Our local heatwave is bringing out the best in our backyard; it's a virtual jungle. I can stand in many parts of this normally exposed urban garden and the trees and plants are so high and thick with leaves that no one in the buildings around would even know I was there.
The butterflies know, however. As do the birds.
Watering everything, protecting it all from the sun, I begin to daydream. I'm in other places and other times.
Squinting, through the greenery, I begin to see apparitions. I imagine a lovely form floating dreamily on the afternoon breeze.
Everything in this vision is so real it's palpable. The long hair, the smooth skin, the gentle grace. It is the ultimate female, the goddess, the one a male has always been seeking.
Suddenly, I snap back to attention and realize I have probably over-watered one poor little plant near me. "Sorry about that, chap," I say in Australian, as I lift his pot and dry him out in the wind and sun.
***
It's not so much that I don't enjoy preparing for audits in the sense that employing an attention to detail and adding up numbers isn't fun for me. It actually is fun -- since I was a boy I frequently have made up and played mathematical games that are probably evidence of borderline OCD behavior.
And then there is my proclivity for Fantasy Baseball. This is an online collective game based entirely on numbers, and I have played it for a decade.
A former college friend actually invented the "sport;" technology has made it accessible to anyone.
So I pass the hours preparing my fantasy baseball team for another night of battles and locating and calculating numbers for that loveable old IRS.
***
Then there is the writing and the editing. Multiple clients these days; lots of work.
***
Then there are the kids. It comes back to math. My daughter and I struggle with her math homework. "You're so impatient these days, Dad."
Suddenly, I know the toll it's all taking on me. That my 13-year-old suffers from it shows just how cruel our government's predations on its own citizens truly are.
-30-
1 comment:
every year when I file taxes I feel a sense of trepidation- not that I think I'm doing anything wrong- but because I've been told by many that "anyone can be randomly audited"-- I think this is unfair- I think they should only audit someone who REALLY has shown signs of defrauding the government. It is a waste of their time and ours if they choose to 'randomly' audit people.
I wish taxes would just be so simple. You earn such and such- you pay such and such a percent- no matter what! across the board- so easy. The more you earn- the more you pay- the less you earn- the less you pay- if you earn below a certain amount- because it is a percentage it should be affordable to all.
I guess it is not just the government who is at fault it is the ones who DO try to defraud- they make it harder on all of us- because they cause the government to think ALL of us are defrauding.
Oh my- again me and my long comments!!!
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