This has been a quiet, stay at home day. I have managed to not get anything done today but some work on my tax class. It didn’t go well.
I did take another long winter afternoon nap. Sure wish I could sleep at night as well as I can in the afternoon. Somedays I take sleep whenever it finds me and am grateful to find it.
The tax class thing is so hard. Thank heavens I know that doing the taxes is actually easy compared to the prep work. I do need to get the instructor or one of the class members to teach me a few things. I promised myself this year that I would learn a couple of things that have stumped me in the past. We aren’t taught in class how to do them, we just compare answers to the quiz and together pick the best answer.
Just getting into the computer is enough of a challenge. We use five different programs that each have their own password and user name. One of the passwords has to be at least 15 characters long and has special requirements. That alone is enough to make me want to get drunk.
I worked on the tax prep stuff in spurts. I would reach a point of wanting to throw the laptop computer and decide I better step away for a bit. I would do so and then return later to try, try again. Nothing about this feels easy to me.
No plans for the rest of the week or weekend. I will continue to work on the tax prep stuff and figure out what I don’t know. I need to make an appointment with the instructor so I can get some private lessons. Other than that I don’t have too much on my pending list to tend to. If I have a good day tomorrow I may make a few phone calls and get some other appointments set up. They have been pending for a bit and I haven’t been able to make the calls.
It felt warmer out today than it actually was. Tomorrow it is to be even warmer. I welcome this break in the temperatures. Kathy shoveled us a better path out both the front and back doors today. Saturday the temperatures are dropping back down and Sunday and Monday we will be in the single digits again. Yuck! Hopefully it won’t last long. I am done with winter and still have weeks to go.
I was scrolling last night and came across an article that shared how communities are developing small Mutual Aid Networks. It is a group of 10 – 25 people that live in the same community and start out as strangers yet are neighbors. They make a list of resources that they are willing to share with others. For some it may be giving rides to doctor appointments, sharing garden produce, having ownership of special useful tools, special talents, etc. Others may offer housesitting or pet sitting help, extra beds for guests, etc. You get the idea.
The group shares contact information and then they meet together informally a couple times a year – think pot luck, bowling, etc. When one in the group has a need they ask the mutual aid group for support. What a wonderful idea to help build a community resource and help to break down the invisible barriers that we sometimes place between ourselves and our neighbors. We have lost the art of being neighbors and this would help bring it back.
I am going to continue to sit with this and then see how I might be able to get a group started. It would be important to me that the group includes people from all social and economical levels. We all have so much more in common than we have differences if we stop and get to know each other on a deeper level. Somehow we are loosing the human connection to each other and I need to find ways to help build those bridges.
Grateful for long afternoon naps, grateful for warmer temperatures, and grateful for the courage to tackle tax prep work.