Tag Archives: credit

Credit where it’s due…

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I spend a lot of time on this blog bitching and complaining about things. No apologies. It’s just who I am as a person. However, when credit is due, I like to think I cover those bases too. So, with that said, here’s the credit due this week:

1. Summit Bridge Veterinary Hospital. As soon as I found Hershel on Sunday morning, I was on the phone immediately to Summit Bridge. The fact that on a Sunday morning, they were open and immediately available for an emergency phone consult put them steps above just about any other practice I’ve used. Assessing that the situation was likely beyond their capabilities, they immediately referred me to two local emergency vet options. Quick, professional, and focused, they’re a solid recommend in my book if you have veterinary service needs in the local area.

2. BluePearl Pet Hospital – Christiana. BluePearl, like a lot of the other large chain veterinary practices get a lot of guff. I suspect that’s at least in part because of the prices involved when it comes to emergency or specialty vet medicine. I get it. However, everyone I worked with there on Sunday morning was fantastic. Hershel was in triage within 45 seconds of walking through the doors and the receptionist seeing his condition. Fifteen minutes later, the emergency vet was providing a detailed breakdown of his condition, pros and cons of treatment, and likely outcomes. She was compassionate and responsive to questions throughout our conversation. The tech who walked me though options for cremation or other arrangements was incredibly professional. The vet and tech tending to the actual euthanasia somehow managed to be a physical presence and yet disappeared in plain sight, allowing as much time as I wanted both before and after administering the final drug cocktail. From start to finish, the team at BluePearl displayed competence, professionalism, and compassion both for Hershel and for me. I don’t regret a nickel of their fee.

3. Jorah. This sweet, slightly neurotic boy has been unfailingly happy through what has felt like a very long couple of days. After sniffing around a bit Sunday night, he settled in to his own routine of snoozing in the living room, barking at the squirrels, and chasing the birds from the back yard. I honestly don’t know what I’d have done if he hadn’t been here when I got home with an empty crate on Sunday afternoon.

Feeling pretty good…

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It’s not polite to talk about money. That’s the kind of thing people drilled into your head back in the olden days. Maybe it’s still true. I don’t know. Maybe it isn’t polite to talk about money, but I’m going to do it anyway.

Like most people, I’ve had a complicated relationship with money for as long as I can remember. Some times were fat, others thin. Even in those thin times, though, debt was easy. I never had any trouble finding someone willing to let me borrow on their account. I’ve had some kind of unsecured debt following me around since Citibank gave me my first credit card as a college sophomore.

A decade ago, fleeing from an untenable career situation, I racked up a mountain of debt. It went to the costs of leasing out the house at less than I needed to cover the note (before finally selling it off at a loss), paying my own way a third of the way across the country, setting up housekeeping here along the northern reaches of the Chesapeake, and a bulldog with eye watering medical bills, among less dramatic things. It was all wildly expensive – and what I couldn’t cover out of pocket, I financed.

It’s taken every bit of those ten years, but as of this morning, with one last payment, I clawed out from under the last $279 of non-mortgage debt I was carrying on my books. With a rock bottom interest rate and no intention of staying in this house forever, it’s debt on an appreciating asset (and a deduction) I’m just fine with keeping. I’m perfectly willing to make that my modified definition of “debt free.”

Some people have said it’s a liberating feeling. Maybe it is, but mostly what I feel is relief – knowing that I can fully allocate resources to better goals than continually servicing debt. I could have cut costs to the bone, but you know, you’ve got to live a life too. I’m not saying I’ll never buy another thing with someone else’s dollars, but I’ll be a hell of a lot more judicious than I used to be when it happens.

This day would have arrived a hell of a lot sooner if I qualified for mortgage forgiveness back in 2008 or any of the COVID cash giveaways in 2021. There’s a good chance that’ll be a sore spot that festers for the rest of my life. Missing out on two big freebies aside, I’m feeling pretty good about things just now… and not only because I’m just a few hours into a 16-day weekend.

The God of Happy Accidents…

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There’s something that’s been bugging me for the last few days. It’s one of those things that most don’t consider a topic for polite company and I’ve swung from one side to the other debating whether this was the right place to even bring it up… or whether I should bring it up at all or just let it be one of those questions that agitates me quietly forever in the back of my head. Since I use this site as a platform for pretty much every other flavor of Buddycontroversy, I don’t suppose religion should be more off limits here than any other topic has been in the past.

It won’t come as a surprise to anyone who knows me that I’m not exactly what you’d call religious. I’m not sure I can even get away with describing myself as “spiritual,” as many people seem to prefer these days. It’s not exactly that I’m anti-religion, but I’ve never quite been able to accept faith as the ultimate evidence of things not seen. I’ve always liked my evidence to be something a little more corporeal. Despite that, I’ve always had a healthy level of curiosity about world religions and have a tendency to pay attention when they are discussed academically.

This past weekend I heard a theologian argue that we can’t really blame God when something bad happens. In the next breath, this same panel member argued that we should praise God for all the good things that we enjoy in the world. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is where my train of thought came off the rails. It seems to me that if we’re going to worship an all knowing, all powerful deity that is responsible for every good thing that happens, the very nature of an omnipotent God demands that He also be responsible for bad things when they happen. To think otherwise suggests a divine duality – one god responsible for all good things and another responsible for only bad things. That’s a pretty problematic concept to tinker with when the world’s major religious groups are pretty well established as monotheistic enterprises.

After writing that last paragraph, someone is sure to argue that I just don’t like religion in general or Christianity in particular. Because I know my own mind, I can say that’s not exactly true. I’m fine with religion and with Christianity (as long as they’re not being forced on anyone at the point of a sword)… what chaps my ass is hypocrisy. If someone of faith had the stones to go on national television and simply say “sometimes God just lets bad shit happen” I think I’d be fine with it, but to absolve your particular deity from responsibility because it doesn’t fit with the traditional narrative that God is Good requires a level of mental gymnastics that I’m not comfortable carrying out.

Although I’m not a theologian by any stretch of the imagination, it seems to be that if there is a God and He is, in fact, all powerful and all knowing, then we’re doing Him a disservice by only giving Him accolades for the happy accidents of life. Sorry, but if He wants the credit when things are going well, He’s going to have to share in the blame when it’s gone to hell in a handbag, even if it’s only because free will was His idea in the first place. How’s that for a controversial stance?