Catching up

Life has been the usual whirlwind lately, but good stuff really.  Work has been crazy busy but good.  I love working for Chris again - he's pretty much the best boss ever.  Feeling like someone appreciates what I do and working for someone who has my back is an amazing thing and not something I have been able to experience often.

We spent the weekend up in Vermont seeing the kids and enjoying our favorite place.  As always, the time was too short.  The weather was almost an exact repeat of our last visit, 3 weeks ago.  Alternately cloudy and sunny on Friday during the drive up, rainy, cold and miserable on Saturday and then gorgeous for the ride home on Sunday.  O well.  A wet weekend in Vermont is better than anything on Long Island.  I will have pictures of the weekend, but I haven't had a chance to upload them yet.

ETA: OK, I put the pics up!

On the positive side, I FINALLY got the official word from the Vermont student loan company that the loans for both kids have been officially FINALLY approved.  It took friggen' forever.  I thought I had finished with all the paperwork back in July but then the kids started getting messages from their financial aid offices that their accounts were frozen and they wouldn't be able to register for Spring semester because their accounts weren't paid.  So I called VSAC and asked what was going on.  It turned out they wanted 2 more pieces of paper from me.  I was tempted to ask them if I was supposed to know this via osmosis because they never sent me any notice of this, but I refrained.  It isn't wise to piss off someone you want to borrow money from.  Anyway, I sent what they wanted and all is well.  I checked on the VSAC website and the schools will get their money tomorrow (UVM) and Thursday (Champlain). 

What is freaking me out now is how I am going to handle paying all this back.  I had to borrow a lot of money to cover the balance of room, board and tuition for both kids.  Even with their scholarship money, their loans, grants and work study there was a substantial sum of money that I had to take out to cover everything.  It is kind of scary.  And this is just the first year, so I am not sure how I'm going to cover all of this for another 3 years.  Winning the lottery would be really helpful.  Of course, their father is no help whatsoever.  He is supposed to be on the hook to cover 50% of their college costs but I know I will never see a penny from him.  He'll just try and take credit for how great they have turned out, when he really had little to nothing to do with it.

For now I will enjoy the fact that I have 2 wonderful kids who are making the most out of their college experiences and trust in {substitute your favored deity here} that the future will take care of itself and I'll be able to manage all of this.  Somehow.

But do you wonder why I haven't slept more than 2 hours a night for the past week?

Catching up

Life has been the usual whirlwind lately, but good stuff really.  Work has been crazy busy but good.  I love working for Chris again - he's pretty much the best boss ever.  Feeling like someone appreciates what I do and working for someone who has my back is an amazing thing and not something I have been able to experience often.

We spent the weekend up in Vermont seeing the kids and enjoying our favorite place.  As always, the time was too short.  The weather was almost an exact repeat of our last visit, 3 weeks ago.  Alternately cloudy and sunny on Friday during the drive up, rainy, cold and miserable on Saturday and then gorgeous for the ride home on Sunday.  O well.  A wet weekend in Vermont is better than anything on Long Island.  I will have pictures of the weekend, but I haven't had a chance to upload them yet.

ETA: OK, I put the pics up!

On the positive side, I FINALLY got the official word from the Vermont student loan company that the loans for both kids have been officially FINALLY approved.  It took friggen' forever.  I thought I had finished with all the paperwork back in July but then the kids started getting messages from their financial aid offices that their accounts were frozen and they wouldn't be able to register for Spring semester because their accounts weren't paid.  So I called VSAC and asked what was going on.  It turned out they wanted 2 more pieces of paper from me.  I was tempted to ask them if I was supposed to know this via osmosis because they never sent me any notice of this, but I refrained.  It isn't wise to piss off someone you want to borrow money from.  Anyway, I sent what they wanted and all is well.  I checked on the VSAC website and the schools will get their money tomorrow (UVM) and Thursday (Champlain). 

What is freaking me out now is how I am going to handle paying all this back.  I had to borrow a lot of money to cover the balance of room, board and tuition for both kids.  Even with their scholarship money, their loans, grants and work study there was a substantial sum of money that I had to take out to cover everything.  It is kind of scary.  And this is just the first year, so I am not sure how I'm going to cover all of this for another 3 years.  Winning the lottery would be really helpful.  Of course, their father is no help whatsoever.  He is supposed to be on the hook to cover 50% of their college costs but I know I will never see a penny from him.  He'll just try and take credit for how great they have turned out, when he really had little to nothing to do with it.

For now I will enjoy the fact that I have 2 wonderful kids who are making the most out of their college experiences and trust in {substitute your favored deity here} that the future will take care of itself and I'll be able to manage all of this.  Somehow.

But do you wonder why I haven't slept more than 2 hours a night for the past week?