Every year around this time I put on my tightest corseted business dress, my highest killer stilettos and pull my hair into a tight chignon, secured with a glossy black pencil. Then I pick up my calculator with its three hundred buttons and I get to work, doing taxes. For the whole collective.
Every year I hold myself so tense I get headaches, neck aches and general all-over body aches. I have been known to paint rooms, reorganize my handbag and drink my face off instead of sitting down and starting the paperwork. Eventually I get my act together and churn out most of them in the same week. The dress and shoes change daily but the little scowl remains. I hate taxes but I refuse to let any of the boys pay a tax preparer to do the same job I can do (with a little prodding and a lot of promises of rewards).
This year Caleb gave me an extra week's leeway by not having the T4s prepared on time. Any other year the boys had their paperwork ready to roll and we had to wait for forms. This year the forms were out and we had to wait for Cale. And to top it off, he always throws a red herring into a box that is meaningless to everyone except the CRA and I have to sort out if it's important or not. Batman? He had the forms ready for me the first week of January.
Add in the fact that we're in a new province and I am still unfamiliar with the provincial tax laws. For example, we pay our own provincial health premiums here. Most other provinces roll them into taxes. Therefore, they can't be claimed under medical expenses. So yeah, a few fits and starts this week as I call the CRA several times just to make sure I'm not making any mistakes. So far so good.
Once I had everything I barricaded myself at the dining room table with many sharpened pencils and swear words. I looked up the word 'tax' on my blog, and then 'taxes' to show you exactly how tense I can get about finances and wound up reading the entry from where I sold the hundred year old castle that killed two men and had to be reinvented and left behind.
I did not cry, but I had that weird stinging ache start up behind my sinuses that means tears are imminent. So I came back to this page to finish up, because it's late and I need to pull dinner together. Dinner is in two shifts, remember? One for the children and the secondary boys who start early and roll in early and one for the princess and the primary boys, who usually roll in sometime between seven and eight at night, which makes for long days but I am far more rested than I was a year ago. And I can't really breathe in the corset but I look great, and between looking good and having a head for numbers I suppose one could do a lot worse.
But that's just me.
The taxes are done now at last and I'm going to go put on my pajamas and make a stiff drink for myself and spend the evening visiting with each of my boys to give them their good news. You see, not only do I do the paperwork but I keep a close eye on their totals to make sure they never have to pay in. Good luck getting that kind of service from some faceless tax preparation kiosk.
Also, I'm really cute in pajamas. So bring on the rewards. Lets start with a cookie and move on to sexual favors after that.
