Daily Ooos: Tuesday, February 22

[faerywings]

26 Days Until Spring!

Good morning! A very happy Tuesday to you all.
yesterday was a beautiful day, sunny and mid-50s. And guess who blew it and didn't make it outside? Me. Yup. I was working on my taxes and was stuck to the computer for hours. In case you were wondering, yelling at your computer, TurboTax, and the IRS website does *not*make any of it work any better.
My taxes are basically very easy. But every darn year it seems there is one thing that doesn't make sense or needs a document that I don't have. This year it was all about the third stimulus checks we got a year ago. The IRS sent Gary and me each a form with the amount on it. But that didn't match what was deposited in our account *nor* what TurboTax said that we were eligible for. TurboTax very helpfully (NOT) suggested I look on the RRS website for more info. Be warned if you need to use that site you need to register with "ID/ me." I spent almost an hour trying to register. You need to take pictures of your Driver's Lic. and then a video facial scan. Easy peasy?? Not even a little bit. It took forever in a "waiting room" to get into the site. Then you need to have links sent to your phone to take the photos. You have to hold the phone supersteady to take a photo of your DL only to be told again and again that it is blurry. You try to take photos of the DL, send them to the computer, then upload them. Do facial scan. Submit all information only to be told that they don't recognize your phone number. Try another. Still not luck. Tray again with your Passport. Told that your passport is expired. It s not. Keep trying. Same problems with the phone numbers --ones I have had for at least 15 years.
Finally, I get a message that I need to do a 15-minute video chat with additional documentation (but don't; tell me what the docs needed are, only to "have them ready.") forgetaboutthat.
Go back to TT and another half hour of Gary, Cait, and I trying to look at our account to get the right amounts all squared away.

ProTip: If this happens to you, and I hope it doesn't but at least you will have this info to consider -- What the IRS did is initially in 2021 was send a check, lump sum to all four of us as qualifying adults. But they sent individual letters to Gary and me for the same amount- that the two of us received *together.* The TT amount was different b/c it counted three of us (G,C, and me) but not Scott since he can't be claimed as a dependant. I went from thinking we were supposed to get MORE money, then freaked out that I was going OWE it. Then after an hour on the website (GAH!!) felt so defeated but relieved that everything was in fact, what it should be. Hahahaha
After that--my brain was *toast.*

Today, I am dedicating to Oscraps at least once I get my food shopping finalized for tomorrow.
I got nothing accomplished other than the basics of laundry and dinner after the IRS destroyed my mind.

Have a great day! xoxo

 

[faerywings]

@LSlycord Did the computer get to you yesterday? Are you all ready for tomorrow? Good luck!!!
Shoot. I am sorry to hear about Decker. It sounds like he will do much better as an only dog. How are the kids with it?
Butter Chicken sounds like a recipe that can't go wrong, *G*, was it bland or too greasy? It is good to try something new occasionally.

@felis Tiny is a good girl. We tried a few times to dress up the dogs for Halloween and Caitlyn insisted that W needs to have matching Halloween PJs with her. But yeah, no go for them

@Cherylndesigns Darn wind, it really makes a big difference in how the temps feel.
Iy yi yi!!! Can only imagine what your family's secret was and how everyone seemed to know it. LOL
Good luck with all of your file organizing. It is nerve-wracking. When I was deleting all of the duplicate photos, I was using Shift-Delete so I didn't clog up the Recycle Bin. I checked and double-checked every darn folder. And was still a wreck over it.

@scrap-genie Yes!!!! That photo gives me hope!!!!! TFS!!!

Hugs!

 

[LSlycord]

Good morning. It is still morning, right?

The computer arrived. There was a laptop, a monitor, a mouse, a headset, a portable docking station, a CDP2DP and more cords than I have ever seen in my life. And NO instructions! Are you kidding me? I finally got all of the pieces connected except the CDP2DP. I don't even know what the purpose is... But they didn't send me any log on information...so I put it away last night.

I also talked with Mary multiple times yesterday. She is our contact at the Rescue. I feel so bad. But the amount of disruption with his play fighting is incredible...and the real last straw is the fence fighting that causes us not to be able to let him into the yard on his own. I really am sad. Syd and Brian are very practical. Shaun is like his mama and feels very sad...especially since everyone at his work was pulling so hard for this to be Decker's forever family. I think that he will be leaving tomorrow or Thursday.

Then, last night, I was going to make some Pad Thai shrimp. The shrimp was in the colander and I pulled one of my glass batter bowls from the cabinet. It slipped out of my hands and crashed onto the granite counter top and shattered with many of the shattered pieces then falling to the ceramic tile floor. What a disaster! Fortunately, I only got a couple of cuts on my hand. Syd got the dogs out to the lanai so that they didn't get cut and Brian and I worked on the kitchen. Glass was everywhere. I have a KitchenAid stand mixer that was 3 feet away and it had the bowl on it. There were large pieces of glass that flew under the bowl. There were pieces of glass that flew across the room 10 feet to the dining room.

All of my utensils (and admittedly there are a lot) needed to be taken out and washed, with the containers also being washed. Even after vacuuming, hand dusting and washing the surfaces and floor, I was still finding small glass shards when I re-washed with wet cloths.

Then, this morning, I spent 90 minutes on the phone with the help desk guy actually getting my computer set up. He was able to give me all of the user name information etc. Very nice guy even though he doesn't understand why they don't have as part of their process to send information with the computer. (I don't understand either.)

Ok...I'm going to catch up on personals right after I refill my coffee. Good grief...I hope that's less than 5 minutes from now!

 

[taxed4ever]

Happy Tuesday Morning everyone! It is sunny but very, very chilly here today! A lovely North Wind blew in a bunch of cold air and a bit of snow over the holiday Monday. I was MIA from here all day, but accomplished lots of things! I got all of my housework done, laundry and even got Sadie's Birthday gifts purchased and sent to her. Hopefully they will arrive by the end of the month, her Birthday is on the 4th of March. The work party at the In-Laws was very good and DH and I joined SIL Linda and her man Mark along with SIL Sharon to do a bunch of power washing and trimming of the hedges and fruit trees. I was in the house with MIL cleaning her kitchen cupboards. They haven't been cleaned since 2010!!!! YIKES!! We remember the year, because we were there painting her newly renovated kitchen and the Olympics were on in Vancouver. We worked through the morning and stopped for coffee and a snack around 11:30 then back at it until 3 when lunch was served. We were all so busy that we forgot about having lunch LOL. It was a big lunch so none of us were having to cook supper that night, so that was good! I took our lunch up there as Gary and I could not eat all the carbs that MIL was serving. It was a very busy day and we crashed early that night, but it all got done and the In-Laws were so happy to have had all the help! Today my DH is back at work and so I will enjoy the quiet house to myself. Tomorrow is supposed to be hiking day, but it will be very cold and far away and with the price of gas these days I just might stay home and try going to the pool to do laps instead. I purchased myself a new waterproof MP3/bluetooth player so I can listen to music while I swim and got a bunch of songs downloaded to it yesterday, so its all ready to go. Oh I also finally completed the layout I had started a few days back, so I need to upload that to the gallery this morning.

@faerywings - Ugh on the trouble with the Turbo Tax!! Dealing with all of that would fry anyone's brain!! Glad that you finally got it all figured out though, that must be a huge relief! Love your cute little spring chick! Hurry up Spring, its more like the middle of winter here today! I hope you can spend time here and get all caught up, I am hoping to do the same today!

@LSlycord - My goodness Linda, what an ordeal with the glass bowl!! Sometimes its like a bomb explodes when you break something glass like that! Hope you did not get too bad of a cut on your hand! Did the glass land in the shrimp? Did you have to throw that out? Sure hope not! It is sad to hear about Decker not working out for all of you! You can't say that you didn't try, thats for sure and I hope that he finds a wonderful forever home, perhaps on a large piece of property where he can roam about on his own. That is crazy that your work computer did not come with any information! Glad that the help desk guy got it all figured out for you. I had to look up what a CDP2DP was and now it makes sense to me LOL. Hope your first day of work goes well!!

I will be like Linda and come back in a bit after I get myself a second cup of coffee! Have a great Tuesday everyone! Stay warm!

 

[BrightEyes]

Sorry I have not been posting for a few days. Needed to rest and relax after Saturday. Not going into details but will be taking it easy for this week. Will do some scrapping as Color Play is this Friday and I love the colors. It is bright and sunny this AM but possibility of snow/storms later on today/tonight/tomorrow. Sounds like a replay of last week! I plan on staying home the rest of the week.

Heard from DSon#1 and he is so happy to be with his wife again. He is at the end of the 7-day house isolation so they can finally go out. They look so happy in the photos they have shared.

@LSlycord WOW... that was such a crazy accident... glad you weren't cut any worse. Seems like it is hard to find all the glass slivers after that type of breakage. So sorry to hear that it is not working out with the dog. Had to shake my head over the company not sending instructions/log-in/other needed info along with the computer/etc. Glad you had a contact who walked you through getting it all setup.

@faerywings Really enjoying all the spring-countdown images you have been sharing. I smile every morning when I see the latest. Yikes!!! What a run-around trying to log-in to IRS site just to get info!!! Hope you get it resolved soon. Good luck on getting your food order done... hope it goes okay for you.

Need another cup of coffee... CYL

 

[LSlycord]

@faerywings although it is called Butter Chicken, there is really little butter in it! It had some spice but still seemed bland. I love your spring countdown each day...although I think I'm in spring now. It is 72* and feels like 74*. It is headed to 81* and it is so sunny. I have been heating the pool the last few days knowing that we were heading to warm weather and it is up to 70*. Not warm enough for me yet, but Shaun might give it a go in a bit. And, good grief on the taxes! The thought makes me crazy. For me, I just need to pack it up and send it to our accountant. Still it overwhelms me! So hats off to you!

@felis how interesting that your background is in animal care. I didn't realize that. Yes, Decker is neutered and they think still under a year. They think that he is a mix of a Black Mouth Cur and a PitBull and they believe that he may have been used as a bait dog for dog fights. That makes my stomach turn. I am so sorry for him. He can be the sweetest, cuddliest dog ever. But, he also has an aggressive side. Since both of our dogs are female, he is pretty good with them...really just wants to play. But the dog next door that is a male...we have a fence but he runs the fence line and tries to get over there and sounds like he really wants to fight. I think that he needs to be in a home where there are no dogs and he can go outside and run and play without having a male neighbor dog. And oh my goodness. Tiny in that sweater is just adorable. Blue is my favorite color so you definitely have me smiling!

 

[LSlycord]

@taxed4ever I did have to throw away the shrimp... but I agree, just glad that I didn't get cut worse! Sounds like you had a very productive day at the in-laws and I am sure that they were very, very grateful for the help. I'm anxious to hear how your MP3 player works. I've been thinking that I may need something like that for swimming.

@BrightEyes, I agree, those ColorPlay colors are just gorgeous! Staying home for the rest of the week sounds like a good plan! Spring is on its way so might as well not fight the winter if you don't have to. Glad that you are getting some resting and relaxing in!

@scrap-genie I think you are right. I have been off long enough that I need to start mid-week and ease back into it! LOL And let me tell you about my latest frustration in my genealogy search! My grandfather was born in 1899. I knew him---he and Dad weren't close which is part of the story but we did visit at least a couple of times a year. He divorced my grandmother when Dad was young---under 10. He then married Clara who I knew for my entire life as Grandpa Noel's wife. He married her, divorced her and re-married her. All of that was known by my dad. Grandpa died in 1979 and Clara died a few years later. Dad had a half-sister who was older, a full sister who was younger and a half-brother who was younger. All of these were children of my grandmother...Grandpa and Clara never had children. About 20 years ago, I found a marriage certificate for Grandpa Noel and my grandmother. That certificate said that this was Grandpa's 2nd marriage. Dad was about 70 and he had never heard that. My aunt had never heard that story either. Dad got on the phone to a cousin (from his mom's side) and he said that there were always rumors that Dad had a half-sibling on Grandpa's side of the family. At 70, Dad had never heard that. It was a very short marriage I believe...had to have been less than 5 years and the marriage and divorce both fell within the time that it wouldn't have hit a census.
Anyway, I keep hoping that DNA will turn up somewhere and I'll find some long lost cousin to piece together the rest of the story. Or some obscure newspaper article that will have been scanned since I last looked. And that's my genealogy mystery at the moment!

 

[LSlycord]

@Cherylndesigns yes, we are in a strict HOA. Not as bad as some, but still pretty strict. Fortunately, our neighbors are gems...during the pandemic when we were doing bubbles, they became part of our bubble. And, oh how I wish that there had been a deathbed confession to explain the story about my grandfather's first marriage. LOL Love the picture of you and Ava. She is such a doll and the two of you are just so cute together!

There, I think that I am mainly caught up on personals. I think that I may go scrap a couple of pages. I have so many ideas floating in my head.

 

[Cherylndesigns]

@Cherylndesigns yes, we are in a strict HOA. Not as bad as some, but still pretty strict. Fortunately, our neighbors are gems...during the pandemic when we were doing bubbles, they became part of our bubble. And, oh how I wish that there had been a deathbed confession to explain the story about my grandfather's first marriage. LOL Love the picture of you and Ava. She is such a doll and the two of you are just so cute together!

There, I think that I am mainly caught up on personals. I think that I may go scrap a couple of pages. I have so many ideas floating in my head.

Oh, that's interesting about your grandfather's first marriage. Oh, I have another one. My husband found out, on Ancestry, that he had 2 half siblings. Apparently there had been a "first marriage" by his grandpa that nobody knew about. That marriage produced 2 children. His grandpa was about 20 years older than his grandma, so it could have totally gone unnoticed. Funny thing, he knows that his mom didn't know because she would have told him. SO many stories, right?

It's wonderful that you have great neighbors. We never did when we lived there (at least next door). We always draw the weird ones, though. Our next door neighbors didn't like dogs at all. We had sweet people in the rest of the neighborhood, though, just never right beside us. Fortunately, they were snow birds, so we only had to put up with their weirdness for part of the year - the BEST part - LOL - when everybody wanted to be outdoors. We had a cage around our pool, so we just had to be sure to keep our dogs inside of that. I knew where their property line was - we backed up to a lake - and I used to walk my dogs right behind their house - off their property.

 

[Cherylndesigns]

@LSlycord Did the computer get to you yesterday? Are you all ready for tomorrow? Good luck!!!
Shoot. I am sorry to hear about Decker. It sounds like he will do much better as an only dog. How are the kids with it?
Butter Chicken sounds like a recipe that can't go wrong, *G*, was it bland or too greasy? It is good to try something new occasionally.

@felis Tiny is a good girl. We tried a few times to dress up the dogs for Halloween and Caitlyn insisted that W needs to have matching Halloween PJs with her. But yeah, no go for them

@Cherylndesigns Darn wind, it really makes a big difference in how the temps feel.
Iy yi yi!!! Can only imagine what your family's secret was and how everyone seemed to know it. LOL
Good luck with all of your file organizing. It is nerve-wracking. When I was deleting all of the duplicate photos, I was using Shift-Delete so I didn't clog up the Recycle Bin. I checked and double-checked every darn folder. And was still a wreck over it.

@scrap-genie Yes!!!! That photo gives me hope!!!!! TFS!!!

Hugs!

Yes, it's nerve-wracking to be sure. I'm like you - checking and double checking - so afraid I'll delete something that I didn't mean to delete. Of course, I can retrieve it from recycle, but once I'm sure, those files go too. It's crazy how many files I've moved/deleted.

It is 29 right now but supposedly going up to 63???!! I think this is our last blast, though. It came up from Texas and moved in last night. I guess the front is quite large and we had a storm advisory again. We've had a fairly mild winter, though. We can't complain - well, I guess we can a little bit. LOL - Looks like it warms up again next week. Fingers crossed.

That family "secret" was a doozy. The "pieces" of some puzzles fit together now though. There were some things that never made sense to me growing up - you just accept them, you know?

 

[bcgal00]

Good morning ladies. Today D is trying to book movers for end of March. It's more difficult than local movers, more time involved including an overnight storage time but I have faith that we'll get something set up. I booked my last dentist appt and need to set up a haircut too before mid March. There are so many little details to take care of. As soon as we have our move in date (probably Apr 2nd) confirmed with movers then I can deal with gas, hydro, telus, etc. I need to get all the work done with the dogs too at the vet before we go so they will be up-to-date on shots, glands, nail clipping, etc so I'll have a bit of time to figure out who we'll go to in Kamloops.

So many things to do but am focusing on a couple each day. I know everything will get done but I stress over it anyway. I'll be so glad when we are moved into the new home, in the new city, and can start living our new life.

TV-wise, we started watching Inventing Anna (Netflix) while in the hotel room last week and last night finished it off. It was really good.

Gotta go, Jen is coming now and we're going to go dump some stuff off at charity, so back later.

 

[mom2triplets04]

woke up this morning and decided to cook and bake! What? I've been cooking and baking since I woke up. Made potato salad, donuts, mini apple pies and breakfast bake. Kids get home in 10 minutes everything is ready for them to eat lunch. Everything found on pinterest. So yummy except for the mini apple pie things that was from something my husband found on tiktok of all places.

Just finished checking my mail. Downloaded my 52 kit and now going to check some other sites for the $2 tuesday sales.

Myla has her training at 4 so keeping myself busy.