A Taxing Day

First, clarification - this post has been in draft stage since the 16th.

In honor of yesterday being tax day (now moved to July thanks to the Corona virus), I worked on our taxes a bit.  You may recall that we sent in estimated payments to the Feds and California in early January.  I used every resource we had and did the most careful projection I could - and am so relieved to say that I was pretty darn close!  We are pretty sure we're getting a refund (small-ish) from Federal and a pretty good refund from State....and that makes sense because I didn't really focus much on our State estimate - I sent a generous amount I was pretty sure would cover it and it more than has.  Refunds!  It's been decades since we've ever gotten a refund.

We continued working on them today - J.'s working on our 'household items and furniture' donation quantification and I'm whittling away at other charitable donations, mortgage interest, etc. .  We aren't in any rush but it is good to know we aren't going to owe a ton more than what we've already paid.

I am so relieved.

In other news, the loan process is in full swing and on Tuesday evening, we were concerned when we realized that the loan docs we'd received (all very preliminary) didn't include any mention of the $65K we gave to the builder in March, 2019.  A few stressful phone calls but by Wednesday morning it was all resolved.  We sent the lender the two receipts we had from the builder - and all was good.  (And our builder sent those receipts after we sent an email inquiry when we first got up - he emailed us back promptly with what we needed).

He doesn't build houses super fast but he's organized about the finances - which is a good thing.

The house is really looking amazing and we get more and more excited every minute of every day.  I've had a couple moments of feeling overwhelmed - sometimes dreading the move process.  But we will get everything moved out of the townhouse first - which will ensure we have all we need to survive in the new house.  Beds, dishes, etc. - and we'll have oodles of time to go through the rest of the stuff as we work on getting settled.  When I think of it that way, it's easier.  We sure hope to get out of both storage units right away - it's $400 a month in expense and we don't want to have to pay that much after the house is ready.

Looks like May is going to be pretty darn busy.

It's been a few days - more than a few, actually.  Today is the 23rd and the above was in draft stage forever.

We went to the house day day before yesterday to meet the Superintendent to confirm the placement of mirrors in the bathrooms.  At least one of the lights needs to be moved - it's mis-centered on the wall and looks off.

Yesterday, J. met the gutter guy at the house to talk through the process and get an estimate.  It's less than we thought so that's good.  So many houses in Carson City don't have gutters....it feels foreign to us as Californians to have a home where water from the roof will just land near the foundation and stay there - especially here where there's a lot of snow on the roof for long periods of time slowly melting.  The builder put the drains in weird locations that don't coincide with a typical 'corner' placement of gutters but we can have the landscaper add a connection and move them to the down spouts.

J. also realized that the laundry room counter top isn't correct.  We have one lower cabinet across from the washer dryer with a sink on top.  We intentionally planned only one cabinet for that wall so we could put cat boxes in the laundry room - but we wanted a countertop across the entire space.  There is only countertop around the sink.  We called the builder's office and his assistant pulled the plans and said 'we'll figure it out'.  They will recut the counter because it needs to be one full piece.  Hopefully, that change won't put them back too far in terms of completion.

We are expecting to close two weeks from tomorrow!

We did a family video call on Facebook today - it didn't last long because B. had to get somewhere but it was nice to see both kids for the first time in forever.  We're going to try to do a video call once a week.

We've got some boxes in the house to start packing up.  I question why in the world I took a ton of clothes out of the wardrobe boxes and hung them in the closet.  I'm wearing the same 24 inches of clothes in a walk in closet.  Guess that's why I did it  super excited to have a walk in closet of my own so I filled it up.  And now I'll be taking it all out of the closet and packing it up again.  Another good opportunity to cull out things I rarely wear.

We finished watching "Little Fires Everywhere" and just started Season 4 of "The Americans".

Supposedly, things here in Nevada are reopening on May 1st but....we're pretty sure there will be an announcement soon to extend the non-essential business closures until mid-to-late May.  It's the best thing to do in a world where no one is really positive about anything.

The incredible lack of leadership in our country these days is terrifying.  Making an already scary time even more so.  I am having more anxiety than I want to admit and it manifests in ways that make me grumpy and over-reactive about things.  To realize that this global pandemic is something our government has done an abysmal job of preparing for and dealing with is overwhelmingly horrific.  There are no words for what's happening - an inept President fueling fear and spreading nonsense.  Not knowing how long 'sheltering in place' will last.  Is doing that - staying in our homes - only going to draw this out even longer?  If we had leadership with communication skills, leadership skills and no ego, we'd be in a completely different place.  But we don't.  We have what we have and we're paying the price.

In spite of the leadership debacle, there are plenty of examples of people with a 'we're in this together' approach.  A Facebook group has people posting one picture with a view from their window.  Only one.  It's fascinating, beautiful and uplifting to be reminded just how incredibly stunning this world is and how amazing people are, everywhere.