$10,000

I got sucked up into doing our income taxes on Sunday. It was grey outside and I curled up with the laptop and fussed with it all. I find it strangely satisfying.

Did you know you can just take a picture of your W2 for TurboTax and it just imports it? I was tickled.

Ernie said he thought we could probably write off some of our medical expenses this year. I told him I didn't know if we could....you know how it has to be higher than a certain percentage of your adjusted gross income, or something like that? I decided to total it all up, just for the hell of it. It came to.....almost $10,000.

$10,000.

Now folks, I'm not complaining about what I make...I wish I made more but I've made my choices in life and I figure I'm lucky to have a job that I like, etc....but $10,000 is a pretty damn hefty percentage of my salary...the income that is supposed to supporting this family of four.

$10,000.

And the thing is...there's not an ounce of exaggeration there...if anything, I'm probably missing some expenses.

No WONDER we're always fucking broke.

Mind you....this is with pretty good insurance coverage. I haven't been able to get it off my mind since then. It really brings home that if I hadn't had good insurance when Ernie was diagnosed...we would be bankrupt. We wouldn't own this house. We sure as hell wouldn't happily be putting on house concerts. I don't know where we'd be. It's really rather frightening.

$10,000. In a pretty healthy year.

Man.

Hopefully we can set some aside to get Ernie's guitar fixed. Owen put it in the kitchen with this plea on it....