Archive for the ‘Misc. Griping’ Category

Being from Northwest Wisconsin, I admittedly come from the stock of cautious but friendly and overly polite. So it goes without saying that most of the time, the people I deal with are like me. And then there are the exceptions…

This particular exception was mean…scary mean. The kind of mean that thrives on watching doormats like me squirm in discomfort. They get off on it like a sick high. You know what I’m talking about, the ones who will look for the slightest hint of pushback against whatever offense they are raving about and use it to fuel their rage. I’m pretty sure these are the “soft skills” that collection agencies look for when they’re hiring.

I’ve been around long enough to have experienced  my share of bullies, divas, and drama queens. The problem is I have never developed the thick skin required to either blow them off or put them in their place. That’s just not me. I avoid conflict like the plague.

I may not have a backbone (figuratively speaking), but I do have a mystery series. It’s just waiting for colorful characters to cross my path and make an impression on me, good or bad. So, go ahead, humiliate me, chastise me in public, get some sick pleasure out of watching my Scandinavian pallor flush like a first degree sunburn. I’ll probably just take it on the outside…but on the inside I’m mentally gene spicing you and filing certain characteristics away for later. You never know when they might come in handy.

There comes a time in a woman’s life when she just has to learn to make friends with herself. Sounds silly doesn’t it?  Unfortunately, most of us were raised by our culture to believe that our appearances were somehow mistakes of nature, and science and technology was created to make us better. We’re too fat, too old, our pores are too big, we stink, we have too much hair in all the wrong places, and the hair we’re allowed to keep on our skulls is the wrong color, style, texture, etc. If we have boobs, they’re only permissible if they are hiked up to our chins by spandexic feats of engineering that leave such painful marks of the day’s suffering behind, it looks like our bras are secretly made out of sand paper.

Men have their own problems, and it usually revolves around the function of their pee-pees. Beyond that, they don’t seem to worry all that much about their appearance, especially if they are happily ensconced in a committed relationship. Case in point: If I go up a pants size, the world is a horrible place and I should just crawl into a dark hole and die, lest I shame my species with my repugnance. My husband goes up a pants size, shrugs, and observes that he must now buy bigger pants.

Obviously, this is different for men who make their living looking a certain way, or are single and want to attract a mate. That’s because, in my humble opinion, men are motivated by more instinctual, less complicated rules (see this post). Women, on the other hand, are neurotic nightmares of their own making. We never like ourselves, outside, and sometimes in. That’s why we worry. That’s why we don’t sleep. That’s why we have wrinkles. That’s why science invented botox.

Ah, botox. Is something wrong with me, that I think it’s completely insane to voluntarily allow another human being to put a needle just a couple of centimeters from my frontal lobe and inject pig botulism into my scalp to paralyze the nerves in my face for several weeks, and pay him/her exorbitant amounts of cash to do so? It’s about as crazy as letting another human being put hot wax all over one’s coochie and rip out the hair…oh wait, women are doing that too.

I was looking for something in one of my old photo albums, and I came across a picture of myself when I was eighteen. It blew my mind. I had no hips, seriously, I was so skinny looking in that picture, and I remember feeling grotesquely fat. I remember obsessing just as much about my weight SEVENTY POUNDS AGO as I do now. It’s just ridiculous.

Do you know why we don’t have a cure for cancer? Do you know why we haven’t solved the energy crisis, or found world peace, or gone to Mars? It’s because our science is being spent on creating superficial, useless products that only accomplish one stupid thing, perpetuate the war women have with themselves. Stop it. Stop it right now. If that former hottie of me demonstrates nothing else, it’s that I will never win the war with myself. Torturing my body and my brain for the hope of some small molecule of self-satisfaction is a waste of time and money and energy that could go to something so much more useful.

Your body is not the enemy. Your body keeps your brain from being a useless pile of wet sawdust on the floor. Accept it for what it is and appreciate who you are right now, cellulite, zits, hairy moles and all. Of course I have wrinkles. I have a lot on my mind. If you notice that my forehead looks like a 3D road map of Nebraska, that’s OK. It means I’ve been thinking…

It’s this time of year when I yearn for the good old days, when I worked a regular, full time job. I don’t miss the hour plus commuting to the Cities, where I would listen to heavy metal to circumvent my potential road rage. I don’t miss the Dilbert meets Office Space mentality of corporate America, where the focus is more on the ass (kissing and covering) and less on the head (that’s where the brain is. Lord forbid, we acknowledge it).

What I do miss is the EZ40 tax return. When you work full time for a big outfit, they have this groovy withholding mechanism in the accounting department called FICA. Basically what it does is forward the government waaay more of your money than they rightly deserve to spend however they want all year long. Then when the new year starts, and you get your cute little W2 form, you get to file what is basically a grievance to get your damn money back, and the government acts like they are giving you a gift. I miss that brainwashing.

People who work in this delusional dynamic happily go to their accountant (if they own property or have kids, because itemized W40s can get complicated), confident that they have a sizable check going into their account a month from that time. Entire industries are built around those people. Need a loan from the bank? Just bring in your W2’s. Want to get a car? Same thing. I used this handy option when I worked full time and the furnace died in my house on Thanksgiving (calamities always seem to befall me on holidays. More on that later).

When you belong to that cursed scorge on society called “Self Employed”, nothing is EZ, especially taxes. W2 People get their income taxes filed as soon as possible, usually February (conveniently corresponding to all of the President Day sales, oddly enough). 1099 People wait until the last possible minute to prepare and file those wretched forms; March, if they are organized, April if they are not. Because 1099 people don’t give the government money ahead of time, they typically don’t get squat back. There’s nothing to look forward to.

Since I have waxed poetic on numerous occasions about my propensity to put things off, it’s no great surprise that this year, taxes were prepared from 9:30am to 5:00pm for our tax appointment with Steve-the-tax-guy at 6:15pm.

Self Employed people have to keep track of everything. Everyone who works is familiar with the terms, Gross income (it’s not covered in slime, it just means massive; not a great term, but it’s what used) and Net income (like a fishing net with lots of holes; you get to keep whatever doesn’t fall out). For W2 people it’s simply two numbers on the form. For 1099 people it consists of insurmountable calculations involving multiple tax forms called Schedules (which I can only equate to the sheer amount of time it takes to fill them out).

On the outset, it looks like self-employed people get away with crap, because you can write so much off. They don’t. The IRS loves to audit self-employed people for the same reason anyone who loans money hates self -employed people. They are not the norm, and they are always picked on. For this reason, meticulous records and receipts must be maintained and presented as proof that what you are writing off is legit. It’s like being self-employed automatically makes you guilty of something, and you have to present evidence to the government so they don’t throw you in jail; like being self-employed is akin to being on parole.

So, we have roughly two weeks to cough up money that most people get screwed out of all year. Except, we only have to bend over once, and we’re not ironically happy about it. In the end, I guess it all evens out.