Happy Friday the Thirteenth!

The festivities started yesterday. In an attempt to avoid doing the work I was supposed to be doing, I pulled out our taxes and started working on those. There are a lot of things I'll have to look up at home, so I wasn't able to do all of them, but I was feeling pretty good about my progress. I'd looked a bunch of stuff up on the IRS website, including a form for deducting part of Penny's daycare expenses, and verifying that I can take a "clean fuel" deduction for purchasing a Prius this year. Stuff like that.

So once I get those final things looked up (things that are in our financial software, like how much we donated to charity this year, and things that I just don't know off the top of my head, like Penny's SSN or her daycare's EID) the rest of it should be simple number-crunching. Having a kid does fantastic things to your taxes. We're going to get a pretty nice refund this year.

So I was feeling pretty good. About ten minutes before I was going to leave for the day, my phone rang. It was my company's HR office. "The W2 for the pay you got while you were on maternity leave? It was wrong. They're going to send you a new one, around the end of the month."

WHAT?

She offered to connect me directly to the company that handled my maternity benefits. After navigating their labyrinthine phone system, I was told that "The current wait to speak to a representative is approximately... thirteen minutes."

It wound up being more like five, at least, but the woman who answered the phone had no idea what I was talking about and put me on hold for probably the rest of the thirteen while she ran screaming for her supervisor.

It turned out to be a good news/bad news thing. My company mis-reported the percentage of my pay that was taxable, which is why the benefits company was having to re-issue W2s. (Not just to me, but to everyone who received disability benefits this year. In a company of over 100,000. I suddenly understand why it's going to take until the end of the month for them to re-issue them.) The representative was not permitted to tell me what the new taxable amount was over the phone, and there wasn't anything she could do to speed up the process.

And the later you turn in your forms, the longer it takes to get the refund back. So instead of submitting our forms in mid-February and getting our refund in mid-April, I won't be able to submit them until mid-March, and we won't get our refund until probably June. BAH.

The good news is that the number reported on the correct W2 will actually be smaller. By an order of magnitude, if I understood what the woman on the phone said. A smaller taxable income means a lower amount of taxes - which means a bigger refund.

It's a good thing I didn't already have plans for the money, though.

And the joy continues. I'm not sick sick, but I've still got a hint of queasiness that comes and goes. And Penny is in a kind of fussy mood today.

(The daycare people said that yesterday she was fussy all day, and broke out screaming and crying several times for no apparent reason, and it took a long time to calm her. Their opinion - the beginning of stranger anxiety. Evidence to support their theory - when Matt went to visit her, she was all smiles and giggles. If that's really the case, it's going to be a fun few months until she outgrows it, or at least decides the daycare minders are Acceptable People.)

I've been feeling a little moody lately, too. Hormonal shifts, perhaps. Whatever the cause, I've spent about the last week or so feeling like there's a huge crying fit on my horizon. And I'm afraid it's going to be over something really ridiculous and petty, like the fact that it turns out that I really suck at a game I actually thought I was pretty good at. (Well, I said it was ridiculous, didn't I?)

And I got on the scale this morning and my weight hasn't budged all week. Despite being sick one day and not eating at all. Despite the fact that I absolutely have not cheated.

(Should I mention that it's been a really banner week for my self-esteem? Yeah. Well below sea-level.)

But fear not! I will not abandon you, the day before Valentine's Day, on such a low note!

The doorbell rang last night, and it was our neighbor from two doors down, coming to bring a Valentine's Day present for Penny! Ostensibly from her two sons, Nate and Pete, of course. (She's the only person on the block with boys even remotely near Penny's age. Everyone else has teenagers or girls.)

It was a cookie (which Matt will get, as Penny's still fighting solids and isn't up to cookies yet, anyway) and a little sandbox-digging toy, along with a heart that reads, "I Dig You!" We were touched and highly amused.

(She's only six months old, and already she has to start fending off the boys... At least now she has a rake with which to do it!)

--Liz