Love, Taxes, and Cold Weather
Feb. 13th, 2016 10:46 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mallorys_cameraTemps are supposed to drop to -5 degrees this afternoon, and while I agree – that’s cold – you still gotta wonder why frigid temperatures in February are dominating the news cycle.
I suppose I should be grateful for any break in the wall-to-wall primary coverage.
The Bernie boosters have been on my case to do phone calls to prospective voters in Nevada – to spread the BERN as it were.
I can only imagine what a successful phone call to a prospective voter in the greater metropolitan Las Vegas area might entail:
“Hi, there! I’m sitting here in my crotchless Victoria’s Secret panties with my vibrator in hand – it’s shaped exactly like Idris Elba’s dick! – and I thought, ‘Hey! You know what would really get me wet? If Bernie Sanders carried the State of Nevada in the upcoming primary – ‘ “
Etcetera.
###
I continue in my abysmal mood. It’s kind of like geothermal activity deep within the earth’s bowels since I am really striving not to let it affect my interactions with others in any way. Long ago, I realized I have Serious Bitch Potential, and one might say, my entire adult life has been a sustained struggle to suppress it.
Thus I cheerfully carry on half-hour conversations with Linda about her hair colorist.
“I keep telling her, ‘My hair is too red!’ And she keeps saying, ‘No, it’s not!’ So I’m going to start seeing a new colorist. There’s one right here in Hyde Park, she only charges $120 –“
“Absolutely, Linda!” I say with great conviction. “Absolutely you should see the new hair colorist in Hyde Park who only charges $120.”
To the clients who seek my volunteer tax preparation services, I continue to be both saint and savior.
A young man came in yesterday who’d spent $400 at H&R Block the year before. They’d gotten him a $7,000 tax refund.
After poring over the young man’s 2015 return for an hour and a half, my colleague in tax assistance at ____________________ had only managed to get him a $3,000 tax refund.
“Do I have to file this?” the young man asked dubiously. “I dunno. I think maybe I should go back to H&R Block.”
“Just let me have a look at it,” I coaxed. “Five minutes! I just want to play with it. It’s challenging! Like doing a crossword puzzle.”
More like doing an organic chemistry synthesis, actually, when you start with ethanol but you have access to any inorganic catalyst you want.
Back in the day, I was very, very good at organic chemistry. I all but flunked P-Chem ‘cause, you know, the Ideal Gas Law (shudder), chemical equilibrium reactions!
But organic chemistry is really just an exercise in logical progression. And logical progression is my intellectual forte. Give me any set of inviolable premises, and I can pretty reliably chart their logical ad infinitum outcome.
Hey! I got an A+ in Organic at UC Berkeley from William Calvin, a genuine Nobel Prize winner!
I digress…
Anyway, after dicking around with the young man’s return for 10 minutes or so – he was growing more and more agitated, muttering to himself, texting irate messages to invisible companions – I finally stumbled across my colleague’s mistake: He’d filled out the Earned Income Credit worksheet incorrectly.
Earned Income Credit a/k/a EIC is something that was embedded in the tax code under Richard Nixon. It’s supposed to substitute for welfare. Provide poor people with an incentive to work and they won't sit around on their asses all day, enjoying the high life that only $500 a month of public assistance can provide. That's the theory, at any rate. These days, EIC the second biggest way the federal government funnels money to people who are living beneath the poverty line in the U.S. Food stamps are the first.
I corrected my colleague’s mistakes, and lo and behold! I jacked the young man's refund up by $4,500! Even more than the bloodsuckers at H&R Block had managed to get him!
The young man shook my hand many, many times before he left. Sweaty palms! I had to douse my hands with Purell. This is flu season, after all. And pink-eye season. And Zika fever season.
###
For another tax client, I made up a whole autobiography! This was a gentleman of around my own age with a weirdly bronzed face. I kept sneaking peeks between itemizing his deductions, trying to figure out why he’d felt the need to put on stage makeup before leaving his house that morning.
“It’s really cold out there!” he told me jovially.
“It is!” I said, trying to match his enthusiasm.
“I just got back from a Caribbean cruise!”
Ah! Did that account for the weird skin tone? I didn't think so. There was something else going on.
“I was sitting here, admiring your tan!” I said.
So then he began to babble about the cruise, the fun times he’d had, the great people who’d shared his table, how they now spent endless hours on the computer batting memories back and forth –
“So, I need to ask you –“ I said, interrupting brightly. “These medical expenses. I don’t need to see the corroborating bills, but you know, we don’t indemnify the tax preparation we do! If you get audited, you’re on your own. You do have the doctors’ bills, right?”
“Oh, yeah,” he said. He sighed. “Having cancer is very expensive.”
I didn’t have a follow-up for that one, so I just practiced my bobblehead moves and my vacant smile.
His eyes teared up. He had remarkably blue eyes, almost violet. “Thing is, I don’t feel sick at all! I never did! The doctors told me I was sick, but I felt fine until I started the chemotherapy. Now I feel sick. But I also know in a little while I’ll get to see her –“
He took out his wallet. Pulled out a snapshot: a rather nondescript-looking woman of middle age.
“We had 43 years together,” he said. “Forty-three years! And in all that time, we never went to bed angry. Oh, we had fights! But we had one rule, and that was to make up before we went to sleep. And we always kept to that rule.”
What could I possibly say? "I know how hard that is."
"Did you... lose... ?"
"I did," I said.
"How long ago? If you don't mind my asking."
"Sixteen years," I said.
"It never goes away, does it? You always miss them."
"You always miss them, but it does go away," I said.
“I’d like to go on another cruise,” he said.
“You should,” I said. “You should go on as many cruises as possible.”
###
My final client for the day was a dead ringer for Barack Obama if Barack Obama was 85 years old. Handsome, courtly, intelligent.
I asked him the demographic questions we ask all clients:
“Are you a veteran, sir?”
“Yes. Yes. I am, indeed.”
“Do you speak any language beside English in your household?”
He laughed softly. “Do you mean Italian, German, or Polish? Sei una bella donna, preparatore di imposta.”
“Grazie, Signore,” I said.
Love, she is fleeting in this and every lifetime.
###
And now, I must face the Big Question of the Day: Do I change out of my pajamas, or do I just say, Fuck dat?
I suppose I should be grateful for any break in the wall-to-wall primary coverage.
The Bernie boosters have been on my case to do phone calls to prospective voters in Nevada – to spread the BERN as it were.
I can only imagine what a successful phone call to a prospective voter in the greater metropolitan Las Vegas area might entail:
“Hi, there! I’m sitting here in my crotchless Victoria’s Secret panties with my vibrator in hand – it’s shaped exactly like Idris Elba’s dick! – and I thought, ‘Hey! You know what would really get me wet? If Bernie Sanders carried the State of Nevada in the upcoming primary – ‘ “
Etcetera.
###
I continue in my abysmal mood. It’s kind of like geothermal activity deep within the earth’s bowels since I am really striving not to let it affect my interactions with others in any way. Long ago, I realized I have Serious Bitch Potential, and one might say, my entire adult life has been a sustained struggle to suppress it.
Thus I cheerfully carry on half-hour conversations with Linda about her hair colorist.
“I keep telling her, ‘My hair is too red!’ And she keeps saying, ‘No, it’s not!’ So I’m going to start seeing a new colorist. There’s one right here in Hyde Park, she only charges $120 –“
“Absolutely, Linda!” I say with great conviction. “Absolutely you should see the new hair colorist in Hyde Park who only charges $120.”
To the clients who seek my volunteer tax preparation services, I continue to be both saint and savior.
A young man came in yesterday who’d spent $400 at H&R Block the year before. They’d gotten him a $7,000 tax refund.
After poring over the young man’s 2015 return for an hour and a half, my colleague in tax assistance at ____________________ had only managed to get him a $3,000 tax refund.
“Do I have to file this?” the young man asked dubiously. “I dunno. I think maybe I should go back to H&R Block.”
“Just let me have a look at it,” I coaxed. “Five minutes! I just want to play with it. It’s challenging! Like doing a crossword puzzle.”
More like doing an organic chemistry synthesis, actually, when you start with ethanol but you have access to any inorganic catalyst you want.
Back in the day, I was very, very good at organic chemistry. I all but flunked P-Chem ‘cause, you know, the Ideal Gas Law (shudder), chemical equilibrium reactions!
But organic chemistry is really just an exercise in logical progression. And logical progression is my intellectual forte. Give me any set of inviolable premises, and I can pretty reliably chart their logical ad infinitum outcome.
Hey! I got an A+ in Organic at UC Berkeley from William Calvin, a genuine Nobel Prize winner!
I digress…
Anyway, after dicking around with the young man’s return for 10 minutes or so – he was growing more and more agitated, muttering to himself, texting irate messages to invisible companions – I finally stumbled across my colleague’s mistake: He’d filled out the Earned Income Credit worksheet incorrectly.
Earned Income Credit a/k/a EIC is something that was embedded in the tax code under Richard Nixon. It’s supposed to substitute for welfare. Provide poor people with an incentive to work and they won't sit around on their asses all day, enjoying the high life that only $500 a month of public assistance can provide. That's the theory, at any rate. These days, EIC the second biggest way the federal government funnels money to people who are living beneath the poverty line in the U.S. Food stamps are the first.
I corrected my colleague’s mistakes, and lo and behold! I jacked the young man's refund up by $4,500! Even more than the bloodsuckers at H&R Block had managed to get him!
The young man shook my hand many, many times before he left. Sweaty palms! I had to douse my hands with Purell. This is flu season, after all. And pink-eye season. And Zika fever season.
###
For another tax client, I made up a whole autobiography! This was a gentleman of around my own age with a weirdly bronzed face. I kept sneaking peeks between itemizing his deductions, trying to figure out why he’d felt the need to put on stage makeup before leaving his house that morning.
“It’s really cold out there!” he told me jovially.
“It is!” I said, trying to match his enthusiasm.
“I just got back from a Caribbean cruise!”
Ah! Did that account for the weird skin tone? I didn't think so. There was something else going on.
“I was sitting here, admiring your tan!” I said.
So then he began to babble about the cruise, the fun times he’d had, the great people who’d shared his table, how they now spent endless hours on the computer batting memories back and forth –
“So, I need to ask you –“ I said, interrupting brightly. “These medical expenses. I don’t need to see the corroborating bills, but you know, we don’t indemnify the tax preparation we do! If you get audited, you’re on your own. You do have the doctors’ bills, right?”
“Oh, yeah,” he said. He sighed. “Having cancer is very expensive.”
I didn’t have a follow-up for that one, so I just practiced my bobblehead moves and my vacant smile.
His eyes teared up. He had remarkably blue eyes, almost violet. “Thing is, I don’t feel sick at all! I never did! The doctors told me I was sick, but I felt fine until I started the chemotherapy. Now I feel sick. But I also know in a little while I’ll get to see her –“
He took out his wallet. Pulled out a snapshot: a rather nondescript-looking woman of middle age.
“We had 43 years together,” he said. “Forty-three years! And in all that time, we never went to bed angry. Oh, we had fights! But we had one rule, and that was to make up before we went to sleep. And we always kept to that rule.”
What could I possibly say? "I know how hard that is."
"Did you... lose... ?"
"I did," I said.
"How long ago? If you don't mind my asking."
"Sixteen years," I said.
"It never goes away, does it? You always miss them."
"You always miss them, but it does go away," I said.
“I’d like to go on another cruise,” he said.
“You should,” I said. “You should go on as many cruises as possible.”
###
My final client for the day was a dead ringer for Barack Obama if Barack Obama was 85 years old. Handsome, courtly, intelligent.
I asked him the demographic questions we ask all clients:
“Are you a veteran, sir?”
“Yes. Yes. I am, indeed.”
“Do you speak any language beside English in your household?”
He laughed softly. “Do you mean Italian, German, or Polish? Sei una bella donna, preparatore di imposta.”
“Grazie, Signore,” I said.
Love, she is fleeting in this and every lifetime.
###
And now, I must face the Big Question of the Day: Do I change out of my pajamas, or do I just say, Fuck dat?
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2016-02-13 05:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-02-13 05:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-02-13 11:40 pm (UTC)I changed three times. Once back into pajamas... Then quickly into pajama-feeling street clothes, and lastly into cuter pajama-feeling street clothes.
no subject
Date: 2016-02-14 12:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-02-15 01:07 am (UTC)EIC – thanks Nixon!
There are quite a few medications that turn skin orange now. There’s that one for Parkinson’s (the name of which I’m too lazy to look up right now). I’d have been able to name it a year ago but all that nursing stuff is beginning to fade. A chemo drug that does that doesn’t come to mind, though. Maybe it was a chemo/sun combo or just something I never encountered?
In regard to pajamas, I hope you said fuck dat and stayed nice and cozy – especially if you have a fireplace.
no subject
Date: 2016-02-15 12:53 pm (UTC)I was thinking he had liver cancer, but his sclera were white. It was really a most unnatural shade of bronze!
no subject
Date: 2016-02-15 12:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-02-15 12:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-02-15 04:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-02-18 02:53 pm (UTC)We'll be going to the caucus Saturday and doing our part to get Sanders nominated — even though his people are so annoying. He's the first candidate for any office to whom I've ever sent money. We need a revolution.
no subject
Date: 2016-02-18 03:05 pm (UTC)Ain't that the truth.
Doubt very much we're gonna get one, though. Or rather -- we may get one when President Trump decides to dismantle the First Amendment by evoking the Adams Presidency-Era Alien & Sedition Act. :-) But it ain't gonna be the one we want!
But I'm pleased that you and