Bills

I awoke from a dream last night at 4:30 am. In the dream, I was living in this really sweet, gigantic apartment, to which I'd just had delivered three new refrigerators and two new bookshelves. I was distressed, in the dream, because I'd just lost my wallet and there was no way I was going to be able to pay for the refrigerators. "I only need one of these!" I declared to my friends (fictional), who'd been angry with me earlier in the dream for not telling them I'd moved to such a grandiose apartment.

As the dream wore on, I started organizing things rather minimalistly, and made my apartment be about 10x the size I thought it was. I was very, very excited!

Then the maid showed up.

The maid?

What?

I was like "Excuse me... what are you doing here?"

"I'm the maid for the apartment complex."

"What?"

"I clean everyone's apartment."

"What? You've been cleaning my apartment?"

"Yes," she chuckled snidely.

"Really? It doesn't look like anyone's been cleaning it."

"Well, I haven't been doing a very good job."

"Am I supposed to leave you tips? I swear I didn't know there was a maid."

"Yes. You are supposed to leave me a tip. This is why I've been doing a bad job."

"Shit. I'm sorry. I swear I didn't know. How much am I supposed to leave?"

"Well, on average, people tip $30 a week, but usually more."

"$30 a week!?!? WHAT? That's $120 a month! I can't afford that! Is this maid service optional?"

"No."

"So you've been coming in here and not cleaning... what have you been doing?"

She insinuated that she'd been doing sketchy things, and I was livid.

"I can't afford to pay you not to mess with my apartment! If I'd have known that this place was going to be $120 more a month than I thought, I'd never have taken it! This is absurd! How dare they? Especially given that I have to pay insane money in health expenses..."

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I jolted awake then, reminded of the "health expenses."

Earlier that evening I'd received an extremely distressing notice from my insurance company indicating that I owe an obscene amount of money to someone. Obscene. Obscene obscene obscene.

I guess I didn't allow myself to think about it when I opened the mail. It's far to upsetting.

At 4:30 am, I was thinking things like "With that amount of money, I could have:"

- taken 16 photography classes
- bought 4 or more really nice new cameras
- taken 2 really awesome and exotic vacations
- bought 20 keyboards off of Craigslist
- paid rent and all other bills for two months
- have divided the money up over a year and have gotten a huge gigantic apartment
- bought 15 pairs of new glasses

I was up until about 6:00 am, tossing and turning and doing math.

I can't stand the thought of seeing my savings torn apart because of health insurance.

I hate that its basically like losing money. Like you wake up one day and boom! It's all gone.

I hate that, here, if you spend that amount of money, you can't ever make it back. It's literally gone. No amount of lifestyle altering could get that money back in even 5 years of living in New York City. Yes, I have it, but the only reason I have it because I was able to save it in Boston. And I didn't save it for this.

The good news is that my money is most likely not going to vanish. I called the health insurance people today and pointed out the issue, and they were like "We have no idea - we will look into it - it looks like we billed it incorrectly, so you most likely won't owe anything."

I am going to operate under the assumption that I won't owe anything and will live as normal and will go to MA and Philly and VT in the next month and not worry. I may take buses instead of trains, though. I was thinking "I can't go home! I can't afford it! I can't go to VT! I refuse to go to Philly for the baby shower! I am going to have to move out of my apartment! Maybe out of New York City! I will definitely have to leave my job because how can I work for a company with such an absurd insurance plan? What if something else happens to me? I will be screwed! For the love of god why do I pay for health insurance if they won't cover anything!?"

Yeah.

So I'm a little tired.

But relieved.

And suddenly feeling like I have options.