blame it on the girls who know what to do
Hello friends! It's a very lazy Sunday morning, so now seemed like a good time to write an entry. And I'm still going to call it morning, even though it's after noon, because it still feels like 11:30. Daylight savings totally screwed me up this time, because Brad and I stayed up late watching a movie last night, so I didn't get to bed till after 1, then woke up around 8 something, because that's just what my body does. I stayed in bed for another hour or so, trying to get more sleep, but got up around 9:30, only to realize it was now technically 10:30. Blech. I hate feeling like half the day is gone by the time I get up, but at least I'm not in any rush to get things done today. I have off this week for March break, so I have lots of time to relax and get things done as I feel motivated, instead of having to squeeze it all in over the 2 day weekend.
No major March break plans, as I can't afford to go anywhere again, but my main goal is to finish my sweater. I'm maybe 3/4 done the first sleeve (my 3rd attempt!), then I just have to do the other sleeve and all the finishing bits, and I think with the week off, that's totally do-able. Otherwise, I may try to see friends here and there, although no definite plans have been confirmed yet. I had invited Gabe to come over one day this week for knitting/baking/general mischief, but that might be turning into a thing with some of the other girls as well; there are tentative discussions about dinner with Catherine and Sue, and the other Sue may be stopping by for lunch and knitting one day as well. Still, everything is a bit up in the air, and I definitely need to do some cleaning before anyone comes over!
I finally got my T4 the week before last, so Brad and I decided to go have our taxes done when I got paid on Friday. We had opted to go back to H&R Block, hoping that they would be able to get us a bigger refund than what we got when I did our taxes myself last year with TurboTax. Ugh, what a clusterfuck, though. We got there around 7 on Friday night, and sat there waiting for over an hour before someone could help us. This was especially fun because we still needed to go grocery shopping and neither of us had had dinner yet (Brad actually hadn't eaten all day). The woman did our tax returns, but then there was an issue when we went to pay and I tried to use the coupon that they had emailed me. It was one of those 'come back and file with us again (because we'd used H&R Block two years ago, but didn't last year) and we'll give you $25 off' coupons, but for some reason they kept getting errors when they tried to input the coupon code and it wouldn't let them use it. We waited around forever for them to try to figure it out, but eventually just asked if we could come back the next day to pay and finish up, because by this point it was 9:30 and we were both tired and hungry.
You see where this is going, right? I went back yesterday after dropping Brad off for his gaming stuff with the guys, getting to H&R Block around 12:30 or 12:40. The woman who'd done our taxes the night before wasn't there, but another woman who had been there that night was, and she recognized me as the one with the coupon code issue. She tells me to have a seat and says she'll be with me in a minute. Well, a minute in H&R Block time means that I again sat there for another hour waiting, and when she finally called me into her cubicle, she went over my whole return again, trying to figure out why the coupon code wasn't working (I assure you, it had nothing to do with anything on the return itself). Eventually she figured out that the system wasn't processing the code because the last time I used H&R Block, I had my temporary SIN, and now I have a permanent one, so since the numbers didn't match, the system couldn't figure out that I had actually been there before. Oy. So the woman tries a bunch of things to make the code work using the old SIN, but still has no success. Eventually, she says that the office manager had done the math to figure out what my price should be with the coupon code, and they were just going to have me pay so they could e-file, and then when the office manager was there on Monday, she would work some magic in the system to make my receipt match what I'd paid, and then send me a copy of the receipt. Why we couldn't have just done that in the first place and saved me from sitting there for another 2+ hours, I don't know.
The whole thing was ridiculous, and I didn't get out of there till close to 3. But at least our taxes are done, and hopefully my refund will come sooner rather than later. They had the option to do instant cash back on a credit card or check, but their fee would have taken about $200 out of our refund, and since my refund is already much smaller than what I was hoping for, I didn't really want to lose any more of it. The amount we're getting back will be enough to pay off Brad's remaining tuition balance, pay off my debt management thing from the States, and pay back all of the small personal loans from friends and family, which will certainly help. We were hoping to have enough to also put a good dent in paying down our credit cards, but that's not going to happen right now. At least with my debt management thing paid off, that'll free up about $150 each month, which we can always turn around and put towards the credit cards instead. I still have to do my US taxes too, but that's just a matter of printing a couple forms, filling out a couple lines and mailing it in. I refuse to pay to file a paper that says I owe the government nothing and they owe me nothing.
I've decided, after being on it for the past 6.5 years continuously, that I would like to go off of birth control. I'd really like to let my body get back to regulating its own cycles, and start learning/remembering what my body is like without all the artificial hormones. Plus, we want to have babies at some point, and it might be helpful to know what my body is like on its own before then. Anyone else gone off the pill and want to share anything about their experience? I know it varies greatly from woman to woman, and the pill could be out of my system in a few weeks if I'm lucky, but I'd like to know if anyone has any words of warning or anything like that. (Obviously we'll just be using other methods of contraception until we're ready for the baby-making.) I'm reading Taking Charge of Your Fertility right now, which has some really interesting and useful information for tracking your cycles and being aware of what's going on with your body. But the one fact that really struck me was that women are only fertile a few days a month, around when they're ovulating, while men are fertile all the time, and yet there are nine million more ways for women to control their fertility than there are for men. Think about it - women can take a pill, which we have to take every single day, that will keep us from ovulating - so in order to prevent those few days of fertility, we have to put hormones into our body every single day, and yet there is no similar option for men, who are actually fertile every day. Brad has said he would much rather take a pill that would keep him from being fertile than wear a condom whenever we want to have sex, and it seems really dumb that there's no such option for men. Apparently male birth control pills have been developed but politics have kept them from being released on the market, which I think is really unfortunate. Get with the program, society! Useful things should be available for people! /rant
Okay, and now that it is noon 1:00, I suppose I should go do useful things like shower, eat lunch, do laundry, and whatnot. I hope you're all doing well!
No major March break plans, as I can't afford to go anywhere again, but my main goal is to finish my sweater. I'm maybe 3/4 done the first sleeve (my 3rd attempt!), then I just have to do the other sleeve and all the finishing bits, and I think with the week off, that's totally do-able. Otherwise, I may try to see friends here and there, although no definite plans have been confirmed yet. I had invited Gabe to come over one day this week for knitting/baking/general mischief, but that might be turning into a thing with some of the other girls as well; there are tentative discussions about dinner with Catherine and Sue, and the other Sue may be stopping by for lunch and knitting one day as well. Still, everything is a bit up in the air, and I definitely need to do some cleaning before anyone comes over!
I finally got my T4 the week before last, so Brad and I decided to go have our taxes done when I got paid on Friday. We had opted to go back to H&R Block, hoping that they would be able to get us a bigger refund than what we got when I did our taxes myself last year with TurboTax. Ugh, what a clusterfuck, though. We got there around 7 on Friday night, and sat there waiting for over an hour before someone could help us. This was especially fun because we still needed to go grocery shopping and neither of us had had dinner yet (Brad actually hadn't eaten all day). The woman did our tax returns, but then there was an issue when we went to pay and I tried to use the coupon that they had emailed me. It was one of those 'come back and file with us again (because we'd used H&R Block two years ago, but didn't last year) and we'll give you $25 off' coupons, but for some reason they kept getting errors when they tried to input the coupon code and it wouldn't let them use it. We waited around forever for them to try to figure it out, but eventually just asked if we could come back the next day to pay and finish up, because by this point it was 9:30 and we were both tired and hungry.
You see where this is going, right? I went back yesterday after dropping Brad off for his gaming stuff with the guys, getting to H&R Block around 12:30 or 12:40. The woman who'd done our taxes the night before wasn't there, but another woman who had been there that night was, and she recognized me as the one with the coupon code issue. She tells me to have a seat and says she'll be with me in a minute. Well, a minute in H&R Block time means that I again sat there for another hour waiting, and when she finally called me into her cubicle, she went over my whole return again, trying to figure out why the coupon code wasn't working (I assure you, it had nothing to do with anything on the return itself). Eventually she figured out that the system wasn't processing the code because the last time I used H&R Block, I had my temporary SIN, and now I have a permanent one, so since the numbers didn't match, the system couldn't figure out that I had actually been there before. Oy. So the woman tries a bunch of things to make the code work using the old SIN, but still has no success. Eventually, she says that the office manager had done the math to figure out what my price should be with the coupon code, and they were just going to have me pay so they could e-file, and then when the office manager was there on Monday, she would work some magic in the system to make my receipt match what I'd paid, and then send me a copy of the receipt. Why we couldn't have just done that in the first place and saved me from sitting there for another 2+ hours, I don't know.
The whole thing was ridiculous, and I didn't get out of there till close to 3. But at least our taxes are done, and hopefully my refund will come sooner rather than later. They had the option to do instant cash back on a credit card or check, but their fee would have taken about $200 out of our refund, and since my refund is already much smaller than what I was hoping for, I didn't really want to lose any more of it. The amount we're getting back will be enough to pay off Brad's remaining tuition balance, pay off my debt management thing from the States, and pay back all of the small personal loans from friends and family, which will certainly help. We were hoping to have enough to also put a good dent in paying down our credit cards, but that's not going to happen right now. At least with my debt management thing paid off, that'll free up about $150 each month, which we can always turn around and put towards the credit cards instead. I still have to do my US taxes too, but that's just a matter of printing a couple forms, filling out a couple lines and mailing it in. I refuse to pay to file a paper that says I owe the government nothing and they owe me nothing.
I've decided, after being on it for the past 6.5 years continuously, that I would like to go off of birth control. I'd really like to let my body get back to regulating its own cycles, and start learning/remembering what my body is like without all the artificial hormones. Plus, we want to have babies at some point, and it might be helpful to know what my body is like on its own before then. Anyone else gone off the pill and want to share anything about their experience? I know it varies greatly from woman to woman, and the pill could be out of my system in a few weeks if I'm lucky, but I'd like to know if anyone has any words of warning or anything like that. (Obviously we'll just be using other methods of contraception until we're ready for the baby-making.) I'm reading Taking Charge of Your Fertility right now, which has some really interesting and useful information for tracking your cycles and being aware of what's going on with your body. But the one fact that really struck me was that women are only fertile a few days a month, around when they're ovulating, while men are fertile all the time, and yet there are nine million more ways for women to control their fertility than there are for men. Think about it - women can take a pill, which we have to take every single day, that will keep us from ovulating - so in order to prevent those few days of fertility, we have to put hormones into our body every single day, and yet there is no similar option for men, who are actually fertile every day. Brad has said he would much rather take a pill that would keep him from being fertile than wear a condom whenever we want to have sex, and it seems really dumb that there's no such option for men. Apparently male birth control pills have been developed but politics have kept them from being released on the market, which I think is really unfortunate. Get with the program, society! Useful things should be available for people! /rant
Okay, and now that it is noon 1:00, I suppose I should go do useful things like shower, eat lunch, do laundry, and whatnot. I hope you're all doing well!