He has risen

He has risen indeed!
Joyous Easter everybody, and I mean everybody for Christ died for you and me and a whole bunch of people. But better yet, he rose again, left the tomb, ran some errands in Hell and returned, and then left again ascending into Heaven.
I am engaging in my traditional Easter activity of staying home. I dislike crowds* with a growing passion. Last night's Easter vigil was good. Yes, I did give nasty looks to the kid who decided to make periodic loud "AH" noises. Yes, they are fun noises and if Jr. came to church regularly he would have gotten the novelty of the echo noises out of his system. The regular kids have their own way of experiencing mass, asleep, eating, staring at adults (including the priest), or a combination of those. Christmas and Easter just seem a little cruel to small kids. They are dragged to a strange place, forced to wear strange clothes that they cannot play in, surrounded by strange people, and if they go to a mass, smell strange smells. It's like only going to school on test or evaluation days. The Help was one of those kids. His childhood memory of church is puking on the playground of the random church his parents picked that year. Though baptized as a child he did not come to know Jesus until his late 30s. So with my data set of one, I don't have much faith in annual/biannual visits to church for children.
Of course, normally I'm home on Sundays anyway.

*Earlier that day I was at a crowded Awesome Con. I disliked the line and HATED the booth area. I had to escape at one point and let the Help wander the booths by himself. The crowded convention center was tolerated because of all the great costumes and get-ups.

PCA church moves to weekly communion

I was at the Help's church this Sunday and they've been having communion every Sunday for Lent. Before it was just for Advent. And from now on they will be having it every week.
Good for them.
Lucky me I'm used to passing the plate of saltines and individual servings of wine/grape juice and it helps that we sit with a group who know I'm Catholic. I honestly don't want to confuse anyone, but I'm not participating. So I will avoid sitting next to the person who asked why I wasn't Christian. Nice person, but....
There are other things I don't participate in at the Help's church, like the praise songs. One, there are no music notes for me to read for the praise songs. Can I read music? Not really but I know a half note from a quarter note, and it helps to see that my voice is supposed to go higher on this part. Secondly, I don't buy or listen to these hippy-dippy Jesus is my girlfriend songs on the radio. They are absolutely foreign to me. Lastly, I don't trust those songs. To me the theology is a little wobbly on some of those lines or something is just plain wrong. Most of the time I can't put my finger on it.

Marriage savings/discount is not automatic

I was talking taxes with a friend, it is April after all, and I mentioned that according to TurboTax the Help and I are paying less than 11% (something like 10.54%) of our gross income to federal taxes. Friend was impressed (yea me, sidenote, another friend says she's paying nearly 0%, which is impossible or illegal), and wondered if it was because the Help and I were married. Unsaid, up to this point in the conversation was friend wondering if it would be worth it for him and longtime gay partner to marry. Unsaid by me in the whole thing was, no, and I went to prove it.

Before the Help and I married, our pre-marriage tax rate was about 12pointsomething%, after ten-point-something. On the surface you'd think, ah ha, we got a marriage tax savings. Ah, no. I noticed two things. One, our combined gross income was less post-marriage than pre-marriage, even though we both got raises in that time. I lost income renting out my extra room, which is now our room. Retirement and other pre-tax funky paycheck stuff also did it. Prior to marriage, we weren't putting much, if anything into retirement. By being one in marriage we are trying to be purposeful about our future and our finances are combined. My gay couple friends, have been together for a couple of decades and their finances are separated, and I don't see their accounts coming together any time soon. Sometimes I'm shocked how separate they live their lives at times.

The second thing that helped lower our tax rate were deductions. We pay more in local taxes (income & property) which is about half of our deductions. The other half, charitable giving. I give to my alma maters, we give to our churches, and one church I don't attend anymore. We give to local charities. I give to random charities. I was giving to charities before getting married, the Help did the 1040EZ and really didn't give much thought to giving. The Help's alma mater, UC-3rd Circle of Hell, will probably never ever get anything from him, and since I never went there, we won't be giving. We give to the school we both attended, only because I was giving to the school anyways. They just tacked his name on is the only difference. I know our friends volunteer for the arts, but I don't know if they regularly give to any one charity. They don't attend any weekly religious (there are many, many gay churches and gay friendly spiritual houses in DC) functions and so as I know don't regularly financially support any non-profit. Knowing one half of the couple he'd probably be very unwilling to give away significant amounts of his income.

So yes, in marriage we saved money. Not because some state granted us a marriage license, that helped, but because we began living as married people, being one with each other. I heard a financial guru say that the difference between being married and shacking up is 'the conversation is different.' We have had conversations about our future, with the assumption that in 20, maybe even 30 years (we're old, we married old, one of us will be dead before making it 40 years) we will still be one. I know the conversation is different in the way I've seen others lives, between the married and the shacked up.

Note: I forgot to mention the mortgage interest deduction, which is less now than what it was when we got married. That helps too, but less so as we throw more at our mortgage. But then again, we're going to get a 2nd mortgage for the construction planned this year.

Lord Revive Us

I am playing this hymn on repeat. I feel the need.