Ulgh - Tax Time!

Time to do taxes again... April 15th can't be put off much longer.

What I seem to struggle with is that I get older and life gets more complicated, so do those darned taxes! I long for the day when I'd hand my dad my single W-2 and bam! I'd get $100 deposited into my checking account.

There's also the time when I filed my taxes myself over the phone and just pressed a few buttons and received my tax return a few days later.

Then. I. got. married.

And since this momentous occassion, taxes have been a luming plague over our heads and something we dread. We end up having a pile of roughly 30 pages of "stuff" to bring into the taxman. Who knows what all this means or if it is even relevant, but it gets sent to us with a stamp on the envelope urging us to save it for taxes.
Two years ago our tax lady spent a good portion of the meeting bashing my new place of business as I was just starting as a nurse at MeritCare and she continued to tell me why Innovis is better and why she does not like MeritCare. Meanwhile also adding comments in about why my husband and I have so many W-2's and why everything was such a mess. Hence, why we went to see you in the first place lady! Having a young married couple with one in school just trying to stay afloat financially, we're sorry if it's an inconveince for you to file our 8 W-2's! And yes, it's just as frustrating to us that PRACS does not tax their checks and that my husband enjoys being a lab rat to benefit us greatly in the short-term but bite our tax paying booties in the long-run... Oh how we were saved by the education credits that year and didn't have to pay in but did not get much of a return either!

Last year was more pleasant as we went to an accountant that is on the Babe Ruth board and knows Tyler well. Well or so it was supposed to be ;) The person working with us was much more pleasant, but we still had our fair share of W-2's and "stuff" to sort through. As most of you know, I was not in school during the year of 2008, but what can I say? My husband loves his part-time jobs, aka "hobbies" :). We also bought a house this year but did not benefit greatly from this. We ended up getting hit with having to pay in, but were saved by the tax credit for new home buyers (if only we'd have waited one year we wouldn't be paying that back for the next 15 years...)

This year and the prompting behind this post is that Tyler and I believed we would just bring in our batch of "stuff" again as we always had before and then we'd sit through a grueling/embarassig/awkward 1/2 hour meeting until we could find out if we owed more money or happily got some given back to us. However, as Tyler was getting the "stuff" together that morning he came across the 2009 Tax Organizer that our friendly accountant gave to us to prepare our list of "stuff" for him. Now he must have seen people like us coming from a mile away and decided it was about time for us to sort through our own "stuff". This organizer wants everything listed and itemized from what you spent on contact lenses to prescriptions. If I wasn't so intuned to knowing that all these things could add up, especially the expenses of having a child and a husband that got orthodontic surgery and braces this year, I wouldn't have spent the time preparing this stuff and pouring over our bank statements (which I might add were all still in the envelopes and hadn't been opened the whole past year - oops - never would have thought I worked at a bank for 3 years)...

So my question is this - why must one spend good money (We know they're not cheap) to organize my taxes just so that someone with the right software and know-how can imput the data for me and get paid like the did all the hard work?

Answer: Because I just don't have the time?! Oh wait. I just spent an hour putting this thing together - why didn't I spend that filling out my own 1099 form?

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And as always: Here's my adorable 5 month old son, Emmett. Can't believe it's been 5 joyous months with him. He has now started to roll over both ways as of last week. He sits up really well now, but we still don't quite trust him alone where he wouldn't fall over. He's doing great at daycare and they say they love how much personality he has.. hehe.

The past few weeks we have been giving him a good helping of rice cereal at night. We know it's early, but he's a born eater - he is a Tracy afterall! He loves to grab the spoon from me and chew on it... Just this past week, he has started to get himself up onto his knees as if he thinks he's going to start crawling! I know he won't quite yet, but it's pretty crazy to think he knows already that's his first step in that process...

Conflicted

Diary of the conflicted:

So most of you know that I recently started a new job with the Internal Medicine clinic (still with MeritCare). More specifically it's with the Resident Clinic which is primarily the group of physicians I have been working for in the hospital.

I did enjoy my past job but it was begining to wear on me. After 2 years there I felt like I really knew what I was doing and was becoming more and more involved on the floor by joining a standards committee, leading rapid improvement events, and orientating a new employee pretty much every shift that I worked. These are all good things which had their downsides too. The more involved you are the more the negatives of management can get to you and that you feel/see your voice isn't heard. And the more I precepted/orientated the later I was always staying after work because we all know that new people are just plain slower! ;)

After too many 12 hour shifts of not seeing cute lil' Emmett awake the whole day and being too burned out from this position it was with some uncertainity that I left his position for a clinic gig.
So far I have figured out what I already knew: the clinic is WAY different and WAY slower than the hospital. Their busy is me having only 2 patients that are walkie talkies at my old job. This comes with good and bad as I am enjoying not passing out after work from exhaustion, but feel I am not challenged enough and feel as if I have "down graded". The people are super nice, but it will definitely take awhile for this to feel like home. Who knew I might acutally miss the place I used to curse going to work at?!?!

On a different, yet same, note: These feelings have left me conflicted about whether or not I did the right thing. For some reason I have also felt this strong urge/pull to go into Maternal/child nursing - "birthing center". I did my internship in the FBC and even declined a position with them as I felt it would be better to get general medical experience before specializing in a field. I also struggled with helping moms through labor and the pain/emotions when I hadn't felt them myself. (Yes I do realize I haven't felt 3/4 of what my genereal medical patients feel either, but labor is totally different). Now that I have felt that and have so many mixed emotions about my career and being a working mom, I have come to the conclusion that if I'm going to leave my baby to go to work I really only can validate that with leaving my baby to go to work helping other women become new moms. I can think of so many great things with this job: helping moms through labor, cuddling newborns and helping parents learn to take care of them, assisting with surgery instead of letting the surgical techs have all the fun (on birth centers, it is the nurse that assists the Dr. with the surgery, not the surgical techs).

Surprisingly my hair dresser made me think of all this when she told me during my last hair cut that she loves what she does and doesn't consider it work. And she loves her baby girl and I know it's hard for her to leave her to go to work, but how great that she doesn't think of it as work?! I then thought if the same was true of me and sadly it isn't. I feel it is work. Plain and simple.

So my prayer is this: That I feel peace with my current job situation and the choices I have made that have led me here. That I find my purpose in this current position and be an asset to this team as I felt I have been before in my position. That if I am meant to be a FBC nurse that the right position/hours/timing will present itself and that I will wait patiently for that direction.

If you read all this you may have to much time on your hands, but with that extra time you could pray for me! ;)

Priceless

Drive across town - $1.00

Meal for 4-6 - $20

Having Emmett and Gabe bond and become best friends - PRICELESS

Recently we have had the honor of watching Gabe become a little grown-up man. In the past 2 weeks (for Tyler and I), we've seen him develop immensley!

This is really more of a blog that should be on Aaron and Julie's blog, but since they don't update theirs and it involves my adorable nephew and son, I am going to share it!

Scenario 1: Last week we were at Aaron and Julie's house and recently we have started bathing the boys together when we are at eachother's house. So we were once again sharing the night together and Julie went upstairs to start the bath for Gabe. Emmett and I were still downstairs mind you. Gabe proceeded to attempt to haul the baby bath tub out of the Schauer's spare room into the bathroom because he knew that Emmett was supposed to be taking a bath with him!

Scenario 2: This past Monday we had my parents and the Schauer's over for dinner. This time however we were just hanging out in the living room and Emmett was sitting in my lap on the floor. Right on cue (little after 7 o'clock) Gabe starts pulling on Emmett's feet and grunting to try to get him to move to the bathroom with him. When we didn't get up right away, Gabe trotted around and started pushing on my back to get me to go! I then got up and handed Emmett to Tyler and started the bath. As I was doing this Gabe proceeded to pull on Emmett's legs again and pushed Tyler towards the bathroom!

What a smart and sweet child!!! They're on their way to becoming best buds!!!