Hate you too, Citicorp!

In continuing with the better financial togetherness goals, I finally got on the horn and called one of my credit card companies to get them to lower my rate like everybody suggests. Why, yes, it was a Citicard! How did you guess? After a couple of late payments, my interest rate had gone up to close to 30%! I know, it's absolutely ridiculous, and it took me way too long to call. They really try to convince you that you are horrible and deserve to be taken advantage of because you forgot their magic date a few times. I threatened to cancel my account and was immediately passed from the initial customer "service" rep who "unfortunately is unable to help me at this time" to an account "specialist" who apparently is able to do a little more. Ok, I'll quit with the quotation marks. Anyways, she was able to "convince" (haha I swear that's all) me to keep my account if she would lower my rate to APR + some number I already forget and also give me 9 months at a low low introductory rate of 2.8% or something along those lines. I agreed and should be able to save quite a bit just because of the insane gouging that was going on. I'm sure it helped that I have had that account for 14 years, I always carry a balance, and my credit score is quite good despite my horrible financial flaws. But another 5 minute clean up done. That should be my new goal. Do something everyday that takes 5 - 10 minutes or so and can make my life slightly better. Writing goals down helps a lot too. I always scoffed at that write it down business, but it does seem to work sometimes for me. Just seeing the words, and even more, the possibility that someone else might see them gets me to follow through.
Last night, D told me the longest, most coherent story he's ever even come close to. It was about his life so far, starting with a foster home where they beat him. (sad face emoticon doesn't cut it here) I don't remember what started it, but he was going on about being scared and going into the mom and dad's room and she was mad and if she chased him, he would run into his room and hold the door, and if she was too strong with him holding it with just one hand, he would use two hands. If she was too strong for two hands, he would use his hands and a foot. This continued until he would have to call on his foster brother who he shared the room with. And she would go get a belt. He is constantly blabbing on and on about "what if..." and I thought this was one of those, though a very interesting one. I asked him if someone hit him with a belt and he put his head under his pillow and pulled his sheet all the way up and told me that was what he did if he was gonna tell someone a gross story that he never said before. He said he was playing with a new toy, and his foster sister came up and grabbed it so they were both pulling it and his foster mom got mad at him. She told him to pull down his shorts and underwear so she could whip him with a belt. Then he moved to a few more houses and then moved to his foster mom who he called Grandma and then he met me and they were trying to decide who he would live with, black Grandma or white mom, and they picked the white mom and he got used to the white family and he was waiting for me to pick him up with all his clothes in a garbage bag... It got quite a bit more unintelligible as far as plot was concerned after that. He was getting too sleepy. I probably shouldn't be putting his business all out in public, but if I don't write it down, I will forget. Since this is where I'm doing the journal thing, it's here or nowhere. I need as many clues as he'll give me to put his history together, and he almost never talks about his foster homes. Poor baby.