Digging

Most tax preparers are working 50 hour weeks between now and April 15th. But I took a break from taxes last Saturday and drove out to Perryville to watch Katie and her friends digging new beds for her garden. It was fun to see how quickly and competently they turned a raggedy old patch into a fine, well laid planting space. And it will be even more fun to eat all the produce that comes out of it.

Here are some pictures of the action.

Katie and Travis have an acre of land around their house. In addition to the garden, they're planting some fruit trees and berry bushes this season. In no time at all, Katie will have fresh peaches and blackberries for her pies and jams. Yum!

On Sunday it rained. Very hard. One of those storms that blows over quickly, but makes a big noise passing through. Mick and I went to a museum with a friend from our Buddhist center, a woman named Mary. She took us to see a special exhibition of contemporary Southern artists. It was pretty interesting stuff. And we were happy to discover that the museum also has a charming standing collection of modern art pieces. Even Mick saw a few things that he liked.

Admission is free to all the museums and state parks in Arkansas. You might have to pay a couple of dollars for a special showing or a tour or something, but the basic admission costs nothing. I really like that.

The cold came back on Monday morning and its been in the thirties ever since, never getting much warmer than about 45. There is frost on my windshield every morning. I'm back at my desk doing tax returns from dawn to dusk this week, so the cold hardly matters to me. Still, I'm eager for Spring to take some of the edge off the bare trees and chilly mornings.

It does not show well in this picture, but Honey carried a spoon around in her little fist almost all day on Saturday. She wanted to dig like everybody else was digging. It was my job to watch Honey while Katie worked (lucky me!) and we spent a lot of time studying the dirt together, noticing how clods differ from rocks, and how you can make different kinds of holes with your spoon.

As always, I had a great time sharing Honey's ground-level, here-and-now viewpoint for a brief time. Its better than a vacation to hang out with her. Whoever invented grandchildren was a genius!

My Life in Taxes

I am truly amazed that I got a tax preparer job so quickly after starting to look for one. I sent out only about twenty inquiries, and got five interviews and three job offers within three weeks. Granted, tax season is underway and the workload is peaking right now. So my timing was good. And it also helps to be vastly overqualified(!).

I took a job with a small CPA firm about 12 minutes drive from my house, on the other side of the river. The little tan building on the left in this picture is my new office. Its on Main Street in North Little Rock, and I love it that I get to cross the river every day.

There are three CPAs in the company and five support people. Everyone but me is a native Arkansan. Clients are mostly mom-and-pop business owners, although the firm also provides bookkeeping services for several local churches and nonprofits.

I spend all my time doing tax returns. Sounds awful, I know, but honestly, I really enjoy the work. Call me a voyeur, but I love peering secretly into people's financial lives.

There's the truck driver still working at aged 71, and the single mom school teacher who qualifies for poverty tax credits because her income is so low. One retired lady had about $30,000 in income last year, but gave away about $9000 to charity. Another lady's business was down 75% from the year before but she didn't lay off anybody because every employee is a relative. People have refinanced their homes and tapped their retirement savings to keep afloat. It looks pretty bad.

But it feels pretty good to be helping these folks maximize their tax refunds and minimize their tax expenses. Take the school teacher, for example: taxes make up her single largest expense, other than her house payments. It really helps her if we can shave something off her tax bill - and we did.

I realized that I might meet some of these folks face-to-face sometime, (which kind of puts a damper on my voyeurism). And then that very thing happened: Mick and I had lunch at a small restaurant near my office and the next morning, I was handed the owner's tax return to prepare. Its kind of like being caught peering into his bathroom window, now that I know exactly how much the business lost last year, and that his parents are still supporting him. I'm going to have to ponder this situation a bit. Figure out how to handle it.

The downside of my new job is that I spend less time with my own family. I had grown to enjoy hanging out so much with Mick and I miss him. I also miss being able to make a last-minute trip out to Perryville to see Katie. We did get to babysit for Honey last Saturday, and tonight, Katie and Honey were in town for dinner with us. Every time I see her, Honey has a bigger vocabulary and some new tricks. At a birthday party last week, she adopted the phrase "Happy Birthday!" and now she says it about 80 times a day. Its her favorite expression. Imagine that!

All week, I've been working with a new tax client, the father of four sons who recently brought his family to Arkansas from the port city of Karachi, Pakistan. [Side Note: I was assigned this client because no one else could understand his accent, and they hoped I would be able to understand him, since I'm also a foreigner.] Anyway, he is a ship's captain who had been unemployed for nearly two years before landing a job here in Little Rock last winter. He'd never paid taxes in the US before and I got to tell him that most of the money withheld from his paychecks would be refunded as soon as we file his return. Now that was a rewarding conversation!

My job will revert to part-time after April 15, and that will be fine with me. Meanwhile, the work reminds me that everyone has issues, and that some are making even greater transitions than me, and hopefully, all of us are landing on our feet.

My fondest hope is that everyone will be in happier circumstances when I do their taxes this time next year - that the worst is behind us now. Its a modest hope, I know. But gee, wouldn't it be nice?

Ice, Snow and Warm-Hearted Arkansas

On the phone last weekend, my dad was telling me about the deep blanket of snow he could see from his apartment window in Virginia. Cars buried to the roof. It sounds like trouble for anybody who needs to travel in the area, but thankfully, Dad is safe and warm and well supplied. He'll be OK.

We got hit with snow Sunday night and it fell all day on Monday - about six inches here in Little Rock. This is a picture of the street in front of our office Monday morning at about 11 am. Everything shut down Monday, Tuesday and also Wednesday. We were able to drive to work and back for two days, but when the slush freezes overnight, driving becomes impossible until it melts. Schools are still closed today, and its c-o-l-d.

Everybody says, "This is very unusual weather for Arkansas!" and I believe them. I saw kids and parents out making snowmen and sledding on the neighborhood streets yesterday. I asked a guy how his family copes with all the snow days and he told me that eating chili and going sledding is their family's tradition. In other words, they make the best of it.

We have not been able to visit with Katie during this weather because of the road conditions, but she sends us pictures. Here's Honey enjoying her home-made sleigh ride. And here she is wearing her new boots and asking for permission play with my dogs.

Our poor old dogs hate the snow. We have to put a leash on Chloe and lead her out into the yard because she doesn't like walking on the snow. And Tashi starts shivering, despite her thick Tibetan fir coat, I think because her feet are cold. I can't say that I blame them.

I got a job as a tax preparer for a small local CPA firm, starting tomorrow. That's another whole story, and I'll write about my job search later, but I want to share just one thing my new boss told me: although Arkansas and Mississippi are the two poorest states in America, they rank first and second for the percentage of citizens reporting charitable donations on their tax returns. Sweet, eh?

Still Neophytes

For thirty years, we lived near the Golden Gate Fields racetrack in Albany, CA but never went to a horse race there. We are horse-racing neophytes. But since we're still exploring Arkansas, Mick and I went to see the horse racing at Oaklawn, in Hot Springs on the Martin Luther King holiday. With a Google map and some cash, we launched ourselves into the adventure. Nothing turned out as we expected, but we had a great time of it, anyway.

As we arrived, we noticed people scurrying out of the racetrack carrying white boxes about the size of a lunchbox, and putting the boxes into their cars. Some people had three or four of them, some had only one. I thought maybe it was a free box lunch? But then, why were they putting lunches in the car? When I asked a guy, he said, "Its a Rachel Alexandra bobblehead!"

I didn't want to admit that I don't know who Rachel Alexandra is, so we said thanks and hurried to collect our own white boxes, both of us noting how eager we were to have a box, even without really knowing what would be inside.

It turns out that Rachel Alexandra had been named racehorse of the year that very day, and people were hoping to sell the free bobblehead to collectors in other parts of the country. And sure enough, before the day was over, people had listed it on eBay. The thing looks really silly to me, but I'm an outsider in this arena. Maybe its WORTH $50, who am I to say?

Despite feeling lost and ill-informed, we had a really fun time at the track. The weather was fine. The crowd was friendly. You could stand surprisingly close to the horses and the track. We bet on twelve horses and lost on ten of them, but one winner paid twenty to one - enough to get back everything we'd lost on the others.

I had picked him because his name, "Grey Knight", reminded me of Leo's video games. Mind you, we had lost all our bets on the other horses picked with the same system, including "Mesa Vista" for Leo's dorm buildings, "Pulpits Secret" for my father's preaching career, "Cinnamon Cowgirl" for Katie, or "Mr. BLT" because Mick likes those sandwiches.

There is something to be said for being newcomers and in such a totally different environment than the one that we left behind. I find myself much more open to things in Arkansas that were not so interesting to me in California. And the openness is a good thing. Cheers me up and keeps me on my toes.

For a fresh and open attitude, Honey is my role model. She loves everything, especially things she's never seen before. As far as Honey knows, every box has magic inside of it - the way Mick's accordion has music inside it. She wants to open every lid and push every button because really, you never know what will happen when you do. I can make Honey super happy just by standing her on my kitchen counter and letting her touch the boxes of tea, bags of beans, salt shakers, wine glasses and teacups in my cupboards. She says, "Alright!" as she lifts each item, shakes it, puts it back and reaches for the next one.

Honey and Katie were here last night when a thunderstorm blew in. We opened our front door to watch the sheets of rain blowing across the street, sometimes lit up by bursts of lightening. Honey kept saying, "Light! Sky! Light! Rain!" and I enjoyed sharing her toddler's viewpoint and enthusiasm, as I always do.

So, my friends, I hope all your horses are winners, and all your boxes have a little magic in them, even when its raining. And I hope the kind, well-intentioned people in Washington can cultivate some freshness and magic now, too. I think we need it.

Cold, Bare Trees, and Birds

We are still dealing with nights in the teens and days in the thirties, and there is lots of ice everywhere. Brrrrr.

The season does have some compensations. For one thing, we can see more birds now that all the trees are bare of leaves. And lots of birds are drawn to the hackberry trees in our yard to eat the berries.

It’s nice that birds like our trees as much as they do, but we park our cars under those trees and, well, the birds are very dirty. This morning, I couldn’t see through all the bird droppings on my windshield, so I drove to a gas station to use the squeegee. But it was stuck in a bucket of solid ice. I dry-cleaned the windshield (sort of) with paper towels, but until the cold lets up, or the birds finish off the berries, our cars will remain very yucky.

Usually, we don’t even see the birds that visit because they come while we're at the office. But today, I was at home studying my tax classes when a flock of robins came to feast right outside the window. There were about a hundred birds, no exaggeration. From my dining room table, I could comfortably watch their chubby bodies wobbling on the frail branches or hovering like helicopters to get at the berries. I would have bought a ticket to see such a fine show, had someone asked me to pay.

Birds are also drawn to our yard because we have fresh water on the ground. Someone's water line is leaking uphill from us in the alley behind our house. The leak has created a treacherous ice field on our parking pad and sidewalk, and I’ve called the city to come and fix it. But pipes have broken all over Little Rock during the recent freeze – and the city workers are busy fixing more serious flooding in other places. So meanwhile, as compensation for the ice hazard, I get to watch birds of all kinds flocking to our back yard to drink.

And that's the news from Lake Wobegon. I still miss my friends. Hope life is treating you well. Cheers!

Here is this week’s picture of Honey. She’s way too young for a bike, mind you. But we were in the bike shop leaving her dad’s bike for repairs. And she really wanted to test drive this one. I wish you could hear the happy noises she was making as I pushed her around the store.

Snow!

Walking is our only New Year's resolution (besides world peace and prosperity). So on New Year's Day, Mick and I took a two hour walk on the Arkansas River Trail. The weather, as you can see, was wonderful: temps in the mid 40s, clear skies. The next day, we were a little bit sore but very self-righteous.



Mick dug out his pedometer and discovered that the walk from our house to our office is nearly a half mile. He can do 3 miles of walking every day just by leaving the car at home. The weather is the only wrinkle in his plan.

It started snowing on Sunday evening and there is another snow storm arriving tonight. Because nobody has snow removal equipment in this area - or snow tires on their cars and school buses - they closed the schools on Monday and Tuesday, even though the total snow on the ground was less than a half inch in most places. Even the University here in Little Rock was closed.

Here are pictures of our front yard and back alley dusted with snow first thing on Monday morning. The snow kept falling gently all morning on Monday, but it was mostly gone by noon, when the sun came out. Apparently, the storm that's coming tonight will leave much more snow, and we expect everything will be completely shut down for the rest of this week.


Even when the snow isn't falling, we are dealing with temperatures in the 20s and it's hard to justify going outside if you don't need to go. Mick has continued his walking regime - Go Mick! - but not me. I'm staying home with my laptop, doing my tax school classes online, and cooking soups and stews - I think they call it "Hunkering."

Last night, we ventured out to hear a Tibetan Lama named Khentrul Lodro Thaye who was speaking at the downtown public library in Little Rock. Besides Mick and me, about 30 people came to hear him teach about training ourselves in loving and compassionate states of mind. I was grateful for the reminder.

Here are this week's pictures of Honey. I took the one of Honey test driving a chair in the store. Katie took the one of Honey watching the snow fall. Everything is new when Honey's around. Its amazing.

I hope the weather is good to you wherever you live. And that the new year (and new decade) will bring better times for everyone. Cheers!

Christmas, Arkansas Style

Mick and I hosted a wine and cheese holiday party at our office building on Monday afternoon. Nearly all of the other tenants came include a massage therapist, a lawyer, an economist/consultant, a graphic designer, and a guy who works for a company that owns cell phone towers. People brought their wives. We brought Leo.

I really enjoyed hearing about everybody's kids, their work, their holiday plans. People we meet in Arkansas seem to be charmed by the idea that we CHOSE to move to Little Rock. They are eager to help us enjoy living here and I gratefully collect all of their suggestions about places we should visit nearby, good restaurants in town, and other features of Little Rock.

One of my own favorite features of Little Rock is how quickly you can get out of it. When I drive out to visit Katie in Perryville, I pass the last traffic light on the West side of town, and then don't see another one for 35 miles. Instead, the road rolls up and down gentle hills past lakes, pine forests, and farm land. In a wink, you go from city traffic to countryside. I love it.

On Christmas eve morning, I drove out to Perryville to hang out with Katie and Honey, despite a driving rain storm. It had been raining extremely hard for about a day and a half. Everything was thoroughly soaked, and it was still raining HARD. Trees were standing in water to their knees, creeks were running fiercely on either side of the road, and Lake Maumelle was overtopping its parking lot. I have new all-weather tires on my car and I really enjoyed being able to get out into the dramatic weather to see what was happening in the countryside.

When I got to Katie's house, I found Katie and Honey sorting through baby clothes. Honey finds this kind of activity irresistible, and unless we give her a job of her own, she will quickly and gleefully undo whatever organizing Katie has done. I love watching how gently and adroitly Katie gets the job done while at the same time letting Honey participate. It's a joy to watch them in action together.

Speaking of joy: I have LOVED getting holiday cards and letters from our friends. You can't imagine how curious I am about all of you - how your kids are doing, how YOU are doing, what you are thinking about. PLEASE keep it up.

Cold weather followed the rain storms, and it snowed out in Perryville on Christmas Eve. We didn't get any snow here in Little Rock, but we did get the frigid temperatures. Brrrrr.

Our family gathered in our house on Christmas day. Here's a picture of the kids with Leo's new video game system. He showed Katie and Travis how to play a game called "Fat Princess" based on Capture the Flag only you have a princess to protect and you feed her cake to make her fat so the other team will have trouble carrying her off.

After fattening ourselves on lunch, we went to see the new Shirlock Holmes movie. Honey came along to her first movie experience and she did pretty well. Hopefully, folks sitting near us didn't mind her little toddler voice naming things that came on screen, like "Horse" and "Water."

Over dinner tonight, Leo and Mick and I were discussing friends, both here and in California. Leo asked us if we've met anyone here that we could call a friend yet, and that left us trying to decide what marks the boundary between acquaintances and true friends. Is it how long you've known them? Or how often you see them? Or what you do together?

What do you think? I'd love to know.

Happy Holidays!