St. Patrick's Day and Tax Time

St. Patrick’s Day was the inspiration for another fun theme week here at the continuum care complex. It followed another theme week I didn’t write about because I’m not into “churchy things” like doing the Stations of the Cross, Ash Wednesday. Lent and a series of classes to study Bible events leading up to Easter. I didn’t even do the buffet for Mardi Gras night because while I like some Cajun music I didn’t trust the iconic food that goes with it not to kill me with hidden shell fish. I did, however, love the paczki’s served on Fat Tuesday before Lent started and the Mardi Gras beads that were free for the taking draped all over the public areas. Best paczki’s I’ve ever had in my life and we used to have some great Polish bakeries in my area.

St. Patrick’s Week started on Monday with a viewing of a PBS documentary The Ireland’s Wild Coast and it featured what they called the most beautiful coastlines in the world. It had some breathtaking photography of a chain of Man-free, wild islands with millions of nesting birds and ancient ruins that are surrounded by waters filled with breaching humbacks and other sea life. I’d love to see another video on how they filmed such amazing close-ups of hatching birds and mating animals. At one point one of the guys shouted out as two seals were mating, “This is my kind of movie” and I mumbled, “Oh gross, you’re into animal porn!"

Irish Happy Hour was my favorite happy hour so far but then I said the same about the Hawaiian Happy Hour. They served my all-time favorite alcoholic drink---Grasshoppers. Back in my dating days when someone would take me to a nice restaurant I always ordered a Grasshopper for dessert which is made with equal parts of ice cream, crème de menthe liqueur and crème de cacao liqueur served in a cocktail glass with dark chocolate power on the edge of the glass. I hear tell they mostly sell Grasshoppers as shooters today which hardly seems worth the effort to get the blender out. I was so hung up on Grasshoppers back in my day that I even made them at home. After awhile I narrowed it down to just the crème de menthe over ice cream and called it good enough. Anyway, the theme happy hours here are bringing back some great memories. Wouldn’t it be fun to be young again, especially if we knew how short-lived our carefree days would be before adult problems would take over our lives.

They also put on an Irish buffet with the best tasting, most tender corn beef I've ever had in my life. (My mom used to boil the flavor out of it and it still cut like leather.) And yesterday afternoon's entertainment was filled with live Irish music, a fiddle player who was really good and he sat in front of a large screen while drone footage of Ireland played in the background.

This week I also managed to run errands and I put more miles on my car that one day than I did in the entire month of February. That’s a fact verifiable by Google because they track me where ever I go in case I decide to take up the hobby of writing reviews of, say, the car wash I went to, the shoe store, the CPA’s office or the bottom of the river that I used to fear I’d end up in some icy winter day where I used to live. No river to fear down here and I managed to navigate the streets and traffic I’m not used to doing just fine. I’m going to take a page out of another blogger’s life (Living Richly in Retirement) and declare one day a week when I explore my new area. The jury is still out on whether I should get a GPS app. I usually just google where I’m going, then print out a map from point A to point B. I have a smart phone but it's maxed out on apps so getting a GPS presents a problem.

Tax Time: I get my income taxes done by a CPA and have for as far back as I can remember. It’s over-kill now that it’s just me and no businesses. But old habits are hard to break and the idea of doing my own taxes is not worth the worrying about making a mistake and going off to tax jail. Ya, I know, that’s not going to happen. We once knew a tax evader and it took seven years before the IRA came crashing down on him and, boy, did they come after him with literal guns blazing. Damn fool tried to hold off several law enforcement agencies in an armed attempt to hold on to a large farm with his underground bank of guns and ammo. Damn Fool could have sold off some acres to cover what he owed but instead he lost it all and earned himself prison sentence for his siege.

The inside of his house was a hoarder situation. A well organized hoard with one room dedicated to just post cards in filing cabinets so close together you could hardly walk down the aisles. At the time we saw the house I was trying to build a set of woman’s suffrage cards and had been at it for several years. I had just one card left to complete the series of 12 and the guy (one of Don’s work friends) invited us out to see the card. He had many duplicates of the exact card I needed but even offering him $200 for the 1909 Dunston Wellers postcard that, at the time, usually went for $100 wouldn’t get guy to part with one of his. 

After the siege everything he own was auctioned off for pennies on the dollar to pay his debts, losing a farm that had been in his family for four generations. He didn’t believe in paying any form of taxes; he had owed the county, state and federal governments back taxes years before they came prepared with a coordinated effort to haul him off. Oh, ya, I never get past tax time without remembering that crazy, old fool. ©

I did finally complete my set, framed them and now my suffragette postcards are hanging in my half bathroom. Their values have fallen in the past five years---thanks, Marie Kondo---but I still love the memories of hunting for them. (Sorry for the poor quality photo. The colors are bright like the ones at the top. I grabbed that picture off an auction site.)

Taxes and Treadmills

I’ve been going to the same Certified Public Account to get my income taxes done since Ring was a pup and he’s been died and buried under a rock in the back yard for over twenty years. I’ve never had a dog named Ring but that phrase was a favorite of my husband’s to denote that something happened a long time ago. Don didn’t have a dog named Ring either. He picked the phrase up from his dad who got it from Don’s grandfather who---family folklore claimed---actually did have a dog named Ring that resided in the back pasture with a rock rolled over the grave to keep wild animals from digging up his childhood dog. I love family verbiage like this and wish I had another generation to pass it down to. Today, out of curiosity I googled “since Ring was a pup.” (Or maybe it was suspicion that made me want to fact-check three generations of males who were all gifted storytellers.) I found ten listings for the phrase, three of which were links to my own blog entries, four to other people’s blogs and three appeared in newspapers dated 1911, 1914 and 1922. Oh how I would have loved to break that little tidbit to my husband! He would have laughed and loved to have one of his grandfather’s tales get exposed after so many years of blind faith in its accuracy. 

My taxes are much too simple to require the services of a CPA but he’s been doing my taxes since---well, Ring was a pup and Don and I both owned businesses and rental property. It was complicated back in those days of employees, depreciations and income and expenses coming in from all directions. Simple now or not, as long as I can still drive the dreaded S-curve to get to the CPA's office, I’ll keep going to him. He’s a straight-up, honest guy who plays by the rules and I like that. We’ve never worried about the IRS hauling us off to tax evader's prison.

The next day I had to go to the dealership for my Chevy Trax’s 10,000 miles free maintenance---tires rotated, oil changed and the fluids topped off. “Have you seen the new arrivals in the show room?” asked a salesman who stopped in the waiting room to refill his coffee cup. “Nope. The last time I did that I went home with my Trax." Can’t fool me twice. The day before my appointment I cleaned out the inside of the car of its winter clutter and when I was done I felt ten years younger. Why? Because I found a pair of prescription sunglasses that I’ve been looking for for weeks. I’m not a person who misplaces or loses things and every time I’d think about those glasses it would make me feel old, like it was a sign that I’m losing brain power. I tore up my reminder note about the missing glasses, quit obsessing about them and went back to believing that my brain might live to see another year before it descends into a pile of mush. 

Friday was my 15^th time on the treadmill at the YMCA and I’m doing one and a quarter miles in a half hour. I decided not to follow my trainer Julie’s instructions to add five minutes every third time until after I see my doctor in April. He’s the boss of me not that tall, skinny-as-a-flagpole girl with her bouncy black hair and Marilyn Monroe red lips. If she ate an olive she'd look pregnant.

My Treadmill Playlist: From the top of the stairs to the treadmill is about a half a city block and I start my iPod playlist at that point so I can strut down the aisle with the Bee Gees singing, “Here I am, prayin' for this moment to last, livin' on the music so fine…” By the time it’s finished I’m on the treadmill and ready for what comes next, the Saturday Night Fever version of The Fifth of Beethoven. I love that piece! Years ago I used to plow snow to it---windows rolled down and the volume jacked up in an effort to keep myself awake near the end of my shift. My third treadmill walking song is by The Killers, All These things That I’ve Done. Until today when I googled the lyrics, I thought they were singing, “I got sold, but I'm not a soldier” They’re actually singing “I got soul, but I’m not a soldier.” I can’t tell you how many times I’ve imagined a backstory for that line and now I have to start all over again. What the heck does that mean? The forth song is my favorite: Stayin’ Alive by the Bee Gees. “Life is goin’ nowhere, somebody help me! Yeah, I’m stayin’ alive.” By then the treadmill is getting harder and I’m wishing someone could help me! 

Then comes the biggie, the 9.52 minutes long Finale from The Lone Ranger movie otherwise known as The William Tell Overture. I really love it but I alternate between wanting to let go of the treadmill to become a made-believe orchestra conductor (which would have me flying off the end of the machine) and trying to figure out which of the false endings is actually the end of the piece so I can slow down and cool down with Helen Reddy’s I am Woman. All I know for sure is when the bass oboes play I think I’m going to die if Finale doesn’t end soon. It doesn’t. I’m going to be three-quarters of a century old soon. I can practically count on my fingers and toes the number of days until it's cake and candle time and I can’t believe I'm doing this gym thing---that I'm actually ABLE to do this gym thing!  ©

Taxes, Movies, Baby Showers, Strokes and God, Oh My!

I didn’t go to the Movie and Lunch Club this week. Normally I’ll go even if the chosen movie isn’t one that particularly excited me, but this time they picked Miracles from Heaven, a faith-based film that from all accounts is preaching to a choir of true believers. The trailer alone was enough for me to know I would hate the ‘lunch talk’ that would come after. Having grown up in The City of Churches that over the decades turned into The City of Parochial Colleges I can go along to get along with the best of them but I draw a line at paying to see a movie that, as one reviewer put it, has only one objective---to reiterate “that God exist, heaven is real and miracles happen.” Yes, I know the film is supposed to be based on a true story of a little girl with a mysterious disease who falls out of a tree and gets cured and in true Heaven is Real fashion she gets to sit in the lap of the Lord along the way. Call me cynical but I have a real aversion with the personification of God especially coming out of the mouths of children and along with that aversion comes a huge fear of voicing that in public. The little girl inside me who was rejected on the playground because my parents didn’t “have a church” is still there worrying that all threads of friendship will get cut if I let my non-Christian leanings show. I did find a bit of cuteness in one of the movie reviews, though, that made me smile: “The part of God was played by a fluffy cloud.”  

Thursday was a lead-gray day. The sky was working itself up to a good cry that never materialized except for just enough sprinkles to make it annoying and necessary to have the intermitting wipers on as I drove the expressway down to see my CPA. Income tax season is so much fun. I got behind an old foggy maybe a year or two younger than me who was driving 52 miles an hour. It’s dangerous to be so pokey! At the first opportunity I sped around him vowing I’ll never drive slower than my age on that highway. I could find someone closer to home to do my taxes but I have a history with my guy. Years ago, before Don and I started going to the man, Don got audited by the IRS resulting in him getting an unexpected tax refund of $7,000. Getting a big refund after an audit was a neon clue that it was time to change tax preparers.  

I sat down across from the CPA and the conversation got around to politics, Don and how much he would been engaged in the circus going on. “I miss that guy,” he said. “He used to stop sometimes when he was finished plowing snow and we’d give him a cup a cocoa.” Besides that nugget from the past the large jar of Tootsie Roll Pops sitting on the desk also churned up memories. Don would open the jar and search for a two chocolates before he'd sit down and in my silly mind that meant I couldn’t have a Tootsie Roll Pop. One per customer and he ate mine! Yes, I’m the kind of person who always buys something when I stop at a gas station to pee. Fair is fair. But I digress… When my taxes were done, the CPA made a remark about life changing and only God knows what comes next and I blurted out, “And sometimes even He doesn’t know.” Crap! Not only did I personify the God Power I gave my CPA the impression that this widow was having a crisis of faith. 

The crème-de-crème of my week was Saturday when I went to a baby shower where all of the women in my family and our five new babies---my great-great nieces and nephews---were in attendance. I’d say I was in seventh heaven but after what I wrote above I probably should come up with another platitude. Let’s just say I had a good time. There’s no one else in my or Don’s family left to have their first baby so this was likely the last baby shower I’ll ever attend, a bittersweet acknowledgement if there ever was one. 

The mother of the last baby born, who was the guest of honor, had a difficult birth and emergency surgery all in the same day. What little miracles babies are! Love plants the seed and a baby grows in mommy’s tummy; I read that in a where-did-I-come-from book. The guest of honor is also the most religious person in the family. She and her husband met at a Christian college and both work in a Christian conference center.  She’s a lovely young woman but every time I see her I’m reminded that Don had his massive stroke the day she got baptized. That week prior to the ceremony Don was trying every which way to get out of going so when we got to the church and he didn’t want to go inside---complaining of a headache---I really didn’t believe him. Still, I left him in the truck and went inside while he was out in the parking lot getting pulled into a ‘black hole’ that would change the trajectory of our lives. There's a lot of what-ifs attached to that day and even an on-going joke (?) made about the stroke being a punishment from God for not going inside the church. But the only what-if that counts now is the what-if we’d never met in the first place…what a dull life I would have led without Don. ©