Petey the Dog

 

Yes I am allergic to dogs, but that does not mean that I am immune to their charms. We make a weekly ritual of stopping at Petsmart every Saturday before grocery shopping. Usually we just peruse the cats and go home, but a couple of weeks ago we met Petey and her siblings. We went back on Sunday to see if anyone was left and there was this cute little puppy with a huge soft puppy belly and an enormous cold wet nose sitting there all alone. We could not resist.
She's been with us for three weeks now and it has not been easy. Our house smells like a kennel while we try and house train her. The kids sometimes hide in their rooms for a break from her boundless energy.
But at night when she gets tired there are fights over who gets to snuggle with her. She is a mix of beagle and daushund, and definitly more beagle compared to her short leggged black and brown siblings.
I'm not totally sure it will work out for us with her and the cats and my allergies, but we are giving it a try. Don't get all up in arms we aren't going to dump her again, we have a grandma willing to take her if we give up and can't handle it any more.
For now she is a sweet little girl who keeps shitting on my rugs and wants desperately to curl up on my desk while I try and write. It's a love/hate relationship.

Spring Break

So it's Spring Break and I'm bored out of my gourd. I just drove all the way into town to go to the post office and the library. Then for fun I took a cruise down the main drag and was lured in by our fancy new Dunkin Donuts. It's a big deal that we have that Dunkin Donuts. No the donuts are not the greatest, but it's there and I had to pull in even though it was 11:30 and I wasn't even hungry. I had to make that trip into town a little bit more interesting. I bought a dozen and a chocolate milk, downed a chocolate glazed cake and a powdered vanilla creme with my milk in the parking lot and then headed home.
That will be the highlight of my day.
I feel like we are missing out. It seems as if the whole town went out of town this week. All the college kids left of course, but also a lot of the townies too. The mall was deserted on Monday, Target on Tuesday, and Sam's Club on Wednesday. I remember last Friday when all the kids at school were talking about all the cool places they were going and I was envious, of 8 year olds. Of course they were just going to Mexico, or Phoenix, or Cali, but still I was totally jealous.

We are stuck at home penniless, trying to catch up on cleaning and paying overdue bills.
We do have those two big trips coming up, so it's not like we aren't going to travel, we just aren't travelling this week like everyone else. It 's frustrating. The weather has been kind of crappy and when it is sunny it's accompanied by a bone chilling wind of at least 20 mph.

I feel like I should be doing more. So here I am. If I can't be doing something big and important at least I can be here writing. I love to write, but don't do it often enough. Lately a lot of the crap I have been putting up here has been put up in the interest of getting more page views per day, not like it's working, but still I am editing myself heavily in order to appeal to somebody, but I don't know who.
I write here because I like to broadcast stuff. I like to have an audience and I sometimes feel like I have something important to say. Other times I just want to get some stuff off of my chest, exercise my fingers and try and make someone laugh or feel like someone else out there has problems too. It's not all roses, unicorns and rainbows. I like to read about other people and know what's going on with them and compare my life to theirs, and maybe you like to do the same. It's like literary voyeurism.
Your welcome.

All of that censoring I've been doing has meant little or no posts here. So I'm going to try and stop thinking and try to just write with no censoring.
I hope you enjoy.

Taxes on a forgiven loan

Let's get the business out of the way first. I am currently awaiting a phone call from my accountant about whether or not we will owe $22,000 in taxes this year. Why you may ask? Well it's all about that forgiven second mortgage.
See the deal is that the tax exemption is only on mortgage loans forgiven for the purpose of initially purchasing the home. Since we took out the loan after the purchase... after we had put down $140,000 on the house and had no cash left, we will now owe taxes on the forgiven amout. So apparently taxes on $79,000 for us comes to around $22,000.
Is there a way out of this mess? Our accountant is looking. Since it is spring break around these parts I probably won't hear from him this week. I'm on pins and needles. Needless to say we don't have an extra $22,000 laying around. I'm not sure how the IRS handles that sort of thing, but it will be an interesting ride and I will document it all for you here.