April Journal

Not much posting this month. First and foremost, busy with life. Secondly, and quite frankly, exhausted. And a close third is, well, I’m finding it hard to re-attain the New Normal. Er, the Old Normal.

I finished my night-time/weekend job, tax preparation, twelve days ago. It was a crazy hectic April up to then. I worked every day but one. Now, I didn’t mind it, per se, because I like this job for some bizarre perverse reason. The big stressball part of it was family life, especially now that Patch is doing all sort of travel soccer things – practices, extra practices, and games. Little One still has band on Mondays. And the wife has her 80-hour job in the Big Apple, which necessitates all sorts of logistical pretzel bends to get everyone everywhere they need to be, as often as possible.

Last year at the end of tax season the Mrs. and I went to Sanibel Island for four days. Didn’t do that this time around, so I don’t have the clean break I did back then. Instead, I had one evening off to myself (Wednesday the 19th). I savored some Chinese take-out, since everyone else in the house dislikes Chinese take-out and caught up on some DVR’d TV. Later, I read a book. Yeah, that was my recovery from tax season.

Since then it’s been one thing after another.

I chose to read two dense books (a biography of Napoleon and a history of the Orthodox Christian Chruch), so I’m kinda slogged down in a literary sense. I’m also finding it difficult to get myself back in to some sort of shape. Haven’t worked out since December, and lived off pizza from the pizzeria next to my tax office for the past three-and-a-half months. I guesstimated that I ate 13 pizzas over the course of tax seasons. That translates into ten pounds on my belly.

I suppose I should mention I did quite well this tax season. I tripled the number of returns I did (up to 132) and quadrupled the dollar amount of revenue I brought in (up to $33,000). So my bosses are happy with my performance. Next year with some more certs and tests under my belt, I should make some decent money doing it.

Since tax day I’ve been nonstop: a trip to the dentist, a garage sale, two soccer games, two soccer practices, two trips to the movie theater (a subject for an upcoming post), and a team dinner Dutch-style to cap off the whole tax thing. All I want is about three days in a row – evenings, I should say, as the day job is still the same as it ever was – three evenings in a row where no one is demanding anything of me, I get a little bit of peace and quiet, and I can make some headway through that Napoleon book!

Some nebulous posts on deck (I write them in my head in the shower, then forget them when I’m actually at a computer) –

Hopper’s two nights out at the cinemaplex

What the heck is up with the interest in Orthodox Christianity?

Oh, yeah, more problems with the Catholic Church

What the heck is up with the interest in Napoleon?

A toe-in-the-water review of a new TV series I’ve been watching

The Literary On-Deck circle

And more!

I’m thinking of attempting a post-a-day in May, like I used ta two or three years ago. Might be fun. Certainly should not be stressful. I think lately I think every post should be the Mona Lisa of posts, and this perfectionism tends to make me tend not to write. Well, the post-a-day philosophy cures that. A few nights ago I randomly perused some stuff I wrote years ago and I enjoyed the irreverent, light-hearted, weirdly or downright humorous elements in the little posts I did. Might try to recapture that coming up.

Anyway, come back tomorrow! It’ll be like déjà vu all over again!