This is the south end of our living room.
Our ski machine lived right here, for a couple of decades, until yesterday. The electrician is going to replace the outlet directly to the left of these bookshelves, and put it on a switch for us. So we had to clean out this area.
The ski machine hasn't been well maintained, and is in the process of grinding itself to dust.
I leave to your imagination what this part of the floor looked like ...
... aside from showing you this,
and this.
Yuck.
Moving along to something no less shocking, but much less disgusting ...
... trumpet cases, which sat untouched in the living room from the Last Concert (spring of 2002) until last month, when the trumpet emerged and was played, briefly but triumphantly.
Now moved upstairs and onto a closet shelf emptied, today, of unwanted things (now on their way to the thrift store).
Quietly thrilling.
And, last but probably not least -- no pics, but we finished and disposed of the taxes on Saturday, which is sort of house cleaning, don't you think? At least as aggravating as house cleaning, if less frequent and perhaps not quite so dirty.
We used some stinking tax software which advertised "Free e-filing!" but really meant "free for the national, but $20 for the state!"
Scumbags.
As we had thought we were e-filing, it was too late to mail the college kid's off to her (and be comfortable that she'd actually receive it in time -- or at all -- we've found USPS to be less reliable in the last year than ever before....), so we forked over the $20 and e-filed hers, feeling totally ripped off. Ours we delivered to the post office and mailed. Certified with a return.
Cleansing breath.
Ok.
Done for another year!
And -- guardedly hopeful that the money will be spent in ways that don't actually make us sick to our stomachs, which would be a marked improvement over most of the last decade.
!!!
I'll take this opportunity to reiterate my suggestion that each of us get to pick what we want our tax money spent on. How much for this, how much for that.... Then those of us who would rather buy good roads than bombs, say, would at least know that OUR money wasn't being spent on bombs........
I've heard this plan objected to on the grounds that it would make long-range planning impossible, but my counter to that is -- WHAT long-range planning????????
Hard to answer that, no?
This is a Great Idea that isn't going to legitimately make anyone any money, otherwise it would go in the "Great Ideas, 2% of net to me" category!
.
2 comments:
Even as a little kid I thought that how taxes were spent should be left to the person paying the taxes.
When I said as much to my mother, she said, "What if everyone decided just to buy things like roads and libraries?"
I thought, "And the problem with that is...?"
Are you sure we're not clones?
Roads and libraries seem like no-brainers to me...... And good places for people of all ages to learn important, useful, and exciting things.......
It seems like there are way to many similarities for it to be coincidental, doesn't it............
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