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Yesterday was another incredibly busy day, but incredibly busy days was what I signed up for, right?
Still. I am basking in the luxury of untenanted time this morning.
###
My first TaxBwana client was a very charming Italian guy and his wife, and in the course of our back-and-forth—Paesan! Paesan!—it came out that he had a very rare autoimmune disease which was being treated by frequent hospital stays for chemotherapy plus a drug that costs (gulp!) $700,000 a year.
Seven hundred thousand dollars a year!
Fortunately, he is a retired postal worker and has fabulous healthcare benefits. Though the co-pay still sets him back $8,400 a year.
###
My second client was a Guatemalan lady who was able to rake in the Big Buck$ thanks to EIC and the child tax credit.
###
My third client was a rather frail, ditzy lady accompanied by a repellant bullet-headed man.
I couldn’t figure out the relationship between the repellant man and the ditzy lady except that he called her “Mary Ann” so she wasn’t his mother.
I have a standard spiel I do at the beginning of all tax preparation sessions to orient people to what they can expect over the next hour and a half.
The repellant man interrupted me three sentences in. “Honey, save your breath. I know all about this. I worked for the IRS for 23 years.”
“Do not call me ‘honey,’” I said.
Ordinarily, this tone of voice shrinks men’s balls at least two sizes.
But in this case, I think it piqued his ardor.
Because he began clumsy attempts to flirt with me. “Look, Mary Ann, I saved you three-hundred bucks bringing you here. You guys provide a terrific service. But you gotta be poor, right? To use it?”
“We have no income restrictions,” I said icily.
“Great. I’ll bring my taxes in. And I’m not poor! How do I set up an appointment? Can I get you?”
Not if I have anything to do with it, I thought. And if you worked for the IRS for 23 years, why aren’t you doing your own fucking taxes?
###
After that, the clients became a blur. There were a lot of them. And one of them cried, and I didn’t know what to do because, as I’ve written here many, many times before, doing someone’s taxes is a bit like reading someone’s Tarot cards: You can see their entire life history and their futures in the tax documents spread out before you.
There’s really not a fucking thing you can do for the ones who are upset by what you see beyond making vague consoling noises.
So, I handed that client a box of tissues, smiled as reassuringly as possible, and said, “Everyone makes mistakes. This, too, will pass. You just have to make up your mind that you won’t allow yourself to get into this kind of a situation again.”
###
I finally got out around 4 pm.
It was an amazing day for mid-February, sunny and bright, the temp hovering at 66°.
Sixty-six degrees in mid-February!
I went tromping. This time the red high-top Converses did not prove overly constrictive (which reminds me—must take injured boot to the cobbler.)
But I didn’t take photographs because I’ve already taken a thousand photographs of the Walkway leading down into Highland Village, and my kids are already gonna have to deal with those 28,000 photographs on my hard drive, right? And who knows when I'll die?
###
Speaking of kids…
RTT texted me: He is very, very anxious over the job situation.
He texted me a copy of a text conversation he’d had with his once-and-hopefully-future boss: She wants to hire him back, but they’re still scrambling to come up with the funding for the position, and in the meantime, he is paralyzed by that awful leadenness of anxiety, can barely bring himself to function—
I know how you feel, I texted back. I’ve been where you are now at several points in my life—laid off from a job that I was absolutely FABULOUS at w/no clarity about the future. So I think I know that sense that no matter how good you are, how good you strive to be, you have no control over what’s happening. It’s massively anxiety-provoking.
Maybe it helps to know someone else understands that feeling? Even if that person is just yr clueless old Mom?
Dealing with that anxiety, of course, is separate from long-term strategizing over job situations.
I know what the long-term job strategy should be—and he knows, too, when he’s thinking clearly.
That anxiety though…
The only thing that’s ever knocked that anxiety out for me was recontextualization.
Best achieved by drugs (opiates work better than Xanax) or trips to unfamiliar places.
In the meantime, I Venmo’ed him a bunch of $$$.
$$$$ is good, right?
Handsome young men would rather get $$$ from their clueless old Moms than wise counsel, right?
###
Meanwhile, I had a basic anxiety dream myself last night.
Dreamed I was living in a cave underneath Berkeley.
(Details are blurry because I woke up, looked at the clock, ascertained I’d only gotten five hours of rest, and willed myself back to sleep again.)
It wasn’t a dark cave but a bright Disney cave filled with crystal stalagmites and light. My immediate ménage was Ben and Eleanor1, but we were sharing the dwelling with a bunch of other people, one of whom was a young man who’d invited a bunch of his relatives to visit him.
There was an increasing sense of financial pressure in the dream.
My only source of income was shifts at the Night Hospital (again, that sense of having dreamed the Night Hospital many, many times before.) But, of course, I no longer had an RN license, plus, honestly, I was a bad nurse, the new medical technologies were not something I’d been trained in. It was only a matter of time before I’d have to quit working in the Night Hospital.
And while I thought the décor of the cave was quite fabulous—beautiful purple flowers in exquisite vases and books everywhere—when I looked at the place through the eyes of the young man’s relatives, I could see it was a dump.
I went up to a beautiful soignée female relative and introduced myself. She was gracious, but I could feel her cool appraisal. And then I caught a glimpse of myself in a mirror, and OmyGAWD, my teeth were falling out. Where my left eye tooth should be was a big gaping hole.
I was surrounded by a bunch of the male relatives. They all wore lime-green flannel lumberman shirts, and they kept multiplying like King Aeëtes’ soldiers sewn from serpents’ teeth. (Whoa! Dream Golden Fleece reference!)
We’re from Texas, they told me in unison as their numbers kept growing and growing.
_____
1 I have two close friends named Eleanor. One is a friend from my undergraduate college days: ethereal, eccentric, honey-voiced—she grew up in Alabama, and syrup still seeps from every syllable she speaks—and a wellspring of creativity. The other is a friend from my graduate school college days: logical, rational, incredibly articulate, and analytical. The Eleanor in my dream was Undergraduate Eleanor.
Still. I am basking in the luxury of untenanted time this morning.
###
My first TaxBwana client was a very charming Italian guy and his wife, and in the course of our back-and-forth—Paesan! Paesan!—it came out that he had a very rare autoimmune disease which was being treated by frequent hospital stays for chemotherapy plus a drug that costs (gulp!) $700,000 a year.
Seven hundred thousand dollars a year!
Fortunately, he is a retired postal worker and has fabulous healthcare benefits. Though the co-pay still sets him back $8,400 a year.
###
My second client was a Guatemalan lady who was able to rake in the Big Buck$ thanks to EIC and the child tax credit.
###
My third client was a rather frail, ditzy lady accompanied by a repellant bullet-headed man.
I couldn’t figure out the relationship between the repellant man and the ditzy lady except that he called her “Mary Ann” so she wasn’t his mother.
I have a standard spiel I do at the beginning of all tax preparation sessions to orient people to what they can expect over the next hour and a half.
The repellant man interrupted me three sentences in. “Honey, save your breath. I know all about this. I worked for the IRS for 23 years.”
“Do not call me ‘honey,’” I said.
Ordinarily, this tone of voice shrinks men’s balls at least two sizes.
But in this case, I think it piqued his ardor.
Because he began clumsy attempts to flirt with me. “Look, Mary Ann, I saved you three-hundred bucks bringing you here. You guys provide a terrific service. But you gotta be poor, right? To use it?”
“We have no income restrictions,” I said icily.
“Great. I’ll bring my taxes in. And I’m not poor! How do I set up an appointment? Can I get you?”
Not if I have anything to do with it, I thought. And if you worked for the IRS for 23 years, why aren’t you doing your own fucking taxes?
###
After that, the clients became a blur. There were a lot of them. And one of them cried, and I didn’t know what to do because, as I’ve written here many, many times before, doing someone’s taxes is a bit like reading someone’s Tarot cards: You can see their entire life history and their futures in the tax documents spread out before you.
There’s really not a fucking thing you can do for the ones who are upset by what you see beyond making vague consoling noises.
So, I handed that client a box of tissues, smiled as reassuringly as possible, and said, “Everyone makes mistakes. This, too, will pass. You just have to make up your mind that you won’t allow yourself to get into this kind of a situation again.”
###
I finally got out around 4 pm.
It was an amazing day for mid-February, sunny and bright, the temp hovering at 66°.
Sixty-six degrees in mid-February!
I went tromping. This time the red high-top Converses did not prove overly constrictive (which reminds me—must take injured boot to the cobbler.)
But I didn’t take photographs because I’ve already taken a thousand photographs of the Walkway leading down into Highland Village, and my kids are already gonna have to deal with those 28,000 photographs on my hard drive, right? And who knows when I'll die?
###
Speaking of kids…
RTT texted me: He is very, very anxious over the job situation.
He texted me a copy of a text conversation he’d had with his once-and-hopefully-future boss: She wants to hire him back, but they’re still scrambling to come up with the funding for the position, and in the meantime, he is paralyzed by that awful leadenness of anxiety, can barely bring himself to function—
I know how you feel, I texted back. I’ve been where you are now at several points in my life—laid off from a job that I was absolutely FABULOUS at w/no clarity about the future. So I think I know that sense that no matter how good you are, how good you strive to be, you have no control over what’s happening. It’s massively anxiety-provoking.
Maybe it helps to know someone else understands that feeling? Even if that person is just yr clueless old Mom?
Dealing with that anxiety, of course, is separate from long-term strategizing over job situations.
I know what the long-term job strategy should be—and he knows, too, when he’s thinking clearly.
That anxiety though…
The only thing that’s ever knocked that anxiety out for me was recontextualization.
Best achieved by drugs (opiates work better than Xanax) or trips to unfamiliar places.
In the meantime, I Venmo’ed him a bunch of $$$.
$$$$ is good, right?
Handsome young men would rather get $$$ from their clueless old Moms than wise counsel, right?
###
Meanwhile, I had a basic anxiety dream myself last night.
Dreamed I was living in a cave underneath Berkeley.
(Details are blurry because I woke up, looked at the clock, ascertained I’d only gotten five hours of rest, and willed myself back to sleep again.)
It wasn’t a dark cave but a bright Disney cave filled with crystal stalagmites and light. My immediate ménage was Ben and Eleanor1, but we were sharing the dwelling with a bunch of other people, one of whom was a young man who’d invited a bunch of his relatives to visit him.
There was an increasing sense of financial pressure in the dream.
My only source of income was shifts at the Night Hospital (again, that sense of having dreamed the Night Hospital many, many times before.) But, of course, I no longer had an RN license, plus, honestly, I was a bad nurse, the new medical technologies were not something I’d been trained in. It was only a matter of time before I’d have to quit working in the Night Hospital.
And while I thought the décor of the cave was quite fabulous—beautiful purple flowers in exquisite vases and books everywhere—when I looked at the place through the eyes of the young man’s relatives, I could see it was a dump.
I went up to a beautiful soignée female relative and introduced myself. She was gracious, but I could feel her cool appraisal. And then I caught a glimpse of myself in a mirror, and OmyGAWD, my teeth were falling out. Where my left eye tooth should be was a big gaping hole.
I was surrounded by a bunch of the male relatives. They all wore lime-green flannel lumberman shirts, and they kept multiplying like King Aeëtes’ soldiers sewn from serpents’ teeth. (Whoa! Dream Golden Fleece reference!)
We’re from Texas, they told me in unison as their numbers kept growing and growing.
_____
1 I have two close friends named Eleanor. One is a friend from my undergraduate college days: ethereal, eccentric, honey-voiced—she grew up in Alabama, and syrup still seeps from every syllable she speaks—and a wellspring of creativity. The other is a friend from my graduate school college days: logical, rational, incredibly articulate, and analytical. The Eleanor in my dream was Undergraduate Eleanor.
