Dumb Girls Debtors Prison

I met with my bankruptcy lawyer again, and today, in fact, I actually gave her money, so it's formally under way now. Woot yee haw. Or something. It's a very strange feeling, I'm kind of simultaneously horrified and delighted. I don't feel guilty about the credit cards - I think I've paid those asshole companies well over 200% of what I originally bought by now, if not more - but I do feel kind of strange about just writing off M's psych bills. Which my health insurance is refusing to pay (remind me again why I give them $450 a month? So they can refuse to pay for almost everything?) and which are rapidly mounting up into the multiple thousands.

Also, I have this strange fear that some Dickensian characters are now going to come stomping through my house, smoking cigars, dressed in caps, shouting in cockney and seizing things. They will probably look something like these guys although less animated, and they will take all my stuff and put it in a big hellish moving van. Then M. will have to grow up as a debtors child in debtor's prison, and he'll have to run in and out of the big iron gates in an oversized coat. It will all be black and white, and I will have consumption.
"cough, cough. . .why thankee kindly dear for the soup. . oh I am so sorry we have come to such a pass!"
"Fear not, mother. I have gotten a job delivering lumps of coal and sweeping chimneys, and I will soon join you with the consumption thing"
"Oh if only ee could go to school, poor tyke. . but my evil behaviour will be visited on the heads of the generations unto forever, alas. . "
The lawyer says no, calm down, this won't happen and nobody is interested in my stuff. I do have friends who have been through this process, and they haven't mentioned Cockney villains (you'd think they would), so it's probably okay. I'm still worried. And I can't quite figure out where this scene is coming from, or why I think they'll be yelling "Assez! Assez there!" Did I mention that it would, of course, be snowing? Cough, cough.

It was strange, I had to list all my stuff in terms of what it's worth. I really have no idea: my mother says "You have nothing, this is all junk" and my friends say, "Wow, that's a really great chair, I can't believe you got it at the Goodwill for only $20." I mean, what's the blue book value on an Ikea dining room table from 1992? Is it increased or decreased by the dog claw marks from the days when Toby figured out he could jump up on the table and eat the cat food? And what about the tile tables I made, and the end table Trish gave me when she moved, that I then painted with purple and gold spirals? It's hard to value your stuff - she wanted a value on the art in my house; does that include mine? So the whole thing began to devolve into kind of a melancholy philosophic dialogue: what is worth, anyway? And can it be applied to 4000 or so paperback books?

The lawyer persevered, however, and it turns out that my monthly expenses are about $300 more than my income, which explains a lot. Years ago my friend Lu & I came up with the concept of Bad Girls Debtor's Prison, which is where you go when you have been not only really dumb about money but have also taken the completely insanely stupid step of being dumb about money WITH YOUR BOYFRIEND. To wit, giving him a credit card, or a car, or something. Don't laugh. I have done both of these things, and in fact that was what started me into this long slow spiral of credit card doom.

Meanwhile, and appropriately, it would seem that my cable internet has been shut off for nonpayment, so until I get that sorted out, I am without internet at home. This always produces a feeling of panic - what if I NEED mapquest, or something? Yahoo weather. I mean, how can they DO this? Evil capitalist bastards.