Taxes Done...It Must Be Spring

Sense of pride, sense of accomplishment!  I like to do my taxes myself, mostly because I can't see hiring it done when mine are pretty simple, and second, I like to think I can still figure stuff out on my own.  I love these fat envelopes, I taped down the flaps with extra tape and wonder if they need extra postage.  This is the first year the government didn't send out booklets and forms; I went to the library and got them, besides working online.  No envelopes were included in the booklets either.  You wonder what they do with all their money, and when you read of some of the extravagances, decry this sloughing of envelopes.  Oyez!

Good news at least this year, probably the last since I graduate in May, that taking a college credit reduces what I owe and gets me a bit of a refund.  Hot dog, I am getting new refrigerator psyched.  Just a small fridge, no hookups with water for ice are available, nor is there much room, so I am looking at apartment size but with an Automatic Defroster.  Chopping ice out and discovering Siberian wooly mammoths inside is getting old.  It's square, it's now brown, it's kinda meat?  Even the cats run.

Tally for the day: bag of garbage 2.  The haul wasn't memorable only but for the volume; there was a swollen can of maybe tuna ready to burst, innumerable plastic straws and fast food cups, some cables and plastic bottles from car oil, five glass alcohol bottles, and a look, don't judge me, pretty little rusty brown back and white underside deer mouse.  I imagine from the feral cats.  Deer mice are known to carry Hanta virus and Lyme disease, so I made sure it got deposited somewhere safe.  Lots of cigarette butts, and if you think I am going overboard, just think of the trillions of butts leaking the toxic chemicals they are designed to trap into both the environment and our water table.  I do not like the giant yard ashtray you see anywhere people sneak out for a butt, particularly when there is a cigarette ash urn immediately two feet behind you.  Yuh, I know, Ms. High and Mighty here.  But for heaven's sake, folks.  I swear if we cleaned it all up, there'd be squirrels begging for fresh cigs to get their depleted nicotine fix.

Now, under one plastic cup cover was a leaf no bigger than a fingernail, a beginning of a burdock.  The edges were scalloped and the triangulated tip pointed up towards light and air and hopeful rain.  Tiny chives are appearing, their little fingers reaching up between the cracks of sidewalk round back.  Said to be maybe a thunderstorm tonight, and down here amid the buildings a storm crashes and echoes off the towers like a firecracker exploding inside a garage.  Hella loud.  I enjoy it, the cats don't.

The low clouds are rolling in, the temperature is to be in the mid-fifties tomorrow; this combination of warm coming into cold air primes the atmospheric pump for tearing open a breach in the sky and letting the pluvial deluge rip.  The spring torrents wash sidewalks, removing mud and salt and percolate through soil and sleeping seed from last year's plants.  Say, go buy a cheap pack of seed from the dollar store, and toss it onto neglected ground, easy enough to find in the city; what a show we would have!  I am sure there is some rule against seeding with intent to abandon, but if it bring flowers or food for the birds, I say go for the sin.  Just think of the cry if people were able to buy packets of used cigarette butts to sprinkle; as it is, it remains an unseen crime out in the open.  Uh oh, I think I am rambling.  Sorry.

Sleep well, the night is coming in measures of time to count the dark till dawn.  We hypnotize ourselves into our dreams, and fall gratefully backwards into layers of precognition.  I will listen for rumblings in the heavens of rising air, cumulonimbus, rain, and hail.