Tax

Getting your tax return done is not a minor event in anyone's life.  It is a major headache.  So I was most pleased to get my tax done today.

I went to a very knowledgeable lady named Janet Ortiz at my local ITP branch at Stone's Corner, 5 minutes drive from where I live.  She even told me where to park my car!

I know it is completely irrelevant but she had the olive skin one would expect of a person of Spanish ancestry  -- not like the awful whiteness of Poles or the Irish -- or the golden brown of the Norwegians and the Swedes.

Like most Australians, both Jenny and I have substantial Irish ancestry so it was no mystery how Joe would end up.  When he was a toddler I used to call him "the white boy" as his skin was just about as white as a sheet of white paper.  And now in adulthood he simply goes red if he gets much sun -- as my father did.  Though my father was a redhead.  But Joe has a red beard so it all fits.  Because Jenny's grandfather was a redhead we had great hopes that Joe would be a redhead but a "bluebeard" is certainly a good alternative.

Anyway Janet sat me down for one and a half hours and turned my heap of paperwork into a proper return  -- and even told me what  refund I would get.  And the cost --$200+ -- was worth its weight in gold to me.

In my youth I used to do lots of things myself  -- not only tax returns but simple plumbing, electrical work and even some (rough) carpentry.  But I am pleased that I can hand all those things to the experts these days.  I don't even hang my own pictures now.  Geoff has just put up a whole heap of them for me -- mostly family photos