A Taxing Day

It's been one of those weeks.  The kids have had a lot going on and Husband got the flu and is now coughing enough for me to consider homicide.  Yesterday was one of those, 'day in the life of ' days that I don't want to repeat anytime soon.

I drove a few towns away to a bank that we only use for savings.  Wait in line, get to the counter, only to find that they wouldn't accept a deposit of my check because only Husband's name appeared on it and his name is not on the savings account.  She offered that he could come in with a photo id and deposit it.  I told her he doesn't work 'banker's hours' and left with my check.  Between the 7 business day holds on checks and the outrageous fees, I'm beginning to see why some people just keep their money under a mattress.

Headed to a local discount store to stock up on food and supplies.  We have adopted a soldier in Afghanistan, so I was looking at the three page list of ideas and buying things I don't normally buy (like single serve containers of food and baby wipes).  It was actually fun, but I was trying to determine, in my head, what would fit in the FPO box, plus give him a variety of food, personal care items, and some entertainment.  And checking ingredients to make sure nothing had pork, which is prohibited.  After two hours (because I'm THAT slow), I went to the check out and waited again, this time behind a man who smelled like manure.  No joke.  Got home and put everything away, only to discover a couple of the items were missing.  Checked my receipt, called the store, and yes, they had one of my bags.  Made another trip that direction to get it later. 

Then made the mistake to work on taxes.  We had three missing 1099 DIV forms, so looked online and got the info on two.  Couldn't find anything on Hewlett Packard's (they were just hocking their merchandise), so I called the 800 number on my last statement.  After the usual rigmarole, I pressed 0 and got a live person, who informed me that they were the new transfer agent for HP and that I needed to call the old transfer agent (Computershare).  Beingst I was holding a Computershare statement, I told her that was who I had originally thought I was calling.  She seemed confused, but gave me another 800 number.  That's when the fun started.  I don't know if I was pressing the '1, 2, 3, 4, 5' choices too quickly, but I kept tripping the system and it was sending me back to the original menu.  I tried the old 0 trick, but it just said, 'that is an invalid selection.'  I got to one menu about statements, but then it told me that I had not cashed a dividend check from 2005 and asked if I wanted that issued again.  Well, $4 is $4, so I accepted that choice, but then was sent back to the original menu again.  After 25 minutes, I finally found the 'need a duplicate tax form' selection and hung up.

I decided to call it a day!  Except I needed to make two more runs to the high school for my kids and then to a music lesson.  At least I had some mint chocolate chip brownies to look forward to at 9 p.m.