Monday, April 11, 2011

an explanation... and the aftermath...

so today . . . i needed a soda. NEEDED one. not in the normal, "oh, i wish i had a soda" kind of way. i needed one in the "if i don't get a soda in the next 15 minutes i am either going to be sick, have a headache, or fall over unconscious" kind of way. i blame the federal tax system...

yes, it is tax time once again. and once again, i was compiling tax information at the last minute. last night was the last minute, because rollie had a tax appointment this morning with h & r block. i've known about this appointment for a week. in fact, i am the one who reminded him that time was running out, and he needed to make time for an appointment. i said this last tuesday. i even said that if he could get an appointment for friday, i would have the information ready. and i would have. it just would have meant that i didn't get much sleep thursday night instead of last night.

my friend wendy can't understand why it takes me so long to prepare for taxes, since i am not even the one who fills out the forms. i think she thinks i do it just so i have an excuse to whine. i do whine. sometimes. but when it comes to preparing the taxes, i have reason to whine.

the main reason is my ability to procrastinate. it doesn't matter whether we make our tax appointment for february 1st or april 10th--whenever it is, i will start preparing early, then decide i have plenty of time, and then end up staying up all night to get it done at the eleventh hour. i wish it weren't so, but it is.

part of the problem is our house in oregon. because we lived there such a short time and now we rent it, we have to itemize our deductions. which opens up another can of worms...

...receipts. to itemize, one has to have receipts. and boy do i have them! the problem is that, while i have file folders for everything, receipts do not always make it into their designated folder. which results in me running around the house, looking in every possible hiding place so that i don't miss any. which inevitably i do. every single year when i am dealing with the mountain of receipts, i will find some from the previous year that somehow evaded detection before. i hate this! it means my tax preparation wasn't perfect, which really annoys the ocd part of my brain!!

and then there is the sales tax deduction. wendy lives in oregon, where they don't have sales tax. at all. 0%!!! so she doesn't understand the sales tax deduction. but if i am going to itemize my deductions, i want to get all i can! this means saving all the receipts every time we buy something... every. single. receipt. and then, i have to somehow organize them so that i can add up all the sales tax we paid. every. single. penny. so i have a system... and the system works pretty well, once i get all the receipts collected. but that is the problem. our system is, at the end of the day we put all the receipts for the day in a file folder in the kitchen. which works great for the first six or seven months of the year. but then as the file folder gets fuller and fuller, we start stacking them, neatly at first, on the edge of the kitchen counter. even that works pretty well, because i sort them out every couple of weeks and stuff them into the folder. the problem is with the receipts that escape...

you know the ones. these are the receipts for the shoes i am not sure i am going to keep until i walk around the house in them a little bit. or the ones for the eighth black sweater i bought, which i didn't really need, but it was on sale soooo cheap, and i forgot i had another one almost like it, but it was soooo cheap! so i leave the receipt in the bag, so i can find it if i have to return the shoes. or the sweater. but then when i decide to keep the shoes (or the sweater,) i don't always remember to take the receipt out of the bag... and then there are the car repairs that are filed in the car file, but which have sales tax added. so i have to look through the car files, just in case we had any repairs done, and then copy the receipts, so i can leave the original in the car file and put one with the taxes.

and then there are the receipts for the stuff we bought online. because those receipts sometimes get overlooked and get filed with warranty information, or stuffed in a drawer, or left on a dresser.

and THEN there are the really confusing receipts for anything we bought while we were in oregon on vacation or at christmastime, because those receipts don't have any sales tax on them. at all. but, out of habit, i save them anyway...

last night this was all further compounded by the mess of medical receipts we had. i thought i had them all. i organized them, added everything up, filled out the form on my computer that i use to keep track of stuff, printed it out, and set it aside for rollie. yay! this was the first task i finished last night. and then, when i started on the sales tax receipts, i found three more medical receipts. so i added them in, reprinted the form, set everything aside again, and went back to the sales tax receipts. and then i found two more medical receipts...

this happened four times. four.

and i am not even going to take time to tell you what i have to do to get credit for all our charitable deductions...

at 7:00 i thought i might finish up by 10:00. at 10:00 i was hoping for midnight. at midnight, i thought i might still be able to function today if i was in bed, asleep, by 2:00. at 3:30 rollie came downstairs and asked if i was going to go to bed at all. i said i wasn't sure, because i HAD to get finished. there was no grace period--i was in the grace period. at 430 a.m. i finally shut my computer off, put the last of the information on the table for rollie, and went to bed...

... and laid there, looking at the ceiling, not falling asleep. i mentally picked out my clothes for school. i thought about how tired i was going to be. i wondered what i would have for lunch. i was afraid i might wake up with a headache. i worried my alarm wouldn't go off, and rollie would think i had decided not to go to work and wouldn't wake me up either. i counted backwards, slowly, which always works! but i kept getting distracted by other thoughts...

apparently i eventually fell asleep, because i did have to drag myself back to consciousness this morning, throw on some clothes, and go to work. i made it through the morning pretty well--a little dragged out, but no headache! and then, at 11:30, i hit the wall. which is where i started this post--i NEEDED a soda...

thankfully my break came at ll:45, so i raced to 7-11 to get a big gulp. a BIG one. i careened into the parking lot, ran into the store, and headed for the soda machine--only to come to a screeching halt!

the front was off the soda machine and there was a guy in a uniform playing with wires...

oh nonononononono!! this could not be happening! i only had a 15 minute break, and i had already spent five minutes of it getting to 7-11! there were no other options, and if i didn't get a soda, well, i did not want to find out what the consequences would be.

i just stopped and looked at the guy. he continued to play with the wires. he totally ignored me!! but i was a desperate woman in need of caffeine, sugar, and carbs (oh yeah, i planned to get a brownie too. duh!) so i said, "excuse me, but is the machine broken?!?!? and how long is it going to take you to fix it, because i really, really need a soda today and i only have 15 minutes." he looked at me, and backed away, just slightly. "no," he said, "the soda dispenser works. there is just something wrong with the lights." "oh good!" i said, "then i can get a soda?" "yeees," he said, and backed away a little more. i grabbed a big gulp cup and started filling it. when it was almost full, i realized i hadn't put any ice in it!

i occasionally forget to put ice in my fountain drink, especially if i am in a hurry. and once the cup is more than half full, you can't put any in or the soda splashes all over the place. i have found that i can dispense a few cubes into my hand and then drop them into the cup... but the guy working on the machine was already looking at me like he thought i was a little unstable--i don't know why, i had been perfectly polite--but i decided to forgo the ice today anyway...

i got my brownie, added a bag of crunchy cheetos (to compensate for pain and suffering,) and zipped back to school.

the good news is, i found that the perfect anecdote for severe lack of sleep is the amount of sugar, caffeine, and carbs found in a brownie, a big gulp, and a bag of cheetos.

the bad news is, i almost didn't pick up the cheetos...

3 comments:

name said...

I'm going to need to read this more than once to put it all together in my brain. My head is spinning just reading it. I can't imagine what yours must have been doing. Glad it is over for a year!! Also, did you know you can cancel an appointment with H&R and reschedule or you can always file a late filing notice with the IRS(by April 15)and have 3 more months to file?

Jewelielyn said...

i'm sorry to have confused you! i know we could file an extension, but the sad truth is, i would have still been up late the night before the new appointment. the only difference would have been that it would be summer and i wouldn't have to get up and go to work the next day! i know, i probably need therapy... :)

Wendy said...

PROBABLY NEED THERAPY??? OMG!!!! This is what I have to say about that.... This is a job Rollie needs to take over! I'm so stressed right now I must go take a hot bath!