You know what sucks? When people tell you about scams months in advance… and you still manage to fall victim. Yup, this happened to us. We bought our first house, and thus have to deal with the grown up stuff that come with that… like TAXES! I hate taxes. I don’t understand half of them, and don’t use half of the things I get taxed for, but I know they are necessary to run this country.

One of the things new homebuyers have to look out for are “homestead scams”. You pay some office $55, and they “check” if you are eligible. Thing is, that is completely free to do. Long story short, Kinsey got the scam mail mixed up with the real tax mail. She ended up writing a check for $55 and sent it in. I happened to be walking by as she wrote the big check and noticed she was writing it to “property tax assessor”. I don’t know many things, but I know that you are supposed to write it out to the county tax assessor/collector. So She wrote it out to him, and saved us a lot of heart ache in the end. Why?

Because we received a letter letting us know we were delinquent with our taxes. Kinsey sent it in with the fee, and sent it to that company’s (that I can no longer find) PO box. Great. For the first time in my life, I felt like we took care of something with plenty of time to spare, and I was getting called out like Wesley Snipes. Dang it. I went straight to the county office. This is scary to do, because lets face it: some city workers don’t care about your feelings. There is a deadline, you get it in on time, or you pay. I was due to pay another $500. That is a lot… A LOT, especially when you have 2 kids. Well, I was treated with respect. They were kind. They were understanding. But, I still was on the line to pay the fine, because it was our fault, after all. I ended up talking to a guy in a big office. Showed him the carbon copy of my attempt at sending the check in. Showed him the $55 scam check, and he determined I was a victim, and let my penalty
slide. He told us we were lucky to have not written the large check out to them, because we would have been out a bunch of money. He also told me that 95% of the people, who fall for this scam, are elderly people. Thanks, boss!

Then my inner Cherlock Holmez came out. I made it my mission to find these jerks. I went to my bank, got a copy the back of the scam check that was cashed, found the bank that took the deposit, and went home to work. This is where my search ended, because when I called the bank, I was sent directly to a manager, and when I told them the account number she got really short, and agressive with me. She said she was not releasing info. I told her I only wanted to know the name of the company and their 800 number, since they deposited one of my checks… and she hung up on me and would not take my call again… and that concluded my investigation. haha. I got nowhere. I guess there’s a reason these jerks do things for a living.

Lesson learned.

In other news: Cason starts school! He’s off to a Spanish Immersion school. Nothing but Spanish all day long. Kinsey and I were talking about it at lunch, and some loud mouth lady decided to butt in. There we are chatting, Kinsey is about to cry (she cries every time we mention it), and then the lady does the “sorry if I am overstepping boundaries” thing.

She said “why would you teach your child Spanish, when you live in the US?” I could see Kinsey getting annoyed, but I was enjoying this woman’s build up. She continued, “your kid may turn into the subject of bullying because of his inability to speak our language when he goes into real school.” Kinsey was now in tight lip anger mode, but I just gave her the “I got us” smile. She went on with, “If you want your baby speaking Spanish, let him make that choice when he gets older…. those are just my observations.” I know what you are thinking: people really butt in like that when uninvited? Yes. All the freaking time. So I answered the lady with something along the lines of: “Why? Because I am Mexican. I was born in Mexico, and that means my family lives in Mexico. If my son does not speak Spanish, he will have a tough time communicating, getting a long, and bonding with his great grandparents, grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins, and paletero men. I
also happen to be very proud of my language, and have found that being bilingual in this country has been more of an aide, than a hinderance… Plus, it will make it easier on him to talk about close minded people in public.” I don’t think she realized I had called her close minded, Kinsey even gave me the “I can’t believe you just said that” kick under the table, but she just said, “oh! You’re Mexican? That makes sense then.” Wow! haha. As soon as that happened, Cason started doing his lion roar as loud as he could. I told her he was also fluent in animal noises.