Marriage Tax?

I filed my taxes today.  I meticulously entered all the numbers that showed my income and was excited to enter the deduction from my student loan taxes.  However, it turns out that when you are married and file your taxes separately you are no longer eligible to claim student loan interest.  Huh?  How does marriage have any bearing on student loans?  I am certainly still paying them every month and I certainly accrued quite a bit of capitalized interest.  Does my marriage somehow mean that I should have no money troubles in the eyes of the Federal government?

At first, I was angry.  It just doesn't make sense.  Now, I am not even sure what to say about it.  I am so used to institutions rewarding heterosexual marriage that I am sort if in a state of shock.

These Are the People in Your Neighborhood

Yesterday, after I completed The New York City Half-Marathon in triumph (well, 8232nd place) my husband, brother-in-law and I decided to take a trip to Atlantic Avenue to eat lunch and do some grocery shopping at the Pathmark there.  The cosmos must have been happy with our decision because we found getting there that the subway wait was surprisingly short.  We ate at Buffalo Wild Wings at of the need to eat quickly (you run 13.1 miles, go back home, take a shower, get dressed, wait for your family members to make a decision, travel for about half an hour and see how hungry you are).  It was somewhat unclean, very noisy and impeccably bad for us  - just what you'd expect from Buffalo Wild Wings.  I HATE the calorie information, by the way.  If I go into a to a place like this, I KNOW it is going to be bad for me.  

Anyway, after years of C-Town (AKA crack town)/Nasty and grumpy Associated/too expensive FreshDirect, I was excited to explore a real grocery store.  As I walked in and saw their produce section, I nearly came down with an attack of the vapors.  No, but it looked good.   Straight away, I went to customer service and filled out one of those applications for a discount card.  A girl needs a deal.  This was accomplished with little wait time. Again, thanks cosmos. 

 

We did our shopping and using a combination of our reusable Target bags (my hubby rocked the Target bags), my brother-in-laws' backpack and my market bag, we managed to get our goodies home in a decent amount of time.  

Then, it was back to Atlantic Avenue for Arthur and I for a date night.  It had been a long time coming and   we were happy to discover that the BAM Rose Cinemas was an easy jaunt from the Atlantic Avenue Terminal.  We did walk right past it the first time around due to the lack of marquis.  The Peter Jay Sharp     building, in which the theater is housed is a combination theater, museum and cinema.  It is not a hi-tech theater with stadium seating, feels old and is very small, but I kind of like that.  

After using the Urban Spoon app on my iphone early that day, we discovered that Smith Street, located relatively close to the area of Boerum Hill (or is it in Boerum Hill?  I still don't know my BK neighborhoods that well yet) seemed to have a number of restaurants.  We could not decide at first whether to walk down Flatbush or get back on the train when luckily, we spotted the bus.  It took all of two minutes before we got to Bergen street.  We almost immediately happened upon the Cubana Cafe.  The decor was one I have seen before in other Cuban restaurants - that sort of colorful, we're pretending we're in old Havana look  As we sat down, we were given two glasses and a bottle of water in a wine bottle and served fried plantains topped with two types of sauces - one some sort of chimichurri sauce and the other some sort of salsa-esque concoction.  Yummy.  We gobbled them up.  Then I ordered a mojito and Arthur had a Dos Equis.  For dinner Arthur had pulled pork with black beans and mashed plantains and I had Picadillo Cubano with Turkey, black beans and rice.  They were both very tasty, though the mashed plantains had a strange baby food like consistency.  For dessert, we had tres leches.  That was just deliciousness incarnate.  

It was a lovely date night and it made us very happy that dinner and a movie was a pretty easy endeavor in our new neighborhood.  We are excited to explore some more in the warmer months to come.

Today, I decided to take it easy  - my only plans were to make beef brisket for tonight's dinner, go to the Brooklyn Public Library and get a little pampering done at a nail salon.  I can smell the brisket finishing up right now.  I adapted it to the slow cooker from a braised brisket recipe I found on epicurious.com.  My changes included adding leeks and a little red vermouth. 

 

I managed to go to the library and drop off the terribly boring Kristin Chenoweth autobiography, A Little Bit Wicked.  I borrowed it last week and I couldn't finish it.  Sorry, Kristin.  I loved you in Pushing Daisies!  Anyway, it is a small branch with an apparent heating system problem (so hot!) and a mecca for teenagers.  It doesn't have a lot of books and is really busy and loud (what happened to being quiet in the library?), but it suits its purpose.  I was feeling very productive when I went to the nail salon Zivales on East New York Avenue and Kingston Avenue.  I tried going last week around 6 PM and didn't stay due to the long wait.  This time, I arrived at a quarter to four and fully expected it to be empty.  Nope!  They only have two nail technicians working there and after they told the woman in front of me that they "had no time" right now and she would have to come back at four thirty, I decided to leave and try another nail salon on Kingston Avenue and Empire Boulevard.  

This other place has shades covering the windows and a room divider so women can put their stockings and shoes back on without others seeings them.  When I walked in, there was a discernable shift in the energy.  Immediately, the women looked down at my legs to see if I was Chassidic or not.  I was wearing jeans and Sketchers and not a denim skirt, tights and Uggs so I did not pass the test.  Then in a very Pretty Woman on Rodeo Drive moment, the owner asked, "Can I help you"?  I explained what I wanted and she said I would have to wait.  I decided not to stay and wait for the one person working to finish on the customer ahead of me.  I just wanted a little me time and feel a bit cheated. 

Brooklyn lessons learned this weekend?  Don't need to go to Manhattan for dinner and a movie.  Make appointments at nail salons.  Wear lighter clothing in libraries.  Beef brisket takes a long time to make.      

                          

Of Course, You Are!

A few weeks ago, on a regular Saturday morning in Harlem, one of my students' parents asked me how married life was going.  I smiled, as I unlocked the door to get class started, and said, "it is going well.  We're moving next weekend."  "Oh, where?" quizzed the long standing parent. "Brooklyn."  He laughed, "of course, you are!  That's what we did after we got married."  

This got me to thinking about the path we've taken.  When we decided to get married almost two years ago, we wanted it to be on our terms (as much as possible).  We didn't do the diamond; We walked down the aisle to Harry Potter and Star Wars music;  We went to Turkey instead of Hawaii.

After the wedding, we knew that we weren't going to stay in our little East Harlem apartment forever.  It had served its purpose for two years, but we wanted more space.  We were willing to look in Queens, the Bronx, etc., but for our price range Brooklyn seemed to come up again and again.  When we saw this place, we just had to have it.

Side note: My body has not quite adjusted to the amount of space we have yet.  I still find myself taking up only a little area of our bedroom.  I've also not quite got a handle on where the light switches are and always seem to hit my hand against the wrong side of the wall.

Anyway, I don't necessarily think that the area of Brooklyn that the parent I mentioned above had moved to as a newlywed is the same area of Brooklyn that Arthur and I have chosen (though I can jog past those neighborhoods since we're close to Prospect park).  I can't imagine this parent living in a neighborhood bordered on one side by the Chasidic community and the West-Indian community on the other.  All the bagels and jerk chicken you can eat!   

 

We've moved to Brooklyn for the roominess and an improvement in the quality of our life despite our less than extravagant income. We've moved here because we deserve to have a space that is a respite from work, from weather, from disappointment, from the sometimes harshness of the day.  We moved to celebrate our new life, our new family in a place that allows room to move, to entertain and to grow.  Manhattan doesn't allow for that at the present time.  

And to be honest, I don't think I'd care if it did.  

So even though, to some, it may seem that we've taken the expected next step in the scripted road map of marriage, we've done what we needed to do in order to feel that we are moving in the right direction.  That direction just so happened to be across the river to the east. 

Marital Bliss… For Him Anyway

Marital Bliss… For Him Anyway