Got my refund, but not my rebate

I checked my savings account balance today (I've been trying not to obsessively check it every day) and saw that my tax refund has arrived. I won't be in the first round of people who receive stimulus payments, because my tax return wasn't processed by April 15. I didn't mail it til around a week before the deadline, and my refund arrived by direct deposit in my account on the 25th.

It looks like the refund, and the stimulus payment, will all go toward the $4000 house project I am suddenly compelled to do. When two different contractors look at your hosue and say the words "termites" and "water damage", you pretty much have to get out your checkbook.

Also, we decided at Xmas to replace our old car. Today the gear shift has been getting stuck in park again. I have had to get out of the car three times, in the rain, to jump on the back bumper a few times. That seems to jog it enough that I can get it into reverse or drive. So, gotta get off my duff and buy a new car SOON.

All this spending. I guess I'm doing my part to support the economy whether I like it or not.

Cafe etiquette

Dear person sitting at the next table in the cafe:

Hot beverages require some moderate slurping to avoid burning your tongue. Cold beverage can be consumed almost silently.

Your coffee is cold. I know it is, because we arrived at the same time and that was over an hour ago.

Therefore, you have absolutely no excuse for continuing to slurp so loudly.

Please, go work at home if you insist on making that noise.

Signed,
Tense Freelancer Working Beside You

She ugly

In 2004, we moved from a relatively integrated neighborhood to one that was almost completely black. My partner is Jewish, which means in this country he's considered white, and I'm sort of a western European mutt. Our son is blonde and blue-eyed. Our son was a baby when we moved in, and I was home with him a couple days a week, so I walked a lot. Hours and hours every week I spent walking with the stroller, trying to get him to sleep, trying not to go crazy in the house. I met tons of people. I gawked at the houses and gardens. And I used to amuse myself seeing how many blocks I'd have to get away from our house before I started seeing other white people. If I saw another white person within, say, four blocks of our house in any direction, I did a double-take. Then I usually recognized the person, and thought, oh, it's that one woman who lives by the train station. Or, oh, it's that social worker who visits my neighbor with all the kids once a month.

I was always aware of being an interloper. Maybe people didn't want us to be here. Maybe they saw us as gentrifying the neighborhood. Maybe they hate that I grow food in my front yard. Maybe if I pick up the trash in front of their house they'll think I'm judging them.

But almost every single person who I encountered in our neighborhood was welcoming. If they were surprised to see us there, they were careful not to show it.

Today I was out pruning in my front yard in a pair of jeans and a T-shirt. Three teenage girls walked past, talking to each other.

"This the wrong street. I'm telling you."

"No, this Herman Road. This the one we s'pose to turn down."

As usual, I butted in.

"You guys lost?" I asked.

One of the girls looked at me, dumbfounded. "She white," she said to her friends, not answering my question. "Look, she white."

"Shut up," her friend said.

"She ugly," the first girl said. By now they were past my house. I could hear her voice on the other side of the hedge. "She white. She ugly."

"I can't go anywhere with you," said her friend, laughing.

I guess you can trust teenagers to tell you what they're really thinking even if the adults won't.

Living in a row house

When we bought our house four years ago, it was infested with roaches. It was so bad we had to wash every dish before using it because there was no telling what had befallen that dish when it was sitting in the cupboard. I avoided going downstairs after dark because then I'd have to see all my little housemates running away when I turned on the light. Ew, I get grossed out just thinking about it.

We live in a row house, which is like a glorified apartment, except that there is nobody above us and nobody below. We share walls with the neighbors on either side. When they cook, I can smell it. So I approached the next door neighbor, and asked her if she had a roach problem, too.

She was amazed, and pleased, that I asked. She said the previous owner never would have admitted to having bugs. Now that we were talking openly about it, she said yes, she did have roaches. We both called exterminators and the problem was pretty much solved.

The neighbor on the other side--not so open. When she replaced all the siding on the front of her house last year, I heard through the grapevine that she was doing it because her house had termites. I thought, my house is smack up against her house, so if she has termites I want to know about it. Maybe my house has termites, too.

But when I asked her about it, she was horribly affronted. She acted like I had asked if she herself had bugs. She claimed that the siding was letting in water (probably also true, but not the whole truth as it turns out).

Today I found out that my house DOES have termites. The houses were originally stucco, and back in the 70s when siding was The Next Big Thing, everybody on the block had their houses sided. But first they had to put up strips of wood so they'd have something to nail the siding to. That's where the termites are. What followed was water damage because the termites compromised the seal between the roof and the siding. Now the masonry underneath is crumbling from the water.

The end result is that I have to have all the siding torn off my house. I'm going to get quotes on getting the thing stuccoed, and also on getting it re-sided. I happen to have an irrational and passionate hatred for siding. So I'd like to do the masonry, even tho it will require more maintenance.

I feel several things at once:

What is wrong with my neighbor that she wouldn't tell me the truth when I asked? We're both middle class Americans. I guess I underestimate the cultural differences between us sometimes. I'm a Gen-X white girl from California, who thinks there's no shame in admitting your house has termites. She's 70-something, African American and churchgoing, and she's from the south altho she's lived in Philly for most of her adult life. Apparently she thinks I don't see the exterminator's truck coming to her house once a month. I just don't get why talking about bugs is taboo.

Also, christalmighty, this is going to cost more than anything else I've ever paid for, with the exception of the house itself. I've never even had a car that cost as much as this is going to cost.

Also, whoopee! I am going to have a new facade on my house! My house will no longer be so ugly. I couldn't justify tearing down the siding when it was just cosmetic, but now I have to do it.


I'll feel better when I get all the quotes so I'll know how much it will cost. Plus, we STILL have that hole in the floor in the front room. I got the quote on it, but still haven't had time to choose which tile I want.

My mortgage lender is hurting

This Philadelphia Inquirer article, Wachovia suffers for ill-timed purhcase, talks about how Philadelphia's largest mortgage lender is the latest large bank to show signs of distress.

We got our loan with them in 2004. We borrowed from them because we already had brokerage accounts and checking accounts with them (they bought the investment firm I had an account with and also the bank where we both had our checking accounts within a few months of each other). We've since closed the investment account and also the checking accounts to move to a discount brokerage and a local neighborhood bank. So now we only have our mortgage with them.

I hope their recent drastic moves will help them get on an even keel.

In the meantime, I'll keep plugging away at my mortgage. Mine is the boring kind: 20-year fixed rate at 5.25%. Sometimes it's nice to be boring.

My mother is buying a house

Today I went with my mother and her partner to look at the house they are planning to make an offer on. It's out of the price range they set for themselves, but they're arguing that the house is so perfect, they wouldn't have to put any money into it. All the other houses, the ones they could afford, they'd have to put $100,000 into to make them "livable", so this house is really affordable after all. Huh. Interesting logic, isn't it. The problem is that nothing they consider "livable" exists within their price range. Therefore, it's their price range that is not livable for them.

So we walked up to this paragon of a house, and I gestured to the front steps, which were crumbling. I just had cement work done at my house, so I know the front steps and the sidewalk, which was totally spiderwebbed with cracks, will cost hundreds of dollars, minimum.

"Needs cement work," I said.

My stepmom looked at me with a brittle smile and exclaimed, "The house doesn't need any work! None at all!"

So I said, "Does that mean you don't want me to point out structural problems if I see them?"

Stepmom, brightly: "It is in perfect shape!"

Okay, I thought. If that's how you want to play this.

I have the worst poker face ever, but I was trying hard as I walked through the house to keep my real feelings off my face. It had been renovated by people who owned way, way, way too many books about interior decorating. I think they should have picked one style and stuck with it. Their taste seemed to vacillate between a "distressed" look, and an overly slick brushed-nickel accessories look. The whole thing looked embarrassingly expensive, and really overdone.

On the second floor, my step mom asked me, "What do you like about it?"

I stood there for several seconds enjoying the fact that she had asked me a very specific question, one she would want to hear the answer to. She didn't ask if I liked it. She didn't ask what I thought of the house. Why can't more people be so specific? The trouble was, it was taking such a big effort to be silent and not voice my real opinions that I just couldn't spare any energy to think of something NICE to say.

"Nothing?" she said.

"No, no. That's not it at all. It's very..."

"You don't like it." This from my mother, standing at the bottom of the stairs and looking up at me.

"That doesn't matter," I said. "It's not going to be my house. I'm glad you found a house you like."

The whole sickening thing about this is that it is the perfect house. For my stepmother. It does not feel like my mother's taste at all. I cannot imagine her in the house. It's not just that I think the house is ugly and ostentatious. It's not just that I am worried that they'll be stretched too thin financially. It's not just that I think they're in denial about how much work they'd actually need to put into the house.

It's just that I think my mother is allowing herself to be eclipsed by her partner. All the houses my mother has liked have been too funky for her partner. I think my mom is so relieved that her partner is finally agreeing to buy a house in Philadelphia, a town my mother chose and her partner reluctantly agreed to move to. So my mom is willing to buy this hideous house just because her partner likes it.

Which is why, after all these years, I still hate hate hate being the child of divorced parents. My father's house does not feel anything like my father. It feels like his girlfriend's house. My mother's houses over the years have felt less and less like my mother, and more and more like her partner's taste.

My parents were terrible together. They made each other miserable. They taught me painful, unforgettable things about how human beings treat each other.

But they had very compatible taste, for good quality furniture and simple design, restful but not dull colors, open rooms with lots of light.

I don't miss my parents' marriage, but I do miss my parents' house.

Writers who blog, bloggers who write

Today I read these interesting perspectives on how blogging can make it hard to get other writing done.

Sarah Hepola writes at Slate.com about shutting down her blog to write a novel.

And Matthew Baldwin writes about why he has been posting less frequently on his blog at defectiveyeti.com.


I haven't taken the step of killing my blog, but it is helping my writing, and my sanity, that I'm posting less frequently.

Now, if only I could get off my butt and generate some ideas to send out queries to maybe get some other writing clients. Trouble is, I barely have time to write for the two clients I currently have. One of them just offered me some interesting work and I had to tell him I couldn't accept it til I hear from the first client about that Big Freelance Gig that may be happening sometime. Possibly. Probably, but who knows when.

Now, gotta go make twenty-five phone calls for one of my volunteer gigs:

"Hi, this is TBH calling from A Really Important Organization about something Really Important. Please don't hang up on me."

WTF?

I ran into Whole Foods today between a meeting downtown and my regular work shift out in the sticks.

You'll be glad to know they now sell multi-grain sushi. I kid you not.

I can't think of anything that sounds less appetizing. Actually, I probably can, but I'll try not to.

2007 taxes: Some numbers and observations

Because my income varies so much, there's an element of suspense that keeps me going through the hours it takes me to do my taxes every year. I still do my taxes myself with a pencil and a calculator. Eventually I'll probably switch to doing it electronically, but I haven't wanted to go there because I spend so much time on the computer already. With 3 paying jobs and 2 volunteer jobs the computer time starts to add up.

Here are some interesting things I learned while doing my Federal taxes this year.

AGI: $22,151. Not sure yet what my partner's AGI is. He hasn't finished his taxes yet.

Medical and dental expenses: nearly $6000. This number was even higher than I expected. My son and I both had a lot of dental work last year, and all the tests related to my cancer diagnosis meant a lot of copays and a lot of miles driving to and from the hospital.

I still couldn't itemize. I've never itemized in my life. Normally, I claim our son as a dependent, so I file as head of household. M files as single, and claims our mortgage interest, charitable contributions, etc. Even with the high medical/dental expenses this year, which were more than a quarter of my AGI, I was still better off with the standard deduction for head of household. I don't really regret all the time I spent tallying up the medical/dental expenses, though. It's good to know what to be prepared for in the future.

It pays to be a single mother. I very much hope that someday M and I will be able to file our taxes together. We do not intend to get married, ever, but we are a family and it's ludicrous that the IRS considers me a single mother. However, it does ease my annoyance at our screwy system somewhat when I find myself collecting a $155 credit for dependent care expenses, a $586 Child Tax Credit, a $1768 Earned Income Credit, and a $414 Additional Child Tax Credit. This is the first year I've qualified for the Additional Child Tax Credit. Next year I expect to qualify for none of these things.

I don't have to file quarterly estimated taxes in 2008! A helpful person at savingadvice.com answered a question I asked there about paying estimated taxes on freelance income throughout the year. With her help, I found IRS pub 505, which tells me that I just need to make sure my tax payments DURING 2008 (through employer withholdings, etc) equal 100% of the total tax I owed in 2007. For me, that number is $1182. My part-time dayjob has already withheld around $700 in federal taxes. To be safe, I directed a couple hundred bucks of my refund to be applied to my 2008 taxes. The payroll withholdings during the rest of the year should easily cover the rest.

Gotta get my motivation back up. I finished the Federal taxes last night. I still need to copy them and mail them out, and then I need to get my state tax forms (I filed late last year so they didn't send my handy packet) and do my state taxes. That usually only takes me a couple of hours, but still, I want to be done!

My economic stimulus payment won't be here any time soon. This article indicates that stimulus payments will be processed according to social security numbers, but also that you won't get your payment on time unless your federal taxes are PROCESSED, not just filed, by April 15. I doubt mine will be processed by then if I haven't even mailed them yet. Oh well. I'll probably do something boring and responsible with my stimulus payment anyway.

I'm getting a refund. I'm not supposed to be happy about a refund. I'm supposed to see it as an interest-free loan to the government, which is bad. But I am very happy that the money I had been saving from my 2007 freelance income to pay my self-employment taxes can now be used for other things. I left some of it in my tax savings account in case I fall a bit short when it's time to pay 2008 taxes. I moved the rest into our Roth IRAs. I am not going to be able to max M's for 2007 before next week, but I'm still pleased with the progress I've made.