Happy Mail Call

I love getting the mail. Despite receiving nothing but advertisements, letters to tenants long gone, and credit card offers for the first several years I had my own mailbox, I still get excited to check it. I'm not sure where this love comes from, maybe some long lost love for my cubby in Kindergarten? In college I remember telling JP that I never got any mail in my dorm mailbox, despite checking it religiously, so he wrote me a letter. This was after our third date and you can see where he scratched out a sentence because he was worried it would come on too strong. Little did he know I had already decided to marry him, though if I hadn't yet, his letter would have sealed the deal. I still have it and reread it whenever he says something particularly Republican.

I was very excited about owning a house with its own mailbox out front, but unfortunately our little neighborhood has community mailboxes. I suppose these are more secure and convenient for the mailman, but I have many fond memories of playing on our solid brick mailbox growing up and I'm not to have one. Luckily it's just around the corner and I take Landon with me to check it every afternoon (he's my weight workout for the day). He's usually just wearing a diaper because it's 110 degrees out and gets a big kick out of holding (and chewing on) a magazine on the way back (though not his daddy's Economist or mommy's Newsweek because those are sacred). Someday I might be able to afford what's in Pottery Barn or Frontgate, but for now, it's teething material.

Today was an excellent mail day - we had a package! It was a bottle of wine and very sweet note from Colleen over at Wine, Please in celebration of graduating, the new house, and getting Landon to sleep at night. It says to be used as needed for Bar Exam prep. It was incredibly thoughtful, especially given that I have never actually met her. Our boys are 3 days apart and I love how the internet can create friends from 1,000 miles away. If you have a second, check out her jewelry silent auction for the Midwestern Flood Victims.

And the other happy item in the mail: our reimbursement from The Firm for our mileage, hotel, and other moving expenses! It couldn't have come at a better time. I just checked our final credit card bill from the last month and holy hell is it a large amount of money. We expected it to be and we've been carefully monitoring it, but wow, seeing the number was a bit shocking. It was crazy to see expenses from our grocery store in Chicago- hard to believe we were still living there during this statement period. It's been a loooong 30 days. Somewhere in there was the drive (and gas bills) for two SUV's from Chicago to Texas, our appliance purchases, the initial buying out of Lowe's and Wal-Mart upon moving in to our house, flying back to Chicago for graduation, JP's business school deposit (I keep forgetting he's doing that soon), 6-months of Texas car insurance, and a lot of other "we just moved" type expenses. Ouch. I also just wrote a check for $350 to switch our car titles and registration over from Illinois. JP considered the amount well worth it for the "honor" of having Texas plates on his car - he was practically giddy on the drive home. When he lived here for college he still had Maryland plates (because that's where he's from, though he gets mad when I tell people that) so this finalized his adoption of the state. He even asked the person at the county tax assessor's office if you had to show proof to get the "Native Texan" specialty plates. Oh yes, there was eye rolling (by me, the clerk was very nice and no, you do not have to show proof).

I'm now halfway through the Federal Income Tax lecture and thinking about breaking into Colleen's wine already. It's from "Miracle Valley Vineyards" and it's going to take a miracle for me to understand anything this women is saying. Perhaps I should have taken some sort of tax or accounting class in law school... I'm hearing words I didn't know existed and I'm pretty sure I'm spelling them wrong.