Thank you, OPRAH

I haven't been able to talk about this, since it was a subject that was making me so sick to my stomach that I couldn't even speak of it without getting not only mad, but upset.

About a month and a half ago, I was having a light bulb moment or as Oprah would say an "Ah-hah" moment at work. It had to do with finances and since anything to do with numbers or money is like talking to me in Chinese, I am always a little hesitant and confused, not to mention nervous -- but this day I was curious. I was perusing Oprah's site to get to Suze Orman's link. Suze Orman is that woman that can talk anyone off a ledge about finances and somehow make everything palpable.

This particular day, I was reading Suze's advice about how to get yourself out of debt. Nice. Seven steps, one being to check your FICO score. A FICO score is a credit score developed by Fair Isaac & Co. Credit and is a method of determining how likely it would be for a credit user to actually pay off their credit. It also determines how often you ask for credit (which effects your credit in case you did not know) and where you stand in the wonderful world of credit.

I hadn't checked my credit score in months but remembered it being fairly good. That is, until I checked that very day.

My score had dropped considerably, but I couldn’t figure out why since I have not used a credit card since last November, so I decided to run an entire credit report.

I nearly fell off my chair at work when reading not only the marks against me for all of the accounts that had been opened, but nearly went into a panic attack when reading how MUCH credit has recently been opened AND approved.

Yes, kids. I am a victim of ID theft.

Fortunately, I was boss-free this particular day, so I went in his office and I immediately called the first credit card that I saw. It was for a women's clothing store, one in which I would NEVER have opened an account for. The guy there was SOOO nice and SO helpful. He also let me know "my perp" (how very "Law and Order," right?) had my social security number. He told me to call every credit number on my account, the credit agencies and to file a police report.

Police. What? Un-effing-believable. I sat on the phone all afternoon that day, calling different agencies, all of the companies on my account and noted that several things had happened just a few days before I'd found out I'd been robbed.

The next day, I went to the police. The Los Angeles Police, as you would guess, are a little too busy solving murders and busting druggies and such to care that I am being thieved on and all, but I was lucky enough to have a fairly nice cop who filled out a police report and asked me a barrage of questions…mostly, did I know who this person was??

No, I told him. There wasn't a soul I know who would steal from me.

He told me they would send my information downtown and from there, if there was enough to work with, it would become an investigation.

In the meantime, I started getting credit cards in the mail with my perps name on it. And they were those kind of credit cards that have the sticker on them that say they don't activate until you call. And then the frightening part started. My perp/whore/bitch-using-my-identity had already used them. And let's just say, the balances were outrageous and made my already stirred up emotions MORE exhausted.

The worst parts are that beyond that fact someone is stealing from you AND racking up credit, you have to stay on top of everything, at all times. This means, if someone from a credit company sends you a statement, you have to call immediately, send them the proper documents AND add more to your already over-flowing police report, not to mention, within a month, I had accrued two large files full of paperwork. And there are also sh**-buckets of affidavits to send just to prove -- you are you.

After all of the anger passed, I just started thanking my lucky stars (and Oprah) that I'd caught on so early. I then received a postcard from one of the stores my perp bought stuff from that said, "Hope you are enjoying your plasma T.V." That pushed me off the edge of anger and more into a sitcom mindset.

And at that point, I'd cracked and cracked up. What more could I say or do? It was like someone stealing your vacation money and then sending you a postcard. "Yo bitch. Having the best time...on you!"

But let's just say, I am SO fortunate. In just a matter of weeks, the police did indeed open an investigation (though I am finding that to be a quite moot matter with them), but the good news yesterday morning one of the credit agencies e-mailed to say to almost everything has cleared and I may be back to my old debt, without my perp-whores "little" extras.

I am a lucky one. There are people that don't catch on for many years of this massacre.

So I guess this was really long-winded, paranoid and about to get preachy, but seriously...CHECK YOUR CREDIT REPORTS FREQUENTLY. Do NOT give out your information to ANYONE. I believe that someone may have gotten my information while I was getting my taxes done at H&R Block. Its so ridiculous to think that someone would steal but the dates of the first occurrences are right around the time I had my taxes done this year.