"The Death By a Thousand Cuts." I have been trying to keep my patience and humor with me through this whole stolen-checks affair, but the little consequences keep adding up to an annoying level of inconvenience. My new debit card finally arrived in yesterday's mail, giving me at least some access to my own money, but my checks still haven't arrived, so I still can't pay bills. Plus my direct deposit, which was supposed to have arrived in my account last Friday, never did, so now I have to spend at least part of tomorrow, a busy day anyway, finding out where, if anywhere, my paycheck was deposited.

Meanwhile, my bank has been playing some sort of three-card monty by seemingly randomly transferring money between my savings and two checking accounts. "Overdraft" transfers and charges, even though the account was not overdrawn, followed by reinstatements of the transfers and charges, but not to the right accounts or in the right amounts. I have to keep my eye on each and every debit and credit, making sure that they all even out in the end. And it's not like I'm being small minded - some of these transfers have been as large as $3,300. And it's not like I'm attached - I mostly need the money to pay to others, like my mortgage company, as I have promised and as they are depending.

I've been the victim of a petty crime - checks stolen out of my mailbox - and possibly by larger felonies - interstate passing of false checks. I expected to have spent some time trying to straighten this all out, but now the bank's own incompetency is complicating matters. When I talked to them, they argue that they called me and left a message, to which I counter that no they didn't until we finally realized that they were calling an old work number at an office I hadn't worked at in two years. More incompetency - apparently, my old employer still hasn't shut off my voice mail.

I was last at the bank on Wednesday, and a few minutes after I left, they called me on my cell and said that right after I left, my new checks had finally arrived. I turned the car around and went back to the bank, but when I got there we discovered that the new box had still been printed to my old account, now shut down because of the theft. The printer had ignored the new information on the order. So we had to re-submit the order and start the process all over again.

Sigh. It's better just to not think about it. Maybe I'll go watch some t.v. . . . .GIL!!!!