(And on the non-procrastinatory side, I actually needed to do some straightening in order to locate all my tax documents. Which I did. So there's that.)

This is me procrastinating on taxes, too!

I'm done with my taxes but haven't filed yet.

My day is going pretty well. I made some mistakes in parenting this morning. I tend to be slightly irrational when my kids don't perform well or behave in a way that I think is acceptable. It's something I'm trying to fix and understand.

I wasted at least an hour looking at fabric and paint samples. I'm going to make slipcovers for two chairs I own. I also want to make some pretty toss pillows and paint my kitchen a color called, "Honey Harbour". There is one particular fabric that I love but it is 68 dollars a yard so it will probably remain in my dreams.

This afternoon and evening have been nice. We ordered Chinese because my kids have been asking to eat with chopsticks. Tonight my family practiced baseball in the backyard with another neighborhood friend. The kids (and dad) hit many balls into the pond.

Tired! Did 6.5 hours of yard work, then took a quick nap.

Am boiling up some eggs because apparently I forgot to collect eggs from the coop this week (could have sworn I did) and just brought 11 more into the house. Had more than would fit in the fridge.

Now to shower in hopes of removing the caked-on dirt from my hands. Think it might be hopeless.

Oh! Forgot the exciting bit -- that I'm having a homegrown dinner! Roasted beets, roasted broccoli, and snap peas prepared in some fashion yet to be determined. It's about a week too early for favas, alas.

Another 6 or 7 hourer in the yard here. So tired.

Taxes are done. Thank all the gods of finance for that first time homebuyer credit or I would have been sending gigantic amounts of money to the government (that's what happens when you cash out your retirement account to buy a house and then your parent dies and leaves you another IRA that you have to cash out for other reasons, all in one year, yes, it's ugly) but as it stands it's really not as bad as it could have been.

Actually I had a lovely day. Dogs & errands & taxes & reading & cleaning a bit & long nap & dinner with friends & now home being mellow. All good. Also, I recommend TaxActOnline. No, seriously, I've been using them for years now and they're cheap & easy & friendly & I haven't been audited yet.

Also, I have had a revelation. If you keep your house sort of relatively tidy, then doing the weekend deep cleaning stuff is way, way easier than it is otherwise. Wow. Who knew? ;-)

Not done with taxes. Which are from 2005 and need to be in or no refund. (For my parents' bankruptcy, I need to get all the old taxes filed. Three years of refunds, which my mom will use to buy new appliances and such, and then one year of a big whopping bill, which will be folded into the bankruptcy. Crafty!)

I also spent some time outside, getting a trailer of brush to the dump (with four properties you have no idea how quickly it accumulates) and doing some general raking, pruning, and tree-limb removal. I hope there will be enough light in the front yard this year for an actual lawn.

Also, I figured out that they are indeed distributing drugs across the street (even though there is very little retail dealing). A young Hispanic couple show up around 4 on a Saturday, and bring in two bedroll bundles. Then about an hour later these SUVs start to show up until there's about 8-10 guys whooping it up on the upstairs porch. Then half an hour later they all speed off. Later, I saw three young guys (under 21 at least) wander in and back out, now unsteady on their feet. The longer you live in this sort of neighborhood, the more quickly you develop the sixth sense that tells you it's happening even before you really know how or when.

Did my taxes, and my mom's going to pay them this year and I'll pay her back over 4 years or so, and then once I'm done with that, I think I can consider myself to be finally be free of their financial influence.

The moral of this story is: pay your fucking taxes quarterly when you're self-employed!

My accountant uncle does my taxes, which is really nice. This year I get a whole $8 back. WOOOOO. I think I'll buy some gum. I guess that means I did my withholding correctly, but it's so anticlimactic not to owe or get much!

It's really worth it for our marriage to have our accountant do our taxes every year. It's not a matter of how much we get back, it's just a matter of preserving our sanity.

In this morning's NY Times, The Paralyzing Fear of Filing Taxes why otherwise normal people fail to file taxes. I did mine late this year, a couple weeks ago. Fortunately, mine are easy.

I already got (and spent) my fed refund . . .thanks for daughter in college. . .I owe a hundred or so to the State so I'll be sending that in today or tomorrow.

We filed our taxes a few weeks ago and received a larger refund than we expected, as we got married after last year's stimulus payment and the government gave us the rest of the money that we didn't qualify for last year! Yay IRS!

MuddDude's best friend is gonna be in town next weekend so we spent Saturday running errands and Sunday cleaning up the guest bedroom (aka The Storage Closet) so that he could have somewhere neat and tidy to sleep. It actually went better than I expected - usually cleaning and organizing causes a big fight but 'Dude and I have been communicating really well recently: expressing our emotions positively rather than negatively, admitting when our physical condition is affecting our mental condition, and so on. It was really nice overall.

Just finished my taxes, and I'm unexpectedly getting a refund. Yay! Apparently the freelance work that I did was actually in 2007, not in 2008, so I've already paid those taxes.

This is one of the few times when my complete inability to remember years (dates I'm good at, years not so much) was a plus rather than a minus. Woo!