Musings
an Online Journal of Sorts
By Alyce Wilson
I have a cold, so I've been sleeping in: I woke up at 9 a.m. When I got up, it was a gray day. Time to do my taxes.
Since I'd procrastinated so long, a little longer wouldn't hurt. I wasted some time at UglyDress.com.
I hate to admit it, but my prom dress was as hideous as those bridesmaid dresses.
When I sat down to work on the taxes, I realized that while I had all the federal forms, I didn't have all the state forms. So I got in my truck. I hate driving in the mornings, because the streets are crowded with people too busy drinking coffee to watch the road. It was raining. I hate driving in the rain.
Fortunately, that experience wasn't too painful because the state tends to be much more organized than the federal office. They gave me the correct forms without the mandatory 15-second stare you get from the feds. The only bad thing about it was that the parking lot smelled like wood chips. I hate wood chips.
On the way back, the rain was fogging up my windshield. I couldn't remember whether it was hot or cold air you're supposed to blow on it to make the fog disperse. I tried hot air, and it worked. I'll have to remember that.
I was behind a car whose license plate read "BIFF W." Are there other people out there with license plates that say "BIFF," so that it's necessary to distinguish yourself? He was driving a Neon.
It's really not so much that I put off my taxes -- I did do my estimated taxes in January, so I knew what I owed. It's just that I had this theory last year that I should save out about a quarter of what I earned to pay my taxes. That was absolutely correct. It would have been a great idea, if I had stuck to it. So for the last few months, I've been scraping together the rest of the money I owed so that I could pay them. They don't like it if you send them the forms with no checks.
Stopped in a drug store to get some more cold medicine. The cashiers were looking at baby pictures a friend of theirs had brought in.
"I can take you at the photo lab," one of the cashiers said, apparently not wanting to disturb the picture ceremony. I followed her across the store to the photo lab. "We're looking at baby pictures," she told me.
"Yes, I saw that."
She told me about her sister-in-law, who just found out she's pregnant. The cashier was vicariously excited. "I'm hoping for a girl," she said. Apparently, she'd been so excited about the prospect of a niece or nephew that she'd teased her brother on his wedding day that they ought to start right away. "There's a room upstairs," she'd suggested.
It was a bright moment in a dreary day. While I labored over the tax forms, my dog (who's increasingly perkier despite convalescing from Lyme Disease) provided entertainment by bringing me toys whenever I sighed aloud.
The process wouldn't have been so painful except that my former employer (who shall remain unnamed) decided to shaft me one more time by not withholding enough federal taxes. This meant that even though I'd figured out precisely what I owed for my freelancing, I still had to throw in another couple hundred because of the miscalculation.
That's okay. It's worth it, because my money will buy a fraction of a piece of a bomb. Perhaps a bit of shrapnel! If I could choose where my money went, I'd designate it for domestic violence programs, or arts funding, or the schools. For my own peace of mind, I'll imagine it went there.
In the meantime, my dog wants to know when I'm going to do something with this pile of toys around my feet. Time to play!
Moral:
Taxes don't bother dogs.
Copyright
2003 by Alyce Wilson
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