monday and see if I can get in to see the shrink some day next week. I know that I'll be ok for the next three days - tomorrow I'm by myself (and I know that I won't have to clean up anyone else's mess because I was the only one there today), and Monday and Tuesday I share the office with my favorite morning worker. Wednesday could be a challenge, since I have to deal with the girl who was the subject of that last rant, but knowing that she's in big trouble with the managers (you know, because she's not doing her job correctly) is going to keep me tongue-in-teeth.

For now, I'll be breathing in good air, and breathing out bad air, and hoping that keeps me going.

Damn It!

This is one of those posts that I shouldn't post. You should hear the alarm bells going off in my head right now. "Stifle it!" "Wait until morning!" "No one cares, princess!"

So what? I'm in a tither, and you're reading. But feel free to not read. I understand. Skip down to Flashback Friday, or come back another time when the world isn't crashing in around me.

I came home tonight to a letter from a collection company. Apparently I owe Penn State $4919.66. I shouldn't say "apparently," because I knew I owed them money... 8 years ago when I was young and poor. But I sort of thought that debt went away.

I really thought that chapter of my life was over - you know, the one with the harsh letters and mean phone calls. Now I'm going to have to have this hanging over my head until Monday when I can call them, and they're going to be mean to me, and I'm going to say, "here's $100...please leave me alone for a month," and that's going to go on for the next 49 months.

Actually, after this month, I only have 3 months left on my student loan payments (10% wage garnishment... the fastest way to pay off a debt!). So then in May I can pay these mean people $300 per month for 15 months. Anyone want to make a wager on whether my car will last long enough for that plan to come through?

I guess there's really nothing to do until Monday. Unless...

Anyone know the winning lottery numbers??

Is It Time for Bed Yet?

I'm tired and my day hasn't even started yet. That's probably not a good sign of things to come.

Oh well - 4ish hours of work and 2 hours of rehearsal, and then I can come home and stare at the TV.

I think I'm just mentally tired from thinking about everything that needs to be done in the next 6 days. Today is going to be one of those "take things one day at a time" days, or my head is going to explode!