It began with a text from Chick-fil-A that I found on my phone this morning when I woke up. I thought it was McKay asking me to play a board game online, but it was really just a coupon for a free kid’s meal with the purchase of any regular meal, today only.
I take that back. It began some day this week, before today, when Karen and her mom packed up a bunch of our kitchen stuff for the move and left only the essentials in a few places in our cupboards. Wonderful idea and wonderful execution.
Fast forward. Rich went down for his nap this afternoon right around lunchtime and I immediately suggested to Karen we finally do our taxes. Taxes are ugly, and people who do taxes can be ugly to each other. For Karen and me, this is pretty much a given. It was a frustrating and altogether labyrinth of a mind game played by the U.S. government today to basically try and steal away all happiness and sanity from our lives. It’s survival of the fittest and a constant reminder that Karen and I are barely “fit” every year. (But we survive!)
Rest assured—apologies were exchanged (see above; you knew this would happen) and Richie woke up and brightened our spirits a bit. But the tension in our home wasn’t completely vanquished. Karen suggested I make some pasta for Richie for lunch, to which I reluctantly agreed (because I wanted something else to eat, but whatever). Time came for the colander to play its role, so I quickly removed it from the cupboard where it was stored. A bit too quickly, it turned out, because sitting in the colander was a glass mixing bowl that normally wasn’t there (remember the packing?) and that happened to be difficult to see (go figure—it’s glass). Out came the colander, and out of the colander came the glass bowl, and the bowl said hello to the floor, and we said goodbye to the bowl. Shards of glass everywhere. Pretty much an explosion.
The tension, I think, climaxed and our day progressed and we behaved better. More [sincere] apologies exchanged and everything returned to normal. It’s sad that the loss of a glass mixing bowl has to bring us back together as a family, but I think we can all agree that bowl fulfilled the extent of its existence. In all its mixing I suppose we never thought it would heal our tax woes. But so it is.
Oh, and that Chick-fil-A coupon must have been inspired. Karen didn’t want any food, but Rich and I grabbed a regular meal and a kid’s meal and had a great lunch. Thanks, Chick-fil-A.
Doing taxes is just really stressful for me. I mean, it's nice that we'll get a tax refund and all, and the refund is worth the time we put into filling out all the information, but it still just stresses me out majorly.
ReplyDeleteAnyway. All's well that ends well.