It is gone. GONE! And it's never coming back (well, except for the maybe 100 dollars in interest that we'll have to deal with next month).
Trent's most recent paycheck was higher than we'd expected; apparently, we'd misunderstood the pay schedule issued by one of his employers. What a pleasant surprise. Deleting the last chunk of debt felt amazing. Refreshing. Freeing. Ahhh.
I drove to my 9 a.m. dental appointment with a smile on my face.
Then Mr. Murphy (of Murphy's Law) reappeared. It's uncanny how fast he heard our good news. He was quick to step in and do his thing: My dentist - who recently acquired a fancy new piece of x-ray equipment that can pinpoint even the teeniest of enamel defects - looked at my x-ray films and announced I'd need thousands of dollars in dental procedures, none of which is covered by my insurance. "What a bummer," he said before shaking my hand and leaving the room.
(Yeah. What a bummer. Is that how rich, well-insured people view situations like this? Must be nice.)
I left the dentist feeling depressed. Talk about raining on my no-credit-card-debt parade.
Anyway, I could lament about how much this stresses me out, how much it's going to cost, how irritated I am that this stupid new technology is only serving to emphasize the fact that am a genetic loser on the tooth front, and how much I hate the U.S. private insurance system. But I'll spare you - at least, I'll spare you today. No promises for the future.
Instead, I'll simply say that I'm going to get a second opinion (and that if you know of a good, nice, caring dentist in the Nashville area, please let me know) and that I will be paying for this work in cash, even if I have to space it out over a period of two years.
And today? Today I floss, brush, rinse, and then celebrate, because getting out from under the thumb of the credit card companies is certainly cause for celebration.
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