Will Work for Yarn: Nothing is certain...

Well, sorry for disappearing into a black hole for a few days there. It is that time again and it took me about 4 days to complete:

THE TAXES

I sometimes think nostagically of the days before I started my own business. I used to think gathering information for our taxes was a real drag. Now I know it is a real drag!

And it's my own darned fault. Because I vow every year that I will start collecting the information every month so that the following year I'll be ready without the superhuman effort I have to make each March to get all my income and expenses entered into the spreadsheets I designed for tracking them, plus figuring out the value of my non-consumables inventory. Last year I even bought some special software designed for stamping demonstrators to track their businesses, but did I use it? NOOOOO. Ah well. Some people make resolutions at the beginning of a new year. Mine are made the day I fax my tax information off to my dad. And like most resolutions, mine are doomed to failure.

My dad has been doing taxes for years and specializes in direct sales. If you are a Mary Kay lady it's even possible you've seen him at one of your meetings; he often travels to talk about taxes to Mary Kay consultants. So I know my stuff is in good hands. I haven't gotten my returns back yet, but I know I'll get a nice refund!

The other thing that occupied my time was making our traditional Irish dinner. I'm part Irish. In fact, I've always held that if you have some Irish blood in you, it ends up contaminating the rest of you until you are ALL Irish. So I do try each year to make corned beef and cabbage. Yes, I know they don't actually eat this in Ireland (they make something called Cottage Ham instead), but we Irish over on this side of the water DO. Plus soda bread, which is always great right out of the oven and really loses something after it gets cold.

This year St. Patrick's Day was complicated by the fact that it was on a Friday. So while we're not Catholic, my kids do go to a Catholic school and we attend the fish fry there during Lent. If we stayed home and ate corned beef we would a) have to deprive our school of the income from our dinners and b) I would miss a day where I don't have to cook, a very important determination! So instead we opted for our dinner on the Sunday after St. Pat's, or yesterday. Here is the result...sorry the photos are not as good as they looked right after I took them. I will say that I am a dab hand at making this dinner, especially since I started relying on my cooking instincts that have developed over the last 20 some years (yes, I started cooking as an infant!) instead of blindly following recipes.

You'll notice no knitting appears in this post; because I have done very little in the last week. I guess I am in a mini slump. None of my projects are appealing to me, but I refuse, yes, I REFUSE to start something new, even though that sock yarn continues to whisper my name. I'll just have to lump it and pick up that afghan or the squatter's sweater and force myself to continue. Quit laughing!