Category Archives: Uncategorized

It has come down to that time of year again, when taxes are coming due in a month and a half or less. And you know what they say, “You can avoid practically anything but death and taxes.” Sometimes I wish “they” would just shut the hell up about it.

My tax situation is perilous still. I am on a fixed-income pension, bankrupt, and having marriage problems because my wife is frustrated that she can’t squeeze any more money out of my worthless old hide.

The problem stems from the Trump tax-cut of 2017. In order to give his rich Filthyrichican cronies thousands of dollars back in a single tax year, he made the horrible bill retro-active. And, of course, they had to cut loopholes in the tax law, which obviously had to include the reduced tax rate that pension earners traditionally pay. When he multiplied the under-withholding thing times 12 months, he ended up costing me $1,400 that I did not have to spend. I had to pay it off in installments, give up some of the grocery budget, and kiss off the chance of ever going on insulin just because I have the welfare-queen trait of being diabetic.

So, I got it paid off in December of 2018. The IRS said be sure I call my representative in the Texas Teacher Retirement System, because this was their fault. Which I did. An adjustment was made to my withholding back in February of 2018. So, now, at tax time, my tax estimate is that I will owe $1,300 again this year. My TRS representative assured me that this was not their fault. They say they interpreted the new tax tables to the best of their abilities. It is apparently the IRS’s fault. And I made an estimate of what I will need to withhold for the next tax year and changed it all again, hoping at the very least they don’t double what I owe next year, which they most certainly will. And next time it will be my fault.

I added death to the title of this rant because that is a very real possibility when you consider that I will have to go back to Uber driving for pennies on the hour to avoid financial collapse. And I had stopped Uber driving because, after the accident last August, I have not felt well enough to do it blood-sugar-wise. I may finally pass out at the wheel and kill myself and any possible passengers too. At least, if that happens, my wife will finally have to pay a tax bill out of her own funds. She might miss out on a trip to Europe or something.

Now I must get busy and earn some money and take this hard experience as a source of comedy. It has to be worth a few yuks, right?

Yes, I collect dolls, and I play with them too. It is not that I am suddenly turning female in second childhood, it is rather that as I near the ultimate end-of-life diaper time, I am taking things slower and appreciating everything.

I remember the mid-1990s.

At that time my wife noticed that I still had my childhood action figures and occasionally worked on restoring them. At the time those particular toys were hot collector’s items. With the internet came E-Bay, and with E-Bay came the power to find and collect old toys that were rising in value daily. Derfy nutcases like me were willing to spend actual money to revisit the toys of our youth. I bought things like the Captain Action vintage Superman costume, seen in my bedroom next to my hospital cup. My wife started the whole Barbie craze by buying some for herself and starting me on a downward spiral of me buying old and new Barbie dolls for her. That’s when the doll collection spiraled out of control. I did manage to sell some here and there and make a bit of money, but eventually, the collectors’ market dried up as nerdy derfs managed to spend all their money on dolls and couldn’t buy more.

I remember the mid-1960s when I loved G. I. Joe and Captain Action.

My relationship to toys goes back to a childhood where I basically had two younger sisters to play with. My little brother was eight years younger than me. So, most of the play time that wasn’t engaged in alone was all about me providing the adventure story that we were playing, and then directing my sisters either through my action figures and their Barbie dolls (Though one sister’s favorite was a Tammy doll) or through our imaginary selves to fight off the bog monsters, werewolves, and Nazi soldiers that tried to keep us from reaching our goals. We taught ourselves teamwork, problem-solving, and social skills by playing through fantasy adventures in the basement or in the yard, or, better still, in Grandpa’s barn.

I told you yesterday about Tagger, my toy tiger. I remember him as the longest-ago toy memory I can recall.

So, now that I’ve brought you all the way back to the 60s and the roots of my memories of playing with toys, let me explain to you why that’s been so much on my tiny old mind. My current WIP (Walnut Imitating Potatoes… no, correct that… Work In Progress) is called Fools and Their Toys. It is a story about desperately needing to communicate, even if you are a deaf-mute, an autistic young man, a victim of abuse, or a mentally challenged grown man. And the main character is a toy. That is, he is the narrator of the whole story even though he is actually a ventriloquist’s zebra puppet. I am not the only fool who plays with toys long past the appropriate age. And I have to tell this story because that’s the rule to this fantasy adventure game called life. Always play until the end. I have done that before. I am doing that still.

Here’s a link to help prove that playing with toys as a kid is not bad for you; https://wehavekids.com/parenting/How-Toys-Impact-Childrens-Development

I have a certain mania about hoarding old toys. My toys. My children’s toys. Other toys like abandoned toys from Goodwill and ReSale stores and liquidation toys from the bargain bins in Walmart and Toys-R-Us.

You see, the dependence on the importance in my life of people who are not real began with my own perceptions when the lights first went on in my little attic. Yes, my parents and my grandparents were real people. And I sometimes admitted, when forced, that my little sister was too. But so was Tagger, my own stuffed toy tiger.

I definitely treated him as my best friend and greatest confidant. I told him my troubles, and he protected me from monsters in bed at night. He often was included when I played with my sisters and their dolls. He was wise and brave and caring, and he talked with a voice that sounded very much like mine. In fact, I often think he was such a part of me that, when I no longer needed him in bed with me to help me sleep, I internalized him and he became a part of me. He did not meet his physical end until my parents had to leave Iowa and move to Texas while I was in grad school. What my sister did with his physical form, I really never wanted her to tell me. The house had to be cleaned out, and stuffed toys from the attic did not fair well.

I had almost given up ever being married and having a family when, at the age of 37, I finally fell in love, and then had a family, first of two, and then of three by the end of 1995. On the day my oldest son was born, as the doctor had told me to go home and get some sleep, I went to Walmart and bought a toy tiger. He was not orange like my Tagger, but white. He was about the same size as Tagger, and significantly larger than my infant son. Truthfully, neither number one son or number two son actually played with him. They slept with him and used him as a pillow, but they never even gave him a name. It was my daughter, my youngest child, who took him over and made him into a her. She named her Baby Tiger, loved her, talked to her, carried her around everywhere, and miraculously never loved her to pieces to the point that we don’t still have her 24 years later. The photos of her prove the miracle.

I am not Calvin of Calvin and Hobbes fame. But I do understand the importance of toy tigers. They help to make you who you are. And while they are technically not real people, technically you could argue, “Yes, they are too real!” and argue it very loudly. Of course, people will think you are a crazy fool if you do. But I doubt that changes anybody’s mind about Mickey.