My wife is a pessimist.  I came home from work and told her how my boss complimented me on a project. Wife: A pat on the back is only a few centimeters from a kick in the pants. I told  her the point in this economy is to be irreplaceable.  Wife: Don’t be irreplaceable, if you can’t be replaced, you can’t be promoted. I said, do you have any idea what kind of crap I put up with to hold onto this job??  Wife: The more crap you put up with, the more crap you are going to get.

This is why she is not employed herself.  Debbie Downer is easy to lay off.  But she redeemed herself a few weeks ago. We got a big unexpected expense, and I didn’t know how we were going to pay for it.  She said that would be easy, go to Wheeling Title Loans, where we can get money from the value of her car.  She was right, that’s exactly what we did.

So, that goes to show that pessimists, looking at half empty glasses, still have a few good ideas now and then.

By the way Wheeling is near Buffalo Grove, Deerfield, Illinois, Northbrook, Prospect Heights, and Riverwoods.

I am not afraid of heights, but I am afraid of widths.

Yup, this is a fat girl story.  I’ve been up and down in my weight, more up lately than down. And entering into a recession is not a good time to be fat. First, if you lose your job you’ll be home all day snacking. Then when you go on a job interview looking like Kirstie Alley (after she got fired by NutriSystems), it’s a ding against you.

So while I hold onto my job at Motorola by the skin of my teeth, I hope, I hired a trainer and went on a prepared meals diet program.  All told, it’s costing me $2000 per month.  Which is $1000 more than I can afford. But I think it’s an important investment. So I had to find a good source of the additional money – this is a three month program, and it’s already working – so I went on the Internet and found Vernon Hills Title Loans.  I’m borrowing against my Cherokee, which is paid off now, and I’ll pay it off by the time I’m down to 135 pounds.

And I promise not to celebrate by ordering a Deerfield cake.

By the way Vernon Hills is near Buffalo Grove, Indian Creek, Libertyville, Lincolnshire, and Mundelein.

Eagles (and geese) may soar, but weasels don’t get sucked into jet engines.

I think there’s a lesson here. Last year I was walking along Slade Street and ran into a high school friend.  Oh was she riding high, in her Lexus (she is/was a trophy wife), leather boots, fur coat, Chanel sunglasses.  I buy my clothes at TJ Maxx and Target (no animal dies for my clothes!), and drive a Volkswagon Golf. We had a coffee at Starbucks, and the conversation was pleasant, although she managed to mention three foreign countries they’ve traveled to in the past couple years.

Fast forward to 2009.  I hear her husband dumped her, his real estate company is completely bankrupt, they lost their house. I’m not saying I wish such things on anybody (noooo not meeeeee).  But it more or less makes me feel happy we’re weathering this downturn without a major disruption.

Last month the refrigerator went on the blink, and my own husband was out of work. We just didn’t have spare cash for a new one.  My husband said, in joke, maybe we should store our food in the cars. So I looked at my Golf and said, “hey, we can get a car title loan.”  Sure enough, I went online and found Palatine Title Loans, where car title loans are available in about a day.  Which was perfect, because we were able to order a new refrigerator for delivery before the food went bad (we actually did keep the frozen foods out there for one night, since it was about 10 degrees out).

This weasel survives, thank you very much.

Palatine is also near, Inverness, Lake Zurich, Deer Park, Barrington, and Buffalo Grove.

I made a list of things I do that annoy even myself:

1. I sing along with the elevator music.
2. I would rather go to work than stay home sick.
3. I constantly talk about the price of gasoline.
4. I enjoy hearing about other people’s operations.
5. I consider coffee one of the most important things in life.

Another thing is I can’t stand is having credit card debt hanging over my head. It happens – God knows, emergencies come up and you have to get out that plastic – but fall behind on those charges and you get slapped with really high interest rates. Like 28%! So to manage down my credit cards, and keep payments made in time to bring down those rates, I took out a car title loan from Lincolnshire Title Loans. It was a lower interest rate, so I was actually doing a smart thing. I thought car title loans were something for people with really desperate problems, but in fact that’s not always the case. A car title loan is a financing option – something grown ups do when they need to manage their money.

Of course, that doesn’t stop me from singing on elevators. And why should I?

By the way Lincolnshire is near Wheeling, Buffalo Grove, Riverwoods, Vernon Hills, and Deerfield.

I asked my obstetrician about how my childbirth would feel, and she said I’ll feel more pressure than pain. My baby weighed in at ten pounds, seven ounces. Calling that just pressure is like saying a tornado is a lot of wind current.

Which is just like the storm of financial problems we ran into around the time of my delivery. We had both lost our jobs, our mortgage was killing us, and then the hospital and doctor expenses were only partially covered by our health insurance. We talked about selling one of the cars, but with a baby and both of us looking for work, that didn’t seem like a smart idea either.

I went online and looked for ideas. That’s when I found Buffalo Grove Title Loans, a car title loan company that advances you money depending on the blue book value of your vehicle. Both our cars are five years old, but since they’re paid for we have the title. So I got $4000 to cover us in that torrent of expenses, enough to keep our heads above water and the insurance bills paid. It’s not been an easy time, but finding that cash got us through the toughest part of it and now we feel like we can manage things and get back on solid footing.

By the way Buffalo Grove is near Wheeling, Northbrook, Deerfield, Highwood, and Prospect Heights.

I know I’m addicted to coffee. In the mornings, I truly am not able to wait to get to the Starbucks over in Schaumburg, where I work. I make the instant stuff at home. And sometimes I think that takes too long.

But this coffee habit gets the best of me sometimes. Like one day I was shopping at Woodfield Mall. I only had a half hour, and there were all these crazy recessionary economy sales going on. I shopped like a thoroughbred at Arlington Park. And Christmas was coming. So between bedding and linens, clothes for me, clothes for my husband, clothes for the kids and a crock pot I really didn’t need, I built up a sizable Visa bill that, unfortunately, I am not able to pay.

With my credit cards maxed and a house rule to no longer tap into the home equity, I wasn’t sure where I’d find the cash. Then I heard about Arlington Heights Title Loans, where I was able to get an advance from the value of my old Saturn. It was the perfect answer: I could apply online from my computer (coffee at my side), get the approval in an hour and money from my car title loan in 24 hours. I just joined a gym now, so that’s how I’m putting that caffeine to work instead.

By the way Arlington Heights is near Rolling Meadows, Mt Prospect, Buffalo Grove, Palatine, and Hoffman Estates.