You Are Your Credit Score

Trust me, I'm not going to use my platform to give financial advice -- to be blunt, I need some -- but Karl Taro Greenfeld's latest novel that I finished the proof copy of this weekend, The Subprimes (ISBN 9780062132420) comes across at first like Ayn Rand's wet dream (I have to wonder if by the time she died in her mid-seventies that she had ANY doubt of her economic and relationship ideas) where the America before the Great Depression of no social assistance and the privatization of everything under the sun, but then as you read and several different vantage points begin to come together pitting a rather blatantly religiously motivated mandated corporation to have dominion over the earth which happens to find a deposit of shale oil underneath a community and a community of many thousand who've been driven out of their homes by draconian legislation and predatory lending practices -- people called "subprimes" due to their lower credit ratings who are seen as cursed, as opposed to those who are "prime" and in this novel's world seen as blessed -- you the reader are forced to answer the question, "If you don't stand now, where will you run to?"

Crap. I think that is the longest sentence I have ever written. (Though I daresay there are sentences in José Saramago novels than span several pages.) Today's title comes from one credit card -- or is it credit counseling? -- commercial that has or had as its motto that "you are more than your credit score". But when I first planned today's entry, I honestly believed it was the title. But besides that this weekend has been bookended, pardon the pun, by Martha and her bowling league going to and returning from their state bowling competition in Grand Forks. So Sarah, Jeffrey, and I were together for most of the weekend; Friday night they got to spend the night with Martha's parents AND I WAS ACTUALLY HOME ALONE. After leaving work Friday I went to dinner at Captain's Cove, a local seafood restaurant -- the rest of the family isn't too fond of seafood, so this was good for me -- and they've got some of the best fish I've ever tasted. It filled me up, and the movie I was planning to watch -- again, because the rest of the family would probably not be fans of it, so Martha says -- didn't get watched, I just played a few games and read and went to bed!

Saturday. Delivering the Minot Daily News to forty-eight subscribers. Going to Breakfast with the Boys at Bethany Lutheran where with ten other guys and five pre-confirmation youth who'd spent the night there we enjoyed pancakes and sausage, and I learned a new cool riddle. (Two sons and two fathers have three eggs, and everyone eats one egg. How does that work? One's a grandfather, whose son is also a father.) I also got to stay for Bible study on John 3, where Jesus and Nicodemus meet late at night and that you probably know for verse sixteen, "For God so loved the world he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life." Then I picked up the kids along with their cousin Josceline and we went to a downtown Minot scavenger hunt where we had to find these pictures of owls in eleven different places and mark them on a bingo card, turning them in for a prize. We almost didn't need the clues, for between thirty seconds and two minutes after we arrived at a place the kids found those owls! I offered to rent them out as bloodhounds ...

Another funny part of this was that I had to wrap myself in a blanket to stay warm because I gave Jeffrey who had forgotten his sweatshirt or jacket MY jacket and got the blanket from the trunk, wrapping myself in it before the scavenger hunt started! Only took the four of us about an hour, and then I treated us all to lunch at Burger King, and brought them to our house where Martha's parents picked Josceline up about twenty minutes later. And for a few hours the kids and I played (and I napped, I do that a lot) before going out to the playground at Longfellow Elementary where we chased around a little and met up with two teachers and their kids who also showed up, one of whom was the CLC after school program principal (am I saying that right?) and she was talking excitedly about Sarah and Jeffrey where she figured out who I was. Sometimes I do have to confer with adults/other parents, darn it ... So the kids and I headed home and had dinner, played some more and I put them to bed early because they had to come with me Sunday morning to deliver the papers. But they slept in the back seat, so I was fine with that.

At church that morning our speaker was Pastor John Halvorson of Metigoshe Ministries sharing the year's motto as well as awesome guitar playing. "God is good ... all the time!" I had fifth graders in Sunday school that morning, Jeffrey was in Creation Station where he got to make a "stained glass" window out of construction paper like Sarah (who was that day in Holyword Theatre) did last week. Then we headed home for lunch, and out later to Main Street Books where the kids decided to get something to make Martha and Mary -- in this case a dolphin and whale sculpture that they bought and painted themselves, and then we played at Oak Park's playground where we played an extended game of tag. Martha got home just before six, and an hour later she HAD to head out to Chamber Chorale practice -- I know she likes participating in activities, but for the kids' sake as well as mine she has got to cut something out. Then before work today a family friend came by with a late birthday present for Sarah and an early birthday present for Jeffrey: two new (to them) used bicycles that together cost seventy-five dollars.

They've got a ticket to ride, David