Somebody shoot me now...please...

Seriously...somebody please shoot me and put me out of my telephone misery. I HATE talking on the telephone. I do everything humanly possible to avoid 99% of the phone calls that come my way. I LOVE e-mail and text messaging. The internet is a godsend.

The telephone sucks.

Talking to customer service representatives is my own personal hell.

My debit card expires this month. My good ol' faithful debit card has reached the end of its life, and I got a bright shiny new one in the mail a few weeks ago. Today, I finally faced my fears, dug out the new card, and got to work making some phone calls. I wanted to be in bed an hour ago. No such luck.

Three of our bills come out of our checking account automatically. The only thing I hate more than the telephone is writing checks to pay the bills. I suck at it. I am often late by a day or two...or three. Okay, maybe even a week. But don't tell J.

It kills me because:

1. I am a responsible person. I don't not pay my bills. I just sometimes miss the deadline a little.

2. I have the money to pay the bills, I just hate sitting down and doing it. If only they were all due on the same day. I probably wouldn't mind it so much then. I could sit down and do it all at once. With everything staggered so much, it's like all I ever do is pay a bill.

3. There are some parts of being a grown up that suck. Paying bills and talking on the phone are two of the sucky grown up responsibilities.

Anyway, because we have automatic payments, I had to get on the phone and give all the people my new number. See, I was dumb three years ago when my last card expired. I didn't even think about it. It wasn't until a month after it expired and the cable quit working that I figured out my mistake. Oops. I wanted to avoid all of that this time, so I thought I would be proactive and call before everything expired.

I didn't realize what a serious pain in the ass it would be. I thought it would be simple. Call Sprint, tell them my new number, hang up. Well, actually, I thought I would try to do it online first. Now, I'm not stupid. In fact, I think I'm actually pretty clever. And, while I am not an expert, I can navigate a computer with ease most of the time. However, the "User Friendly" Sprint site was apparently set up to prove that I am not, in fact, clever, but dumber than a box of rocks (sorry J...I know rocks aren't dumb...sort of).

For the life of me, I could not figure out how to change my credit card information. So I picked up the phone, and got one of those HORRIBLE automated systems that wants you to say your information out loud, and choose from a list of options. Apparently my stuffed up nose (I'm sick again...this sucks!) renders me incomprehensible to the damn computer. I finally gave up and tried a trick I heard from a friend...I sat in complete silence. It worked! I outsmarted or frustrated the computer, and the digital voice went away and I got an actual, real, live person on the phone! I was ecstatic. Then reality sank in, and an ENTIRE HOUR later, I have an entirely new internet account, and new credit card information. Many thanks to the very kind lady in India who I sat in companionable silence with for approximately 50 of those 60 lovely minutes we spent together on the phone.

That accomplished, I thought I would just call Charter and get the cable bill set up. This time the process was much faster. I didn't even try to work with the nice digital lady...I tried the silent trick again, and it worked again!! The whole call only took 20 minutes from start to finish! There was only one slight miscommunication, but we resolved it rather quickly. She asked how she could help me, I told her I wanted to give her a new debit card number for my automatic payments, and she heard "credit" card. And, I told her it expired in 03/11, and she heard 01/11. Damn stuffy nose.

Anyway, it's all good now. I need to call my insurance agents in Gig Harbor tomorrow, because I really need car and house insurance. (I love Tim and Jorja Potter of State Farm Insurance!! They're wonderful. So great, in fact, that even though we live on the other side of the state, I still use them. And, when we got married, I made J call his agent and switch to mine!) I'm pretty sure their automatic payment comes from my checking account, and not my debit card, though, so I'm not worried there.

Oh, and when I call tomorrow, I know a real person is going to answer the phone...

If I get another computerized voice I'm going to cry.