So it hasn’t all been termites and sinus hell around here, despite all evidence to the contrary in my previous few entries. There has also been Fun With Taxes (and the subsequent Paying Of Large Bills that resulted).

Last month we picked up Turbo Tax during a trip to CostCo, so I finally installed that and gave it a whirl. Aside from spending close to half an hour swearing under my breath about how my life would be ever so much easier if the bank would just provide the damn investment tax statement in the same easy-to-read format as every other damn tax statement created by every other company out there, it wasn’t too painful. The software very nicely walked me through a million different questions (including the one about foreign tax from capitol gains, which is what got me started on the muttering and the swearing in the first place) and then just as nicely presented us with a big fat whomping number of dollars that we owe the Feds. The amount we owe the state is much smaller in terms of whomping, but still painful, in the grand scheme of things. And then Turbo Tax did something that not one single tax preparer from the popular tax place with the green signs ever did – it suggested some ways we can avoid this big fat nasty tax bill in the future. Not only did it suggest ways, it then went one step further and merrily filled out the forms and let me print them out, all without having to figure any of it out by myself. And really, can you give any higher praise to a tax software than that?

Things are otherwise sort of normal and boring around here. Just as my sinuses have finally decided to calm things down (prompted, I am pretty certain, by the impending tests and poking and prodding that is sure to ensue), Richard’s asthma has been ramping up and he’s spent the last week or so wheezing. We are a fun pair, we are, what with our inversely coordinating issues with breathing.

And in other news, now that it is spring, the white peach tree finally decided to bloom and I pondered going out and treating it for the curly leaf problem that has led to a distinct lack in fruit production over the past year or two, but then decided not to bother, because if it is not the curly leaf, it is the blue jays, and really, maybe it is time I accepted that this is all nature’s way of telling me that my dreams of getting enough peaches off this little tree to make even one measly pie per season are pointless. On the plus side, the apple tree is also blooming, which means that it somehow survived having a fence fall on top of it and part of the root system splitting ever so slightly in half. I am not holding out any hope of getting actual edible fruit off of that tree either, if past history is any example, but it is at least nice to know that at least it is still alive and can continue throwing tiny little oddly shaped apples all over the ground, just in case the blue jays finish off all the peaches and are still hungry.