An Update from Little Momma

I guess I sort of left everyone hanging at the end of my Legal Secretary classes. I took my finals on April 24th and got them back in the mail during the first week or so of May. I got 100% on the first test (my teacher wrote, “this is no surprise”) and I only missed one on the second test. I immediately thought of Harry Potter when Hermione Granger gets all “Outstandings” on her O.W.L.s, except for one “Exceeds Expectations.” Harry says, “You are actually disappointed, aren’t you?” I had to laugh, because I actually was disappointed! But I had 283 points out of 275 possible in one class and 218 out of 215 possible in the other, so I had higher than 100% as an average for both classes (I got all the extra credit points). My teacher said I was the best student she had ever taught. She offered me her cell phone number and said she would be happy to give me a good reference whenever I applied for a job. I haven’t applied for one yet.

I have also lost heart in selling my house and have begun the process of refinancing as an alternative to it. Julio, the guy from Countrywide who I talked to just last night, said that I could get a 30-year fixed loan at 6.375% with a monthly payment of $1135, if all goes well. That would be about $300 less than I am paying now, so it sounded pretty good. I was upset, however, to learn that Sallie Mae, the company that gave Kjersti the school loan for her MA training, still has a $30,000 loan on my credit report that is not my loan. I fought with them two years ago about it and thought I had gotten the problem resolved. But now I see that all they did was mark it “Payment Deferred.” It still shows as a debt I owe, so it still affects my debt to credit ratio and lowers my credit rating. As Chelsee would say, “I was…SO…MAD!” Now I have to start fighting with them again. If you want my advice, NEVER GET A LOAN FROM SALLIE MAE. They don’t know their head from a hole in the ground. And that’s all I have to say about that.

I am really looking forward to taking some time off work for the Turner Family Reunion in Moab a couple of weeks from now. I know this is weird, but I love staying in hotel rooms. I also love hiking and scenic driving through all those beautiful sandstone formations in that area of Utah. I have never been to Canyonlands, but I have hiked in Bryce Canyon and Zion’s National Park and the natural beauty always amazes me.

I am also looking forward to the Shakespearean Festival again this year. Allison got Chelsee and me tickets to see three plays in July: King Lear, Twelfth Night and Coriolanus. We have had so much fun hanging out together and going to see these plays. I have had my own resident scholar on Shakespeare at my side the whole time to explain anything I don’t understand. It reminds me of going to Washington D.C., Gettysburg and Spring Hill with your dad. I had my own private historian to narrate for everything I saw there.

Mr. Groen promises that we are “this close” (he holds up his thumb and pointer finger about an eighth of an inch apart) to becoming multi-millionaires. It should be any day now. He has been saying that for as long as I’ve worked for Groen Brothers Aviation, so it has become sort of a joke for us “old-timers.” But, even as a long-term goal, millions of dollars sounds pretty good. I would like, just once, to deal with the problems that come from having way too much money.