What Ben said

Benjamin Franklin said the only things certain in life are death and taxes.  Mr. Franklin obviously never met Scarlett.  Lucky dog.

I can add one more certainty to Ben's duo.  Scarlett's complete, no doubt about it, 100%, dead sure, absolute, full to the top, no vacancy, parking lot full, inability to comprehend much of anything above Jr. High level.

The woman never (sadly) ceases to amaze me with her sheer ignorance.  And it is a constant source of irritation to see that ignorance cloaked in a sense of self-righteousness mixed with unequal parts hubris, anger, conspiratorial thinking along with a dash of self pity and a smidgen of faux intellectualism.

So just what the hell am I talking about here?

I picked up our tax returns from my CPA's this past Saturday.  We were on extension and the due date is today.  They are filed electronically which means that both Scarlett and I need to in essence sign the 8879 permission slip for our CPA's to do just that.  Nothing new here, been doing it this way for a number of years now.

My CPA's were even kind enough to run off a 2nd hard copy for Scarlett so that she could look it over and/or give it to her attorney.

So yesterday I took over her copy and the two 8879's for her to sign.  Later that day I called to ask whether I could come over and pick them up.  That would be fine I was told.  Except that once I got there, she was picking through the return (have I mentioned that math and Scarlett are not the best of friends?) with a notepad by her side, and a furrowed brow with squinty eyes.  Well, she had a couple of questions.

Truthfully, all she was really doing was going page by page (the return is around 200+ pages) looking for BIG numbers.  And she found one.  Right next to the word "income".  Scarlett must have thought she'd hit the jackpot.  FINALLY, she "had me".  I was hiding something and she just KNEW it!  And there it was in the tax return.

Long story short, I had her call one of the CPA's to have him explain it.  In essence it all boiled down to the difference between "gross" and "net".  Scarlett isn't real clear, or wasn't, on the definition of "gross".

So, I never did get the signed 8879's yesterday.  But we still had one day (today) to go.

Had a call from her this morning.  She was on her way to her attorney's office (I wonder why....) but she was lost.  She told me where she was and asked if she was going the right way.  I said I don't know.  You have a stand alone GPS in the car as well as your (stupid) smart phone that also has a GPS.  She said Oh, I get it and hung up.

A few minutes later she called again.  In tears.  I'm lost, I don't know where I am.  The GPS on my phone isn't making sense.  PLEASE help me.  So I got her turned around and headed in the right direction.  And I stayed on the phone until she was within feet of her destination.

Nope, didn't end there.  About 10 minutes later she calls.  Crying.  Uncontrollably.  I can make out a few words here and there but not enough to figure out what the hell is going on.  She finally tells me she couldn't find the building her attorney is in.  Went into a parking structure, couldn't get out, probably screamed at some poor attendant, got back on the road, not sure which way she was heading or where she was going.  HELP ME.

Which is about what I feel like saying a lot of time.  HELP ME getthisfuckingbitchoutofmylife!!!

Anyway, she wants to go home, but not before asking me why am I making her do this.  Please see my previous post - A cluster of bees for an explanation of that typical question.

So again, I get her headed where she wants to go (home) and then she wants to know if I can come over and look at her computer and GPS because obviously the problem must lie in one of them.  Since I still have those 8879's to retrieve, I consent.

I get over to Tara and lo and behold, nothing is wrong with the computer or her GPS.  Wow.  I. Was. Shocked.  Nothing wrong with those things.  Can you beat that?  What or where could the problem be?  That one's a puzzler.  Going to take a lot of cogitating and figgering to get this mystery solved.  Where's Sherlock Holmes when you really need him?

Well, I decide to leave that enigma for another day and concentrate on something a bit more time critical - taxes.  So I ask her if she has signed the 8879's yet.

I have a couple of questions first.
Okay.  What are they?

And she starts back in on what she asked me yesterday that she also talked to the CPA about.

You've got to be kidding me Scarlett.
No, I don't understand it.  Why does that page (which is really not much more than an obscure form used to calculate the amount of some foreign taxes that can be used as an offset to US taxes) have this income figure but on what you want me to sign it shows something else?

Did I mention her not knowing the difference between gross and net? Oh righty-o I did!

Now I can tell she thinks I am trying to sneak something past her.  That's precisely what I was trying to do.  Sneak something past her on a tax return that will be filed with the IRS that her attorney could then use against me during this divorce.  Yep, that's exactly what I was trying to do.  Damn it if she didn't see through that.  Curses, foiled again!

Well rather than get bogged down in a discussion that I knew she'd already had with the CPA, I just told her to sign the stuff or not.  I just didn't care at that point and I left.  An hour or so later, I called to see if she'd signed them.  Nope.  Still had her questions.  So I tried again to answer them but this time added in that if she thinks there's something there she can use against me then she will want that return filed.  Until it is filed it is not a legal document.  And if it isn't filed, there will be late filing fees, which you Scarlett get to pay and this divorce that you want ASAP will be slowed down even more.

Somewhere in there she decided it would be in her best interests to sign.  So back to Tara I went.  She signed them.  But it wasn't quite over.

That tax return that she had tried to take to her attorney before erupting into tears, remember that?  Could I (Salty) take it to his office for her?

Really?

But that's what I did.  My hope was to hand deliver it to him and sit down and have a little chat but the drill sergeant who acts as the firm's receptionist at the front desk informed me he wasn't in.

Probably just as well.