friday, part 1

so today . . .  we went to our first angels game of the season.  it was so much fun!  we were so excited!!

and then our tax return popped into our bank account...

"let's go get a tv!" rollie said.

the first time rollie walked into our new house, before we knew it was going to be our new house, he said it knew it was the right one.  he said he just knew it when he walked in the door.  i sort of think he knew it when he saw the gigantic tv on the wall in the family room!  of course that tv did not come with the house, but i know rollie has had visions of a huge tv in that spot ever since that day.

but big tvs are expensive, and not in our operating budget.  income tax returns however, can sometimes cover non-budgeted and non-essential items like big tvs.  so the minute that return hit our bank account, rollie was ready to go.

i, of course, was a little slower to get with the program.  i kept thinking about all the other things we could do with that money.  rollie kept saying, no we couldn't, the money was for a tv--we had agreed.  and he couldn't understand why i wasn't more excited about it, since it was going in the family room which is where i watch most of my tv.  really, this tv was for me!

uh huh...

so off we went.  but our time was limited, because we had a baseball game to go to!!

he wanted to go to costco.  i wanted to go to walmart.  we decided to check out walmart first, then go to costco, then make a decision.  this is the way i shop.  it is not the way rollie shops, but for some reason, today he agreed to my methodology.  which turned out to be a blessing and a curse...

when we got to walmart, it looked like they were clearing out all their tvs!  the tv wall was half empty!  we had decided to get the biggest led tv we could afford.  it probably wouldn't be as big as we wanted, but we didn't have thousands of dollars to spend, so we would have to be content with what we could get!  we found a couple of possibilities to keep in mind as we went to costco.  and then, as we were walking out of the electronics department, we found a 59 inch plasma tv on sale for a ridiculously low price!  i whipped out my phone and started researching online.  rollie whipped out his phone and scanned the upc code.  his way was faster, and in a couple of minutes he discovered that this tv was selling for less than half of its suggested retail price!  bargain!  bargain!!  bargain!!!  but we showed great restraint, walked away, and went to costco to compare.

costco had a lot of tvs, but the one we would have wanted was about $400 more than the one at walmart.  we debated between plasma and led.  we debated the difference in price.  i did some more online comparisons, and we finally decided to get the one at walmart... if it was still there.

and it was.  now we were excited!  we paid for the tv, declined the three year extended warranty, and waited for a store employee to bring the big rolling cart so we could get that thing home!  rollie kept saying, "we are going to have to call diandra and have her come pick us up in the rodeo.  this will never fit in the prius!"  but i knew it would.  i had measured it!  they rolled it out to the car, and the walmart employee took one look at the prius and just shook his head.  "trust me," i said, "it will fit!  i measured it!!"  they both looked at me like i was a crazy person, but when dealing with a crazy person, i guess it is best if you give them what they want... so they picked it up and tried to put it in the car... and it wouldn't fit.

"no, wait!" i said, "you have to put it in straight, not at an angle!"  they still weren't convinced.  i could see it in the way they rolled their eyes.  but i knew it would fit.  did i mention that i had measured it???  so i went over to one side and helped them lay it down flat, and guess what?  it fit.  perfectly.

well, nearly perfectly.  we thought the back might stick out a little bit, but rollie moved a few things around inside the car and found us a couple of extra inches which is all we needed to get the back of the car closed.

while he was doing that, i was dancing around on the sidewalk, giving myself a thumbs up, and saying to anyone who would listen (and even some who didn't quite know what to think of me, including the walmart employee) "oh yeah! listen to the girl!! oh yeah!  listen to the girl!!"

we had bagged and tagged our tv!  and successfully put it in the freezer!  (not really!  it's a hunting expression!  it was actually sitting in the entryway...)  but since we had used my method of shopping (check out every possibility before making a decision,) rather than rollie's method of shopping (buy the first one you see and go home,) now there was no time to install the beautiful new tv...

..because we had a game to go to!

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...

procrastinating again. it must be tax time...

so today . . . i spent the day avoiding doing my taxes.

i hate taxes. it isn't that i mind paying them--i know it costs money to run our government (although i have some choice words for the games currently being played...) and i don't mind paying my share. what i hate is figuring out how much of the tax burden is mine.

i've actually spent the last couple of weeks avoiding doing my taxes--i'm quite good at it--but rollie has an appointment with h&r block on monday. this means that my time is almost up. soon, avoiding this odious task will no longer be an option. soon, i am going to have to wade my way through mountains of receipts and stacks of file folders and put my calculator to work.

every year when i get the stuff ready for taxes, i say to myself, "next year i am not going to wait until the last minute to do this. next year, i am going to organize the receipts and paperwork each month during the year. next year, doing the taxes will merely be a matter of adding up the monthly totals that i have carefully calculated all year long." which might work, except for one thing--since i never get the taxes done until the last minute, i am already three and a half months behind when this brilliant revelation comes to me...

my plan for this weekend was to do the taxes on friday afternoon. then i could goof off the rest of the weekend. that was my plan. and it was a good plan! rollie was out of town and wasn't scheduled to be home until about 8:00 p.m. friday night. diandra had a youth event and would be gone friday afternoon and evening. so, my plan was to drag all the paperwork to the family room floor when i got home from school, get a large soda, watch some tivo, and get organized.

i was somewhat successful. i got a large soda, and watched some tivo...

when i went to bed, late late late last night, i had a new plan. i would get up first thing this morning, drag all the paperwork to the family room floor, get a large soda, watch some more tivo (have i told you lately how much i love tivo?) and get organized. once again, my plan was not totally successful.

i tried... kind of. i had a large soda. i had the tivo on. i was thinking about dragging out all those papers. i was mentally organizing. and then diandra came into the room. it was lunch time, so we discussed options, and she agreed to come with me to do an errand. at ulta. and then have lunch. (can you say, "reprieve?")

i had to go to ulta today, because i had a 20% off coupon. i get coupons from ulta all the time, so i have become somewhat immune to their charms. but this coupon said i could use it on some products that are never discounted. ever. products that i use every single day. so the deal was too good to pass up. i got my products, and diandra looked at hair stuff. i picked up some clearance items (that were almost free!) and diandra looked at make-up. i paid for my stuff, and we headed for el pollo loco.

yes, back to the crazy chicken. they have recently added sweet potato fries to their menu, and diandra is in loooove. sweet potato fries at a drive-thru just five minutes from our house! i'm pretty sure she thinks it is a preview of heaven...

as we left el pollo loco's drive thru, i looked at the clock on my dashboard. "we haven't been gone very long at all," i said. i was feeling pretty good. i knew i still had to do the tax stuff, but it was only 2:00. i had plenty of time...

...that is, until i remembered that i haven't yet changed the time on my dashboard clock to reflect daylight savings time. it isn't a big deal. usually i just mentally add an hour to the time on my clock. but that only works on normal work days when i am on a schedule and already sort of know what hour it is. it does not work quite so well on saturdays.

when we got home, i started the laundry. i should have started it sooner, but as i said, diandra was at an overnighter last night, and i thought she had probably been too tired to get her laundry together. (and before any of you get all worked up about me doing her laundry, i don't fold it or put it away--i just throw it into the machines with our clothes. it saves water and electricity. i'm just trying to be earth friendly here...) i checked my email. i looked longingly at the red wii on buy.com. i put the clean sheets back on the bed. and then rollie wanted to eat...

you see, this is our problem. on saturday, we are all sort of on different schedules...

we ate dinner, watched last week's survivor, and then i dragged the receipts and paperwork out to the floor of the family room.

i was making progress...

then i looked for some pictures diandra wanted that we thought might be on my computer. of course, we didn't find them, because the picture files on my computer are still a big mess. and it just keeps getting worse! because now, not only do i have the photos i take with my camera to organize, but also the pictures i take with my phone. and all the old pictures i have been scanning into my computer. my picture files are a nightmare!!

finally diandra went to bed. rollie went to bed. i did a couple more loads of laundry, and virtually purchased some stuff on pet society (that's a facebook game, in case you didn't know. my poor pet, penelope has been sadly neglected the last few weeks...) and then i remembered that i hadn't blogged yet.

i've been trying to get back into the habit of blogging after being off for a couple of weeks, but it isn't as easy as you might think. my brain has not wanted to get back into blogging mode. and we continue to have internet issues, which make me a little hesitant to spend hours writing a blog only to possibly lose it if the network goes down. and sometimes i can't stay connected long enough to get something posted, even if i write it off line! but i need to try anyway...

i looked at the pile of stuff on the floor in the family room. and then i picked it up and moved it back to the kitchen counter. because it is late and i am tired. and i can't leave it on the floor while i go to church tomorrow, because of the dogs. and i can't deal with it tonight, because i need to blog.

but tomorrow i have to do the taxes. i have to. i can either do it during the afternoon and go to bed at a decent hour, or i can spend the day avoiding it and then stay up most of the night to get it done. i'd like to say that i know i am going to make a good choice and get a good night's sleep. that is what i would like to say. but i know myself. i know the odds are not in my favor. if you were going to bet on my behavior tomorrow, the smart money would be on avoidance and a late night. because i am a world class procrastinator. if procrastination was an olympic sport, i would be the gold medal winner. every time. no one else would even be close!

sigh. tomorrow is another day... yippee...

what? you can mail income tax forms before april 15th?!?

so today . . . is tax day, which means (drum roll please . . . ) it is time for a story . . .

filling out the tax forms has always been my job. it started out simple enough--poor college students, 1040EZ form, 10 minutes to fill it out--so there was never any real hurry. in our early married years, we usually got back some of what we had paid, because we hardly got paid anything! you would think the possibility of money we had already earned being returned to us would be quite an incentive to file those taxes early. but, being the world-class procrastinator that i am, the ease of filling out such a short form negated the result of a check in the mail, resulting in me filling out the form at 4:00 p.m. on april 15th and then dropping it off at the post office. mission accomplished. no laws broken.

we got older. we made slightly more money, because we both had jobs. we still didn't have enough deductions to itemize, being young and healthy, but we did graduate to form 1040A. since rollie is a pastor, the government considers him self-employed (which is pretty hysterical if you have any idea about his job,) so we have to pay self-employment tax--which gave me four times a year to play beat the clock with the post office when mailing his quarterly taxes.

we got older. our lives got more complicated. we graduated to form 1040. many years, instead of getting money back, our tax forms showed that we owed the government even more of our hard earned dollars. and of course i wasn't going to give it to them a moment earlier than i had to, so i still did the tax forms on april 15th, wrote the check, and raced to the post office, making sure to drop it off before the overtime staff went home at midnight. these were not fun times. i would look at the clock at 11:15 p.m. and think, "there is NO WAY i am going to get this finished and at the post office by midnight. no way." and yet, i always did. and then i would vow to start earlier the next year. which i never did.

and then we moved to california.

the first year we lived here, i didn't have a job, so i had plenty of time to get the tax forms done early. but of course i didn't. by now it was a sort of nightmarish tradition that just wouldn't die. i would think about doing them earlier, but it just never seemed to happen. so there i was, on april 15th, 2002, working on the taxes as i watched the minutes tick by. i finished up about 11:00 p.m. and since the post office is only about two minutes from our house, i was feeling pretty proud of myself! those forms were going to be sitting in that post office, and i would be back home in bed well before midnight. i thought.

i got in the car and drove to the post office. oddly enough, the small parking lot only had a few cars in it. i drove up to the drive through mailbox, but there was no special sign on it proclaiming that there would be a mail pick up at midnight. hmmm. i almost dropped it in anyway, but i decided it wasn't worth the risk. so i parked the car and went inside--only to see about half a dozen people wandering about in a zombie-like state. i soon realized that there were no employees working overtime at this post office. this post office was done dealing with mail for the day. it was closed.

ohno!OhNo!OHNOOOOOOOOO!!!!

i was toast.

it was now 11:15 p.m. on april 15th, and my tax forms were still in my hand and the post office was officially closed. this couldn't be happening to me! i didn't have time to walk around like a zombie, so i dashed back outside and started looking for notices. i finally found a piece of paper with a very short list of post offices that would be open until midnight.

there were three. and i only knew where one of them was. and i had to drive all the way to long beach to get there.

fortunately i had been at that post office once before and kind of knew where to go, because this was before everyone had a gps in their cellphone. i jumped into my car, slammed the door shut, and sped (yes i said sped) to the freeway. i checked the time, and noticed that my gas light was on. but i didn't have time to stop for gas. i started doing the math in my head, "let's see, the light just came on, so i can still drive about 60 miles, i think--i'll get gas on the way home AFTER my tax forms are safely delivered." because the clock was ticking.

11:40 p.m.--i could see the long beach post office. it, of course, was on the opposite side of the street from me and there were an awful lot of cars on that long stretch of road. there were traffic cones and uniformed officers directing traffic--apparently i was not the only one on the southeast side of los angeles trying to mail my tax forms before midnight. i approached the cross street, drove between two rows of orange traffic cones, and waited for someone to let me cross traffic so i could get turned around the right way to enter the post office parking lot. i saw a traffic officer running my way yelling and waving his arms. yes, i thought, come over here and make these people stop so i can get across. otherwise we are going to have a traffic jam!

to my surprise, he came to my window. "ma'am," he said, "what are you doing?!?!?!" so i explained that it was almost midnight and i had to get my income tax forms in the mail, but there were all these cars out tonight and no one would let me go across so i could turn around . . . and then he said, "why do you think all these cars are out here? they are ALL here to mail their tax forms!!"

you have got to be kidding me! i was stunned. i had never seen such a line of traffic in my life! (of course, i hadn't been on the 405 during rush hour yet!) "and didn't you see the orange cones?" he continued. "you can't turn here. it will create a traffic jam." oh. i thought the orange cones were there to mark where to turn, not to keep me from turning. as i was saying this to the officer, he looked at me like "what planet are you from?" so i did the only thing i could think of to do. i played the out-of-state helpless female card.

"i'm so sorry!" i said, because when a police officer is leaning in your open car window, that is probably a good way to start. "we just moved here from oregon," (ten months ago, but i think anything less than a year counts as 'just'.) "and in oregon the post offices stay open until midnight on april 15th and i live in cerritos but the post office there is closed and this is the only post office i knew how to get to and my husband is already in bed alseep and i had to drive on the freeway to get here in the dark and i thought the traffic cones were marking where i was supposed to turn and if i have to get in that long line not only will i probably hit something when i back up, but i will also probably run out of gas before i get to the post office because my gas light came on 20 minutes ago and then people will get mad and honk their horns at me . . . " and then i looked like i might cry. actually, i felt like i might cry--and it probably didn't hurt to have tears threatening at just that moment . . .

he should have made me get back on the road and drive clear to the end of the seemingly endless line and wait my turn. but he didn't. he let me cut the line. i think he just wanted to to be done with me--and preferably before those threatening tears erupted or a traffic accident occurred. i thanked him profusely and promised that this would be my last midnight run to the post office on april 15th.

and i've kept that promise. the following year we hired carol at h&r block to do our taxes, and she always calls us well before april 15th to get us started. rollie meets with her, they fill out the forms, and all i have to do is sign my name.

carol mails them. early.

my brain is full of numbers . . .

so today . . . i am buried in tax receipts. i have no brain for blogging. i do have a really funny tax story to tell you, but i don't have the brain power to do it tonight. just wait, though . . . :) tax day is coming . . .

tax time. again. sigh.

so today . . . i'm doing our taxes.

well, technically i guess i am blogging. but i am thinking about doing our taxes.

and technically, i guess i don't do our taxes--someone from h&r block does them. but i make it possible. i collect all the data--you know, all those pesky receipts--and organize them so that the tax lady can fill out the forms. it's a big job! and every year i plan to do it early, but that never happens. so here i am, in the middle of march, tracking down deductions.

i am all about getting back as much as we can from the government. i don't mind paying some taxes. i appreciate having police and fire protection. and i guess we need some sort of decision-making hierarchy, and no one is going to do that for free! but i don't want to have to contribute anymore than i have to. i would rather get to spend my own money!

so . . . that requires some work--keeping track of all those medical expenses we have had, adding up all the sales tax receipts, and listing each item we have donated to charity. yeah, you can see why i am avoiding it by blogging . . .

medical expenses aren't too bad. all the receipts are in a folder, and i just take them out and add them up.

but the charity donations are more daunting. i've always made lists of what was donated, because that's what my mom said to do--and she is pretty smart! and that wasn't too bad--i just listed things as i popped them into bags. then a few years ago my sister-in-law (who is also pretty smart,) said the irs was getting tougher on those types of contributions, and she suggested taking digital photos of stuff. i can see why a list in itself might not be enough--i could say i donated anything! but this whole photo thing complicates my process, because i have to take pictures and make a list. if i didn't get rid of so much stuff, i wouldn't do it! of course, if i didn't get rid of so much stuff, it would be easier.

which brings us to the sales tax receipts.

we have a folder for sales tax receipts, just like the medical receipts. the difference is, the sales tax folder is bulging by the end of the year. bulging. we pay sales tax on everything!! so by the end of the year, it is daunting. every january i vow to deal with these receipts at the end of each month, so that it isn't such a big job. but it never happens. so here i am, trying to read the faded ink on year-old receipts, sorting them by month (because i need some sort of system here,) and circling the tax amount (so i can see it when i start adding up the numbers.)

the first year i did this, i used a yellow highligher instead of circling the amounts. i found it oddly satisfying, and it didn't take too long to highlight all the tax amounts. but a few days later when i got around to adding them up, i found that the ink on some of the receipts had reacted with the highlighter and disappeared! so that brilliant idea backfired . . .

i am always amazed at how much we spend in sales tax every year. actually, it is a fairly painless way to pay taxes, even at nearly 10%, but when i see the total i am always shocked! and also glad, because we can deduct it all somewhere on our tax forms. so you see, shopping is actually saving us money. without shopping and eating out, we would have to pay way more in income tax--but only if the receipts make it into the receipt folder.

every year when i deal with the mountain of paper, i always find a few receipts from the year before. "oh no!" i think. "we could have deducted this $3.48! why, oh why weren't these receipts in the folder last year!" i don't know how this happens, but it always does. so, to offset "the lost ones," i am not above picking up receipts carelessly abandoned by others.

i mean, those sales taxes deserve to be part of someone's returns. it isn't their fault that someone dropped them. or left them on the table. or threw them away.

no wait--i don't go diving for receipts. really.

that would just be weird.

my brain has left the building . . .

so today . . . i don't have anything to write about. it's been a very busy day and i haven't had time to think about blogging. the other teacher who teaches in our classroom has been out sick since last thursday and is probably not going to be back all week. she is in the hospital, so she is really sick, but having her gone makes my day at work much more chaotic. there is a substitute, and it is helpful to have that other adult in the classroom, but i am trying to teach curriculum to two different classes every day. so while i am at school, my mind has no chance to think about what would make a good blog.

after school, i walked both dogs, crashed on the stairs for a few minutes, then went to macaroni grill for dinner--the last hurrah before tomorrow's ban on sugar and all things white (except cauliflower.) when we got home, i put on warm flannel pants and a polar fleece shirt (because, i'm sorry, but it is COLD here!!!) and fired up the computer. i've been checking email and reading blogs, but when it came time for me to write, there was nothing in my head.

so i thought i would just copy one of the blogs i had written in the last few years on myspace. there are some cute and funny stories on there. i started reading. and reading. and reading. and i was right--i did write some cute stories for myspace. but you aren't going to get to read any of them today. maybe tomorrow, if nothing interesting happens . . .

here is the awful truth--it's time to do our taxes. rollie does a lot of the work of getting all the information gathered and actually meeting with the tax person. but the information that i gather is burying me this year, and it is taking up way too much space in my brain, which makes it difficult for me to do other things--like write a funny and interesting blog. which is why you are getting this almost boring one today.

but here is the good news. our tax appointment is for thursday, which means that i have to finish this stuff up in the next couple of days whether i want to or not. so by the end of the week, the blogs should be better.

of course by then i will have been without sugar or anything white (except cauliflower) for a few days, so my brain may have other issues . . .

but to quote two of my favorite bloggers, since "every post is better with a picture," here are some pics i snapped with my camera phone (thus the less than fine quality) while walking mia today.