Klowns in my Koffee

Daily Kup (My Life Clinging to the Weekend)
It's ironic that for the person with — let us say — an atypical business week, that Monday no longer holds a sting but Friday still comes soft and gentle and with some giddy anticipation. Perhaps the joy that many feel as the end of a standard workweek approaches is in the air like ozone before a lightening storm. Yes, casual day!

Taxing My Resources
On January 3rd, the mail contained a thin paper book. Some of you may have received the same book. It was from our state government and contains income tax forms and instructions. We got two — one set for us and one for Kollege Kid.

I leave them on the coffee table, the pair of them. I want to carry them with tongs to some place where they can't scare the children but instead I let them stare at me accusingly while I avert my eyes.

It's a canned response, like Pavlov's dogs puking whenever they were audited. The irony is that my bookkeeping has never before been so perfect. Illustrating clearly that two negatives make a positive, I've never before had the time to devote to tracking and managing my money so completely ... and I've never had so little of it to track and manage. It's like Gandhi discovering that his pesky problems with laundry and closets were solved by extreme sartorial reduction. It's a weird relief.

But the fear still lingers. I should do the taxes by hand when the 1099's and W-2's and 1098's and all the other letters and numbers arrive at the end of the month, but I've become addicted to TurboTax. I love the big checkmark over the name and the words "Don't Panic" in large, friendly letters on the cover. (Thank you, Ford Prefect.)

The cheapest place that I've found to buy TurboTax so far this year is Walmart, since I've been too cheap to renew my Costco membership. I made my way to the Mart of Wal but unfortunately forgot to bring my nearly constant friend, Cam the camera. I was told about People of Walmart (http://www.peopleofwalmart.com) over the holidays, but I didn't believe that I would encounter the same phenomenon so close to home and in such infinite and perverse complexity. It's true. All of it.