The last few days have been spectacularly beautiful. All of the flowering trees have burst into bloom.
I love this time of year, but it makes me sad at the same time.
Whenever I see a flower or tree I don’t know, or a dogwood or tulip tree, I think of my Gran’mama. I also think about her when I’m walking with Noah and telling him what different flowers are.
I used to call her when I spotted an unfamiliar flower. “It’s a creamy yellow, with a little bit of green, and the blossoms look like they’re floating,” I’d tell her. And she’d tell me what kind of tree it was.
I don’t remember exactly when I couldn’t call her for things like that any more. Maybe 5 or 6 years ago? Her brain kept working most of the way to the end of her life, but the last couple of years were less solid. There were still good moments, they just weren’t what they had been. And she didn’t always remember them later.
(That’s how it was when she found out that I was engaged to Jill, maybe a month or so before she died. She was in the hospital, sleeping. I sat with her, holding the side of the hospital bed. When she woke up, she smiled at me and croaked, “What’s that on your finger?” It was my engagement ring. Someone, my mom or maybe my aunt, had already told her. The question was her invitation/acknowledgment. She hoped I would be happy and warned me (again) to keep our money separate. That was a favorite warning of hers, regarding marriage.)
Gran’mama had the most amazing backyard, when I was a little girl. It was full of brick paths that intersected so you could run around in circles and figure 8s until you couldn’t breathe, without getting bored.
Even better than the backyard, my grandparents had a greenhouse. I’m pretty sure my gran’papa built it onto their house — the door was through the master bedroom. I wasn’t allowed in there by myself, and when I was allowed in, I wasn’t allowed to touch anything. But I still loved it.
It smelled warm and moist and alive. It was full of breathtakingly beautiful orchids, which my grandparents sold to florist shops. Sometimes they would show us something interesting, unusual, or just beautiful.
So, spring.
It has been HARD this week to not stop and get coffee, or donuts, or a bagel. Wednesday and Thursday were the hardest. I constructed elaborate rationalizations as I approached the store where I would stop for donuts, the drive through bagel place, and worst of all, the elevator stop where I could step into starbucks in seconds.
But I held steady. I didn’t cave. I made a commitment and I stuck to it.
I’ve been thinking a lot about another money thing this week: taxes. Jill and I met with a “tax guy” for the first time together, a couple of weeks ago. While there are some details he still needs, he walked us through the basics, and it looks like I will be getting a ridiculous refund. We’re talking a big ass, interest free, loan to Uncle Sam.
So I need to change the number of exemptions I claim. I upped that number when I returned to work after Noah was born, but not enough apparently.
Jerry, the tax guy, ballparked the number I should be taking at triple what I currently take. Not quite comfortable with that, yesterday I increased it by 150% instead. And I did that after spending a few minutes with this extremely cool calculator that lets you see how payroll adjustments affect your take-home pay.
That calculator is awesome if you are at all interested in things like that — you can see what happens with more or fewer exemptions, by increasing or decreasing your contribution to your 401k/403b, what a raise would really be worth, and if you’re bitter like me, about being taxed on the imputed income of the value of your partner’s health insurance, what your paycheck would look like if your marriage were recognized by the federal government.
In my case, every two weeks, I would be bringing home an additional $111 dollars. Not chump change.
That’s without making any changes at all except to eliminate the “imputed income” related to my insurance.
(Note about the calculator: Add your state taxes to the “miscellaneous after tax deductions” to make the numbers match your paystubs, or at least come close.)
