Entitlement

My husband and I discovered that there is no direct translation in French for expressing the sense of entitlement. You can only say that you feel something is your due, which is a more cumbersome way to say it. It loses the punch factor. It sounds ugly, but less ugly.

2016 – and now the beginning of 2017 – has been a series of unfortunate events. You all know about the house travesty: hiring a carpenter named Jesus (not Hay-sus), whose wife is named Mary – after we had prayed for a sign that God would show us which contractor to use – only to have his business come very close to folding after we had given him nearly all the money. We are waiting to see if he can come finish the work and patch all the damage the initial stages have made in our living space.

And you may remember the car frustration, where a nanny hit our car and we gave her the insurance to sign but her employer never got back to us. We paid nearly 500€ out of pocket and I forgave the nanny the debt (with loud cries and tears in the privacy of my own home). In a twist of fate, the son of this family invited mine to a birthday party not knowing it was our car that was hit. I left a very nice message saying I’d like to understand what happened with the insurance form now that I had her number. And I hope that my insisting a bit still counts as forgiveness. If the woman doesn’t respond I won’t harbour ill feelings towards her. But I don’t think my son will be in attendance.

Then this year, thinking to do the smart thing, I hired a lawyer to set up an LLC in Delaware – to record my book expenses and earnings. That way I could declare my expenses and get a tax break. The thing is, I know how to set up an LLC. I’ve done it before. But I was hiring him for his international tax expertise. He charged me an exorbitant rate, told me any further questions would need to be billed, and was actually WRONG about my ability to use an LLC because I can’t even set up a US business banking account from overseas. So I’ve paid all that money and I’m back to square one. I cried loud and bitter tears over that too – over the unfairness of it all.

Many of you have read my smashing the plate post about one of our infrequent marital fights. What I haven’t mentioned on my blog – but what we talked about in our recent church marriage retreat – was another fight we had a week after that episode. My husband was supposed to attend a parent-teacher meeting for one of our children and he knew about it 2 weeks in advance, but only told me he couldn’t go a couple hours before the appointment was supposed to take place (because of a call he knew about longer than 2 weeks).  It didn’t help that he came to see me with his earphones in and the conference call on mute. (More on that in a minute, but my husband and I are good).