Time for another one of Catherine's little lectures - feel free to click away.

Married women - establish separate credit, in your own name, and do it now. I did it years ago and it has saved my ass.

My husband and I had no joint accounts other than the mortgage - we each had our own credit cards, bought our own cars, etc. Early in our married lives we did, but I started feeling hinky about not having "my own" and once I went back to work when Girlchild was 3, I started establishing my own credit. His credit was fine, mine was fine, we just each had our own. We pooled our money and paid our respective bills out of the same household account - it wasn't "his money, my money" by any means - but we had separate financial identities. If your credit history is attached to your husband's, that can be disastrous in the event of divorce or death. I would hate to be establishing a credit history of my own now, at 45. A lot of women who lose their husbands after 24 years together are in that boat. Instead I was able to refinance the house and I'm going on with the remodeling and other work we'd planned together and financially things didn't miss a beat. Everything else is hard enough at a time like this, the last thing I would need would be a financial identity crisis.

I am delivering this lecture for two reasons - one, I was waiting in line in a clothing store the other day while a woman applied for a store credit card - she had no credit cards in her own name, like many married women she was the "other" person on her husband's card. This makes you pretty much an unperson to the credit bureau - you do have the use of credit, but you don't really have the "credit" for the credit rating. You do have a credit rating, but it's tied to somebody else and doesn't "count" as much. Yet you are fully responsible for the debt. You don't think about these things on a daily basis, but when (God forbid) something happens to change the status quo, women are often financially screwed. His credit history goes with him in death or divorce, and you are basically left an Unperson - "formerly the wife of...." Just something to think about.

Reason two to keep your credit separate from his - if you are ever faced with the circumstances I'm in, where he died after a long illness and left no estate other than his debt, you can tell those creditors to pound sand. I'm in the process of sending pound sand (or as my grandfather put it so colorfully, "Go scratch your ass with a broken bottle"- what can I say, the man was a poet-longshoreman) letters to a couple of really persistent collection agencies. I am not liable for his debt because it was his, not ours, and he left no estate to pay it from, so they can eat it. Have a nice day. Believe me, it's not a significant amount of money and compared to the staggering sums that, just for example, our President pissed away in his many failed business ventures, it's laughable and also nauseating that anyone would hound the widow of a cancer victim for what amounts to less than Dubya's bar tab during his "youthful indescretion" years (when he was my age). I will take great pleasure in telling them to hit the write-off button, baby, you aren't getting it. He died with nothing left but debts. That's what two years of terminal illness does. And I can do this because these were his accounts and not "our" accounts - if my name was on it I'd be saddled with paying this shit off, and if I didn't it would ruin MY credit and MY future and when you're in your 40s rebounding doesn't look so damn easy. Instead I can tell them quite honestly that I'm sorry he exhausted all his (and ours, for that matter) assets during his illness, but there ain't nothing to pay this with and that's how it goes. It's not my account, go away. This isn't legal advice because God knows I'm not qualified to offer any such thing, but it's something to consider, based on my hard-won wisdom.

Knitting - I worked on the sleeve of the Lo-Tech Sweat last night before falling asleep early. Tonight I'll probably do the same. I have the urge to start something new from the stash - maybe that Patons Katrina shawl. The church was freezing yesterday and I was glad I wore a sweater, but soon it will be time to wear sleeveless to church and wrap up when I get inside.