GI Bill nonsense

So I finally had enough and wrote a scathing email to an editor on the staff of the Virginian Pilot. Here's the scoop:

I rely on the MGI Bill that I received after serving four years in the US Navy. I am a full-time student at Old Dominion University in my senior year of English/Pre-Law. I have not received my MGI Bill benefits for three months now. Our budget has been pinched tighter and tighter...now finally, the US Treasury, authorized by the VA, has begun issuing emergency checks of up to $3000 to veterans. Too little, too late, I say.

So The Virginian Pilot wrote a little article, in which they said "tax payer dollars" were going to this, as if the veterans themselves were not tax-paying citizens when they were active duty, earning this benefit. Let's just say I expressed my discontent in this email.

Anyway, now that's off my chest, I'm still waiting for my check...I requested it a week ago and am still waiting anxiously so we can get some of these creditors off our backs, at least temporarily. Who knows when I'll get another GI Bill payment, however....this is only a stop-gap measure by the VA when what they need to do is hire more workers at their VA education offices and light the fire under their butts to process those claims expediciously (in other words, to do their damn jobs).

It's getting really, really hard to remain patient. We are so broke we are squeezing water from rocks at this point. We ration gas, so we haven't been to church in a while because it takes a quarter tank to get there and back. Logan goes to work every day, and I go to school most days, but if my tank is dry, I don't go to school. All of my professors have attendance policies but have been extraordinarily understanding thus far. We live about half an hour from my school, which really takes some gas, especially because it's downtown and the stop-n-go really sucks the gas. We both try to fit trips to the store into the route to work or school so we don't waste gas making a separate trip, but of course we forget things and then have to make a separate trip.

Things we have learned:
-our kids like Hamburger Helper.
-Our kids do not like beans, and are pretty much over rice.
-Our two youngest go through way too many diapers, but we can save on wipes by using a washcloth that gets soaked in hot bleach water between uses.
-Bleach is cheap...might not smell as nice as other household cleaners, but does the job well for pennies and kills H1N1 dead in its tracks.
-Chocolate chip cookies are cheaper when homemade, but get eaten twice as fast :).
-Wal-Mart brand frozen broccoli is insanely cheap but is gone from the freezer case by about noon...gotta get there early.
-Farm Fresh has the cheapest milk, still, but that's about all they have cheap.
-The Market downtown puts their display meat on drastic clearance at the far right end of the meat display case...we're talking 3-4 marinated pork chops or steaks for $2, 4 lbs lean ground beef for $1.50. Not a thing wrong with them, but they have to change their display cases every day, so yesterday's stuff goes on clearance.
-Homemade Halloween costumes are way more fun. So is spending an afternoon with the family, playing football in the backyard...for free.
-PBS rocks.
-Casseroles are cheap, easy, and feed the whole family from one dish.
-We have gotten more spontaneous "I love you"s from spending one-on-one time with our children, rather than buying them toys or taking them to Chuck E Cheese or Jumpin Monkey and letting them go wild.

I'll be glad to get the check for my GI Bill, but I'm also glad to have learned a few of the things I have learned.....but seriously....gimme my money.

So much to do....so much to say

Anyone who can reference the song lyric in my title gets extra credit.


Anyhoo, Logan and I are doing the big clean out this weekend. I'm looking at several law schools that fit what I want to do and some happen to be in New York. Not New York state, like upstate, Buffalo...I'm talking downtown, subways, beatin the street in the concrete jungle. I'm stoked. BUT we have to de-clutter our lives BIG time. I'm also applying in NC, SC, VA, GA, etc...lots of places. Either way, there is a move in the imminent future.

The kids each have a toy box, then we have a vertical Ikea toy storage unit...all packed and overflowing with the plastic atrocities our kids call toys nowadays. It's too much, too too much STUFF. So we've convinced the kids that we will keep their ten favorite toys and all the rest will go to charity by way of the local Ronald McDonald house. Same with their clothes: we're downsizing their little diva wardrobes to some necessities and staples, like jeans and cords, that will wear wellf or a long time.

Don't feel sorry for my kids...Logan and I are doing it too. I've already gone through my clothes and got ready of anything I haven't worn in six months (seasonal exceptions) or is one of those sizes I keep "hoping" I'll get back into. I figure if I ever do get back in that size, I'll go buy myself new clothes as a reward for shedding the weight. So I am down to 1/2 of the closet bar of hanging clothes and 2 drawers of clothes and 1 drawer of underthings and PJ's. Logan has got to let goooo of those size 34 khakis, but he's holding strong. But then again, men usually can lose weight fairly easily and he may actually get back into those pants.

We're also trying to get rid of our bigger stuff, the garage full of extra dishes, clothes, boxes, nick nacks, furniture, and the more space-consuming junk that is no longer of use to us.

So wish us luck as we get started this weekend on the big purge of all of our junk, the byproducts of our materialistic life that will hopefully lead to a less hoarding lifestyle and make us think before we buy the next "I want" item.

Other than that, getting geared up for the holidays...alone. Logan's leaving in a week and a half and won't be home until the day before Thanksgiving...if we're lucky. Then he gets to be home for about a month until he leaves for his third deployment in four years. Hooah, go Navy, right. So I will be doing all the prepwork for the holidays alone, which is mildly irritating, but, as a good Navy wife, I'm getting used to it.

So wish me luck as we set out on this weekend and get everything done so I can do the last stretch of my undergrad at a breakneck speed and get my butt into a decent law school so I can get on with my life, already!

Finally I can get back to blogging

I finally feel like everything has settled down enough so I can get back into my daily routine, one item of which is writing. So you readers get to be my guinea pigs as I start to try my daily writing routine and see how you like it. Sometimes it may not be interesting, and sometimes I'll just be writing about my kids and nothing else, but at least I'll be writing something.

OK, so since my last appearance in January, my ex-husband passed away, I [finally] got back custody of my son and we are [finally] one cohesive family unit. Logan came home from deployment, and I started my Fall semester at ODU and took the LSAT for law school. I made a pretty decent score and now I'm looking at law schools, and I won't saw where for fear of retribution. The fact is, one law school in SC is probably not feasible for me to get into and the other is crazy expensive. If it works out, good. If it doesn't, it doesn't...so sue me.

I can't wait to be done with my undergrad and on to bigger and better things. Since some of the classes I am taking this year were unfilled freshmen level prerequisites, I feel like I'm spinning my wheels a little, and the sad part is...I'm making the worst grades in those classes! Because I don't like them! How stupid is that? I'm trying to buckle down but it's hard with three kids, their school schedule, my husband's crazy military work schedule, and trying to maintain the household...it's totally cuckoo for cocoa puffs in my house, 24/7.

On a side bar, what's the deal with college students wearing black? Black jackets, black jeans, black shoes, black scarves, black glasses...we get it already....our campus is starting to look like some retro-sad beatnik invasion of coffeehouse geeks circa 1993.

Back to what I was saying, hopefully I will find that magic mastery of organization and scheduling which will allow me to finish my undergrad with flying colors and get into some of the law schools I am DYING to go to (hello... CUNY!). It would be sad if I didn't get into a good law school because of laundry, seriously. I've been thinking of cutting the kids' wardrobes down to 14 shirts and 14 pants each, that all "go" together, so I can do laundry once a week and they will always have clean, matching clothes. Thoughts?

Gotta run to class. I screwed up on the syllabus and did next week's assignment for today, so at least I'm ahead (albeit unintentionally)...as Forrest Gump says, one less thing.