No, that's not a typo in the title.
I did my taxes this afternoon. As always, they weren't difficult to do (with the exception of the Kansas state tax forms, which suck), just time-consuming. Not much changes on the federal 1040s from year to year. There are occasionally a few little additions or they'll put a new, different line here or there, but for the most part, they're set up the same way every year, and all I have to do is open both forms -- last year's and this year's -- and use the old one as a guide, obviously updating my pay and taxable income info where necessary, re-calculating my earned income credit, etc. I do them all on my computer now; the IRS has fillable forms that you can download, fill out, and print out, making the process much easier than doing it with pen and paper.
Of course, because I make so little, that makes the process easier as well.
I made slightly over $11,000 last year. Yes, that's it. I know I have friends and family reading this who make 5-10 times that every year, or somewhere in that ballpark. Now do you people understand how poor I am and why I have to budget for everything?
I'm getting about $1,500 back in refunds from the feds and state combined. The federal refund, for the first time, is getting direct-deposited into my bank account so that I can get it faster and won't have to wait for a check. This is good, because I have bills to pay and will need money to survive on -- most of that refund is going directly into bills and living expenses, more than likely. The state refund doesn't offer that direct-deposit option on the mailed forms, so I still have to get a check for that.
With the taxes done and in the mail, I paid $100 of my Citi Card bill and mailed that as well, vacuumed the top floor of the house (as well as the stairs and landing, which is fucking hard to do), and ran the dishwasher again to clean everything I'd dirtied over the past two or three days. Aside from taking the trash down to the road in the morning and getting a fresh shower tomorrow afternoon, everything is done and finished before my trip up to Omaha.
As I told Daisy last night, I am also really surprised that I haven't had any students whining/bitching/moaning at me about their midterm grades and/or the latest grades on their papers/assignments. They've all been quiet, with the exception of two of them -- one asking if he could change his paper topic and the other emailing me an updated copy of her rewrite, since she'd given the the wrong one last week. Everyone else? Silent.
There are a few little things I've done this weekend, or things I will do, before I leave for Omaha for a few days. I still have to run another load of laundry, and I still have to re-pack my suitcase a little bit for Omaha as it is going to be a bit colder there than originally expected this week -- it's only supposed to be in the 50s or low 60s, which is generally too cold for shorts, so I'll have to pack pants instead and will have to bring a jacket or my bigger wool coat.
On the plus side, when we stop at the Walmart in York (the 2/3 point or so of our journey to Omaha) I'll be able to look and see if they have my boot socks and thermal pants/shirts on clearance there too, as they did here in Newton. I cleaned out all the boot socks the Walmart here had left (at $3 each for a two-pair set) and bought two $3 turtlenecks to wear as thermal undershirts. If you're curious about the boot socks, it's because if I'm wearing socks, I only wear boot socks because they're really thick and warm. Nothing else will do, and I usually wear two pairs at a time. Most of the ones I have are beginning to seriously wear out, too, no thanks to the fact that it was so cold last year that it was snowing in May, and because even this year it's struggling to be springlike even now.
As for the turtlenecks? They make me look more respectable when I wear them under sweaters or other shirts, and they're really warm. That's really my only reasoning for them.
Anyway.
In the past week, I received four different mailer packets from the Publisher's Clearing House. No, seriously. Four. I bought a book from them once for Daisy, and I bought a magazine subscription to Vegetarian Times for the two of us about, oh, six months ago. Because of that, I now get bombarded with their mailers every month, and I'm always compelled to fill them out and mail the forms back to them, because who knows -- I still hold on to some hope that maybe I'll be the next "$7,000 a week for life" winner or some shit like that. Usually, I just sort through all the forms and offers and find the stamps I need, seal up the return envelope, and stick it back in the mail. While this may just further encourage more mailers, it's better to be hopeful than without hope, right?
This time, however, I started looking through all of their offers, because I had gotten four of their mailers in one week and I was, admittedly, pretty bored. One of them had an offer that if I bought at least two items (usually of negligible cost; $10-20 each or so) I could send back a coupon they had enclosed that would get me $30 off my order. Hmmmm. That's interesting. Okay. This means that, basically, I could pick two items for (mostly) free and would only pay the shipping and handling on them -- which is actually a great deal.
So, I scoured through what they had. A lot of the PCH stuff is geared towards old people -- I can tell, seriously, by the stuff they include in their mailers that their primary clientele is the 55-85 age range, judging from the goofy shit they sell. I mean, I've seen everything in there from bible DVDs to ugly jewelry to peanut brittle in a tin to those grab-and-reach-things-from-high-shelves mechanisms. Usually there's nothing at all interesting or appealing to me as a 31-year-old male. Daisy may call me an old man due to my habits and mannerisms, but I'm not that old yet. I'm not "Publisher's Clearing House" old. Every once in a while, though, I'll find something interesting and will be like hmm, that's neat. And that's what I was looking for this time around, though not exactly for me.
Keep in mind that over the next few months, not only am I getting married but there are the late-spring holidays coming up -- Easter, Mother's Day, Father's Day, etc. I've always gotten my parents (and Daisy's parents, for the past two years now) something for those holidays. Well, not usually Easter, because I'm an atheist and don't care about Easter, but for the other ones I do. Last year I got my parents a huge selection of different Keurig cups -- something like 30 or 40 in all -- for their combined Mother's/Father's Day presents, and had them shipped back home. Last year I got Daisy's mother a beautiful blue/green wavy tie-dye shirt and had it shipped to her. I don't remember what I got Daisy's father last year for Father's Day, but I did get something. I'll have to ask Daisy if she remembers.
So, I wasn't in the mindset of looking for something for me, but for my/our parents. As those folks fall within the age range of PCH's wheelhouse, and as I would get something for them all anyway, I narrowed my focus to what they would like and/or use. By the time I was done, I had found three of the four parents Mother's/Father's Day presents and had found a three-tiered tabletop fruit basket for Daisy very similar to the hanging basket set she has on our wedding registry. With the coupon from one order and shipping and handling on everything, I'll pay about $40-45 for everything when it's all said and done -- which is roughly what I'd spend on all of them anyhow. The only one of them I didn't find a gift for was a Father's Day gift for my dad, though I tend to scour Amazon and get him something nerdy anyhow (despite our age difference, he and I have very similar tastes, which makes him easy to shop for).
All of them will be at the wedding, of course, so that even makes gift distribution amongst them really easy, even if the timing will be a bit (or a lot, by several weeks) off. I thought it was a rather brilliant plan, actually. So, along with my taxes and the Citi Card bill, all of those orders went into the mail as well. Yeah, I had a stack of mail to go into the box with the flag up this evening.
Rae told me earlier this evening that she got her wedding invitation (which is good because, y'know, she's in the wedding and all that), and I asked her if she liked it/if it was pretty enough. I still haven't seen the actual paper invites yet -- Daisy designed and printed them up herself at the house, and all I've seen is the graphic she made for them. I won't see the actual paper ones until I get the ones I'll give out by hand to friends and colleagues once I return from Spring Break, so I don't even know how big they are, what type of paper they were printed on, if they're all in color or black-and-white, etc. Daisy was so excited to do that herself that I told her that whatever she wanted to do for them was fine, and gave her free reign over them. Her design is really cute/sweet, but again, I've only seen the graphic and not the actual printed ones. If Rae's gotten hers, and at least a few of my own family members back home have gotten theirs, it's probably safe to say that most if not all of them have arrived by now.
By the way, Rae described the invite as "lovely." So that's a plus, right? I'm intensely curious to see them myself.
Daisy told me that the Fazoli's people (who will be doing the food/catering for the wedding) want to meet with her in person to discuss logistics and an estimated amount of what they'll need, instead of doing it all over the phone. I would assume that she'll wait another week or so on that until everyone who's going to RSVP for the wedding does so, and we have a more accurate number of family/guests who will be there. She asked me if I wanted to do it with her when I was up there this week, but it's not incredibly necessary (read: I don't want to), and until we have an accurate number of guests, setting up everything right this second would be pointless anyhow since we're basing it on the number of expected guests. We're doing that because the price obviously differs by quite a bit.
"How many people have RSVPed thus far, based on receiving the invitations?"
Daisy put, on the invitations, various easy ways for people to RSVP, both via phone and electronically, to make it simple for them. No more mailing back a card or any of that shit. I thought that was an ingenious idea.
"No one," she said, laughing. "But it's not because they aren't coming, because I know some people are, but, it'll just take them a while to RSVP."
Well, that doesn't help us as we're trying to figure out the logistics of our last major task, does it?
We'll have to give it time, I suppose -- we do know the "locks" of who's going to be there, of course, namely our parents, her sisters/families, the bridal/groom's parties, etc. It's everyone else who's up in the air right now, so to speak.
As for the house hunt, Daisy has found a few suitable places she's more than likely going to call and ask about over the next few weeks, which is fine for a timeframe as they're like...townhomes, I suppose? That's about the best way I can describe their setup. Townhomes in complexes, nice ones. However, right now the point may be moot because they're slightly out of our price range for the moment, but won't be if she gets a new job in the next month or so -- as she'd like to do, of course. There's a college in Omaha she sent an application to for an administrative job of some sort, and encouraged me to do the same ,as said position pays really well. I will do so either tonight or tomorrow before I leave town. Might as well start making contingency plans, right? Especially when said contingency plans may become my actual plans soon enough.
"Do you want to go look at some places while you're here?" she asked me earlier tonight, in reference to some of the homes she'd found.
"It's going to depend a lot on the time we have, babe," I said. "We have a packed schedule for most of the time I'm there, and I don't want everything to be scheduled out to the hour or minute without any actual time to relax and just be together."
This is true; we have at least three or four tasks we'll be doing on Tuesday and Wednesday, including Wednesday night as well, and on Thursday we'll have to sleep a fair amount of the day because we'll be coming back to Kansas in the overnight hours that night. And, again, there's no use to jump the gun here -- we can look at all the places we want, but most of those said places may be no longer available a month from now (or more) when we'd need them.
"I trust you, babe," I added. "I know your aesthetic desires, I know you know our location needs and our budget. If you find someplace, yes, let me know. Yes, go look at it. Take [best friend and maid of honor] or mama with you to scope it out. But do it when it's going to actually mean something and not way in advance of us being able to afford it or know what's going on for certain as it pertains to our job situations."
Note: This probably makes me sound like I'm lazy or that I don't care or that I'm making her do all the work, both with the catering thing and with our possible future home. That's not my intention, of course, and it couldn't be further from the truth. More than anything else, it's that she's there, and I'm not. Even if I were there 24/7, I'd still defer to her on everything like this even though we'd be doing this stuff together. She wants Fazoli's because they can and will do things vegan. I'm fine with that. Vegan is her arena, not mine -- I let her have complete control of that and do what she will with it. She wants certain things/amenities in places we might live, and I've told her that as long as we can get to and from it, don't have on-street parking (which we both agreed we'd never do), it's quiet and safe, and they take the cats, I'll be happy with whatever/wherever she wants us to be. I mean, hell, I live half an hour out of Wichita as it is now -- I wouldn't be opposed to us living half an hour away from Omaha proper if it meant our rent and bills would be drastically lower every month compared to within the city. And, obviously, wherever we live after the wedding isn't going to be a permanent residence anyhow -- we'll maybe live there for a year before we start looking for homes to buy, of course, if we want to stay in the area. We agreed on this long ago as well.
So, it's not that I'm standoffish or don't give a shit/don't want to be involved -- I do. And she does involve me. It's just that this far out, with me still here and teaching, and without knowing what our job/financial situations are going to be like this far in advance, I'm of the "it's up to you, honey" mindset more than anything else.
On that note, folks, I have exhausted my mental abilities for the day. It's time for me to retreat to the bed with the cats.
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