Coothood is becoming a pain in the neck (or back, or head)

It is late and I am too tired to go to bed. It has been one of those days. (Actually it has been three of those days.) Way back in April I spent some time doing my income tax, but decided not to send it in because some really weird things were coming out of my Turbo Tax program, creating a situation where I had multiple thousands of dollars coming as a refund, and I knew that wasn't correct. For some reason that I couldn't figure out, it (the program) had decided that about half of my income (mostly pension etc) was non taxable. I knew that it had never been non-taxable before so I decided to give it a rest, apply for the automatic extension and work on it later.

It worked out (confusing pronouns eh?) that soon after my automatic extension went into play, I got into the house buying and selling thing, trying to preserve both my and Janet's health, moving, helping my son move, learning to clean swim pools (they are not as much fun when you are one the end of a pool vacuum) and to make a long story long, I procrastinated till the last minute only to find that I still couldn't figure out why my income was screwed up (I finally discovered that I had put a check on the wrong little box somewhere). In addition to that, My "file system" had become un-filed during the move and I ended up sorting thousands of pieces of paper (most of which I had sorted in April then "un-filed them"while moving). I turned on the shredder and shredded almost all of the non-tax paper in my office (six shredder loads) finally getting the right pieces of paper together, correcting the wrongly checked box and after three days of purgatory --( I am reluctant to say hell because I might sit here and say it over and over and over again for days. -- I am trying to gentrify my language ).

The days were not improved when I discovered that both of my Florida granddaughters were hospitalized, one with an apparent pelvic infection (she has been in and out of the hospital for a while, being diagnosed first as having acquired intestinal parasites of some sort, then diagnosed as having salmonella poisoning, now with an infection), the other with keto-acidosis, a very serious complication of diabetes that is often fatal. These two young ladies are the mothers of three of my great grandchildren, so I am concerned not only for them, but for their mother, father, and their progeny.

Taxes are hard enough when you can concentrate on them, without family worries, and my days were filled with geezer and coot experiences. locating five essential receipts, putting them down to find a sixth, and when the sixth appears, the five evaporate into some kind of limbo. Mistaking 2005 receipts for 2006 receipts, then after they are entered into the program, having to figure out how to delete them and find the right ones, and on, and on and on. Finally when all was finished and Turbo tax was preparing to send my forms off electronically, it suggested (wisely) that I print all the forms for my records. At that moment, my HP deskjet 940c that has been doing yoeman service for years decided to die. DIE DIE DIE. I really needed that.

I finally opted to just save my work and send it off without printed copy. With my luck, tonight, when I am asleep the computer demons will attack and kill my hard drive. (I hope they don't realize that I made a zip disk. or they might go after my zip drive too.)

To relax, I turned on Monday night football to watch the Falcons do what they have been doing so well this year. Lose.

Nuts. I decided that I would check Tracksy and see who has been reading what I haven't written much of lately. I love Tracksy. It shows me that enough people come by to read my work, that I decide, at least temporarily, that this whole blogging thing is worth while. I went to check one of the articles that someone had googled, and found an old joke about a lady who mislaid a breast (her own) while at a banquet (I dare you to go back and find that) It was distressing to find that about twice as many people read that nonsense than are now reading this nonsense, but it was fun to see what interested some poor soul (from England, no less) enough that he/she googled it. I also found that I could read a post that I entered a week or so ago about acronyms, in Russian. Someone had translated it. Since I last studied Russian in about 1954 I did not successfully translate it back, but it was fun trying. If I could write in Cyrillic with this computer, I could show you what "acronym" looks like in Russian.

It is now about 1:30 A.M. and having gone from Tracksy to blogspot, I think I am tired enough, and have run past my tax frustrations enough that I can go to bed. Of course I might not get to sleep, but hey, one does what one can.