Monday

Good morning, early spring!

At the farmhouse kitchen table, I do my annual switch of placemats: from wintry scenes to flowers under our breakfast plates.

What a lovely season we are approaching!

Okay, so there is one aspect of spring that I dislike immensely. I, along with perhaps 99% of Americans (the 1% of outliers being either employed in the business of preparing other people's taxes, or being so wealthy that they just dont care about any of it) -- we all hate April 15th, the date you have to file your tax returns. The relief after this chore is behind you knows no bounds, tempered only by the agony of having to fork over more than you think you owed (perhaps 50% fall into this category). Despite what TurboTax and other online tax prep software want you to believe, the surprise is rarely in your favor. 

I cant decide if I have made life more miserable for myself by abandoning online services such as Turbo Tax and doing it all myself. I feel that as a lawyer, I should be able to navigate the forms on my own without having to spend several hundred on aids and services. And I always believe that my own tax situation could not be easier! Until I remember that I made a withdrawal from my IRA to fund a trip and then all hell breaks loose as I try to navigate that little glitch in my otherwise fairly straightforward accounting. And last year? I sold my Warsaw apartment. Boom! More complexity. And this year we bought short term bonds because we are getting old and long term investments suddenly seem inopportune. Not a lot, mind you, but now there are more figures to plug into some supplemental form or other. Even more complexity. 

People say that it's all about the math of it -- that the average person needs help because they haven't the math skills to do a good job of it, but that's just nonsense. All you need in terms of math skills is a dexterous finger that can type in sums into a calculator. Straight addition. Not in the least bit hard. The horror comes from not knowing what forms to fill out for what purpose and what adjustments to make and and and... well you know the procedure -- it's hell! Or at the very least it's a sizable bite out of your free time. 

I realized this weekend that I should get started on my taxes (and my mother's, because even a super senior's forms need work) because spring break is coming up and after that's over, it's a mere hop skip to April 15th. So I took out my notepad and started in on the calculations and none of it looked good, nor did I appreciate how shrunken my IRA looked (all those trips!). I was heading to total doom and gloom.

Of course, it's not just about the forms and figures. It's also about reviewing the choices you made and options that remain going forward. All my friends who are at or above 70 are thinking about travel in very different ways now. All raise the question -- how long will we be able to continue? How long will our stiffened bodies and dwindling energies tolerate a long haul trip? And just how much should a prudent middle class person put away for senior needs? This is all a bundle of unknowns. April 15th brings no answers, only sums of moneys spent, levied against pensions and social security, trickling in, keeping you solvent (hopefully), as you march through this complicated process of accounting for your life in the previous year.

Luckily, cheering me on, I have Ed, who thinks the whole IRS reporting thing is a time waste, but so long as you have to face it, you may as well challenge yourself to come up with some credible strategy to do it well. So with my peanut gallery egging me on, I forge ahead. And then I throw it all down, patting myself on the back for making a good effort to get started, and turn to welcoming my granddaughter, who gets dropped off a bit earlier today because once again, for reasons known only to the educational gods out there, schools are closed for the day.

Because the girl has more time at the farmhouse, her play extends beyond just our usual reading. Yes, there are the scuffles with Ed...

But, too, she's there while I deal with groceries...

And she is there to revisit the art room...

And she's there to take on some jigsaw puzzles that I was going to scrap for their underuse. Suddenly, she is interested!

(this is before I spilled coffee over the loose pieces...)

In doing puzzles, we fall into a back and forth that is similar to what we might have in the car. She'll tell me -- without challenge, you can never get better. And -- if you're not afraid, you can't ever be brave. I'm thinking -- she's been reading some good stuff, or listening to some inspiring people lately, but no, when questioned, she says -- oh I just made that up.

And eventually she leaves, and again I marvel that it is so light when I start in on creating something out of leftover crunchy chicken for supper. Yes, early spring is special and singularly full of good signs of grand stuff everywhere, April 15th to the contrary, not withstanding.