A quick look at February so far
Spring IS here!
This is a quick little note because, until I hear from my accountant, I am now out of “Getting the Taxes Done” mode. I’ve been gearing up since the beginning of January and, during this first week of February, have spent more time than I care to think about pulling together all the necessary documentation. I use Quicken—and have done so since I severed the tendon to my right hand thumb in an encounter with a broken piece of glass at the Jordan Marsh Christmas display counter back in 1989(?) and couldn’t sign my cheques for the monthly bills. I was in a “cast” for ages and then had months of physical therapy. But bills needed to be paid, so, as a diehard techie (I was working for Digital Equipment Corporation at the time), I looked for a technical solution… got Quicken… and never looked back. True confession: I will admit to being a little bit of a control freak. In the interest of keeping us out of jail, I had made myself the responsible person from the day my husband Robbie and I got our first joint account. Robbie’s idea of bookkeeping is a shoe box. Mine is spreadsheets. I even created a program to balance our accounts on our Commodore 64 in the '80s. I am the person who goes looking for the penny when things don’t add up because I know that if I’m a penny out, there might just be a much nastier mistake somewhere in the books.
Over the course of my Annus Horribilis of medical interventions, I did let Quicken make decisions on the categories of our expenditures during the nine months I was in one form of recovery or another.1 The upshot of letting Quicken decide what I had ordered from Amazon resulted in loads of money being spent on “Arts & Crafts”!2 I know I spend a lot of money (basically my children’s inheritance) on materials to knit or quilt, but the number Quicken gave me strained credulity. Turns out, it just used the last category I had labeled and, for the months of April through November, put everything in Arts & Crafts—bird food, socks (special compression ones), gluten free necessities, etc. It took almost the whole day to match up records between Quicken, the various credit cards, emails of receipts, and Amazon order records for both me and my husband to sort it all out. My NEW New Year’s resolution now is to put IN THE NOTES in the Quicken entry just what was purchased, every month, when I get the statement. We’ll see how long that lasts.
But that leads me to why I am posting this tonight! Today, I sent out my critical documents to my accountant and now feel I am freeeeee! Free to get back to quilting and knitting and baking and, since the sun decided to come out today… gardening.
I enclose a collection of photos to show where I’m at right now, although I didn’t get a photo of the Coll Hat (Stolen Stitches) I knitted for my daughter-in-law from leftover yarn over the past few evenings because it was calming.
Hope you are all keeping warm and doing something to make you feel comforted.
Everything is fine… this was fixing some important structural stuff… not a life threatening disease. Believe me, I know how fortunate I am that we caught these things in time to prevent something more serious.
As much as I hate ordering from Amazon, we do live on an island and sometimes it’s the only way to get some things. I do try and see if I can get it from anyone else… even if it means paying a little bit more.