I am having an series of unfortunate events that are draining the life out of me

Sunday.

Woke up at 7:30. Filed for unemployment.

Well, I tried to file for unemployment.

I forgot my pin.

The stress of fighting identity theft for the past few weeks jarred four numbers from my head.

I tried too many combinations. The system locked me out.

This is going to be trouble.

The only way I can unlock my account is to call the unemployment office Monday morning and reset the password.

I guarantee this won’t work. It won’t because every time I’ve called the unemployment office in the last month, they’ve told me a dreadful story about identity theft and how my benefits were tied up by some fucking algorithm.

The result being I won’t get paid until the anemic fraud investigators at Iowa Workforce Development stumble across my case at the bottom of the paperwork avalanche.

To recap, I’m not getting my unemployment benefits because someone else committed a crime.

The unemployment office people told me to keep filing. I have.

But Sunday I forgot a code.

Now I’m condemned to the hell of calling the unemployment office, a mixture of talking to a robot that will keep me on hold no less than 5 minutes. Then the robot will ask if I want a call back.

Sure.

When that person finally calls back, they’re going to ask for my birthdate, Social Security number and other data.

And then the unemployment office caller will tell me that my birthdates don’t match.

I will again point out that we’ve known this for some time.

But here’s the nasty trick.

I bet a hard nickel this failure to remember this damn four-digit code on Sunday morning will result it yet another hassle in filing for benefits — likely resulting in me getting shorted a week whenever this mess is finally sorted.

Honestly, I hate to keep bitching about this.

I would rather talk about the five best food stands at this year’s Iowa State Fair or five things we learned at the Cyclones/Hawkeyes spring game.

And regular readers know I’d rather scrub my face with a carrot peeler than talk about those topics.

Here’s the thing.

This foul-up with the pin code was caused because the unemployment office made me change the code.

Of course I forgot. I have something like 700 passwords. Every time I change one, I forget it by the next time I lose it.

The loss of the pin wouldn’t be such a hassle if it weren’t tied to this giant clusterfuck with unemployment office.

That hangs over my head all week except for Sunday. That’s the day when I put in my data and then slack off to watch film noir, read a comic book or take naps.

I botch this thing first off and it revs up the anxiety meter.

There’s a problem. I can’t fix it right now. And it contributes to another problem.

And pretty soon it’s 9 p.m. and the only thing I’ve done all day is worry about a thing I can’t fix until Monday — if at all.

Dear readers, I promise to get off this endless, whiny diatribe soon.

It’s been all consuming.

Maybe I’ll have a list of something or some goofy food product to write about to breakup the monotony.