Five Happinesses

Fio is happy to report that those boxwoods she and Husband planted a year and a half ago are thriving despite the extraordinarily cold winter. So are the ligustrums and the nandenas, but the bayberries seem to be going into decline again. Com'on guys--you can do better than that!
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She's also happy to tell you that her wonderful yard man is back in business again. He came by a week late in his cousin's truck (his is in the shop) and cut more firewood (mas lenya) for Fio and Husband, who were running out.
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Fio's third happiness is that she's actually had a reply to her letter to the editor about the march she wants to put together in conservative-as-all-get-out Georgetown. That makes at least three of us who will be carrying signs on March 24.
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Number four is that Fiorella is finally getting a handle on putting together the taxes for the accountant. Pray for Fio on that one though.
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Last but not least, Fio has started her 5000th revision of Phillipa's story and it's actually moving along. Good, because she's eager to start on her next story.

Taxes, Television, Errands

Fiorella really had a scare yesterday--a three-page notification from IRS saying that she owed the Feds more money. It was just $17, but the situation unnerved Fio, who thought she'd taken care of everything back in April. But apparently her payment had not reached IRS headquarters when it was supposed to, which also explains why her check hadn't been cashed yet. Deliquent postman? Could be, but Fio knows better than to fight los federales about $17.
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My 600-pound Life was so boring the other night that Fio turned it off and went to sleep. She wanted to be sympathetic to the rape-survivor woman who was sharing her depressing life with us, but she also wanted the story to move faster. As an author, Fiorella knows that each scene in her books must move the story along, and as a TV viewer, she knows that true-life stories must do the same or the audience will, like Fio, opt out. At a certain point, Fio just plain didn't care.
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 Fio has an action-packed day ahead of her today--the pharmacy to pick up a prescription, the nursery to ask advice about her raggedy bayberries, the eyeglass place to see if her spectacles can be fixed, Click Computer Repair to give her computadora a stern talking-to, and a meeting with friend Sherry ShamRock at Papi's Pies, which will be her reward for driving all over town taking care of the errands. Yum!

Up and Down

Fiorella's world goes up and down, from Friday's visit with Austin Son and his wife and the joy, the ecstasy of holding Baby in her arms again to the teeth-grinding irritation of having both her good watch and her secondary watch go out on her on Saturday evening. Not only that, but the two keys she took back to Home Depot because they hadn't opened any doors, still don't work. neither does the TV sound. To top it off, Fio can't find an important tax return page she needs.

But Fiorella will survive. She always does. But meanwhile she'll blame it all on Trump.

Movin' On

Christmas is almost over at Casa Fiorella. Husband kindly packed away the last of the Christmas ornaments yesterday afternoon, and Fio hopes to get his help unwinding the lights from the tree today. Maybe we'll even get the tree disassembled and stuffed into its many containers.

Fiorella loves decorating for Christmas and is always a little sad when her creative efforts have to be banished to the garage shelves till next year, but it's not just that Christmas has a limited shelf life--it's that tax time is just around the corner, which means that Fiorella has to turn her mind to IRS and her dining room table into a processing station.

At the same time, she's trying to rock-line a driveway, learn Spanish, write a book, and pretend to be human.

High School Reunion

Husband and Fio are in Waco for her high school reunion.  It's interesting, exciting, and weird.  People grow up to be different than they were as teenagers--their appearances change with age, weight gain and loss, and hair colors and styles, while their personalities and attitudes have been altered by their varying experiences.

Fio is attending the reunion not only because she is curious about her former classmates, but also because she might pick up some good story ideas.  Hmm--light bulb goes on--maybe she could deduct the registration fee as a business expense.

Whew!

Fiorella's happy.  Yesterday she finished typing in the thirteen pages of HONEYSUCKLE DREAMS that her laptop had gobbled up on Sunday, finished her umpteenth edit of the book, ran a copy of it off for Georgetown friend Suzy, and sent an email attachment of it to Bastrop friend Joan. The addition of three new threads--crystal meth, possible pregnancy, and a Hollywood star--have swelled the wordage to almost 95,000 words so Fio hopes Suzy and Joan will still be her friends after they've hefted the manuscript.

So now Fio has to figure out how to use Dropbox or something similar to avoid another near-disaster like the thirteen digested pages, and she has to catch up with everything else she put off while she was devoting all her time to HD.  Little things--like figuring income taxes.

News Updates

Fio would like to be part of the forty-seven percent who don't have to pony up to IRS, but, except for the lean student years just after she and Husband got married, they've always had to pay the piper.  Now that they are more comfortably fixed, she'd still rather not pay--like the millionaires who've figured out ways to get around taxes.  Um--does that mean they support Obama?
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Fiorella is amused that people have finally realized we've probably contaminated the moon and Mars with our landings, that minute microbes could have made it through the sterilization process and are seeding the universe.  She figured that out  some time ago, but her postulation goes even further.  Microbe or not, she thinks the capsules and payload themselves are contaminants because they cut the time/space continuum.

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Lindsay Lohan has been arrested again.  But what's new?