Day of the Boar, 28th of Spring, 525 M.E. (Electra): There are many reasons my blood pressure has been elevated. Setting aside politics, the economy, and my car, I've also been the victim of credit-card fraud.

Back on Monday, March 31, as I was checking out of my hotel in Knoxville, I got a text message from Chase that they had declined the payment for my stay. I went to the front desk to get it straightened out, but we were both confused as their records showed that the payment went through fine without a problem and the amount of the declined payment wasn't the same as the total of my bill. So I texted Chase back that no, that charge apparently wasn't mine, and they replied, no problem, they'll cancel my card and send me a new replacement.

(Actually, it turns out that the declined charge wasn't for my recent stay but a partial down-payment for the reservation I had made for next year, but I didn't realize that until later.)  

A few days after I got back home, while I as still waiting for the replacement card to arrive in the mail, I got another text from Chase saying that they declined a charge on the new card number made at a Walmart. Folks, I don't shop at Walmart and besides, I didn't yet have the replacement card the charge was made on. Apparently, someone had stolen the replacement from my mailbox. I have no idea how they got the card authorized, but the thieves apparently used it to make a purchase at Walmart. I checked my account on line, and found that in addition to the Walmart charge, there were two other fraudulent charges, one at a Publix supermarket and the other at a Mr. Fix-It Phone Store or something.

So on top of my anxiety about the cost of the repair of my car, which had been in the shop for over two weeks with some sort of inscrutable electrical problem, and the cost of the cracked windshield on the loaner car they had given me, and on top of the news saying that Trump's tariff's were going to raise the cost on virtually everything, were causing the stock markets to crash, and were likely to lead to a recession, and on top of my IRA hemorrhaging cash value like a hemophiliac in a knife fight, and on top of Mumps' attacks on the Social Security benefits I receive, I now had to worry about some criminal running around Atlanta using my credit card.

I called Chase and after going though the frustrating touch-dial menu and two representatives who couldn't help me (I'm not kidding, one of them advised to me to just wait a while and see if things wouldn't straighten themselves out over time) I finally got a competent person who cancelled the replacement card, took the fraudulent charges off my account, and is sending me a second replacement, a card to replace the stolen replacement card. Now, I have to guard my mailbox against theft until the new card arrives, "within 5 to 10 business days."

No wonder my blood pressure has been elevated.