My Crazy Week!

I can't believe it's Thursday already. The Little Emperor started coming down with a cold over the weekend and missed three days of school. He's had a bad chesty cough and been pretty low energy, up until yesterday in the late afternoon and evening, when he became feisty enough to be annoying and I decided it's time for him to go back to school. He still has the chesty cough, but no fever, so I don't think he needs to see the doctor.

While he's been home, I filled out our taxes. It's a little bit of a pain in the neck because I had some self-employment income this year, which adds two schedules to the 1040, and because I get a modest payment from a trust fund from my deceased grandfather every year. The payment for each year comes in the first two months of the following year (65 Day Rule) and is followed by a thick envelope of forms that have only a few incomprehensible numbers on them. Most of this trust money comes from tax free bonds, but a bit of it comes from taxable dividends and interest. And some money is exempt from Federal taxes, but not state. The total amount of trust fund money would not support one person above poverty for a year in Madison, but it does offer a nice little cushion in our lives. Still, when I'm staring down the Alternative Minimum Tax form and after working through the computations to be fully compliant, I find that it doesn't affect our federal outcome one bit, I get a little bit of attitude. Which could seg me into a fully-formed rant about taxation in America, but I might have to save that for another day. I usually like to compose those kind of rants carefully a day ahead, or more, and proofread at least once before I hit post. So, I got the tax forms all filled out on Tuesday April 17, feeling mightily relieved and like a good citizen, and while I'm stuffing the envelopes, I double-check the address for the State of Wisconsin and I see that the Wisconsin deadline was April 16. Oh well. Not much can be done when it's already 24 hours late. Just post it and hope for the best.

Meanwhile, Monday afternoon, Mr SABLE came home from work with a little box in hand. He asked Owen to pass it up to me, (I was half-way down the stairs) and it's labeled Apple Care, which can only mean one thing. He's been to CompUSA and bought something. Something BIG. (BTW, in our family, we say Compusa like it's the name of an obscure country in Africa: Kahm-poo-sa, with the emphasis on
the middle sylable.) So, here's the Something BIG:


It took us a couple days to get all my stuff moved and install new copies of the software I use that doesn't come with it, but I'm happy as can be. When I have patterns to format, I can have a page layout open and not constantly juggle formatting palettes, and have Photoshop open, and Illustrator, and still see everything I need to see. What a thrill!

Today, now that the Little Emperor is back at school, I finally get to do a big grocery shop and take a big comforter to the laundromat. It's one we used to have on our bed and when I bought us a new one, LE took it over. He's still in Pull-ups over night, and sometimes he exceeds their capacity. Unfortunately, Sunday night (I think, it all blurs together) he leaked onto the big comforter which does not fit in my home washer. I can tell you, I'm getting mighty tired of changing sheets at odd times of the night. When Owen was 6, we used an alarm method and it worked really well. It's just about time to use it on the LE, too. I miss having an unbroken night of sleep.

Yesterday I managed a few rounds of knitting on the Baby James Cardigan. I think when I get back from grocery and laundromat, I'll figure out the numbers for the neckline shaping, and move that into the hood region. If I don't just take a nap until 3, when I have to go pick up LE at school.

I'm happy to report that our temperatures will reach the upper 60s and low 70s in a few more days! Yay! I'm ready.