Option C

This report covers Wednesday, July 15. No date took place. I was out of town and remained out of town. The cost was $846.10, paid in full by me across 2 transactions, and it is the largest single figure in this file by a factor of 2.31.

The duration above reads 0 minutes. It is accurate. The event this report covers had a duration and it was not mine.

Summary of charges

• Duration, mine: 0 minutes
• Resort booking: $686.10
• Overage, paid the following day: $160.00
• Out-of-pocket costs: $846.10
• Amount contributed by M.: $0.00
• Policies redeemed: 1, of 16 issued
• Dates held: 0
• Follow-up: none

Cumulative: $2,103.90. This entry is 40.2 percent of everything spent in 86 days, and 67.3 percent of everything spent before it.

The card

On July 4 I gave her a glass box of 16 cards, 1 for each day I would be away, each redeemable against a future failure of mine.

One of them offered a day trip, with 3 options:

• a) her
• b) her and me
• c) the whole family

I wrote those 3 lines by hand at a kitchen table on July 2 or July 3. I want to be precise about what I meant by the third one, because the whole entry is in it. I understood the whole family to include me. That is what I intended when I wrote it and it is not what it says.

There were 2 unambiguous options. The one that named me explicitly was b. I offered a third that named nobody and assumed I would be counted.

The claim

She opened the card and sent me a photograph of it with option c checkmarked, and asked whether she could claim that one early.

The card was not one of the immediate ones. It sat behind a clause, which is to say it was payable on a failure of mine that had not occurred. She asked to skip the clause. I allowed it.

That is a waiver of the trigger condition, granted by the underwriter, on request, in writing, from another state. The policy paid out with no loss event attached to it.

Her sister was in town from out of the country. That is a fact and it is in this report because it is the reason.

My first reaction was that I was hurt, because she had selected the option I had written for myself and I was not in it.

The rationalization

This form asks what narrative I told myself in order to keep going. It is the third entry in that column and the second in 11 days.

The narrative was that her sister had come a long way, that the visit was finite, and that apart from a box of handmade cards I had not given her anything. On the strength of that I put the hurt down and obliged.

Two of those 3 clauses are true. The third is the one doing the work, and this document exists to check exactly that sort of clause. In 86 days I have supplied $1,257.80 before this line, 1,350 minutes in person, 815 minutes of road, 420 minutes of manufacture, 2 sets of flowers, a card with $70.00 left on it for her children, 7 reservations, every proposal and every broken silence. The sentence I used to talk myself past a disappointment was that I had not given her anything.

I did not check it at the time. That is what the check looks like.

The booking

I wrote:

“I have an idea of where you could go, but tell me where you’d like to go”

She wrote:

“what’s your idea?”

I told her: an overnight at a family resort in town. She complimented the suggestion and said it would be perfect.

I booked a room for her and her children, from out of state, at a cost of $686.10.

Read the sequence back. I invited her to choose, she asked what I had in mind, I named it, and she agreed to it. This file records 3 occasions on which I offered a menu and 3 on which the menu came back to me: on May 27 she wanted all 3 options and I made her prioritize, on the card she took the one option that did not specify who was going, and here she declined to choose at all until I had chosen first.

The booking excluded me. I made it. There is no version of this in which somebody else left me off the reservation.

The overage

The following day M. asked whether I had put a limit on her spend at the resort. The reason she asked is that she had been charged an additional $160.00.

I sent her the money.

I want the shape of that exchange on the record. The question assumes a limit exists. The answer, delivered as a transfer rather than a sentence, is that one did not.

I had written the policy myself, 13 days earlier, at a kitchen table. It has no limit of liability, no deductible, no schedule of covered events beyond 3 handwritten words, and no exclusions. Its claims process is a photograph of a checkmark. The first claim against it exceeded the initial booking by $160.00 and was settled inside a day, without negotiation, by the underwriter, from another state.

This report was filed on the evening of July 15 and was wrong by $160.00 within 24 hours. That is the correction.

Findings

Policies issued on July 4: 16, each payable by me on my own failure. Policies redeemed by July 15: 1. Time to first claim: 11 days. Failures of mine that triggered it: 0. Clauses waived on request: 1, being the one that made the payment conditional.

The instrument worked exactly as designed except in the particular of who it was designed by. I wrote a contract that pays out to the holder, wrote 1 of its terms loosely, and the loose term resolved against the author, which is the standard outcome for loosely written terms and is the reason the word is drafted rather than written.

Cost of the claim: $846.10, settled in 2 payments. Cost of everything else in the arc: $1,257.80. Minutes I spent at the event: 0.

Contributed by M.: $0.00, across 8 dates, 1 negotiation, 1 birthday and 1 overnight.

Rationalizations recorded: 3. All 3 are mine.

Costs

• Resort, 1 room, 1 night, for M. and her children: $686.10
• Overage, July 16: $160.00
• Total: $846.10

There is no cost per hour on this form. The denominator is 0.

For comparison, the most expensive evening in this arc was May 30 at $367.00 and ran 240 minutes. This entry is $846.10 and ran, for me, no minutes at all. The overage alone is more than 2 of the 9 dates on this site cost in full. It is also the first line in this file paid from out of state, and it bought a night for M. and her children, of whom this file records no meeting.

Running position: $2,103.90 out of pocket, 1,350 minutes in person, 815 minutes of road, 420 minutes of manufacture, $0.00 contributed by the other party. The arc passes $2,000.00 on a line with no date attached to it.

Status

The follow-up field reads none. I return on July 20.

The account is open. It holds 15 unredeemed policies with no limit of liability between them, 10 disclaimers, 3 rationalizations, and 1 line item for $846.10 filed under a heading that says the whole family.