Law Students

Deep, Cleansing Breaths

By Anonymous

I should start out this post by saying that JP doesn't read this blog. He could, of course, and I've even bookmarked it on his computer, thinking he should have easy access to anything a stranger in Minnesota might be reading about him. But when I asked him a few months ago if he ever read it he said no, not since Landon was born. Since that means I've written 32 months of posts that he hasn't seen, I asked why he didn't want to check to make sure I wasn't saying anything bad about him. He looked at me, wide eyed, and replied, "but what could you say?" An insufferable response if it weren't so true. He's a pretty awesome husband, dad, and best friend and I rarely have any complaints. The ones I do have- his passionate and time-consuming love affair with swimming, his dogged determination to forge an unconventional career path no matter how uncomfortable it makes me- these are frustrations I accept because even with them, he truly is the more giving half of this marital partnership. He's dragged himself out of bed on many a morning when it wasn't his turn and I can't say I've done the same. He's a keeper, even if he likes to soak pans that don't need it.

But I hung up on him today -- slammed the phone down in a desperate attempt to avoid screaming profanities into the receiver with my door open and my co-workers, the ones who remark that I'm always so cheerful and smiley, in hearing range.

You see I did our taxes back in January. I had one portion remaining, the one about any personal business deductions or expenses, and I've been asking repeatedly since January 20th for JP to look at it regarding the swim school. He finally told me on Friday that we didn't need to add anything about the company and I immediately filed the taxes that night. Then today he called to let me know that oh! he happened to read through all the papers the swim school's CPA sent him over a month ago and it turns out we're supposed to file something with our personal taxes and there's some deductions we can take and we're supposed to get an extra refund because the partners overpaid on their business taxes. Isn't that great?!

I should also add, just to complete the picture, that I had just spent 5 hours over 2 days and 4 phone calls battling with our insurance company to cover my weekly progesterone shots. The ones that will cost a total of $300 and should prevent another $55,000 NICU bill. And also, some of my other OB claims were submitted incorrectly, so it turns out I paid more than I should have, and it will take hours of phone calls to get reimbursed for them- and no one would have ever told me I overpaid if a co-worker hadn't happened to mention on Monday that certain categories of maternity costs are covered at 100% under our plan regardless of whether the deductible has been met. And I pay nearly $1,000/month for this insurance. And it is a good plan, and I'm grateful for it, but my god it should not be this hard to get the things I'm paying for paid for.

So it was not a good time for JP to cheerfully inform me that he had discovered the answer to the tax question I'd been asking him for 7 weeks, 4 days after I submitted our taxes. In fact, he is very lucky I hung up because otherwise I probably would have turned it into a fight the likes of which we haven't seen since 2003 when we broke up for 5 months.

I grabbed my keys and went out to run errands. I find them soothing because of their productivity and the ability they give me to cross things off my to-do list. I picked up this owl at Target for the baby's nursery:

and hugged it in my arms as I shopped around the store. I also got a fabulous pair of gold sandals at DSW for $9 after a bunch of coupons and found a changing pad cover in the perfect shade of green at Babies R Us.

I returned to my office feeling calm and re-centered. I no longer wish to physically harm my spouse. I have in fact spoken with him in a pleasant manner and told him about my stuffed owl and golden shoes (about which he was far more enthusiastic than normal), and informed him that he will fix the tax problem and I'm not going to remind him about it. It's not even going on my list. I'm just going to ask about it sometime in May and my god it had better have been done. But I love you! and sorry about the slamming of the phone thing. Let's get ice cream after dinner tonight, yes?

Full post as published by Lag Liv on March 10, 2010 (boomark / email).