A Work at Home Mom’s Blog

My living room is so cramped it’s not even funny. It’s not huge, but it’s decent sized. But there’s just too much stuff in there. The air hockey table is the main thing that’s driving me nuts. It takes up all of the space from the front door to one wall, making rearranging like I want to impossible. And we have too many chairs to fit comfortably in there.

The good news is that one of the chairs I’ve been dying to get rid of is in the process of disintegrating. A month or so ago the footrest on the recliner part broke. Then last week one of the arms broke off. I think I’ve finally convinced Hubby to let go of it. Now it’s just a matter of getting him to haul it off.

There’s also another rickety chair that I want to get rid of. That would leave us with one couch and one chair. I don’t particularly like that last chair either, but I can live with it. And my brother has another chair for me that I need to pick up, so then we’ll be back up to a reasonable amount of seating.

What I’d like to do is find somewhere to put the air hockey table or get rid of it, and move the TV to where it is. If we could find a smaller TV stand that could handle our behemoth of a TV, we could do that with plenty of room to spare. Then we could move the couch along the other wall, put chairs on either side, and have a pretty roomy living room.

Maybe all of this will happen one day. The biggest obstacle is that blasted air hockey table. It’s fun and all, but it needs to be somewhere else. Too bad the basement’s so damp and leaky. There’s plenty of room for it down there.

Hubby and I were talking about money issues the other day, and he got to talking about how he wished he could get his own business started. I wish he could too, but he never wants to do anything of the sort except when we’re extremely low on funds. Back when we had money he was interested, but wouldn’t come off of the money to get started.

I think part of his problem is that he doesn’t really know what he wants to do. Sometimes he talks about putting one of those car lifts in the garage and doing oil changes and other maintenance. Sometimes he says he wants to get into masonry. The most frequent thing he talks about doing is yard work and other odd jobs, but he’s already found out that there’s not much money in that around here, especially for a small operation.

At any rate, I would love to see him get his own business started. As hard as it is sometimes, it’s so rewarding to have that kind of control over your life. When the time comes that we have some extra money again, I hope he’ll seize the opportunity and try to get something started.

I still haven’t gotten a couple of my tax forms, but I couldn’t wait any longer. I had to get started on my taxes. Money is ridiculously tight right now, and we need that refund. And seeing how ridiculously tight money is, I decided to bite the bullet and try to do the taxes myself, against my better judgment.

So I went for the TurboTax Free File option, as I’ve done for the past few years. Up until this year I was quite happy to use it, because my taxes weren’t terribly complicated. I had enough home business income to make it a little more complex last year, but at no time did I feel that I was in serious danger of screwing up. This year, however, is a different story.

Not only do I have my business income, but we also bought a home. Now, buying a home changes your taxes a lot on its own, but when you have a home business, it makes it seriously confusing! I had two different home offices last year, so I have to figure expenses for both of them. And then there are the subtle and often unclear differences between owning a mobile home and owning a house, which I’m having serious trouble with. Ugh.

TurboTax keeps suggesting that I purchase the edition for small business owners, and the one for new home owners. Can you even do both? Not that it matters, because I can’t afford it. Both of them combined would be much less than paying a professional, but when you’re rolling up change to buy groceries, it’s just not an option. So I’ll just have to keep wrestling with it until I’m comfortable enough to file.

At least it looks like we’ll get a decent refund. If we didn’t need to catch up on the bills and get a new computer, I’d put it toward some luggage and a much-needed long vacation. But if nothing else, maybe having it to get us caught back up on the bills will make it possible for us to go somewhere this summer. I’m not getting my hopes up, but maybe.

I have come to the conclusion that my kitchen faucet is possessed. When we first moved in, it acted more or less like a normal faucet. But it seemed like with each use, you had to turn the cold water handle a little further to turn it off. Then it started making this horrible thumping racket when I would try to just barely turn on the cold water.

Now it’s to the point where you have to turn the cold water on about halfway before it will quit making that awful noise. But if you turn it that far and then turn it back, you can usually turn it down and have a little water without the sound effects. That’s not all, though. I noticed a couple of days ago that it’s leaking around the base.

I haven’t had time to examine the problem yet, but I do know that it’s not leaking all the time. It may be just when the water is on, which isn’t that big of a deal seeing how it’s coming out on top of the sink rather than underneath. But I have a sinking feeling (pardon the pun) that the faucet isn’t going to last much longer.

I suppose I should go ahead and find some eFaucets coupons and have them ready for when replacement is no longer optional. Might as well make sure I get the best deal possible when that day comes. It’s not like a kitchen faucet is something that it’s easy to live without.

I learned to ride a bicycle when I was about nine or so. Older than most kids, but I didn’t have any brothers, sisters or friends who were close to my age to help me learn. But honestly, I did learn to ride one. Don’t try to tell Hubby that, though.

I hadn’t ridden a bicycle in over a decade when I met him. But one day after we were married and had Pumpkin, he talked me into getting on his bicycle. Big mistake. I was a bit rusty, but you know what they say: Once you learn how, you never forget. And I didn’t forget. But the bike was way too tall for my short legs, and I couldn’t even get taken off. Hubby still doesn’t believe that I can ride one.

It didn’t help matters when I tried to ride his brother’s motor scooter. I couldn’t make it through the yard on it, because I couldn’t bring myself to pick both feet up. And here I was thinking about getting one (or better yet, a motorcycle) to save gas. I guess I’d better either get more practice first, or put the numbers of some motorcycle accident attorneys on speed dial on my cell phone.

One of these days, I will show him that I can ride a bicycle, and I will learn to ride that scooter. And when I do, I’m going to shout it from the mountaintops.

I’ve been waiting and waiting to get the forms I need to file my taxes. I only lack one (or maybe two, but they would be from divisions of the same company). So I decided to call around and find out where I could get them done inexpensively.

I thought maybe some small local service could give me a better deal than the big boys. So I looked some up online and started calling. Here’s how the conversation went with the first one I called:

Lady on phone: XYZ Tax Service. (No, that’s not the real name.)
Me: Hi, I was wondering how much you charge to do taxes.
Her: It’s $74 for federal and state.
Me: Well, I’m self-employed, and I usually get the Earned Income Credit. Does that make a difference?
Her: Yes. That would make it around $120.
Me: Okay. Where are you located?
Her: Umm… I’m not taking new clients. Bye. *click*

Not taking new clients. Then why did she quote me prices when I asked? She could have just said so then. Kind of makes me wonder if she knows what she’s doing. Maybe she heard how complicated my return was going to be and decided she didn’t want to fool with it, either due to incompetence or being too busy. I’m guessing it’s a very small operation, so that may have been the case. But I hate being lied to. And when a business does it, it makes me want to tell the whole entire world.

I’m thinking about getting someone else to call and see if she says she can do theirs. And if she does, calling back and asking why she lied to me. Probably won’t do it, but it did cross my mind.

Anyway, I’m thinking about going with Liberty. They quoted the same price, and they have done ours before and got us back the most we’ve ever gotten. There’s also another local place I called that will do them a little cheaper, so I’m considering them too. We qualify for free filing at the local library, but the people doing that do not have to be certified or anything. I think I’d be better off going with someone who’s in that type of business.

But that first place I called definitely won’t be getting my business, nor a recommendation from me. I’m good about spreading the word when I find a good product or service, so it’s their loss. But I’m betting I wouldn’t have been pleased if I went there anyway.

I am not a morning person. At all. Hubby has to practically drag me out of bed in the mornings. And if I don’t take my ADD medicine, I usually end up dozing until 10 or 11. Really, I’m not lazy, mornings just are not a good time of day for me.

So I’ve decided that I need to start doing something to perk myself up in the AM. I don’t like coffee, and I can’t drink much caffeine anyway. So I thought listening to the right kind of music might help. This morning, as soon as my computer warmed up, I listened to a few good rockin’ tunes. It certainly put me in a better mood, but we’ll see how it affects my productivity.

Here’s a video of one of the songs that gets me going. It’s a little on the psychedelic side, so don’t adjust your video card:

Pretty cool, huh? I think so, anyway. If you’re interested, you can get the MP3 here. Click on the “Downloads” link at the top of the page, and it will be the only Yogi Bear song listed.

In case you’re wondering, I do listen to music other than cartoon songs. As you might have figured out from that selection, I like rock, but my tastes are rather eclectic. One of these days I’ll post videos of some more of my favorite songs.

I heard on the radio a couple of weeks ago that WWE Wrestling was coming to Viking Hall in Bristol, which is not prohibitively far from us. At first I was excited, because I’ve been promising Hubby that we’d go see it one of these days. Then I remembered that we don’t have any money to spare for tickets.

Well, I just found out that the radio station I was listening to is going to be giving away tickets this coming week. I’m not too good at being the right caller for these kinds of things, but I’m going to try to win some. It’s not often that wrestling comes to familiar territory. Well, Hubby has never been there, but I used to live about 10 minutes from Viking Hall. I went to see Def Leppard there once, too. So I could find it without GPS, or even a map printed off the Internet.

Wish me luck! We desperately need to get out and have some fun.

I’ve had trouble with my install of Microsoft Word ever since I got it. It’s very buggy, and I wasn’t able to install anything but the most basic stuff. I guess that’s what happens when you buy an old version for $30. Not saying it wasn’t worth that 30 bucks, because it’s what has enabled me to do my work for a couple of years now. But it has been a royal pain at times, freezing up and being excruciatingly slow at times.

I heard about OpenOffice a while back, but never got around to trying it. But I’ve had an inordinate amount of MS Word trouble lately, so I finally decided to download it. Heck, there’s nothing to lose, because it’s free, and I’ve heard good things about it. So far I’ve just installed it and done a couple of short test documents to see how well it converts files to doc and txt format, the two formats I use the most. It passed those tests with flying colors.

If anybody out there has tried it and has any thoughts to share, I’m all ears. I’ll probably post a review once I’ve used it more.

We got a little skiff of snow last night. It wasn’t enough to even cover the ground, not by a longshot. Yet they still called off school today. I’m beginning to think that they get paid extra for dragging the school year out into the summer.

The forecast is calling for a substantial amount of snow in the area. I’m happily on the least snow-prone side of the county, and we’re only supposed to get a couple of inches. But on the other side of the county, they are calling for up to 10 inches.

Will we get it? Who knows. Most of the time when they cry “Big Bad Snow,” we get next to nothing. I’m hoping this time won’t be any different, because even though I stay close to home most of the time anymore, I like being able to get out if I need to. That, and when school is out, I have a hard time getting my work done. I can’t expect poor little Pumpkin to entertain herself all day, after all.

Anybody want to place bets on how much snow we get? I say 4 inches on the snowy side of the county. I’m willing to put up my entire jewelry box, contents included. Nothing really worth anything in there, but it’s the best I can do right now. Unless anybody’s interested in an air hockey table…