I woke up at 5:15 and went down to feed the pups, make some coffee and then get the paper. When I opened the front door I was surprised to see no snow. Where was this winter storm that was supposed to hit us last night? Hmmm, another gaff by the weatherman, no, it couldn’t be, but alas it was true, they were wrong again.
Today the misses works but I’m not sure how much longer that’ll go on. It seems her back problems might be related to standing on her feet at a register for 8 hours in a row. We’ll know more tomorrow after she sees the doctor. The youngest one managed to make it into our room during the middle of the night with a bad dream. This of course, along with Lacey rolling around grunting and itching her back, doesn’t bode well for a good nights sleep. The misses is in the shower and I’ll follow her as it’s my turn to take the boys to school and then I’m off to a meeting at a key account.
The misses and I stopped by the mall yesterday as I need some new dress pants. I haven’t bought any new pants probably since I was married. I found a pair that my Mom is going to give me for Christmas. Better to try them on first so you know they fit. While at Neiman Marcus we ran into a couple people we knew from Saks 5th Ave. When that store closed down about a year ago, it seems all the employees moved to Neimans. The misses saw a midnight blue dress that Nicole (the sales girl) made her try on. Of course she looked heavenly. Now this was fun but just a dream as it was made by some designer named Zac Posen. These high end stores must be feeling the pinch too as this was an $1800 dress on sale for $1100 something this Wednesday only. What a sales pitch! She sure looked good in it. She also tried on a black dress for fun, but the blue one could be worn year round, day or night while the black one was just a cocktail or evening dress. Oh well, it’s fun for her to try these on even if we can’t afford it. In a strange way, it gave her some kind of lift just trying them on which is good as she’s kind of been in a funk lately. It’s kind of like the Cinderella thing!
I taught her how to Mind Map yesterday which will make it easier for her to confront big projects or problems that on the surface, can be too overwhelming. I (and she) thinks it’ll help. I guess I’m lucky as I just never (well maybe once in a  while every few years for a few seconds) get overwhelmed. I’m just wired that way, it’s pretty hard to freak me out, unless it’s football or something really important like that!
It’s now 6am and the misses just came down with her hair all full of curlers. I’m sure she’s thrilled with me telling you that! I guess the earthquakes in Oklahoma were only about 2 miles from Aunt Myrna’s house. She said there was a clock on the wall that hasn’t worked for 20 or 30 years. They even took it to clock maker who couldn’t fix it but after the earthquake, guess what, it started working!
The oldest one asked his teacher for more advanced math problems. After school he said, go ahead dad, ask me some multiplication problems. First I asked something simple like 42 X 9 and he had the answer in a few seconds. Next was a bit more complicated like 23 X 2019, and in less than a minute, with no paper, he shouted out the correct answer, 46,437. The misses and I were stunned. I asked him how he did it and just like me, he broke it down in his head and then added the sum of all the calculations together. I guess he did the same thing for his teacher with another problem as she wrote on his Monday folder about a similar experience. First though, she said she had to check his answer on the calculator which kind of bugged him as he knew he was right, which he was. Good to know he has that “numbers thing” like I do. It’ll make life much easier for him.
Well, time to run. I think I’ll grab another cup of coffee and hit the showers. I managed to get half of my taxes paid and am now only off $4K. Someone asked how we could get a surprise like $8K in taxes we didn’t know about. The short story is that from owning part of the Company, I get a K1 (profit distribution) on my taxes each year. We always file on October 15th (when taxes are due if you file an extension) and this year due to Company allocated profits on paper (even though we received no actual cash distribution) it resulted in  us owing $8K! Our accountant finished our taxes about Oct 12th so he (and we) didn’t know this until 3 days before we had to file. So there you have it, nothing I could do about it. I had to send in the Federal return without payment and am just waiting for the letter with what I’m sure will be a nice penalty included. Oh well, remember what I said, hard to overwhelm me, I mean what are they going to do? It’s just another bill, get in line right? Oh wait, they’re the government, they can go to the front of the line! Hopefully they’ll accept something like $10 a month for life rather than come after us, ha ha. It’s next year we need to worry about as we’ll probably owe more like $15K or more, ouch! Oh well, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.
So there you go, that’s what’s happening here. Hope you all are doing well, take care and God Bless. if I was thinking I would have taken a photo of the misses in that dress! I wish you could have seen her, she was stunning and glowing. Oh yeah, next week, a hair salon in Cherry Creek (our Beverly Hills) is using her as a model and she gets like $800 worth of hair stuff done! Good for her.
So, have a great day and we’ll see you tomorrow. Bye for now,