I'm miffed.  You haven't published anything AND the photos you added to my SERIOUS article Make Your Own Codpiece to Go With the Nipple Tassels We Told You How To Make Earlier have gone.  I particularly needed the one of W Bush the day he gave his premptive victory speech... 

PMed you - hope all's well

People were wondering? Some thought we scared you off with our over zealous political comments. I said no, you were just on a breather!  I was right! I think you will be great in Family & Home! You will offer a unique perspective.

I just saw a Oprah show which featured Stay at Home dads. Not by choice like yourself, but because the wife was the only one who could find a job.  Apparently unlike past recessions in America the women are going back to work first! I find this is true in my own personal job hunting adventures.

Anyway the men are having a hard time "adjusting" to their children, and the new job. You can help! Speaking of Jobs  & Careers I too will be a new feature writer in that category.

Writing well is hard work, and sometimes we all need a mental vacation! Good luck in your future endeavor with Xomba.

Welcome back!

I was pretty obsessed the first half of the year. I had made the rash decision to do my late mother’s final tax return as well as my own instead of hiring a tax preparer, and since they were both complicated for boring reasons I won’t go into, and I’m dyslexic when it comes to money matters anyway, it was quite the hair-yanking experience. When I finally put it all together for the IRS in April I included a letter explaining that I was an idiot so I may have made some stupid mistakes, and that if I hadn’t figured them out right, please don’t send me to prison, just let me know and I’d send them a barrel of money if necessary. Well, something like that, anyway. Then I settled into my padded cell to scream obscenities and pull out the remaining strands of my hair.

I got a response from them in due order, and it turned out that I had slightly underestimated my own taxes but my mother got a refund, which was a happy outcome, as far as I’m concerned. They even helpfully explained which items I hadn’t calculated correctly, those sweeties. Amazing what a little groveling does. And next year there’ll be just one tax return to worry about and the complications will be all mine. Oh joy. So I can relax. Sort of.

What I’ve learned from all this is that taxes suck. I’m no teabagger, but something has to be done to simplify our massively obscure income tax code. As a liberal, I accept the need for taxes, but it’s so difficult for a layperson to understand the regulations and which forms to use when, and then do the higher math once you figure all that out. Of course, if they made it too simple, H&R Block and the rest of those blood suckers would be out of business, and we can’t have that.

So anyway, that’s my excuse for being the big bad grouch I was, back then. Now I’ve returned to the lovable mid-size version of grouch I normally am! Happy days are here again.