she's
actual
size

Today started off so well, too.

There are some days when I wish I'd never bothered to climb out of bed; this was one of them. It started off benign enough: waking, showering, eating some cereal. I scraped together my dirty clothes and went over to my parents' house to do some laundry (for free, you see).

The Scale

My parents have cable, and I made use of this luxury while I had the chance. Cartoon Network was having a Powerpuff Girls Marathon. The Powerpuff girls are one of my guilty pleasures - something I am terribly embarrassed to admit liking, but watch anyway. Call me crazy.

While the second load was washing, I wandered upstairs to use the bathroom, and got on the scale. Just out of curiosity, you know?

I've broken 200 pounds.

For years I've flirted with the two hundred pound mark, never quite touching it. I've been damn close before; last summer I reached about 198 lbs before losing 10 or so. The weight comes and goes without me doing a thing about it, although I do tend to lose weight during the winter. (Why during the winter and not the summer, I don't know.)

But when I saw the digital scale's reading of 205.4 lbs, something inside me wailed mournfully. Two hundred pounds is fat. I wasn't fat before; 198 lbs wasn't fat. Two hundred is fat.

The question, now, is whether I'm going to do anything about it. I probably will, slowly, but making drastic changes in my eating habits only makes me crabby. Probably the only thing I'm going to do is stop getting fast food for lunch, and pack a lunch instead. I'll save money that way, too. You see...

The Mail

After washing my clothes, I went home. The mail had arrived, and I grabbed the pile of paper. Serendipitously, the only letter that wasn't junk mail stuck up out of the pile. The return address said, "City Income Tax."

I'd done my city income tax return back in May, and I couldn't pay the total amount at that time. They let you pay in quarterly installments, with interest, so I'd sent them a quarter of the total due and forgot about it.

Literally.

The second installment was due July 31. Panicked, I ripped open the letter and saw:

Augh! But... But, wait. My total due had been only $140, and I'd sent them a check for $40 already. How could I owe so much? I pulled out my records and compared it to what they sent me.

Well, they made a mistake. Several, in fact. First, I had three W-2 forms to turn in, and they typed in the wrong local deductions: $2.39 instead of $25.39. Quite a difference! Plus, their own printout shows my payment for $41.29, but the front sheet says I never paid that. It says "$146.88 owed, return received without payment." AND the other thing that I'd supposedly screwed up was line 5: They said I should have written $398.64 on line 5.

Guess what I wrote? $398.64.

It's all fucked up. I'm going to go in there Monday morning (goddamnfuckingcity GRR!) and get this straightened out. I'll also plead that I though I would receive a notice from them regarding the tax due, which is why I forgot about the balance due.

While I was sitting on the couch pouring over these records...

The Smell

There is a stink in my living room. I can't identify it. It smells sort of like when you burn a bag of microwave popcorn, then let it sit for several days behind the couch. That's what it smells like. I assume Jaws peed someplace, but I can't figure out where.

I got out the rug deodorizer (that stuff you sprinkle on the carpet and vacuum up) but it really didn't do anything. I pulled out the couch and smelled around. Nothing. I did find a spot on the window sill that seemed to smell bad, but I wiped it up and the smell remained.

I don't know what to do. It still stinks in here, but it smells like "mountain fresh springwater" (whatever that smells like) and burnt popcorn/cat pee. I found the potpourri I got for Christmas and haven't used yet, and poured some of it into a soup bowl to sit. Then the room smelled like burnt popcorn/cat pee and potpourri and mountain fresh springwater. So I lit a scented candle, and now it smells like burnt popcorn/cat pee and potpourri and mountain fresh springwater and lavender.

Help!

And, to top it off, while I was writing this entry, my word processer freaked out. I know have TWO drop-down menus that say "File," and THREE that say "Help." Great. Just fucking great.