Around the Table

It wasn't a fancy dinner (just baked ziti) and of course, I seemed to catch Ryan mid-chew despite multiple photos, but we were all together for dinner on Saturday night. 

Because of different schedules and other interferences, we haven't been able to all get together since Christmas. That was much of the point of Ryan moving back east, so I'm glad we could finally make it happen. It made my weekend (and also gave me a good excuse to make a pound cake for dessert)! 

I hope your weekend was a good one!

Friday Letters: 4/1/22

I haven't written any Friday Letters for a long time, but today I've taken my virtual fountain pen in to wonder about something, apologize, and offer a few thank yous. Let's open the mail ...

Dear Neighbor,

I've passed this thing daily on my walk and always assumed it was a doghouse. This week I got curious and took a closer look. When I walked around it, I saw that it was completely enclosed without a door for the dog I had imagined. I also noticed the holiday greenery, Christmas lights, and extension cord running through the grass towards your house. What is this thing? Did you completely enclose some sort of grill base with wood to make a festive holiday thing? The wheels would make it easier to move, but this thing hasn't moved in four months. I appreciate that you took the time to shingle the roof, but why? I have questions, and someday I might just knock on your door and ask them. 

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Dear Borough Office,

I will no longer make fun of your sad planters with plastic flowers in them. I've looked for pansies at three different places this week and haven't been able to find them anywhere. Everyone has told me that it's too early. I disagree, but I do appreciate your efforts to liven things up with flowers, even if they are silly plastic ones. 

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Dear Mom,

Thank you for the cable needle. When I reached the yoke of my sweater it was time for some cabling. I'm not quite adept enough to attempt cables without a needle and I couldn't find one in my knitting bag. Then I remembered there might be one in the stash of your knitting things. I only remember one project that you knit, but you had a few accessories that I've kept. I checked and you did have my favorite kind of cable needle! It was a lovely surprise and I 've been thinking about you each time I use it. 

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Dear John,
Thanks for the laugh! When you told me you were going out to the barn to fix the wench on the four-wheeler, I just raised my eyebrows and said that I hoped all of our wenches were in good working order. When you came back in, I asked you how she was doing. You looked at me quizzically and said that you fixed the wench, but it wasn't a "she". I had to explain that a single vowel can make a big difference, and was even more surprised that you really didn't know the difference between winch and wench. I'm glad the winch works, but I do still wish we had a serving wench.

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I wish you a lovely weekend with no unidentifiable things in your yard, some real flowers, a serendipitous find and lovely reminder, and maybe even a serving wench of your own. 

If You Start Some Shredding ...

I usually go through my file cabinet once a year after taxes are done and clean it out, shred, and make room for new things that belong there. Because we've been dividing our time between MD and NJ for the past three years, this annual shredding event hasn't happened during that time. So I started shredding on Monday and was reminded of one of the boys' favorite picture books If You Give a Mouse a Cookie when I found myself getting waylaid.

If you start some shredding, you'll probably shred and shred until the shredder overheats and you have to quit.

When you are taking the bag of shreddings to the bins, you'll go past the dining room table and see some things that should have been put where they belong (this year's tax file, a TV remote from MD that belongs with the TV, and a Christmas ornament that never got put away for some reason). 

When you head to the cellar to put the Christmas ornament away, you see the small refrigerator that you have been meaning to unplug and clean out for about three years. 

After cleaning out the refrigerator, you once again carry a bag of trash (and rotten carrots) out to the bins. When you come back inside you enter through the mud porch and see the mint plant that you have been meaning to re-pot for the past week. You go back outside to the root cellar where your potting supplies are located. You decide the root cellar is far too cluttered so you give it a quick clean-up and organize a few things. 

It's still a bit of a mess but will get cleaned out much more thoroughly later in the spring. You re-pot the mint.

You come back in through the kitchen to go see if the shredder is back to temperature and you can get back to shredding, but you see that there are dishes in the sink. You decide to wash the dishes. 

Once your tea mug is clean you can't resist pouring yourself a cup of tea and sitting at the kitchen table to enjoy it. 

There were no cookies involved this time, but I might need to bake some for the next time I do some shredding.

 

Unraveled Wednesday

I'm joining Kat and fellow Unravelers for Unraveled Wednesday, with a little bit of progress on the Antler cardigan yoke. 

I didn't take the photo until late last night so the color is all wrong, but that's the first repeat of the antler cables on the yoke. I did have the second set done, but then I noticed I had introduced a row of stockinette in the purl columns between the cables. I considered calling it a design element, but I didn't really like it, nor did I want to remember to make the same mistake going forward. I thought about dropping down and fixing those five stitches, but there are 14 of those purl columns between the cables, and I didn't trust myself to fix 70 stitches correctly. So I tinked back patiently and now that I have made that mistake, I'm careful not to repeat it. On to more knitting and new mistakes!

I finished listening to Migrations (a three-star book for me but I've found myself thinking about the characters a lot) and French Braid. I had eagerly awaited this new Anne Tyler book, but it just wasn't for me. And then there was Chouette. I woke up very early on Tuesday morning and couldn't get back to sleep, so I browsed the library's shelves. The cover intrigued me and I didn't know anything about it, so I checked it out and started listening. I listened for a few hours and then couldn't stop listening. It is the most bizarre story I've ever read, and I can't begin to explain why I liked it, but I did. This is one I'm going to be thinking about for a long time. (My review is here if you'd like to read a bit more about the book.)

What are you making and reading this week?

Poetry on Friday

I came across this poem recently and it reminded me of my mother-in-law. I do the same sort of paring down with bouquets, and I'm sure many of you do also, so I'm sharing this poem with you today. 

Bouquet 
by Tadeusz Dąbrowski

Paulina, the gardener's daughter, cares

about flowers doomed to die.

If I bring her a bouquet, she frees it

from the ribbons and gently places it in the hospice 

of a vase. When the flowers weaken, she trims their stems

and plucks off their wilting leaves. She takes

the dead ones to the compost, from the rest

she forms a new bouquet. Thus disappear in turn:

poppies, anemones, carnations, damnations, and

forget-me-nots, until finally all that's left are

gypsophila and Judas' pennies. Paulina,

the gardener's daughter, sees a bouquet in the vase

even when it's not there anymore.

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Translated from the Polish by Antonia Lloyd-Jones

You can read more about the poet here.

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I wish you mindfulness, peace, flowers and bouquets along with some poetry as the week winds down. 

They're Done!

My taxes are done, and this is all due to someone I now think of as my tax hero.

I've done my taxes myself since I was 16, and I just continued doing them once John and I got married. He makes a show of checking them over once I've completed them and it is good to have more than one pair of eyes on them since I am quite capable of making mistakes, but neither of us is a tax wizard. 

They've gotten a little more complex as the years have gone by, and buying the house in MD made them almost too complicated. I've soldiered on over the last three years, doing our Federal, DE (where John worked), NJ (which remained our primary residence), and checking tax law in MD to see what we were responsible for. I started the process for the 2021 tax year in February and after a week or so I threw up my hands in despair, and said, "I have no idea what I'm doing!" We had sold Ryan's house in CO and since our names were on the deed, we realized some of the capital gains, and we had NJ and DE as usual. John was in charge of everything I considered "retirement stuff" and he had sold some stock options and became vested in some RSUs. He didn't fully understand the tax implications and neither did I, but when the H&R Block tax software said we owed half a gazillion dollars in federal taxes, I knew it was time to seek help. 

I called a couple of friends who happened to recommend the same CPA, and he looked like he was rated highly. I called for an appointment in February and thankfully, he had a few openings. We went last Sunday afternoon with last year's tax returns and all the stuff I thought we might need. We sat with him for about 90 minutes, and he completed our Federal, NJ, DE, and CO returns. It was so efficient and almost painless that I wanted to hug him. We still owe about a quarter of a gazillion dollars, and his fees were an arm and a leg, but I would gladly have paid him more. He is e-filing everything, payments will come directly out of our bank account on April 18th, and he even got us a $68 return from DE. (Take that Delaware!) There was no fuss or shame, and I've finally learned what so many of you have realized long ago. It was worthwhile to consult a professional, and I think I've slept better since Sunday now that I'm no longer worried about taxes. John said that now that I had seen how to do it, maybe I could go back to doing our taxes next year. I just replied, "HA!" Next year we'll have the sale of the MD house to deal with, along with more RSUs, Medicare, and maybe Social security for me, so I fully intend to go back to my tax hero. It was the best thing I've done in a long time! 

Unraveled Wednesday

I'm joining Kat and fellow Unravelers for Unraveled Wednesday. Care to join me in a rousing chorus of "It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like a Sweater"? 

"A Lot" might be a stretch for this song, but the sleeves are now joined to the body and I have a couple more rows of stockinette to knit before I start knitting the antler cable yoke in earnest. It looks more like a sweater than anything I've knit in the last three decades!

In the reading department, I finished The Island of Missing Trees (it was excellent and will probably be one of my favorite books this year) and Groundskeeping (a pretty good 4-star book). I've started Remote Sympathy as a real book and am listening to Migrations as an audiobook. Both are books that I need to concentrate on so they're slow going right now, but that's okay. Sometimes it's nice to slow down and read something dense. (I believe Kym calls books like these chewy). 

What are you making and reading this week?