Dry Spell in the Land of Taxes

The calendar is not bursting at the seams today. 

The past month has been taxes, taxes and more taxes.  A nonstop parade of W2's and itemitized deductions.  People would walk in apprehensive and worried.  By the time they left they were relieved and feeling on top of the world.  (Well, most of them.)

But those days have abruptly dried up.  There's two rushes in a tax season.  First it's the people who know 100% they are getting a refund and they need it right now.  And I mean right now.  These are people who are going to call daily, if not hourly, if there is the slightest delay in the day they are expecting their money.

Those fair folk have come and gone.  I'm certain the same goes for the money they received.  Most of them had it spent before it even showed up.  Hence the demanding phone calls.

There's going to be another rush which will start right after everyone sobers up after St. Patrick's Day.  These will be the people who know 100% that they owe money and are putting off the news until the last moment.  Not that the news is going change with waiting.   Even if you file in January and you owe money, it's not due until April.  Waiting to file is just torturing yourself.

Funny enough, the idea of a big push on the day before taxes are due is mostly a myth.  Last year we had one appointment on that day and that was someone who had already filed an extension which actually made them six months ahead of the game.

So to get back today, there is nothing doing around here.  Whenever the phone rings we all jump a mile.  I've cleared out the inbox on my personal email and work email.  I've caught up the scanning.  I watered the plants and put in new paper towel.  I swept.   I played a whole bunch of Angry Birds.

And now I blogged.

Must be naptime.

A Farewell to Blog (Reading)

Friday I opened my Google Reader and discover something altogether disturbing.  I had 517 unread stories.

517.


That's a crushing amount of Damn You Auto Corrects, Cake Wrecks, Wil Wheaton, Lifehacker plus many, many, MANY other post that there was no possible way I could read.  Ever.  That's why there were so many unread posts.  I just don't have time to read them all.

So I did the most sensible thing I could do.  I deleted everything unread.

Then I deleted all of my subscriptions. 

Now that might seem a bit drastic, but the idea of unread posts piling up into hundreds, and maybe even thousands, is just overwhelming.

The problem is I am crazy busy all day long.  Taxes, taxes, taxes!  Business is jumping.  So my slack-off time to read posts in the office is completely gone.

When I get home, the very last thing I want to do is sit in front of a computer.  I won't even check my email. 

Put these two facts together and you get a Google Reader that becomes your boss.  And that's no good.

I made a list of all the blogs I did subscribe to so I could put them all back when tax season is over.  So I will return!  But for right now, no, I'm not reading you.  Or you.  Or even you.  It's just got to be this way to preserve my sanity.

I hear you now.  Hey woman, you are saying, if you have time to write this post, you must have time to read my stuff.  Funny enough, not having posts to read gives me time to come up with my own thoughts.  So we'll call this time an experiment.  Will I use the spare moments I have during the day to write more?  I think I will.  Or maybe not.  We'll see how much I post before mid-April!

Watch out. They're armed.

When the sun shines and a warm breeze blows, my sweet children like to play with their weapons.

The Boy with a throwing knife comes after his sister armed with a  BB gun.  An ever watchful mother...snaps photos. 

Now The Boy has the gun.   Seems like he doesn't want his picture taken.

Yeah, I think I better get out of here.

I returned with the blow dart gun.  That sent them running.

Seriously, The Most Adorable Puppy in the World

Grammy and Poppa got a puppy. 

 An extremely cute puppy

Cuteness to epic proportions.

A melt-your-eyes cute puppy.

So cute you start to doubt the possibility that other dogs even exist anymore.

So cute you are reduced to babbling nonsense nonstop.

Cute enough to actually cause physical pain, mostly in your heart.

And then he fell asleep while The Man held him.  

Death by puppy cuteness.

Padiddle

There was a little story on NPR that the average age of a car that needs tow truck assistance is up to nine years old.  I didn't catch what the previous average age of cars, but it's up.  People are holding on to their cars longer.  (Here's the story for real...)

It's not exactly Earth-shattering news, but you can see evidence of  this out on the roads.   When I was a kid the roads were just one massive rust bucket after another.  Of course cars were made of mostly steel then, not plastic, so there was much more car to rust, but those cars were old.  My dad drove around a flesh colored Datsun when I was a kid.  It was more rust than car by a long shot.  There were holes in the floorboard.  We would listen to golf balls rolling around in the back of the car and then you just wouldn't hear them anymore.  They had fallen through the floor.

He drove children around in that car.

Look around at cars on the road right now and there's rust.  More than you would expect. And there's minor fender benders that you can tell the owners would rather live with than fix.  I've seen more than one car that's made use of red duct tape to fix a broken taillight cover or a bungee cord holding up a bumper.  There's also cars out sporting major damage, like garbage bags covering missing windows and whole passenger sides being crushed in.  The cars out there are in pretty shabby shape.

But more telling then the bent antennas or the fourth tire being a donut, you can really tell that times are tough by the most glaring evidence of all...

The Padiddles.

(Do not argue with the spelling.  I Googled it.)

As a kid seeing a Padiddle was a truly exciting thing.  I honestly don't remember what rules we played by except that it involved yelling "Padiddle" when you spotted a car with one working headlight and either punching someone or getting punched.

The Girl is now the referee of the game.  By her rules, when you see the car, you have to yell Padiddle and touch the ceiling of the car.  The last person in the car to do that gets punched.  It's usually me because I'm driving.  (No, the driver in our car is not exempt from being punched.  You would think getting everyone from  Point A to Point B in a safe and legal manner would protect you.  Sadly, no.)

I bring all of this up because Padiddle is a non-stop game lately.  It probably helps that this time of year we are mostly driving in the dark.  But even so, Padiddles are everywhere.  We probably see a dozen everyday.  I swear I didn't see one for decades.  Now they are coming at us from every direction. 

If you are the driver of a Padiddle, do you notice carloads of passing kids punching each other everywhere you go?  I wonder.

A little of this equals a little of that

 What is that in the doorway between the dining room and the kitchen?

Why it's chin up bar!

The unexpected hit of Christmas, the chin up bar, has already changed the behavior of the Andersons.  It's prominent installation right in the middle of the house has spawned all kinds of rules: 

• Whenever you are standing around in the kitchen, do a chin-up.  
• Whenever you grab a cookie, do a chin-up. 
• Whenever you are going in the kitchen for anything after dinner, do a chin-up.
• Whenever you are just walking through the house, do a chin-up.

Its only been a few day now, but so far the chin-up bar has gotten quite a bit of action.  Last night we were all sitting around on the watching TV when The Boy got up to get a cookie.  He dutifully did his chin-up for it.  I tried and tried to get him to bring me one too, but I was turned down.  My choices were to get off the couch and do a chin-up for it or not have a cookie. 

So I didn't have a cookie.

It's important to have something like the chin-up bar around when in the kitchen there's a ridiculous machine like this...

 which makes ridiculously delicious things like these...

You see, it's a delicate matter of balance between aching arms and glazed mini donuts.  Aching arms are winning.

In other news, Jack disapproves of the Christmas day mess.  



History of Santa

I really wanted to embed this, but the interweb is being grumpy.  So just hit the link and enjoy.


Short History of Santa

The following interview never happened.  The events described did.

J:  Are you comfortable?  Need anything?

Man:  No, no.  I'm fine. (sounds of shuffling and scraping)

J: Something wrong with your chair?

Man:  It's just... (scraping, banging)... stuck here on this rug edge.  (Violent noise)  Ah, there.  Okay.  What did you want to know?

J:  I haven't asked you anything yet.

Man:  So what are we doing then now?

J:  It's an interview.  I want to know about the accident.

Man:  Accident is a bit of an exaggeration.  More like an incident.  A big incident, yeah, but not an accident.

J: Okay, then let's get started.  About how long have you known that the tires on your truck needed replacing?

Man:  Oh, you want to start there?  Well... I guess about a year now.  Yeah, a good year.

J:  That's a long time.

Man:  Yeah, well that's how it goes. I just didn't get around to it.

J:  So tell me what happened on October 22nd.

Man:  Umm.... well I was on my way to band practice...

J:  Your band The Black Valentines has a gig this Saturday right?

Man:  Yep.  A Halloween party.  Thanks for the plug.

J:  No problem.

Man:  So anyway, I was going down 480 just getting into North Olmsted when the back tire exploded.

J:  You just used the word exploded.  Did you hear it?

Man:  Oh yeah.

J:  And you obviously felt it?

Man:  Of course.  Have you ever been in a car when a tire blows out?

J:  No.

Man:  Believe me.  You know when it happens.

J:  So what did you do then?

Man:  I got to the side of the road and stopped.  I checked out the tire.  I was completely destroyed.

J:  I think we have a picture...

Man:  Yeah, as you can see, it's completely blown out.

J:  I see.  Intense images.  So then you attempted to get the spare.

Man:  The spare on my truck is locked into the frame.  You need a special key to get it out. At first I couldn't find the key. It was buried in the glove box.   It's a stupid system.  Who would want to steal your donut?

J:  I think we have a picture of your spare...

 Man:  It's a looker, isn't it?

J:  So you successfully got the spare on the truck.  And then I guess you started back out for band practice?

Man:  The gig was in a week.  Can't miss practice with the gig so close.

J:  But this story has a happy ending, right?

Man:  The truck has four brand new tires now.  I guess that's a happy ending.  Better than having another blow out anyway.

J:  Thank you for sharing your story today.

Man:  What's for dinner?