Shallow Targets

Dearest Rachel –

Some days, I’m at a loss for what to write you because there just isn’t much going on that I haven’t told you about before (or that I can at least put a slightly different spin on, for the sake of offering some amusement). Today is a little different, insofar as I can think of a number of different things to talk about, but none really feel like they’re worth going into great depth about. So you’ll forgive me for a series of scattershot paragraphs about this shallow topic or another.

I suppose I could start by indicating the calendar; after all, Saint Paddy’s Day, like Christmas, comes but once a year, and you only experienced it but fifty times yourself. Granted, it’s not as if you might have noticed it growing up; Macomb may be a college town, but it’s no South Bend. The girls pay no attention to it either; only Erin has any connection to the Emerald Isle, if only by dint of her name, and, being of Italian and German heritage, she has to be reminded of even that small connection on an annual basis.

I will say that I would be curious to see how the day will be celebrated when the holiday falls on a Monday. It’s probably the worst day of the week on which to go on a bender, since not only do you have the rest of the week to show up at work under its effects, but most restaurants tend to close today, meaning that you have so many fewer options to patronize for the festivities. Then again, my only concern is to find something long-sleeved and green to wear under my Sparks T-shirt tonight.

I know I try to tell you about my dreams – when I can remember them – and last night’s was kind of weird. I was trying to help an acquaintance I’d met at the men’s Bible study to set up his phone, so he didn’t have to focus so hard on it and not pay attention to where he was going while he was doing so. That much wasn’t the weird part; what was strange was that his phone was like an iPhone as envisioned by the Flintstones cartoon. It was a series of thin slates set in a small frame, and you flipped through them as if you were going through a day-by-day type of calendar. Don’t ask me how it connected to the internet, or how you could use it as a phone; it’s a dream, there’s no requirement that it make sense.

Ironically, after getting Bert set up with his new phone, he thanked me and headed off to wherever – only to not notice that the pavement outside was covered in ice. He proceeded to slip and fall with a rather sickening (and, given our history, eerily familiar) crack. As a dream, a self-manufactured fiction, it would be peak slapstick comedy, but under the circumstances, it was just disturbing enough to wake me up and leave me remembering it to you.

I could tell you about the fact that Kris is over to clean house – which, admittedly, isn’t such a big deal, as it happens every four weeks or so. But she’s working on stuff that has been left untouched for a while longer than that, like the Thai noodles that Daniel told Jan and I to keep when she was here – one of the few things that survived the purge in the pantry. Four years later, and those boxes are still here; I don’t know what he’s waiting for. Unfortunately, we can’t ask him about them just yet, as he apparently took his bath in the wee hours of the morning, so as not to be caught with his pants down while Kris was here. As a result, he’s pretty much out cold.

Still, once he wakes up, he and I can also deal with the tax returns we’ve gotten back from our preparers. Everything needs to be signed and sent off to the appropriate authorities. Although, given what I told you last month, I’m wondering how soon we ought to do so. That’s the thing with investments as opposed to wages and salaries; you never know how much it is until you tally it up at the end. It so happens that, while we did make estimated payments last year, it doesn’t seem to have covered our burden, and we both need to pay that much more, which leaves me wondering whether to wait and let those investments grow that much further, or liquidate a few holdings now, and take care of the filings to make sure we don’t forget. It’s all due in just under a month, after all.

And once that’s taken care of (or not; our broker seems to think things should be turning the corner after a brief rough patch, and drifting upward, so maybe we should hold off for a couple of weeks on liquidating any positions), there’s another deadline that he and I ought to look into today. You remember – and I’ve related to you – about how my one credit card gives me rewards in the form of coupons for the local superstore, but that they expire after about three months. Well, tomorrow is that day, and we’ve got to burn some eighty dollars worth of these things. So, between taking the day off from the office (even if I don’t finish our taxes today) and making our way to Sparks (with a side quest of getting ourselves an early dinner – or maybe just a late lunch?), that looks to be on our agenda for the day.

So all in all, there’s rather a bit more going on than usual, even if some of it (like the holiday and my dream) have very little to really do with me. It’s not a particularly momentous day, but it’s enough to talk with you about, I guess. Certainly enough to ask you to keep an eye on me, and wish me luck; you can tell I’m going to need it.