I Wear My (Denial) At Night, So I Can, So I Can (Sleep)

(Didn't catch the title reference??  This was one of my favorite 80s songs. And even though apparently I was 8 years old when this video came out, I have clear memories of thinking Corey Hart was totally radical, dude!)

I am a little bit like a slumber party attendee in the middle of the night hours right now. Why? Because I have spent about 10 hours today preparing for the big meeting with our CPA tomorrow to do our taxes. I am most definitely insane at this moment.

It is my own fault.  I have a filing cabinet, but instead "file" our bills by throwing them in a box and not looking at them for approximately 1 year. So today I spent a few hours filing all of that junk, so that I could then access the files to get out all of the paperwork we need to do our taxes.

Tonight, I spent another 5 or so hours doing the actual tax prep work. Because of Eric's job, our tax status is weird -- we pay less taxes, I think, but the amount of documentation we need to actually DO our taxes is ridiculous. By ridiculous, I mean "almost every receipt and bill from the entire tax year".  And this year, we have the extra bonus of having sold a house out of state as a short sale, so I've been wading through sale documents, bills and expenses related to that house,

Remember in yesterday's post where I said whining and complaining gets boring? "Skip to the end!" 

Now it is past 11pm and I am exhausted. And my lips are chapped! And I have been calculating, thinking about our expenses and our money situation.

All of the sudden, I thought of something to share! A quirk, if you will.  It's "Let's Get to Know Amanda" time!

My biggest stress is money. When I wake up in the middle of the night, my primary irrational, panic and insomnia enducing fear is about money.  I have gotten a lot better about that lately, but it is still there.  One of the ways I avoid that night time anxiety is I refuse to get our mail or look at our mail after dinner. If I haven't seen it before then, it has to wait until the next day. No money talk, nothing to make me think about our budget or bills if we have already eaten dinner. And, amazingly, that actually has seemed to help us. Though, admittedly, it is occasionally inconvenient.

What will happen tonight? My rule was broken tonight and then all of those broken pieces were broken again.

Thankfully, I have a friend upstairs named Ambien. And my Ambien awaits!

Tomorrow, I *might* consciously break my Lent commitment to buy myself a lovely, syrupy, caffeine filled latte on my way to the CPA.  The good news is my appointment is basically first thing in the morning. At least it will be over before dinner!