Being a Grown-Up

Tomorrow morning a nurse is coming to our house to draw blood, take our blood pressure, get a urine sample, and ask a lot of very invasive questions all in the name of life insurance. Yes, we are finally acting like responsible parents and insuring ourselves against future tragedy. Right now if we were to die Landon would inherit a house that is almost all mortgage, two big dogs with even bigger appetites, and a savings account with barely enough to keep him in diapers for a year. After tomorrow he would be a multi-millionaire, though until we ground him for staying out too late on a school night I'm pretty sure he prefers us alive and well and nagging him to PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD eat something besides Cheerios.

As part of this "how big is the risk that we'll actually have to pay out this money before the policy expires in 30 years" process, I was given several pointers from our broker for making sure my blood and urine results were as "accurate" as possible. These include: no alcohol for 48 hours, limit salt, cholesterol, and caffeine for 24 hours, fast for 8-10 hours, drink plenty of water, and get 8 hours of sleep the night before the exam. I think if I followed these rules every day I really would be less of a risk- they stopped me from eating so many unhealthy things today (well, I did have french fries at lunch, but who can resist french fries with a turkey wrap? I cannot. And they were delicious- all plump and seasoned and doused in ketchup, mmmmmm). We're hoping to get the Super Preferred status, it's so much cheaper, so I really did try to follow the rules, though I'm greatly missing my little "Landon's in bed and I can sit down for the first time since I've gotten home" glass of red wine.

In other grown-up news, we're also (finally) making a will. The Firm has a program where an associate in the Trusts & Estates group does your will and estate plan free of charge. It's been a surprisingly difficult process. There isn't any estate to plan, we currently have negative wealth, other than the pending life insurance policies, but choosing an executor and guardian and back-up guardian for Landon and future children was tough. But these decisions must be made, and if it's this hard for us to choose, I certainly don't want anyone else deciding for us.

And since I was flush from all these other grown-up activities, I decided to start our taxes today. JP has done them since we were married, but he's even busier than I am and I'm the one who really cares about the refund total- I have plans for that money. I didn't get very far, but I hope to finish this weekend.

So now I have a house, a husband, a child, a mortgage, a job, a will, a life insurance policy, my own turbo tax user ID, and hair curlers I kind of know how to use- and yet I still don't feel like a full grown-up because I can't choke down coffee in the morning. It's like some strange caffeinated version of an inferiority complex, but I swear that someday I'll be one of the cool kids gripping my coffee mug like it's a life preserver at our 8:00 a.m. meetings