moosh in indy.

Stereotype would have you believe that as soon as Cody graduates we’ll be driving new SUV’s and living in the nice part of town with all the other doctors and lawyers. We will be going on family vacations to the Bahamas and have matching Ralph Lauren luggage and linen pants. Carefree! Rich! Raking in the dough!

Wrong.

The closer his graduation gets the more I realize that not only are we going to have to be grownups and buy a house with a water bill, a garbage bill, a sewage bill, a gas bill, no landlord to take care of the leaky faucets,  we are going to have loans to repay. Loans that will amount to even more than what a mortgage and two new SUVs would amount to; not that we’re getting SUVs but whatever.

I look forward to having a house after eight years of marriage, while at the same time I want to curl up in a corner and cry because I don’t feel old enough to be dealing with IRAs, stock portfolios, life insurance and mortgages.

Today I had an experience that angered/frustrated/humbled/outraged and opened my eyes all at once. I had to go see a doctor at a new clinic about some issues I’ve been experiencing. It was a low income clinic because we don’t have insurance, and medical tests and procedures are expensive. Because we go to low income clinics, the wait times are longer and getting appointments can be like trying to get a lunch date with the President. But hey, I’ll take what I can get.

After my appointment today I was made to sit down with a “financial counselor.”

I had been “flagged.” Apparently they thought I was trying to “mooch off the system.” They wanted me to prove to them that I was eligible for financial assistance for my medical care. Even though I had a card that said I was eligible for a discount on my medical care through their facility, they thought there had been an oversight and that I was to pay full price for a visit to their clinic. Their clinic was for people with “no insurance” and “strained financial situations.”

When did living off $1500 a month become a “wonderful financial situation”?

This is where I get nervous about writing what I want to write. Trolls? Stay back. I don’t mean this to sound the way you’re going to want to twist it and make it sound.

I’ve never really been put in a situation like this before, but as I sat there trying to explain to this man that my husband was in school and we were living off small amounts of borrowed money that isn’t even ours, I started to feel like I was being accused. Because someday my husband will (hopefully) have a decent income we should find some magical way to have health coverage? Or we should pay full price for our health care now? No, we’re not going to be in this situation forever, it’s only temporary. But I still needed to see a doctor whether my husband was a hobo or an attorney. And I’m still on a tight budget whether my husband is going to school to become a nose picker or a lawyer. Nothing is going to change that. And if there’s an option where I can get medical care for cheaper I’m going to take it. If you’re on a budget and there was a way you could save hundreds, if not thousands on your medical care, even though it meant longer waits and appointments made far in advance, wouldn’t you do it? Assuming you were eligible (on paper) to receive such care?

I’m frustrated. No, we currently don’t pay taxes, but in another year we will enter a tax bracket so ridiculous we’ll be sure to make up for lost time. And honestly after our experiences over the last few years I am grateful for taxes and taxpayers in a way I never was before. A lot of people honestly need a little help sometimes. Yes, there are those who abuse the system, but then there are those who just need a little something to get them on the right track. We are in the latter.

This is one of the reasons this election is so hard for me, and I’ve never really known how to get it into words. By the time the new president gets his policies into effect we will be in a different scenario than we are now; we will be taxpayers with a mortgage and we’ll be hanging out in a high tax bracket. But for now, for this election we are a low income family trying to gain an education without any easily attained health care.

So do I vote for the candidate who will best suit who we are now, or who we’ll be in anther year? I don’t want to forget about all the wonderful people I’ve met while in this situation, the doctors, nurses, social workers and government employees who do all this hard work without enough gratitude or glory for the people who honestly need help to get back on their feet. But at the same time I don’t want to be paying more in taxes than we are able to save or put towards our own loans or mortgage.

So there.

I’m afraid I come off as a whiny baby. Hopefully there’s some of you who have been through the graduate school thing or a rough patch and can understand. I’m not a whiny baby, I’m grateful for the great life I enjoy and the comforts and opportunities I have in this country. I guess the stereotype that comes along with being an attorney’s wife is starting to rub me wrong.

Bah.

Be nice. I will delete on this one.

Whenever Cody starts spouting off law school blah blah my eyes glaze over and I nod catatonically. I really want to care. Really I do. But a lot of it just doesn’t compute. It’s safe to say he keeps talk of federal jurisdiction out of our conversations and I don’t bore him with the finer points of why you must slowly sweat your vegetables before adding them to the soup.

Fast forward to Friday night.

I received an email with an attached contract that I needed to sign for a new gig I’m about to begin (SQUEE! shh.). I started to read it over and wouldn’t you know it, my eyes glazed over and my brain started to shut down. So I called Cody in from the other room.

“Hey dude, wanna read a contract?”

Boy did he. He read that thing like I read Perez Hilton. Focused. Intent. Interested.

And when he was done he let me know that according to this contract I was under obligation to do something I didn’t want to be doing and that there was no way out and no way of changing it once I signed it.

Really? It said that? Because all I saw was “blah blah money blah blah”.

Anyway. He said that I should write what I wanted added into the contract and send it back to be added in.

Me? Write what? But I don’t even…I but I, how do I?

Cody flippantly said “I’ll write it.”

I thought “Ha ha sure he will, like he’ll really write a clause into a contract for me so I can protect myself.” And then it dawned on me. “HE CAN WRITE A CLAUSE INTO MY CONTRACT SO I CAN PROTECT MYSELF!” In that one moment it dawned on me that all this time my husband hasn’t been with me he’s been learning how to write legal garbage to protect people like me who don’t get legal garbage.

SWEET!

You see, Cody’s school brain has been growing and getting infinitely smarter. I just don’t see his school brain much. But I do see his home brain a lot and sorry to say it hasn’t gotten quite as smart as his school brain has, so it’s easy to forget just how book smart he is.

My mom is a computer programmer. It’s easy for me to forget that my mom is a class A computer geek until I see her surrounded by some of the supreme uber dorks she works with typing seven hundred words a minute in insane computer languages.

Then there’s my dad. He could tell you the ins and outs of any piece of furniture he sees. How well it’s made, where the wood came from, how it was put together. He could even reproduce it down to the exact detail if you gave him enough time.

My sister knows every dog and cat breed ever to be ever, and the pros and cons of every single one.

I have another friend who eats breathes and sleeps music. The other day at lunch I asked her why everyone sucks at singing happy birthday and she went into stuff about octave jumps, seventh notes and funny pitches. Who knew?

And then there’s me. Any one of you who know me in real life probably know better than to ever ask me a baking question again because chances are I GAVE YOU AN EARFUL and you could have cared less about half the stuff that poured out of my mouth. I am fluent in bake speak. And I speak it liberally.

So what about you? What language are you fluent it? What question could I ask you that would set off your “speak”? What are you dorky at? An expert at? Even if it’s something as small as knitting tea cozies, tell me. Tell the world.

You know, just in case someone needs a perfect tea cozy. Or whatever.

Lent.

40 days.

40 days that represent the time Jesus spent in the desert, where, according to the Bible, he endured the temptation of Satan.

Tough right?
What about the 40 days I’m spending in Utah without my make out buddy husband?

I know it’s not Ash Wednesday or Holy Thursday and I’m not even Catholic, but it is ovulation day. And you ladies know what’s up on O day. (TMI? Sorry.)

25 more days.

25 more nights with a body pillow as my only bed fellow.

If my body pillow could talk it would definitely be saying “BACK OFF LADY.”

25 more days until this…

I know there’s some Military wives out there who read my blathering.

HOW. DO. YOU. DO. THIS?

Gah.