Thunder of Wade

It started badly.

I was out running errands on a rainy Saturday afternoon around one and I hadn’t eaten lunch yet – which is dangerously late for me.  Or rather, dangerous for the people around me that dare to stand between me and food.

My travels took me near a Wendy’s and I stopped in and went up to the counter. 

(Note to Wendy’s – consider adding a kiosk.  Not “only a kiosk”, but as an option. Just a thought.)

There was one guy in front of me and he apparently had never ordered food at a fast food place – in that he did not move out of the way when he was done.  The clerk and I had to work around him.   And in the case of the clerk, I use the term “work” loosely.

I usually get a Number One Single Combo with Lettuce Only, No Cheese (™).  Which sounds easy, but on a good day I’ve got only about a 40% chance they’ll get it right.   It looked a little lot chaotic in the kitchen and I decided to go just a little simpler. 

Spicy Chicken Sandwich – Lettuce Only.

Even easier, right?  “Have it your way” – wait, that was Burger King…

Anyway, I got my receipt and confirmed the order was entered correctly. It was  – and that’s literally half the battle right there.

I get my drink from the machine and go back to the counter and wait. 

And wait.

The clerk put the fries on the tray in front of me and I had high hopes that my sandwich would be shortly on the way.  

Instead, he proceeds to spend a great deal of time and concentration placing stickers on the bags for the pick-up orders.  He doesn’t wait on anyone else, nor does he acknowledge any of the delivery drivers.

I continue to wait.  

The shift-lead, I think, pulls the clerk from the counter to instead work on the fryer.  The woman who was working on the fryer comes up to the front and looks at the fries rapidly cooling on the tray.  I step forward and say,

“I’m just waiting on a Spicy Chicken, Lettuce Only”

I’m pretty sure she heard me, but there was no reaction from her. Not a glance my way or a quickening of her pulse.  If there had been a cranial scanner nearby it would have registered not a single wave.  No gamma, no alpha, not even a blip of beta. 

Not who I would have put at the front to interact with say, I dunno, customers – but there she is and there we go. 

She proceeds to take the order from someone who has navigated the cluster of delivery drivers crowding the lobby – which goes badly since the woman ordering simply refuses to SPEAK. UP!

(I wanted to pull her aside and stridently lecture her for half an hour on how that isn’t cute or sweet or funny or whatever else she was trying to do.  It’s a noisy restaurant and if you have to shout to be heard, then you had better shout, missy. If you know what’s good for you. )

I check my receipt and my watch and then do the math.  Fifteen minutes have passed since I placed my order. 

Sigh.

Then, I hear the shift-lead say to the woman at the front, “Are you waiting on a Spicy Chicken?”

She doesn’t confirm, but he takes that as a “Yes” somehow and my heart skips a beat.

Then, he picks up the cold fries off the tray and tosses them out – replacing them with a fresh order.

My estimation of this guy – and my hopes – skyrocket.

An unknowable amount of time later (time had become meaningless), a sandwich is handed to Little Miss Loquacious – who places it on the tray and pushes it towards me.

“Here you go,” she says and immediately forgets that I have ever existed.  

(For those of you that have been reading carefully, you’ll note that the shift-lead said, “Spicy Chicken” and not “Spicy Chicken, Lettuce Only,” Which will soon be important to the story, dear reader. )

I get to a table and have a seat and sure enough – the sandwich includes tomato and mayo.  The tomato is easy enough to dismiss, but the mayo was everywhere.  No scraping that off – there was an “extravagance of mayo”.

I sigh, marshall my defenses and gird my loins, and go back up to the counter with the offending sandwich. 

Getting the attention of LML is no easy task, but I finally do and explain the problem – ready with my receipt, should proof of their folly be needed.  She takes the sandwich to the shift-lead and says something to him. 

And I begin waiting again – apparently dumped back into the queue with the delivery drivers who are almost certain by this point to not get ANY kind of tip.

Finally, LML gets the new sandwich and hands it to me with the now familiar, “Here you go,” and immediate dismissal.  I consider pinching myself to confirm I haven’t been banished to the shadow realms, but I instead go back to the table and sit down.  I open the sandwich and it’s correct – to my relief and surprise – and I take my first bite.

And I am here to tell you now that it was the best god-damn chicken sandwich of my life. 

The chicken was hot and spicy, juicy and full of flavor.  The bun had been warmed to a perfect temperature and was soft and yielding – like a cloud.  The lettuce was crisp and fresh with a delightful crunch. It might well have been harvested only moments before.

And for those of you thinking it was just a sandwich –  you weren’t there and you could not know.  That chicken had an amazing life and met its end peacefully and with a song in its heart. I knew this as surely has I knew my own name.

Each bite was so good, I had to take breaks and slow myself down by working on the merely adequate (but hot)  french fries.  The return to that sandwich and each subsequent bite was bliss.

I left one bite remaining while I finished up my fries – saving it for dessert, as it were. 

And, with regret, I then finished that most perfect of Spicy Chicken, Lettuce Only sandwiches.  

I sat for a moment in that Wendy’s, contemplating what I had just experienced and how it had changed me.

I looked over at the counter to see if I could trouble them for a moment and share my experience back with them. I felt we had been through something together and wondered if I could convey to them what it all meant and how we were now all connected.

But, the lobby was still full of increasingly angry drivers and impatient customers.  I instead forlornly wadded up the now empty wrapper and took my trash to the bin like an adult. 

As I walked to my car, I wondered at the cosmic rebalancing I had witnessed.  The awful customer service and righteous Spicy Chicken Sandwich, Lettuce Only.   A great disservice had been done to me, but this time the fates themselves had intervened. 

I went on with my errands a different man than when I started  – knowing in my heart that no sandwich would ever compare, and stealing myself for a future of disappointment. 

Better to have loved and lost, than never loved at all.

It’s time for another webmaster email story.

I had an email sent in from someone complaining about the poor behavior of our students and how they threatened a conservative figure that came onto campus. And how they would no longer recommend students go to our institution because of that.    They included a youtube video link and I reluctantly clicked it. 

Within about 4 seconds, I realized two problems.    One, it was from over 5 years ago.  And two, it was from a different Ohio university. 

And then I realized the real problem.  The focus of the video was Kaitlin Bennett – infamous for open-carrying an AR-10 on Kent State’s campus the day after her graduation and gaining the name Gun Girl.

She’s a darling of conservatives and has made a social media career out of having terrible ideas, getting in people’s faces about them, and then pouting because people are mean to her.

The video did have students being aggressive towards her and her team and throwing things at her car when they ran her off campus.   Not appropriate behavior – but not unsurprising either.  

I’m certain her Oscar is in the mail for her feigned surprise and disbelief at the response to her rhetoric. 

I approached this email as a problem to be solved.   I did a reluctant search on “her name + Akron” and found two videos of her on our campus.  One was an interview done by a communications student for Z-TV and the other was from her youtube channel about how she “changed people’s minds”.   

A-hem. 

So, I worked on an email to express my concern about the student behavior and also politely point out that it was from several years ago and from a different institution.   I planned on sharing the other video links back and suggesting that they visit our campus and see how open this is to everyone – no matter their viewpoint.

And then I stopped.

And deleted everything I had written.

Because it doesn’t matter.  Their email wasn’t the start of a conversation – it was the end of it.  It doesn’t matter if they got the facts wrong – there was no defense for my alma mater.  

Just like the Gun Girl, they wanted to be mad about something.  They wanted to be outraged at an invented injustice.  

So, there’s no response that would make this better.  No carefully written email would shine any light there. No rebuttal would win the argument. 

I didn’t delete the email, but I unflagged it and moved on.  I can’t imagine being a social media specialist that has to deal with crap like this every day.

There are other emails that need my attention and other problems that can – and want to be – solved.   So, I’ll focus on those and do my best where help is needed.  

And shine a little light on the places that are tired of darkness, perhaps.

A couple of years ago, I got an odd discount at KFC.  I was placing my order with the clerk at the register when I noticed something briefly flash across the screen.  When I got my receipt, I realized it was a senior discount.  I didn’t have to show a Golden Buckeye or AARP card – the clerk looked at me and decided I qualified.  I was 50 at the time and the discounts are for those 55 and older.  So he was close, I guess, but it still rankled.  I even made a haiku about it.

It was a more reasonable assumption than back when I was 43 and was mistaken for 55.

This past weekend, Jim and I were at Michael’s craft store.  He was ready to go and I went to the I’m-assuming-quicker self-checkout since I only had three items and the only lane open with a clerk had two people with full carts.

I scanned the first item and set it aside. I then scanned the second item and looked at the screen to see if the sale price rang up.  It was instead 4 times what I expected – it wasn’t half-off like the sign on the shelf suggested and I had rung it up twice.

I tried to cancel and edit the quantity – but it just said, “Help is on the way!”

Which means I had failed as a human being. 

While I was waiting for “help”, I saw on the screen that I had gotten a senior discount – 10% off each of the items. While I was puzzling that out, a clerk came up and performed her incantations. I also had her deactivate the anti-theft on one of the items while I scanned the last one.

I finished and paid as the clerk was coming back and I bagged my three items and took the receipt. 

Sure enough, 10% senior discount.    But, why?

I hadn’t thought to put in my phone number so it didn’t really know me – I’m guessing they have my birthday stored somewhere, but there was no look up.  And the discount appeared before I used my credit card – so, they didn’t even know my name by that point.

And then I realized.

I was on camera.

And an A.I. had taken one look at me and decided I was a senior citizen.

Human beings, I suppose, I can forgive for seeing the gray beard and wrinkles near my eyes and assuming I’m older than I am.  Or maybe it was my jaunty hat that seemed dated. 

But this really stung.  I had been reduced to key biometric points and classified as…senior.

I suppose it was bound to happen and there are worse things than getting 10% off for no reason.  But, I don’t feel as old as I am and it seems disrespectful to make assumptions.  Or to program a machine to make assumptions, I guess.

In the end, I have the supplies I need for a couple of projects and I saved $1.50

Which I suppose I can use to get my senior coffee at McDonald’s.

The word is out – at least in my community – that I can teach origami. In addition to the Maker Faires, the Library pre-finals week session, and Parent and Family Weekends (for both Akron and Kent State), the Downtown Akron Partnership found out about me – from talking to some program directors at UA.  

They wanted me to be part of the Sakura Festival downtown this past weekend.  It’s a celebration of Springtime, Cherry Blossoms in bloom, and Japanese culture. 

I’ve been having a rough time of late and wasn’t sure I would be up for it. I was also more than a little concerned about having the “whitest white guy” teach something as iconically Japanese as Origami. 

But, with about a week to spare, I reached out and agreed – almost hoping that I was too late and would get a year-long reprieve. 

They responded back right away and said there was still time.  I got the details of where and when – and decided on what I would be teaching.  

The day of, I got a little nervous.   Even with some reassurances from the committee, I still felt like an intruder on someone else’s culture.   But, with my plastic totes of paper and pre-made origami to give away, I headed downtown.

And right into a sea of people. It was a bigger event than I knew and the directions I got to the parking deck were the same ones that everyone else was using.  I finally found a space near the elevators – but then the elevators refused to go to the main floor.  I made several trips up and down before giving up at the basement level – which turned out to be the ground floor. 

I wandered around outside for a bit before I found an information booth and got some slightly confusing but ultimately helpful directions. While I was following those directions I ran into a co-worker and had a friendly – though short – chat. 

I stopped twice more on my way before finally finding the venue – by the shuffleboard courts, naturally. 

And then I found a familiar face – a former co-worker from UA that now worked for the Downtown Akron Partnership.   I was early – even with all the adventure in getting there – and we chatted for a bit before she went to go find paper for my event.  (I had plenty with me – just in case).

The event before mine was a lesson in Japanese Tea service and I watched that while I went over my notes and got ready.  

When they were finally done, I got set up and waited for people to show up.  There were going to be 3, 30 minute sessions with a 15 minute break between them – with as many as 25 people scheduled for each session.  

The first session, though, only had 7 people.  I had them pick out the paper, gave my introduction, and we got started. 

And it went pretty smoothly, with us finishing up the projects right on time.  I was curiously pleased about being so precisely on schedule – through the whole evening. Everyone seemed to enjoy it and most did the folding without too much trouble. 

After a short break, the second group got started.  This time we had 12 people – 13, if you count the crying baby.   They did well too and seemed to have fun. 

By the time the third group rolled around, I was getting tired.  I’m not used to being “on” for such a long span of time.   There were 6 people in the last session – and two of them asked to take a few sheets of paper with them afterwards to practice. Which was encouraging. 

I had a big tub of giveaways and talked to some of the participants while they were picking out something to take with them.

And my 30+ years of paper-folding helped me get past any of my cultural concerns. 

So, it was a good time and I’m glad I attended and contributed. 

And the flowers we made? Kinda looked like cherry blossoms.  

In the novel “1984”, the character Winston Smith works for the Ministry of Truth – where he edits publications to reflect the Party’s current understanding of the “Truth”.

I’m relating a lot to Mr. Smith these days…

My job grants me access to some 8,500 webpages on our site and with changes to federal and state law, we’re making mad edits to rename or remove programs that are suddenly no longer allowed.

It’s depressing and full of double-speak.

Our diversity department got a new name and I guess a new mission – and had me remove most of the links to their programs from their pages.  

I followed up a few times after that to see if we could repurpose some of those pages and rework them – and got little response.  One of those pages was a list of LGBTQ resources – and while there was no link to it anymore, the page was still out there and available in the search.

Recently, one of my coworkers mentioned working on a flyer for Gay Prom and it reminded me that the page was still out there. 

Since it could potentially fall under the provisions of the new law, I reluctantly reached out to the VP for that group via email.  I offered to update the name of the division on the page, rework the page, or simply unpublish it to remove it from the search. 

I got a call from him within an hour, emphatically requesting that the page be taken down – and thanking me for looking out for his department. 

So, on a website with already very little to say about the LGBTQ community, I unpublished the resource page, the documents, and the images.

A few years back, I had been on the fence about being part of the Zips of Pride – a poster of LGBTQ faculty, staff, and students on campus released as part of National Coming Out day.  I had reasoned then that UA has never done much for the community and if I wanted more, I had to support their efforts – no matter how small.

And now, I was responsible for erasing LGBTQ representation on campus.  

I could have ignored the page – everyone else seemed to have – and I could have waited until we were “caught” before being directed to take it down.  But, it’s my job to keep track of everything on the site and be a responsible caretaker.

But this one bothered me.  I felt like I had betrayed my community – even though the real betrayers are the lawmakers and fear-mongers. 

I stewed about it for a while, then decided to leave early for my own mental health.

I went home, did my chores and ate a quick meal, then I went to bed and slept for 12 hours. 

It was better, for a while, to not have to deal with my own thoughts.

I’m better now, I guess, and I have a little hope that maybe the tide will turn again and we’ll be able to bring these resources back.  I know it might have helped me when I was an undergraduate there to have found some common ground with someone else who knew what I was going through. 

For now, though, the page is hidden away.  Just as “they” would like us to be, I guess.

If you need me, I’ll be at the Ministry of Truth – sending more webpages down the ‘memory hole’.

The office suite I share with my colleagues across our division has desks, cubicles, two conference rooms, and a break room.  

Our team was the last to move – our offices needed to be vacated first – and the rest of the division had already staked out their claims.  

And it was…a mess.  Every surface was cluttered with old print samples, office supplies, and surplus computer equipment.  For every cluttered and junky looking surface there were two empty cabinets.

It bothered me for a while and was a little embarrassing to have people come to my office in the back corner past all the clutter and junk.   Didn’t seem, to me, to reflect a professional environment. 

Fast forward to this year – yes, it’s been like this for years – and my mental health is not doing so great. On a Saturday, I decided to come into the office and tidy things up – fighting back against the chaos with a little order.

I took a couple trashbags with me, turned on all the lights so I could see what I was working with, and set to work.

I gathered and broke down all the empty cardboard boxes.

Gathered all the surplus computer equipment in one area. 

Organized all the office supplies and paper. 

Cleared off all the desks and the counters in the break room.

And set up a nicer workspace for one of the student assistants in a cubicle with a lamp.  Everyone deserves a nice place to work.

Took me about 2 hours and while I worked I was supportive and encouraging to myself.

“Nice work on breaking down those boxes, Anthony!”

“You found the perfect place for those supplies,”

“You are doing such a good job with those desks!”

When I was done, I took out the trash and turned out the lights as I left.  

I assumed that my colleagues either wouldn’t notice or wouldn’t care.  It didn’t matter too much since I did it to try and help my own head. And it was very cheap therapy.

We were all remote on Monday, but on Tuesday one of my colleagues asked if I knew who cleaned up the office.  I told him it was me and he was surprised – but thanked me.

By the middle of the day, though, things turned slightly sour. 

Empty cardboard boxes appeared on top of a shelf that I had just cleared.  I didn’t know who put them there or if they were intended to be saved or just left as clutter.

And an extra monitor  – that I recall seeing on the floor of a colleague’s office – got moved to a desk in the common area that I had cleared.  Rather than clutter up their office, it now added to the clutter of the common area.

I had expected a slow slide towards chaos – it is the way of things since order takes work – but I didn’t expect it to happen quite so fast.  Not even a day…

I know that I shouldn’t feel bad about it or feel anything about it.  This is an office suite shared by 20 people and I don’t get to impose my own ethos on the space.  

But it would have been nice if it had lasted just a little bit longer…

The fate of books that I’ve read and didn’t like is a pile in my library that I’ll eventually take with me on a trip to Half Price Books to trade in for some paltry sum.  Paltry, I tell you. My reasoning is that someone else might enjoy them – so putting them back in “the system” and getting a little back to try other books makes sense to me. 

Never have I ever added a book so quickly or throughly to that pile as I have for “Dhalgren” by Samuel R. Delany.  

Consider this my book report for the worst book I have ever read.

I preface this by saying I’ve read two other books by Delany and thoroughly enjoyed them – Empire Star and Babel-17. They were both clever and thought-provoking.

I approached Dhalgren with interest – a mysterious city and a nameless protagonist on an adventure seemed like my cup of tea. 

But, as I found, nothing mattered.

The nameless protagonist does finally remember his name – or so he thinks.   But no one cares and there’s no revelation as to why he couldn’t remember and suddenly did. He doesn’t use it going forward and no one ever calls him by his real name.

The second moon that appears in the sky one night has no explanation and is glossed over.  A second moon, mind you. As is the sun that appears at night – but it may or may not actually be night and anyway no one knows what day it is.

The chain he wears with prisms on it – and is hesitant to talk about – turns out to have no special significance.  There are literally miles of the stuff in a warehouse that is never mentioned again.

The gang he joins – and is made the leader of for no reason other than he shouted once – has no purpose or motivation. The holograms they wear have no explanation.

There is misogyny, racism, and sexual violence throughout the story – but it’s gratuitous and doesn’t advance the plot or really mean anything to anyone.  Though, really, I had trouble finding a plot to advance.

The poetry that the protagonist writes may not have been written by him at all and people either like it or don’t like it.   Which can be said about any poetry. 

Even the central mystery of the weirdness of the city – what caused it, why are directions so random, why do some buildings burn but are undamaged – is never addressed.  Things are weird and that’s it. And where does the food come from? No one knows or cares.

In the end, the protagonist  – called “Kid” through the whole novel even though he’s an adult – leaves the city and hands off his fancy bladed weapon (that he never uses and cuts himself with by accident several times) to someone else entering the city. 

And that’s it.   Roll credits.

The only thing I found remotely clever took place on page 672 (in the edition I read) when Kidd repeats the name “grendhal” (as: grendel) and realizes the syllables should break differently as Dhal-gren.   I actually had a little bit of hope that it was going to tie into a larger mythology, but no, it’s dismissed immediately like everything else.   Couldn’t even get the spelling right…

800 hundred pages I read, hoping for something clever, something thoughtful, something meaningful. 

Denied. At every turn.

I pulled the bookmark from the pages as I closed the cover for the last time and added it to the pile.

And then, I looked it up on Wikipedia just to see if I’d missed some underlying plot or to learn why it was so well reviewed.

Much was given over to the non-linear approach – where the end mirrors the beginning.  I found that to be heavy-handed and obvious – and was done to much better effect in Empire Star.   

Some notably luminaries in Science Fiction liked it and others were…less kind.

“I must be honest. I gave up after 361 pages. I could not permit myself to be gulled or bored any further.”

-Harlan Ellison

“Dhalgren is, I think, the most disappointing thing to happen to science fiction since Robert Heinlein made a complete fool of himself with I Will Fear No Evil.”

-Darrell Schweitzer

In response, Delany has speculated that:

“a good number of Dhalgren‘s more incensed readers, the ones bewildered or angered by the book, simply cannot read the proper distinction between sex and society and the nature and direction of the causal arrows between them, a vision of which lies just below the novel’s surface.”

Oh, Oh, Sammy.  I didn’t like it because I didn’t get it?  Oh, if only I was a little bit smarter.  Oh woe is me.   Woe, I tell you.

Ass-hat.

A man goes to a city. He does things. No one cares. Then he leaves. 

Eight hundred pages.   Eight. Hundred. Pages. 

If I wasn’t so violently opposed to book burning I’d toss this one in the fire pit.  But, no, I’ll trade this in at Half Price Books to get something out of it.  But I might put a warning on a post-it note on the inside cover:

“Just…don’t,”

On Tuesdays and Wednesdays I work from the office – but still need to come home at lunchtime to let the dogs out.  I will sometimes stop at McDonald’s on the way and eat lunch with the dogs before heading back to the office. 

This past week, I was lost in thought on the drive and missed my exit.  I had a hurried bit of time with the dogs and decided to pick up lunch on the way back and eat at my desk.  Which I don’t like to do, but was pressed for time.

I pulled into the restaurant and went to the kiosk inside to order.  It’s usually faster than the drive-thru and it’s easier to check on the correctness of the order without holding up the line.  With my order complete and paid for, I moved near the counter to wait for my number to be called.  One of the staff members gave myself and another patron our cups and I went and got my drink while keeping an ear out.

With drink in hand, I went back to the front and waited.  The guy that had ordered when I did got his food and left.  Two more guys ordered and they…both got their food and left. 

One guy apologized.

I’m deeply polite and patient to a fault, but this was getting out of hand.

I managed to get the attention of a harried manager and asked if my food was ready since I’d been waiting a while. I was still very polite.   She asked what I had ordered and I told her and gave her the order number. 

I could see into the kitchen and my number was clearly absent from the pending orders.  I heard her tell another staff member to re-order the food from my order.  The staff member slowly made her way to the counter and asked what I had ordered.  I gave her my receipt – with the date/time and amount paid – and she re-entered the order as a “promo”.  At least they didn’t try to charge me again. 

She gave me the new receipt along with the old one – though I don’t know what I was going to do with that and I waited a bit more.

I then heard the manager tell another employee to go ask me what size fries I had ordered. Which is odd, since they had redone the order and it should be on a screen or ticket somewhere.  They came over and asked me and it had been so long since I ordered I had to look at the receipt to be sure.

They went away and a little while later I heard the manager tell the employee to take me the bag of food.    

The employee brought me the food, handed the bag to me, and walked away.

And that was it.   No, “sorry for the wait,”  No, “sorry for the wait, we gave you more fries or a cookie,”  No, “sorry about the wait, here’s a coupon”

Just…nothing.

I stopped at a table on my way out to check the order.  It would have been icing on the cake to have gotten the wrong order but it was correct. 

As I walked to my car and drove back to the office, I tried to figure out what I had done wrong or where my order had ended up.   

I guess they figured I was going to be a dick about it and the manager wanted as little to do with me as possible.  I get that, I guess, but any kind of acknowledgement would have gone a long way.

The plain hamburger ended up tasting faintly of onion.  

And the fries were cold by the time I got to the office. 

It was the most unhappy of meals.

I may have mentioned before that I have an irrational fear of a problem with my taxes.  That I’ll make some kind of mistake, get audited, and get sent to federal prison for the rest of my life.  

The odds are against that, but they aren’t quite zero – no matter how simple my taxes are. The forms and rules are designed to be complicated and I always get so frustrated. 

So, I’ve been taking them to a well known and large company for several years now – working under the assumption that if something does go wrong, I’ll have a large company potentially on my side.  Better than just me vs. the IRS, I reasoned.

Jim and I had been filing our taxes separately since we got married – his job changes made his taxes more complicated than mine.  Last year we decided to file jointly and while that went okay, his former employer hadn’t taken out enough for taxes and we ended up owning a bit. 

This past year, Jim had a tax bill from the city where he used to work, but it was an error.  He had already paid, but was told to keep the next installment’s paperwork and see if he could get it back.   I put the paperwork in a folder – carefully labeled – and we both kinda forgot about it.

For the taxes this year, I gathered up all the paperwork that said “Important Tax Information” as soon as it came in and put it in a folder. 

The pre-scheduled appointment snuck up on Jim and he asked me to reschedule while he reviewed his paperwork.  I called the office and got routed a few times before an A.I. picked up.  With some difficulty, I navigated the menus and got the appointment canceled. 

The day before it was supposed to have happened, I got an email with “Oh, sorry you missed your appointment – it happens.”   I rolled my eyes at that.

When Jim was ready, I made the new appointment online with the same person we had seen last year. 

So, on that Saturday in March, we went to the appointment with all our documents in tow.  I had ignored all the “upload your documents” emails – not willing to do any more work for the money we would be paying – and it was the first step they did when we got there. 

The appointment went okay – the preparer was okay, though she tended to drop her voice for conspiratorial whispers that neither of us could really follow. 

As this was going along, Jim remembered the document we had set aside – but neither of us could remember quite what it covered.  We decided to suspend the filing until we could locate that document and reschedule. 

Before we left, though, we got the bad news that Jim’s new employer hadn’t taken nearly enough out for taxes and we would owe a good chunk of money.

The preparer was maybe a little too enthusiastic about that – though I told Jim it just meant that he’d had a little more in his paycheck over the past year. 

We gathered up our paperwork and went to go get lunch.

When we got home we found the paperwork and on Monday, I called the office to reschedule the appointment.  No one picked up and after a bit, I got an A.I. again.  I tried to schedule the appointment and it was going poorly.  At one point I asked to talk to a human and it responded, “I know you want to talk to a human, but you’re really better off leaving a message for your tax preparer,”

I was not expecting that level of snark from an automated phone system and hung up.  Grumbling, I headed upstairs to the computer to schedule it online.  While I was working on that appointment, I got a call back from a different office – other than the one I had called.  Apparently, if you call one office and it doesn’t pick up, it tries to transfer you to another office – and when that fails, it gets you to the automated system. 

I explained that I had trouble with the automated system and was redoing the appointment online – but thanked the human for the callback. 

I got the appointment scheduled for 6 pm on Friday. 

On Tuesday of that week, I got a call from the office while I was driving and didn’t pick up.  They left a message that their office was closed at 6 on Fridays and that they had rescheduled for 5 pm.  Since Jim works until 4:30, that wasn’t going to work well.  That evening I asked Jim if we could do Thursday at 6:00 if that was available – or when on Saturday if it wasn’t. 

Wednesday morning I called their office again and got routed to some other office.  I was a little confused, but they were able to reschedule us from Friday at 5 to Thursday at 6:00.    Later that day, I got a call again from the original office to confirm and it was all very confusing. 

You should have seen all the automated emails I got.

We got to the appointment in plenty of time on Thursday and got the extra form scanned.  As we were reviewing and wrapping up, it came time for the signatures.  One of the items to sign was a form that gave our consent to share our tax information with various international subsidiaries. 

Which seemed dumb and we wanted to decline.  And while we could, technically, it also meant that we couldn’t use the digital signatures.  (I think that the preparer had never had anyone actually decline and didn’t know what to do.)

So, we had to manually sign the rest of the paperwork and got a fat stack of paper to take with us – as well as the return we had to manually send in for the city and the voucher to include with the payment for the federal taxes.    The paltry refund from the state would go to my checking account and the city would send Jim a check based on that extra form. 

We gathered up all the paperwork, paid less – somehow – than what we paid last year, and were on our way.

I got the email and text messages that our federal and state returns were accepted in short order and now we wait for the rest to be done. 

It’s an awful-on-purpose process, but it’s done for the year. 

And, so far at least, I haven’t been brought up on tax evasion charges. 

So, bonus.

Ever since my college days, I’ve taken night-time solo walks to clear my head.  The fresh air, the quiet, and the solitude seem to help.

I can chalk up my white-male-privilage to never being afraid on my walks and never being questioned.  Whether it was around campus or around my neighborhood, I could walk until I was tired or had sorted out whatever was bothering me.

The neighborhood where we live now is a maze of quiet streets.  No sidewalks and few lights, but safe enough from the cars, I guess.  If I want a purposeful walk, I can travel about a mile away and reach the post office or the local Target.  I’ll sometimes compose my daily haiku on these walks.

And while I don’t mind the heat or the cold – or even the snow – it’s miserable to walk any distance in the rain. 

The past few…well, pick a unit of time… have been difficult.  Work has been stressing me out and I can’t seem to let it go.  There’s so much uncertainty with…well, pick a unit of size…and I’m just worn out by the effort of not dwelling on things. 

So, I’ve needed my night-time walks, but the last few times I’ve tried it has started to rain not long after I had set out.  Instead of a peaceful trip, I’m trying to dodge puddles in the dark and constantly adjusting the hood of my jacket so I can see and still keep the rain off of my head. It stops being useful quickly and I just give up and go home.    And then I’m still miserable and tense that I’ve been “thwarted” by the weather.

I wonder how far I would have to walk to really feel better?  To let everything go and just feel a little peace?

Pretty damn far, I’d guess.