GetSheila

Who's the Mommy?

1:30 Chauffeur 78 year old mommy to oral surgeon.

2:10 Watch her disappear into the bowels of the office and wonder if I will ever see her alive and/or whole again.

3:30 Settle tipsy gray-haired woman into house and head for Walgreens.

4:00 Return from Walgreens disgruntled as prescription will not be ready until 5:30. Eat 5000 calorie burger and fries to lighten mood. Dip fries in mayo because they don't come with enough fat and calories all by themselves.

5:45 Pick up meds and decide the person with a new prescription for Vicoden would be my new best friend if she were not already my mother.

6:00 Mom says her head has cleared and boots me out of the house, er...tells me it's okay to leave.

As I drive home, I think about all the times my mom took care of me when I was sick. It's true the roles reverse as your parents age. Neither one of us is quite comfortable with that yet so we joke about it while at the same time pretending it isn't happening.

What happens when I get old and I have no children to take care of me?

Tags: aging, mom, elder care

Scissors as Pet?

Have you seen the Discover Card commercial with orange-handles scissors running around the streets of the city like a bunch of hungry pigeons? It's up on YouTube if you need a refresher.

So here's the thing. When I first saw the commercial, it creeped me out. Animated scissors? Jumping up a snipping off pieces of things? RUN FOR YOUR LIVES! Yet everyone in the commercial seems to think they are cute little creatures to be smiled upon and fed. Fed with their credit cards.

And then I started to see them as cute, too. Aww, toss the adorable little jumping scissors your plastic and watch them whittle away at your debt. Symbolically, anyway.

But wait a minute! It's just wrong, those animated scissors! I am not comfortable imagining steel implements roaming free. I am not comfortable imagining them roaming, period.

Great. Yet another disturbing image burned into my already overcrowded brain.

Technorati Tags: commercial, scissors, discover card

Psychic Smackdown

I finally finished the book reviews for Medium Dreams I told you about. Whew! What started out as a simple one-book review turned into a Psychic Smackdown between Allison DuBois, Gary Schwartz (the parapsychologist who used her as a lab rat), and a bevy of skeptics. I wrapped the two book reviews up with a third post a la a boxing match that ties all the other research I did together.

Um...since I don't actually follow boxing, it is possible I got some of terminology wrong. As I started to look things up, I decided I didn't really care so don't be offended if people don't "wade in" during a boxing match and you're only "denied" during a game involving a ball. Calling the reading I did "research" may be a bit of a stretch, too. It was more along the lines of reading along and minding my own business before suddenly snorting tea out my nose, especially when visiting The Two Percent Company blogs.

Please click on over to Medium Dreams and check out the posts. If you're in a hurry, skip to Part 3 for the most bang for your buck.

• Part 1: Book Review: Don’t Kiss Them Good-Bye by Allison DuBois’
• Part 2: Book Review: The Truth About Medium by Gary E. Schwartz
• Part 3: Psychic Smackdown (a review of discussions on this subject floating about the Internet)

I hope you enjoy reading them as much as I enjoyed writing them. Wait. What I really mean is: I hope you enjoy reading them as much as I enjoy reading them now that I am done writing them. There, that's better.

Tags: book review, books, medium dreams, mediums, skeptics, allison dubois

Bedbugs, An Epidemic

So I'm not crazy after all. Bed bugs really are on the rise, as my good childhood friend J. Clerkin-Whitcomb alerted me! He sent me this article by Paula Froelich over at Page Six:

 

WHAT'S EATING RALPH LAUREN? September 26, 2006 -- FASHION house Ralph Lauren is giving its designers the creepy crawlies - literally. Staffers say they've had to put up with an outbreak of bedbugs at the label's graphic design studio and shirt design offices at 650 Madison Ave. One affected employee told us, "I have bites all over me. This has gone on for over a month now." Ralph Lauren executives at first refused to exterminate "on grounds of bites alone," the insider says. "They wanted to see the bugs first. But bedbugs are notoriously invisible. So we have been here suffering forever. It is scandalous." A company rep said, "The exterminators were called and came in three weeks ago when the problem was first brought to our attention, and again last weekend. The employees in that office were offered a chance to relocate to a different floor." Let's hope the little critters don't pop up in any of the clothier's posh stores.

 

ALL my best gossipy tips come from J.

Tags: bedbugs, ralph lauren

Where's My Laptop, Dammit!

I ordered a Dell laptop a week ago. (I know, I know! But I'm counting on them having worked that whole battery-exploding problem out by now.)

Anyway, I didn't expect it until tomorrow - then found out it would arrive day before yesterday - got a notice they tried to deliver it during the only one hour period no one was home - stayed home all day yesterday to be sure I wouldn't miss the second delivery attempt - found out UPS only does first-attempts on Saturday - so now have to wait until Tuesday because no one will be home to sign for it on Monday.

Bastards!

I look forward to blogging from my bed surrounded by cats as I watch my favorite shows on my new DVR which will also be installed on Tuesday.

I love the whole ugly American spending my disgusting capitalist wealth on filthy luxuries when I should be feeding the poor blasphemous life that I lead. It makes me feel all girly and princess-like.

Tags: computer, laptop, UPS

Link Love - Group Writing Project

This post is just a little link love going out to everyone who wrote how-to posts for the latest Problogger writing project. The more people that link to a blog, the higher the blog's ranking so I am linking to all the participants in the hope that they will link back to me (which some of them have done already) as we all merrily boost each others rankings.

I thought about trying to organize the posts in some way but there are 343 of them so you're on your own determining which ones you might want to read. Um...sorry.

• How to Survive Your Young Husband’s First (Unexpected) Heart Attack by Olivia
• How to Overcome Fear by Scott
• How to Be Bald by Dave
• How to get promoted when you work from home by Home Office Blues
• Quieting the Monsters… or how to feed your Children by Miscellaneous Mum
• LJP - the Treo 600 Gameboy Emulator by Tam
• Make a simple diagonal page background using photoshop and css by Ben
• How to Be a Parent and Still Have Fun by Mama Duck
• Manage Your Manager - How to cope with Ineffectual leadership by Katy
• How to Dress Like a Desperate Housewife by Leora
• How to Make a Rubbish Website by Tim
• How To Participate in the Blogging Community by Ray
• The Great Flood by Jude
• How to Jam a Printer and Settle for Tie-Dye by Deb
• How to build a GARDENING blog that’s bigger than Boing Boing by Stuart
• How to Get Rich in Three Easy Steps by FMF
• How do I get a job in the Car Industry by Gary
• Become a Blogging Maniac by Tammy
• How to Dangerously Inflate your Ego via Blogging by Wendy
• How to Proofread Your Own Writing by Anne
• How to Sell Your Home for Sale by Owner by Rob
• The Inside Scoop on How to Get Published by Tasra
• Don’t get caught misunderstanding the difference between APR and APY by Ricemutt
• Set up your blog using Textpattern by Jaro
• How to write a great blog post by Leroy
• Integrating a Forum with WordPress by ZMAng

Tags: group writing project, how-to, link love, writing

How-To's. Lots of 'Em. Now.

Problogger's "How-To" group writing project is done and received 343 submissions! That makes me .3% of a giant group of people who are silly enough to write on a topic chosen by someone else. For free. (BTW, that's point-three percent, not three percent, proving just how insignificant I am in the grand bloggy scheme of things.)

There were prizes for winners chosen at random, but how was I to get myself to Spain for a week long stay at a beach front apartment in Estepona on the Costa del Sol anyway? I am much too busy hanging out with Paris Hilton and being seen in all the "right" places. (Oh gross, I think I just threw up a little bit thinking about what that experience would be like.)

No, I entered to see if I could perhaps generate some new readers for my blog. Bookkeeping for Bloggers was probably not the best topic choice since this is my personal blog, but I don't want to start a tax/accounting blog. Then I would actually have to commit to writing about that stuff all the time. I won't! I won't! I won't! I will, however, write about it occasionally and post it here. I'll try to keep that sort of nonsense to a minimum, though, oh ye who must be entertained at all times.

In retrospect, I probably should have written a how-to related to the TV show Medium for my Medium Dreams blog, since that is an actual paying gig and could use more readers and commenters. I said, COULD USE MORE READERS AND COMMENTERS. But...well, can you think of any how-to's on the subject of Medium?

How to survive on DVDs and infrequent cast appearances until Medium's mid-season premiere

How to save hours of your time by not reading entertainment blogs because the Medium stars never do anything shocking or unwise in public so they aren't going to be mentioned or photographed in there anyway

How to find information on your favorite Medium star who isn't Patricia Arquette (because she is everywhere so you need no help there)

Hey, I think I just came up with a post for Medium Dreams.

Tags: blogging, medium, medium dreams, contest, writing

GetSheila "Must Be A Liberal Democrat" - The Shame!

Ryan Ellis at Tax Playa recently wrote Child Care Credit: Subsidizing Working Mothers Instead of Homemakers. Does anyone else have a problem with that title or is it just me? So of course I had to click over and here is what I found:

Q: Tax Playa, why do working parents get a tax subsidy, and I get nothing for my stay-at-home wife's contribution to my household? Brian, Washington DC A: You're right--it isn't fair.  A tax subsidy is given just for day care, but a corresponding tax credit for homemakers is not available.  Nonetheless, it's my job to give the best tax advice I can--so here we go. [He then proceeds to describe the mechanics of the tax credit]

Well, I couldn't resist:

Comments Let me get this straight: Brian's wife provides free child care as well as free housekeeping, cooking, shopping and I'm sure many other tasks throughout the day in support of their household. Brian gets all of this for FREE, yet he begrudges a tax credit to people who have to pay for child care? Please tell me you made that question up. Posted by: GetSheila | 2006.09.19 at 04:34 PM

Here is Ryan's email response, which by the way I completely agree with: 

Sheila: Actually, I get that question all the time.  The issue is that the tax code in this case is not being neutral with respect to lifestyle choices (though this is by no means the only example). The legislative history behind this tax credit is an interesting one.  It was pushed through Congress by very liberal members in order to explicitly-encourage women working outside the home.  This is, in my view, an inappropriate "social engineering" use of tax policy.  Tax policy should be neutral.  There should be no marriage penalties and no marriage bonuses.  There should be no child tax credit and no regular child credit.  All income should be taxed once and only once at one low, flat rate.  Social engineering is inappropriate from a liberal or conservative point of view. In this case, the code is not neutral.  It subsidizes two-earner families, and fails to give an equivalent subsidy to one-earner families.  Brian (and he is a real person) wants to give a credit to stay at home moms.  I think that is simply compounding the error.  I would repeal the credit entirely and lower the top marginal tax rate to stimulate work, savings, and investment. Ryan

And then one of Ryan's readers felt the need to email me this. (What is with the emailing? Perhaps commenting is too public for people like this. If he emails me, he only runs the risk of one person disagreeing with him, as opposed to potential masses if he leaves his comment on a blog for all the world to see. I took care of that last part for him. I'm just thoughtful that way.)

Bookkeeping for Bloggers

B is for blogger but it is also for business owner. If you earn money from your blog and blogging isn't just a hobby for you, you need to keep track of your income and expenditures. The more organized you are up front, the easier your job will be at year-end when you have to pull it all together for income tax purposes.

This post is targeted to the sole proprietor who works from home in the U.S. and has no employees. Translation: It's you, only you, and nothing but you. In your PJ's. If you don't live in the U.S., most of the basics still apply so read on.

SET UP AN EASY-TO-USE SYSTEM

Step 1: Open a business checking account.

The easiest way to track your business income and expenses is to keep your business funds separate from your personal funds. For example, you may have a checking account, a PayPal account, and a credit card account that you use solely for business.

Step 2: Use personal financial software.

Financial software like Quicken and MSMoney make keeping track of your business and personal finances a breeze. They are designed for easy setup and the best part is that you can download your bank, investment, and credit card activity directly into your software. No more manual data entry. Later, as your business grows and you graduate to a bookkeeping software (e.g. Quickbooks), these files easily import.

If you want to try your hand at preparing your own tax returns at year-end, there are also some great tax software programs like TurboTax and TaxCut that import your tax information from your financial software.

Step 3: Hire an accountant.

Why try to figure it all out for yourself when you'd rather be blogging? Pay a CPA to prepare your income tax returns and answer your bookkeeping questions. It will be money well spent. And you can deduct it.

KNOW WHAT YOU CAN DEDUCT

It is impossible to talk about bookkeeping without also talking about income taxes, at least in the U.S., because things you pay for aren't necessarily deductible as expenses. The money you earn from your blog is business income but the expenditures you make may be:

1. Business expenses
2. Business asset purchases
3. Business loan repayments (someone actually loaned a blogger money?)
4. Owner draws, or
5. Personal expenditures (which are also classified as owner draws)

Tags: blogging, bookkeeping, record keeping, small business, taxes

In The Works

Some of the things I am working on that you shall soon see:

1. Problogger group writing project:
   
   This will be my first time submitting. Eek! The topic is "How-to's" and my post is titled Bookkeeping for Bloggers. I thought, gosh I don't enjoy writing about taxes because it feels so much like work but I can whip out a little ditty on bookkeeping. That's no big deal, right? (...) Yes, I am an idiot. But I'm going to finish it, dammit. And you're going to read it and not say out loud, "All that agony over this?"  Or...Or...Or no ice cream before bedtime!
   
   
2. Book Review:
   
   Don't Kiss Them Good-Bye, by Allison DuBois. Yes, the real woman the TV show Medium is based on. Why should you care about her silly old book? Well...WELL, apparently there is some controversy a-brewin'. Actually, it probably a-brewed a few years ago since the book came out in 2004 but I am just finding out about it now. Ms. DuBois tells a story about a dear childhood friend, Domini, she got back in touch with shortly before she died of cancer. It was a touching story and includes some details that it turns out Domini's sisters say Never. Happened. I just read about this on a forum so have a bit more reading to do. But YOU, gentle Internet, will be the first to hear all the good gossip as soon as I dig it up. 
   
   I am also reading The Truth About Medium, by Gary E. Schwartz, Ph.D. (the guy who used Allison DuBois as a "research medium") and it's really pissing me off. More to follow.

Tags: books, writing