| Current mood: |  accomplished |
imposing order
One of Jak’s most endearing traits is the way that he approaches any major project. If he’s going to cook something (sadly, for Jak anything more than microwave heating is a rare and significant event) he has to make sure the entire kitchen is spotless before he so much as preheats an oven. I kid him about it, but I am in no way inclined to discourage spontaneous cleaning, even if means an extra hour of stomach growls.
Since we’d agreed that this weekend we would tackle the taxes, I was amused but unsurprised when he started on Saturday by cleaning and organizing his side of the office. A non-trivial effort, that, as we both had mountain ranges of unfiled paperwork piled around — and, courtesy of the Sammycat, spilling off of — our desks.
You ever see post-tornado photos where one building is splintered and a building right next to it is untouched? That was the state of our office by Saturday afternoon. I mock-complained: “Dude, you’re making me look bad.”
I could say I was inspired, but really it was more like embarrassment that led me to buckle down on Sunday and, for several painful hours, follow suit. My biggest victory lay in recognizing that a filing system which I only use about twice a year, under duress, is NOT WORKING, and in devising a simpler alternative which I sincerely hope will allow me to file-as-I-go, avoiding (or at least postponing) the tornado-alley scenario. (I still expect to have trouble with the occasional odd item that doesn’t fit into any preconceived category, which is why the last twenty percent of any filing flurry is always the most frustrating.)
Meanwhile, Jak started in on the taxes. Our current division of labor has me paying all the bills and handling the regular finances, but he has to cope with the annual accounting of our mostly-dormant multi-business partnership. ‘Excruciating’ is really too gentle a descriptor for that task — I know, because it used to be mine.
We didn’t finish, but we got far enough with our respective calculations that I’m confident we will not, collectively, owe the government any more money. Woohoo! We have been holding several thousand extra dollars liquid just in case, because last year Jak sold the rental house he co-owned with Seana, and we had no idea how badly the capital gains would hit us.
So while I’m turning mental cartwheels about putting that several thousand back into play (remodeling! retirement!), Jak is agitating about his negative four-digit number, despite the fact that my positive four-digit number is more than enough to compensate. I keep reminding him that it’s all the same pot o’ money, but there is a clear psychological need for him to personally come out with a refund. It’s a great racket, how the government has managed to make us all irrationally happy for the opportunity to give them large interest-free loans.
Anyway, by next weekend we’ll sit down and run some alternate scenarios to make sure we get the largest possible refund. (Our situation is much like this one; I think we’ll end up dividing it the way she does, but we’re going to run the numbers all ways to be certain.) I’ll be proud if we manage to send the forms off a full week before the deadline, as we are both world-class procrastinators.
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karawynn) wrote,
