play and work

The horrors of the tax season have been thrust upon me once again. Yes, I filled out the fed forms on Friday. (I use freefilefillableforms.com because it's free, but you may as well be sitting with pencil in hand because they offer no prompts -- you do the thinking!) And yes, they got rejected within a day. So I filed again, correcting three mistakes on Saturday. The forms went through! Today I attacked the Wisconsin ones. Ridiculously complicated, but at least they took only two hours as opposed to five plus corrections for the feds. I called Ed four times with questions. We laughed, in a pained sort of way, at the ridiculousness of it all, the ambiguities, the fact that there is a raging debate as to what line 9 on one of the forms really means, with no agreement at all, not even among professionals or IRS folks. And yet here we are, wasting time and money (most people do not have eight hours to devote to this nonsense, let alone the training, so they pay the giants, like the rip off money making TurboTax, to do the work for them... imagine, you have to PAY to fulfill your legal obligation to submit your tax forms! ), wasting it on something that is as straightforward as pie in other countries, with the government doing the work for you, for free. 

This was my morning. or rather late morning. The very early hours were much more pleasant.

Millie tried getting me up at 5:30, but I told her to wait a bit and she did. (She had no choice -- she sleeps in her crate.) An hour later we were out and hopping. Well, she hopped about. I was rather slow moving. Trying to assess the weather, the day.

She ate, I ate...

I coached her on some of the commands -- she's got one down pat, two are a work in progress, the fourth -- totally not yet part of her vocabulary. And then she played. My, was she in a puppy mood! Bouncy and just enough naughty to be cute. She makes me think that Henry couldn't have been 7 months when I got him in October. He must have been older. He had none of Millie's goofiness. Serious from the get go, he played deliberately and with all his great big dog power on display. Millie, on the other hand, is like silly putty -- all bounce in all directions.

(Millie likes toys that look like her!)

And then she napped and I did the Wisconsin tax forms. Enough said on that one.

 

I had a lunch date with Ed at Tati's. I really had to nudge the girl to walk with me to the coffee shop. Her reluctance stems in part from the construction across the road. It's loud and it scares her. Too many big machines, too many strange noises, too many people popping in and out of building frames. I can never get her to just step out with me. She has to be carried to the sidewalk. After that, it's one big tugging session until we are away from our block. 

Once at Tati's she settles down between us, all chill, no worry.  

An older woman comes up, and after showering the girl with compliments, asks me her name. Millie, I reply, like a proud parent. Yes, she very much looks like a Mildred -- she says nodding her head knowingly. It struck me that Millie is your typical older people pleasing dog. The size, the impish yet shy demeanor, the innocent eyes -- all of it. Kids love Millie because they can hold her and play with her without fear. Adults kind of look beyond small dogs. Seniors? Enchanted!

 

In the afternoon, I take her to the farmette. 

(it's very windy!) 

 

I need to print my tax forms on the farmhouse printer. 

(Ed, please keep an eye on her so that the cats don't clobber her and scratch her eyes out!) 

 

We have a little extra time, so we go out for a walk along farmette lands. Ed joins us as we inspect the new orchard, the peach orchard, the trees we planted to the north. 

It feels so good to be here on this warm spring day and yet I also have a feeling of relief.  The flower fields need to be trimmed up and weeded, and beyond that, the trees need to be pruned and the grasses and meadows need a facelift. Still, I like feeling part of what went on here. Things are growing. It all looks very beautiful.

And from there we go to the Vet Clinic for her first formal check up.

I had to shake my head at this: my daughter got her rescue dog in early October She took him to the vet in the first week. She took him once more for an eye infection. Me? Between Henry, Sadey and now Millie, I have been to the vet at least a dozen times in this same period. It's a good thing I like the vet and the mood of the place. I used to take our dog of some thirty years back to a place that was sterile and no one knew us, nor my pooch, and it felt so impersonal that I may as well have been taking him to a concrete bunker manned by robots. This is much different. But still, the dogs have been quite the line item in my budget. And there's not much I could have done differently. (I have pet insurance, but always manage to just get up to the deductible.) 

Millie is of course a different proposition altogether. She is so small (weighing in at 9.2 pounds today) that I sometimes think I'm dealing with a hamster under my arm. Her feeding bills are... also small!

At home, I fix dinner, Ed comes over. Millie is worn out by her various visits and vaccinations. Little girl, spring is here. we'll play some more tomorrow, and the next day, and the one after...

with so much love...