My Credit Report is Scarier Than Halloween Night

My favorite scary movie is the original Halloween. It scares the pants off of me every time I watch it. I love it! But my credit report, now there's a true-to-life scary story.

In the past five years or so I finally got a little smarter and started requesting my husband's and my credit reports. I don't pay a cent for them either. (Must be the cheap Menno in me.) I fill out the form, which I find online, photocopy the appropriate ID, put it into a secure envelope and drop it in the mail. Within a few weeks I get a detailed report of what these credit reporting places have on us. I get reports from Equifax and Trans Union and they can have totally different information on us. That's only one weird thing about this ... it gets even more strange. Here's a list of things I've either had to request to get corrected or have investigated and dropped from our reports.

• Incorrect previous employment. Equifax had information on me working at a bodyshop back when we moved here in 2001. Mike worked there for a little while but why was it on my report? Obviously a misunderstanding. 
• A bank I didn't recognize was doing frequent credit checks on me. Laurentian Bank of Canada was doing credit checks every few months. I requested more information and nothing was found so the credit checks stopped and it was dropped from my credit report.
• Mike's personal phone number changed. We tracked it down to a credit union that had done a credit check on him when he made a loan for our trailer. But why would Mike's phone number change? Weird.
• MTS...I'm thinking it was the the Manitoba Telephone System? It was hard to tell on the report. They apparently had reported me to a collections agency. Wait...what? I made sure to clean everything up before we left Manitoba in 2001 and left a forwarding address so I asked that to be investigated. They came back with no information and it was dropped from my credit report. 
• Combinations of Mike's name changes every now and then which is understandable because his birth name is Jon Michael but he often just goes by Mike. Whenever he corrects it (and he will list Mike or Michael as an alias) they screw around with it. I've noticed they enjoy using hyphens.
• Mike's workplace name changed. Hmmm, he's still working at the same place he's worked at for over a decade. The address is correct. Maybe it's misspelled? It's hard to say. The alphabet is a crazy concept. 

If anyone out there works for, or understands, either one of these reporting agencies, please, please let me know how information gets incorrect and jumbled up from year to year. Some of these things just shouldn't get messed up. They don't let you know when something changes at their end. It's your own responsibility to find out your facts.

For those of you who haven't requested your credit reports, Equifax has information about a lot of your bills too. It even tells you how many late payments or missed payments you've had on your cellphone bill. Yep....so if you've sloppy about your bill paying, your credit report will reflect it.

A credit report is different than one's credit score, which you have to pay for.  We just asked for our credit scores when we applied for a mortgage last year and that's good enough for me. (There's the Menno in me again.) I'm sure you could get it from your bank when you apply for a loan or a credit card because they have to request it anyway. After all, you pay the bank a lot of money every year, why wouldn't they just tell you what it is?

So there's my scary Halloween story for all you kids. The first time I received our credit reports, I felt like somebody had been watching me all these years. It gave me a jolt as I read eight pages of my personal information. They have a lot, I mean a lot, of information about us. It's frightening how my personal information can change without me ever knowing too....but that's the world we live in.

Have a great Halloween!

Low-German Word of the Day

Schlawp....hope I spelled that correctly. Is there really a correct way to spell low-german words? Has anyone actually seen a low-german dictionary? I'm not sure something like that exists. I think of a low-german dictionary kind of like the Loch Ness monster......there have been sightings but does anyone actually have legitimate proof? If anybody knows of one, let me know. I'd like to get my hands on it.

From growing up in a mostly Mennonite community in southern Manitoba, we often used the word schlawp to describe things, and sometimes people, when you didn't want to waste too much breath. This one word can shorten a sentence immensely. Instead of saying "My boss doesn't answer his phone calls, doesn't help his employees and sits in his office all day doing nothing" you can just say "My boss is schlawp."  Anyone that understands the meaning of the word will know exactly what you are trying to say. It generally means weak, lazy, disorganized or describes someone who just doesn't care or has no idea what their doing. I've had schlawp bosses and co-workers. I've bought small appliances, clothes and other items that don't work properly or fall apart easily so I don't like to use them because they're schlawp.

So go ahead...use the word. It's quite funny when it comes spouting out of your mouth at the opportune time. When you're trying to get your toddler's arms into their jacket sleeves and your beautiful cherub is just laying on the floor pretending like he/she is a wet noodle, tell them to quit being schlawp. It's not a bad word so kids can blurt it out in class the next day and can't get into trouble!

Why Can't You Just Be a Princess?

I know, I know....I should be encouraging individuality with my daughter but if you saw what I'm sewing up for her Halloween costume this year, you might be on my side. "Why can't you just be a Teletubbie?" I may ask her as we're browsing Halloween Alley, answered with silence and the "look". Don't know where she gets that from.

Over the years I've had to put together a costume or two...sometimes purchased and sometimes put together creatively . My daughter is 13 and still loves dressing up for Halloween. Her brothers were done with dressing up for All Hallow's Eve by that age. Raelynn is going to be....you know those kind of people....the ones that are 35 years old and go to work for their 8-hour shift in full clown attire and feel totally comfortable with it.

Really, I am okay with making her costumes.

The school girl uni still needs some touches but I've got the major parts done.
Ooops....don't look at the fireman's calendar to the right.

This year she is some sort of anime character, I think? I don't know, but I do know that I'm sewing up a black and red Japanese school girl uniform. To order the uniform was to cost a ridiculous amount of money but going to Fabricland when they have the Buy 1 Metre, Get 2 Free Metres Event was priceless. (I'll need lots of fabric because there's a good possibility that I'll screw it up the first time.) I love it that Raelynn doesn't mind homemade costumes because they're usually a whole lot nicer than the store-bought ones that come in a 9x12 plastic bag and thinner than tissue paper. Besides, you can be much more creative and authentic-looking if you can put together your own costume.

Coleson & Raelynn...Coleson's is homemade, believe it or not

Here's a few costumes of Halloween past...

I think this is Brody

This is Brody but Coleson also wore
this costume 5 years later.
This one
is also homemade....my first!

Brody is a ninja....homemade costume

Raelynn is a ....fairy? The store-bought little girls' costumes all look the same to me....princesses, fairies, they're all the same

Our house isn't quite as busy at this time of the year as it used to be. Now that the youngun's are getting bigger, I can make the time for Raelynn's costumes. She approached me sometime in August with her ideas and together we figured out how we could make it happen.

Gone are the ghosts, grim reapers, princesses and fairies that I used to buy off the Wal-Mart shelves.

Hello? Edward Scissorhands? Can you come over?

Could you imagine having Johnny Depp over on a Saturday afternoon helping with the gardening? I'd even make him supper!

We bought this house in April 2015 and the front flowerbed is choked with Bishop's Weed. At first I was thinking "Great! Low maintenance!" but not anymore. Now I'm thinking I want something much prettier in the little garden adorning the front of my house. There is a really nice hosta and a lily in there somewhere but they just get bullied out by these weeds. Even the sprinklers are buried under there somewhere and I have to constantly pull weeds so the sprinklers can actually spray the lawn. I do believe there is a place for vigorous ground covering plants but a potentially cute front flower bed is not the place. This stuff creeps into the lawn, between the steps and drops seeds like mad in spring. I've been in crazy mode trying to keep it under control. Anyway, we'll be digging out the roots the next nice weekend and dealing with this elephant on the yard.

We also have these beautiful vines that grow up along the deck posts in the back yard. I love them but if I don't keep those under control, the place looks like something from a horror movie. Last summer, obviously too late in the summer, I went out to trim them and they had spread over to the neighbor's back parking area and were making their way around their yard. I was horrified....I didn't even know the neighbors yet! Needless to say, I trimmed them immediately.

Now, I'm not blaming previous owners at all. In fact, after we'd lived in the house for about a month, we found out that this was a show home back in 2001 when this neighborhood was in it's infancy. That would explain fast-growing plants among a few other quirky things that I won't get into.

I love this house. I wished we could've moved here sooner... although I miss our old neighborhood like crazy. I guess working out things on your house and yard are just part of the journey of making your house your home.

I wonder if Johnny Depp would enjoy kielke and schmontfat?

Turkey Hunting

I was not prepared for Thanksgiving weekend this year and I have no excuses. I figured I could get what I needed for Thanksgiving dinner the night before. What was I thinking? No, really.....I'm old enough to know that you don't run out and purchase what you need last minute at this time of year.

Since we were doing some business in another area of the city than where we live, we decided to pick up a few Thanksgiving dinner items at our favorite stores before we headed home on Saturday night. We checked several grocery stores and kept meeting up with the same pathetic, unprepared turkey hunters in every store we went into. We were feeling defeated after checking our fourth grocery store. After hopping back into the vehicle for the fifth time, my husband looked me square in the eye and said "Ham it is then?" 

On the way home that night, we decided to check the store nearest our home. With a heavy heart and thinking we would probably be picking up a ham instead, hallelujah, we found plenty of turkeys. Sigh.

WANTED! DEAD OR ALIVE
....PREFERABLY DEAD, DE-FEATHERED AND FROZEN

Fortunately (and thankfully), it all worked out and our family got together Sunday at noon with a cooked turkey and all the fixin's.

We played several rounds of crokinole (knips braat or knips dasch for my fellow low-german comrades), ate more, watched a movie, ate some more, played more games and ate more. (Cheesecake pumpkin pie is REALLY good.)

Of course there's many things we are thankful for but I realized, once again, how easily we lost sight of why we were getting together and celebrating this Thanksgiving weekend. It's embarrassing how we take advantage of everything at our fingertips and we would have had just as good a time if we would have had ham instead of turkey. 

Can I Get Directions to the Nearest Insane Asylum?

Now, I wasn't going to make this site of mine a "how-to" blog but on occasion I may share my vast knowledge on a particular subject. I'll start off by saying that once your children are teenagers, it's all payback and parents should take full advantage of it. For instance, I have this apron that has mustaches all over it and everytime I wear it, the conversation goes something like this...."Coleson?" and he says "Yep" and then I wait until he looks at me and I say "I mustache you a question". He just shakes his head and tries with all his might not to smile.

The Dispicable Apron

Another approach a parent may try is to recite lines from movies and childhood shows frequently. For example, when you walk into a room where your teenager is sitting, probably his or her room, and yell "Who...made... this... great ...big... mess?!" (This is from the Big Comfy Couch... if anyone had the pleasure of watching at least a hundred episodes of this show, you probably own a straight jacket). Shrek and Toy Story movies have some great lines to use on your teenager until they run screaming from the room.

Or how about when your teen is in the bathroom, walk by and knock on the door and yell "I have to pee!" ...even though there are other bathrooms in the house and you don't have to go pee. Every now and then when my teenager steps on my toe or bumps into me, I yell "ouch!" A really good one (I'm quivering as I'm thinking about it because I LOVE this one) when your teenager passes their learners license you can inconveniently ask them to drive you places like the grocery store or gas station at all hours of the day....preferably when they're playing games on the computer with their friends or better yet, wake them up early on a Saturday or Sunday morning.

Remember, your quest is to get the eye roll.

If the truth should be told, I don't think I've ever caught a full-on eye roll but I know I may have to stop tormenting my offspring at some point or one day I'll get a pat on the head and the nurses will say "there, there".

The Oldest Munchkin

Our oldest child moved out on his own about a year ago. He knew and we knew when it was time for him to get out of the house. Brody's a great guy and didn't cause us too much grief while he was at home but it came to a head the last few months before he moved. I felt awful the day he and his friend started carrying all his belongings out to the truck. I had to keep myself in check because I kept thinking "Have I failed with Brody?". No! I didn't fail...if he was smart and brave enough to decide to live on his own, then there was no reason why he shouldn't be moving on. Why was I feeling bad? He needed his own space and besides, he wasn't living that far from us.

Brody in his room at our old house.
One of those sticky notes on his computer says "Get a Job"

Brody went to the college the year after he graduated from high school. He took one year of the Computer Technician Program and decided that wasn't for him. Now he's back at the college, upgrading so he can get into an engineering course at the University. He's paying for this himself this time and it's hard to watch my boy struggle but I know it's for the best. Nowadays he appreciates it when we offer to buy tires for his car for his birthday.

I know Brody's a busy man now, trying to build a life for himself and I try to connect with him every week or so without nagging. I invite him over for supper every now and then and on occasion he'll just pop in to talk for a few minutes.

I wish him all the luck in the world.....although it'll be his hard work and dedication that will determine whether he gets through the tough stuff. It's hard to keep your head up when all the stress in the world seems to be sitting on your shoulders but I know he can do it. He's stubborn.