Fun with Clients...

Meanwhile, back at drama central, aka the office, Brain Damaged Boy was in fine form. He had arrived unannounced as he always did and we commenced having one of the five conversations we usually did, i.e. as follows:

Him: "Why do I have to pay child support?"

Me: "Because the state orders it."

Him: "Even though I have no money? Why didn't you tell them I have no money?!"

Me: "We used your paycheck stubs to calculate it. What you pay is standard for the state."

Him: "But why do I have to pay child support and the mortgage?"

I usually check out at this point in the conversation, otherwise I would have been arrested several weeks ago not long after we took him on as a client. In all fairness, it really isn't his fault. Smart, good-looking guy who happens to have been born Asperger's spectrum and then got a brain injury while he was in the Air Force. Since my son is also learning disabled and struggles in social settings, I get it better than most people would.

But let's face it. Family law is intensely stressful and difficult. People are rarely at their best when they're in the middle of divorce or a struggle over how much child support is gonna be paid or who gets the kids when, so it's an emotional black hole, no matter how hard you try to hold yourself apart from it. Add into that my drama queen boss, who is never to blame for anything, even if what I did is exactly what she said to do, and I'm already running low on emotional stamina for dealing with much more than your average crazy client.

Enter Brain Damage Boy. Yes, hugely politically incorrect, feel free to castigate me. But it is NOT my job to teach him social skills. Dealing with him at least once a day in person, and usually three or four times on the phone has really worn out my p.c. trigger. But fortunately for me, and unfortunately for BD Boy, he's hired Ms. Money Obsessed Attorney, and while she's let him slide because he's been bringing in big chunks of money, the other party just changed to a different attorney my boss loathes, so looks like we're out! Of course, there's always another needy, clingy, crazed client just lurking around the next corner. Gotta love my job. Not!

Universities Hate Working Moms!

Why is it that because I want a real education from a real university and not one of those fake ones you can get from the "online" colleges, that I can't get a little more cooperation and assistance from my school? I'm not talking about hand holding but just something a little less labyrinthine when you're trying to make your way through the maze of requirements, classes, schedules and programs that is commonplace in most higher ed organizations would be great.

My experience, after attending a community college and two state universities, is that if you don't fit in the box they've got for a college student, too bad, so sad! Foolish me, when I first started college, I had dreams of dropping my son off at daycare while I took night classes after work. I was quickly informed that the daycare hours ended at six. Even most of the classes that were held at "night" began an hour or more before I could even leave the office. I think what makes it so annoying is the schools are so self-congratulatory about how flexible and accommodating they are. Ummm, not so much.

Plan B, online classes. Not ideal, but the only option open to me. I managed to make my way through all the general education classes required for my degree. Believe me when I say that biology online has a set of challenges all its own! By the time the choices at the school I was attending had dwindled to almost nothing, I had already decided to shift to another school that would hopefully be a little more challenging. Again, not so much. Oh well.

The new university was great, and the best surprise was the health insurance coverage you automatically were enrolled in if you took over five credits. Since I had a choice at my dinky two person office between having my benefits go toward covering my daycare expenses or towards my health insurance, I hadn't had any coverage for over a year since thanks to the fabulous health options in our wonderfully advanced country.

But my happy happy joy joy moment lasted until I tried to enroll for the insurance over the summer. True to form, there was a clause buried deeply that only certain online classes were counted towards those five or more credits. For my spring term I had inadvertently registered for classes that were considered "self-support" which meant I had not only not had coverage for the last three months unbeknownst to me, but I was also no longer eligible for coverage over the summer. Great.

The university, like most gargantuan institutions, works on the squeaky wheel principle, so when contacting the administrator of the clinic got me no results, I contacted the provost (another weird word only used in universities). That's looking slightly more promising, but in the meantime, the first of the notices from the insurance company have shown up, with a large figure in the "you may be billed this amount" section. ARGHHHHHH!