Taxes.....bla bla bla

Ah, the joy of tax season.  I have spent hours sorting through piles of papers, receipts, deductible expenses from the rentals, etc. I hadn't filed anything or organized anything in my home office since we moved last May.  What a royal pain in the ass this has been.  Although after tallying up all the receipts and seeing the grand total, I understand why I've felt like I haven't had any money all year.  Buying a new home and turning our old one in to a rental was a lot of work.  Clearly, Thor and I have done our part to stimulate the economy!  Had I been thinking clearly last spring, I should have bought stock in Home Depot before we embarked upon this little adventure.  And what's with these refunds?  I deserve a good refund and yet always seem to get a smidgen of what some friends or family members receive.  And...I don't get this whole thing with kids being tax deductions and dogs aren't.  Dogs don't use any public resources like SCHOOLS or anything like that.  It just doesn't seem fair!    We need a good Dog Tax Credit program for people who have no children but have "fur kids".  And, I'm not the only one who has these ideas.     http://dogs.thefuntimesguide.com/2007/03/dog_tax_deductions.php

And, someone's even proposed a tax deduction for pet owners! http://www.dogsonly.org/Pet%20Taxes.html

It's just a thought :)

February already?

I can't believe it's already February!  That means that 1/12th of the year has already gone by.  I'm ready for warm weather.  A former high school classmate asked me a couple of days ago on Facebook if I'm planning to go to the 25th year class reunion in October.  Holy cow!  25 years already?  Reunion already?  What is going on?  Is this some form of early dementia where time just goes by faster and faster each year?  Unbelievable.  So, yes, I'm planning to go to the reunion and figure I have a number of months to lose some weight and get in to "reunion shape".  This year hasn't started out the greatest, we have not won the lottery yet (although we've only purchased one ticket!) and we had to put our oldest dog Mercedes down a week ago.  She was 16 years old and it was certainly time but no less heartbreaking.  Moving on, we still have 2 dogs and a cat remaining.  It felt odd to change my profile from "we have 3 dogs and a cat" to "we have 2 dogs and a cat".  One dog was somewhat depressed and looked for Mercedes for several days. The other dog thought it was amazing that there was one less pet in the household with which to compete for attention.  He seemed a bit bothered that mommy and daddy seemed depressed but didn't seem to bothered by the loss of his family member.  We knew the time had been coming for a while and probably put it off longer than we should have but will miss her so much now that she's gone.  For now, back to my laundry and then off to bed!