Category: 2012_Posts

Daily is difficult for me, and weekly can be too slow. “Whenever” seems to be the way I post.

Guess Again

~ JodiLea ~ 1 Comment

Just when (you think) the chaos in your life is at the maximum level, the post-office puts a bomb in your mailbox.

Mailbox

Not the exploding kind, but the kind that raises your blood pressure and makes the headache that you thought was already bad turn into a migraine. You know you’re in trouble because the return address is: “Internal Revenue Service” and it is not even near the holidays.

Sure enough, we made a mistake. A typo that our software should have noticed when it did the math. We were too excited about getting a refund for once, to realize something was off.  The official document  insisted we send them $10,000.oo. Yes, you read that number correctly. And who says the IRS has no sense of humor?

Hey! Wait a minute. There is a typo on our 2010 form and we have to pay them what we still owed. Plus interest. We were not the ones that took 2 years to find the mistake – we sent our return in on time.  Now they want the interest that the absent money could have earned. Oh, Really? I want to know where the Hell they invest their money. I would like to earn that kind of  interest myself!

I can understand about the interest. Almost.  But a fine??   Sorry, we messed up and here’s your money + interest. Now please go away.  But NO,  you’re  punishing  us. To teach us not to mess with the IRS? We don’t. Hell, they know how much money we earn – they have the damned forms.

Thanks for letting me get that off my chest.   Tax Form

We shall pay their bill (what choice do we have?), but not until the other chaos in our lives has settled down and we can find where we hid the damned thing….

photo credit(mailbox): Steve 2.0 via photo pin cc

photo credit (form): Josh Thompson via photo pin cc

Assistant to the Castle

~ JodiLea

House For Sale

I used to be The Woman of the House. Now I am The Houses Woman  Slave.

My new morning routine is to coffee up, tidy the kitchen, hide things, and try to get some work done on my sister’s memorial before the phone starts ringing.

Our house is quite popular. I schedule showings for agents and their clients all day long. We have had a few good nibbles, but no offers we couldn’t refuse. All we want is our listed price and a buyer with a pre-approved loan. We think that’s reasonable.

Our agent is surprised that we have so many showings during the week. We are damn lucky, because we can’t show the house this Saturday. It would just be too tacky to give tours of the house during a memorial service. Wouldn’t it?

Chaos will begin tomorrow evening when my beloved girls &  favorite son-in-law arrive. There will be musical beds, hidden toys to be found, and plenty of hugs & giggling. The reason for our gathering, and the person missing from it, will add an undertone of sadness, that, shared by many will be a lighter burden. Which is why we have these things, I suppose. And along those lines, I must bid you adieu and get back to work.

TTFN

A Death in the Family

~ JodiLea ~ 1 Comment

Normally I write about frivolous things with smart-ass humor, or climb up on my soap box and rant good and loud. This post is different.

My sister Melanie and I said good-bye to our terminally ill mother last spring. We leaned on one another during the months we took care of her, and then as we carried out her last wishes. We had lost our father in 1993 and now it was just the two of us. Being “the writer” of the family it fell to me to write mom’s obituary. It had to be perfect. I struggled for 3 days on the thing until I couldn’t find anything more to re-write. That and I had the thing memorized.

If you have ever had the misfortune to write one, I’m sure you know exactly what I mean.  How do you sum up somebody’s entire life? Especially someone you have known and loved your whole life. Writing a stranger’s obituary would be so much easier. Just the facts. No memories. No emotions.

Last month I got a phone call – Melanie died. WTF??  How could she just die in her sleep like that? She’s my younger sister. The second shock was the cause of her death. The coroner explained to me that Mel was healthy – except she had advanced stages of coronary artery disease. Her arteries were so blocked that her poor heart simply gave out. I can almost hear my mom holler, “Well, SHIT! SHIT! SHIT!”.  Mom always did get to the point.

So, here I sit sweating over another obituary. Mel’s memorial will be on the 16th, and tonight is my self-inflicted deadline. At 10:08 PM (PDT) I stopped fussing with the copy, closed my eyes and sent my sister’s obit and photo to our local newspaper, and a Bay Area newspaper. Maybe some of her former classmates/co-workers/buddies will see it and drop by.

I hope so – Mel deserves that.