Taxes... ARGH

I really severely heinously dislike taxes. I do my stuff online at HR Block and there's a little window in the upper corner that reads out your refund as you plug in the numbers. I started on one and as I put in my W-2s (a total of $11,000 for the year) and my 1099-R (401k distribution), my refund went from over $1,000 to $800 and then when I plugged in my $1,000 in medical expenses for the year... It went down to $323!!!

Seriously? Really? I mean, I'm already insulted enough by the fact that I'd have to be making $6-7,000 to qualify for welfare or any type of assistance from the gov't to whom I have dutifully paid my taxes since I was 15 and now you have to tell me that since (with taxes and medical expenses deducted) I make $9,000 to live on for 12 months, you're not going to give me any of it back? Oh, oh, and lest we forget, the EITC (Earned Income Tax Credit) laws were changed last year, so since I'm not 25-65 it doesn't matter that I'm poor. Apparently they assume my parents are still supporting me?

ARGH!

People wonder what's wrong with our country, and I promise I'm not going to rant, but this has to give some kind of minor HINT as to what the deal is.

/rant

In the end I'm getting a fairly decent refund, it'll pay for the deposit on the wedding and hopefully a little more since it'll sit in a high-interest savings account until October, but it still just drives me up the wall that we (aka, the lawmakers) have such a skewed idea of what poverty is. We want people living in filth and dying because they can't afford medical care before we'll offer a helping hand. And, if you've paid taxes for almost 10 years and asked for nothing... oh, well! Wayne got fired and was making $275/week on unemployment. I work three days a week and don't make that.

/really end rant...

I didn't get much sleep last night, my brother was up and I finally had just been up so long I stayed up-- then I had an allergy issue and had to take a Benadryl so I don't think I made much sense when Jeremy called at lunch... I ended up sleeping until 2, so I didn't get any packing done, though it was raining so I wouldn't have been able to move it anyway. Work was really slow, though I did get the macadamia nut encrusted scallops and chocolate bread pudding (two of my favorites!), and basically the day ended up being pretty rotten which is kind of the story with my birthday every year. Except last year, I want to go back to last year. Jeremy made me some crazy brownie concoction, we got Papa Johns, watched Burn Notice, and he gave me my beautiful earrings (which have come off twice since-- both for surgery).

Apparently my birthday present is in the mail (from Jeremy) and he's more and more sounding like he'll come up for Valentine's day-- he says he won't if the weather is bad, but the weather was pretty rotten at Thanksgiving and he still came up. I'm also looking forward to going down to Savannah (at least, that's the plan) in a couple weeks to see Sara! I love both Savannah and Sara and haven't seen either in several years, so it ought to be a great weekend. Jan and Marc are headed down to Florida for a conference that weekend, so Jeremy doesn't know if he'll come up and meet us for Friday night or not.

Anyway, I'm gonna see if I can't get a couple bags packed up before I go to bed since I'm watching a House Hunters in Austin! Oooh, maybe I can use part of my refund to put towards my ticket to the best bridal party EVER this summer with Dill and Osso Buco by Casey! Yeehaw!

A little something

So I'm seriously considering starting up my own custom cards business. I hand make most of my special events cards and while Christmas got a little out of hand this year (as I custom-tailored each card for each family), almost all of the cards usually end up pretty sharp and darned cute, I think. I don't have the capability to do anything super fancy, but I can do some nice, hand-made cards and get the envelopes to go with them from like PaperDirect (if I need special colors) or something. I could sell them on Etsy and possibly market them to some of the boutiques in Decatur-- have some stock designs and then offer custom type stuff on a website? Plus, the materials aren't that expensive and since I only work part-time, my time isn't all that valuable...

I don't know, what do you guys think? I know there are lots of you who come by, but nobody ever says anything! Well, with the exception of Em who left a note last night :)

Things are going along here, I ordered my save-the-dates tonight and I'm really excited! Hopefully I'll have them out in the next week and a half/two weeks. The template that I ordered ($3 to save myself hours of screwing around with layout in Microsoft Word? Hells yeah!) is downloadable, so I can go ahead and figure out fonts and layouts and all that sort of thing before the actual paper gets here so I'll just print 'em out and address them on slow nights at work, maybe have Em over to help with the rest.

Work hasn't been too bad, and I have my car back which is a huge weight off my shoulders, so now I have to replace the Mass Air Flow sensor and plug the exhaust leak, which will hopefully get done by mid to late February so I can drive down and see Jeremy! He's also talking about coming up here for Valentine's day weekend, which would be really sweet. I have to work Valentine's night, but there's a good chance the dishwasher won't show up, so maybe he can make himself useful during that time and do some dishes... hey, it'd be an extra $30-50!

I'm finally exhausted enough to fall asleep without tossing and turning (not that I wasn't exhausted when I got home, but mom was still packing so I ended up waking up a little bit which was awful), so I'm going to hit the hay and try to prepare for the whirlwind of packing tomorrow morning...