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Ten years into widowhood, after one year of incredible happiness and nearly 14 years of single blessedness. Retired, and mostly enjoying it. Still knitting. [Zen]tangling.again after a brief hiatus.

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Procrastination: It’s what’s for dinner. And it’s eating my lunch.

Well, I am almost done preparing my taxes. I need to snag a couple of numbers and plug them in, and I need to start over on the use-of-personal-auto-in-defunct-business section, and I won’t actually be able to give them any money until Friday the 24th [plus interest, plus penalty, minus at least half of the yarn I was going to buy], because it’s more than I have in my back pocket, but it’s nowhere near as bad as I feared.

It’s certainly not like the year when our tax bite was roughly two-thirds of our gross income.

But let me tell you, I should have made the switch to the single withholding rate at the first of 2008, and not at the point when LittleBit and I separated households. I suppose technically I provided more than 50% of her support last year [I have no idea how much or how little she made], but she lived with me less than half the year, and I suspect that carries greater weight with Uncle Sugar. And anyway, I don’t know how to get hold of her to ask. And she’s probably already filed.

Let’s talk about happier things. Lots of copacetic knitting on BittyBit’s sweater. I am galloping along on the right front. It’s easy to read my knitting and see a mistake, and I finally figured out after two sleeves, one front, and one-third of a back that I need to finish a bout of knitting at the end of a knit row, so I can tell where I am on the chart. Sometimes that purl row just totally changes what the fabric looks like, and I get naviknitionally challenged.

Leftover chicken fried steak and mashed potatoes are a reasonably effective antidote to the IRS blues.

I found out that there is another Tommy’s, further west on Camp Bowie, and that there is never much of a wait for your food, although they call your name and you have to walk up and get it, like you do at Kincaid’s. I can live with that. Trainman and his IT-geek friend say that each Tommy’s [there are others] has its own unique vibe.

I consoled myself for the tax news by making a run to the store for a video and a pint of ice cream eating a carefully measured portion of cheese puffs and watching “Sleepless in Seattle”. And knitting, of course.

Life is good. Today is my Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday all wrapped up into one. There is knitting tonight, and tomorrow is my Friday.

4 comments:

Jenni said...

I am glad that Derek and I have extra witheld from our checks. We would rather get the refund then owe.
11th hour much?

Tan said...

Hurray for a really long Friday!

I never got delivery confirmation on my state taxes . . . hmmm. I did mail them. I wonder if I saved the receipt.

Sherry said...

I owe, I owe, so off to work I go....Yep, I owe Uncle Sam, too. I should have changed my withholding earlier this year as well, but now I've got to remember to get it done. I won't be able to count Lauren as a dependent on my 2009 taxes and that will bite. Oh well......

Kristen said...

We ALWAYS owe Uncle Sam, whether it's during the year or at the end. We each get to decide if we let him use our money interest-free throughout the year or use it ourselves and then pay up a little at the end. We'd rather end up owing him some rather than waiting for him to pay us our own money back.