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...

an ulta birthday activity

so today . . . is my birthday.

i had plans for the day, sort of, in my head. i hadn't shared my plans with the rest of my family, because i wasn't absolutely positive that i wouldn't change my mind. sometimes something sounds like a good idea to me while i am planning it, but then when it is actually time to go, my enthusiasm wanes.

but this year my birthday fell on president's day--a free day off work! so i thought i should do something out of the ordinary. my first thought was disneyland--when you live 20 minutes from the happiest place on earth, how could it not be??? and on your birthday, you can get in free! unfortunately, the rest of your family cannot. we got on the computer and checked out ticket prices, and i thought yikes! one of us will have to sell a kidney to pay for an entrance ticket, parking, food (because, of course i would want to eat all day!) and souveniers. i decided maybe we should all keep both of our kidneys and do something else . . .

so i settled on going to the beach. i love the beach, and yet i rarely go. i don't know why . . .but i didn't tell anyone that is what i wanted to do, because i wasn't sure i would still feel like it when my big day rolled around. i decided i would just spring it on them--we are so spontaneous, i knew they would jump up and down and say "yay!" (that was sarcasm--i am about the least spontaneous person i know. if i had done that, rollie and diandra would probably think i'd been abducted by aliens, and my body was now being remotely controlled by the mother ship!)

then this morning i woke up, and i felt like i had been drugged! i could not get my eyes to open. but i could tell by the amount of light shining through my closed eyelids that it was after 8:00--way after. i thought i should check the time, so i worked one eye open and looked at the clock. it was 10:50!! and i was still in bed sleeping! i rolled over to get up and felt a horrible pounding in my head, and instantly i knew i wasn't going to the beach today . . .

and it turned out to be a beautiful day!! my only consolation at having to stay indoors where it was dark, was that the beach was probably crowded anyway. it is, after all, a holiday. the beach was probably packed with obnoxious kids. at least that is what i told myself. all day. i briefly considered driving down there for dinner but instead went another direction.

we went to rubio's. i know, i know, we eat there all the time. but i had an ulterior motive--ulta is right around the corner. and they have a new "benefit brow bar" there. and on your birthday they will do your eyebrows for free. and today is my birthday.

i had spent the whole day at home, doing nothing, and i wanted to do something special. or at least out of the ordinary. so we ate dinner, and then i left rollie at rubio's with his kindle and soda, and i walked to ulta.

there was no one at the eyebrow bar. i thought that was a good sign--i wouldn't have to wait! i found the technician, who was very cute and looked like she was about 12, and we got started. the very first thing she did was clip my bangs up off my forehead.

did i mention that this eyebrow bar is at the very front of the store? right in front of the entrance?? well it is. and there was my great big forehead, visible to the world--at least the portion of the world that came through ulta's doors while i was there. i'm kind of protective of my forehead. i have bangs for a reason. and having them pulled up off my face in a public place is way outside my comfort zone. but i guess it was out of the ordinary . . .

i have had my eyebrows waxed before (and btw, with my bangs intact!) i am blessed with pretty thick eyebrows, but they tend to get out of control if i don't wrangle them into submission occasionally. usually i go to the salon where diandra gets her nails done. it is a very quick process there. they slap wax above each eyebrow and yank it off, and then they slap wax underneath the eyebrow and yank it off. they tweeze a few strays and then say, "ok, you are done." it takes about 5 minutes. and when i leave, the skin is kind of red and traumatized for a few hours. so i am not unfamiliar with the process.

but at the "benefit eyebrow bar" the experience is somewhat different. the first thing the technician said to me was, "how long has it been since you had your eyebrows done?" it has been quite a while--i've been sick, and busy, and the nail salon moved out of the mall. i think maybe she thought i had never had it done before--that's how bad it was. so she explained everything. she drew the shape she was going to create for my approval. she waxed very small sections at a time. she trimmed. she tweezed. she applied soothing, cooling gel. she brushed. it took about 30 minutes. but i have to say, when she was done my eyebrows looked awfully good. for eyebrows. of course it costs about twice as much as at the nail salon, but it is a much nicer experience.

and then she said, "now to maintain your brows, you should probably come in every three weeks." yes, well, i probably should, but that is not going to happen. not at those prices. at least not until my ship comes in . . .

and for a birthday activity, it doesn't quite compete with mickey mouse. or ocean air. but oddly, it was kind of fun and did make me feel good! which is important when it is your birthday!!and lest you all think, "well that was kind of an awful birthday!" really, it wasn't. rollie took care of me all afternoon and said we will go do something nice for my birthday next weekend, when hopefully we will both be feeling better.

maybe i will even post a birthday picture with me and my newly shaped eyebrows in it.