Do-Over

Today was one of those days that if I had a "do-over" card, I would have played it.

Here are the events of the day that aren't really in any specific order, except for the last one that seriously pissed me off...

I got to work about 20 minutes late and realized as soon as I turned on my computer that I was 20 minutes late for a fairly important meeting that I was sitting in for, for my boss who is on vacation this week. Oops. (p.s... this is TOTALLY not like me. I usually check my email the on Sunday night to look over my calendar for the next day, but I had such a great detached weekend from work that I simply did not want to even think about it before I got into my office this morning)

I then forgot that I had an offsite meeting at the University in my town to potentially partner with  a group of them for some statistical modeling that we are working on at work and missed going to that because I was stuck in the above meeting. So I missed a really fun morning of touring a newly built think tank and schmoozing. Crap.

I was eating a snack at my desk, of yummy chips and salsa, and sure enough, spilled some salsa on my shirt AND pants ... the shirt and pants I had JUST washed and ironed yesterday. Ugh.

(This next part is the part that is really pissing me off right now. And it does discuss finances, so for that, I apologize as I usually don't like to discuss finances, nor do I believe it is very appropriate to, but when it comes to infertility, blogging about it and raising awareness, I do feel it is very important to show the lengths people will go to, to figure out how to afford to pay for these things that we do in order to just... have... a.... baby!)

I called my Lawyer's office today to pay the bill I received on Friday for her to review our donor contract.  I'll get to the bill in a second, but first.... On the bottom of the bill it says, "Make checks payable to XXX, LLC." I called today to ask if we could pay using our credit card, because we've decided to finance some of our donor cycle with 0% interest credit cards. I have my spreadsheet all plotted out with how to pay it off within the allotted time frame. 

The assistant at the office said, "We prefer that you pay cash or check." And to that I said, "I'm sorry that we can't do that right now, because we are paying about $XXK in total for this whole Donor Egg IVF cycle and I simply don't have $X00's in cash right now. We've decided to finance much of it with 0% interest credit cards so we don't have to pay any interest on much of this money, because as it is, it's already a lot of money and we'd prefer not to pay more". (pay attention to that interest/extra money part... that's important later on). The assistant then agreed to let me use my credit card, but after I said it was a Discover card, she said, "Oh... we only accept Visa and MasterCard".... Of course you do.

So I explain to her that if she needs me to come up with the cash over the next few months I can probably do it, but I simply can not pay that amount of money right now. She said she'd check with the lawyer and get back to me.

At the end of the day, I looked at my phone and the assistant had called back and left a message. She said she had talked with my lawyer and the lawyer suggested that maybe we could get one of those checks from our credit card company and can pay with that, because to them, it's simply a check.

I literally dropped my jaw at that... Like... Did she not understand my point in discussing my finance with her? I DO NOT WANT TO PAY INTEREST ON THIS MONEY!!!  We have a plan and I really really want to stick to it. One of those checks comes with hefty fees for using them which essentially would amount to paying interest on the legal fees. Which, again, I do not want to do.

Granted, in the whole scheme of things, it's not that much more, but it's the principal. I hate that we are so limited and tied up by the money aspect of infertility, sometimes more than the unfairness of infertility to begin with.

Now, I do know that MAYBE, just maybe, the lawyer was thinking of this as being a good option so I could use my credit card and maybe, just maybe she didn't realize there were hefty fees to use those checks, but after the day I had...where I really just wanted to crawl back into my bed, go to sleep and wake up and claim a do-over for the day (or Mulligan, in golf speak)... I went with the emotional reaction to this situation and assumed that all this lawyer could think of was getting her money as fast as she could. Bastards! :-)