I did our taxes yesterday; revisited the mind-bending reality that we spent over $24,000 on medical bills and health insurance, recalled the angst-filled trip to the bank last March to cash in savings bonds, pondered how much less we spent with no place to go … filled in all the little boxes that defined 2020.
In the end, I breathed a sigh of relief as TurboTax spat out the conclusion that we are due a $404 refund. Fine. Done.
The rest of the day was far more pleasurably spent. I took a half-hour walk. Stitched a Superb Owl and wrote a blog post. Thought about what to fix for dinner, which was good enough to be worth documenting for future reference:
1040 Chicken
- Rotisserie chicken cut into bite-sized pieces
- Queso fresco cheese, crumbled
- Grape tomatoes, rough cut
- Chorizo, fine dice
- Frontera tomatillo sauce
- Shredded Mexican blend cheese
- Crumbled tortilla chips
You’ll notice there are no quantities. That’s how I roll. Everything was put into a Pyrex dish and tucked into the oven to get bubbly hot while some Royal Blend mixed rice cooked on the stovetop. The rice was my base, the assemblage was my patchplay. The dinner was delicious.
And because I wanted to celebrate, dessert was some underbaked, crustless fudge pie nuked to molten, then draped over vanilla ice cream and topped with crushed raspberries and freshly whipped cream.
Now that’s a day worth remembering!
I'm Going to Texas (version 2.0) 
Seems like the money spending has just been shifted somehow …
Haven’t touched the taxes.
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travel was the difference for us … or rather, the lack thereof
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Taxes. Yuc. Everything is so different this year, what with being furloughed and so on. I’m dreading it. Molten ice cream sounds good. I’ve been trying so hard to eat better, which is not easy for me. I could live on junk (and veggies, I love those!) if my body would let me. Oh well.
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I enjoy eating well and eating junk in equal measure … I guess I just plain love eating
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i would be dead. I just got my Social Security thingy…my income in 2020 was $9,144
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just three and a half months until I can go on a Medicare … my individual health insurance didn’t cover one red cent of my cataract surgeries
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You brought back to me- the year husband had triple bypass. Medicare (after deductible) paid for everything but the ambulance ride. I send the check to the Fire Department with a letter to thank the two guys who transported my husband. I haven’t even purchased Turbo Tax yet. I should just get it done.
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I’m clear-eyed enough to not see the government as the solution to all the ills in society, but Medicare seems to get more things right than it gets wrong (and here I’m thinking about hearing aids, eyeglasses, dental care and, yes, ambulance rides) …
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A very happy foody patch! And thank good ness the taxes are done. Our health systems are so dramatically different…
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HI LA – that is an amazing amount for health expenses – so stay well I say. B
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B – the irony is that we have to withdraw retirement savings to pay for the health insurance, which raises our income, which makes us ineligible for health insurance supplements … needless to say, our health care system is in need of serious restructuring
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Understatement. 🙂
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boy, your health costs are mind-boggling for a Dutch citizen……not that our system is perfect! far from it, our covid-vaccination program is the worst in Europe!
on to more pleasant matters: that bowl is the icing on the cake, delightful;-)
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thank you … the patched patch looked lonely so I added the bowl (the better to hold memory)
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I loved the the addition of the bowl too. Sorry for your woes on health insurance we have had to cash in bonds to pay for hospital bills for my spouse. We have Medicare now but have to purchase supplemental plans to pay for what Medicare doesn’t cover. I have been reading your Blanco River Monument Project. My folks left Lincoln City, Oregon in the 90’s to Dripping Springs . They used to talk about Wimberley all the time. My mothers roots go way back in Texas and Oklahoma.
I look forward to see what your next patch is going to be.
Be safe and well,
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Beverly – I love knowing that you have a connection to the Texas Hill Country … much as I imagine your folks did, we moved to Texas about 12 years ago. We didn’t have any roots here as your mother did, but our daughter lives here so we brought our roots with us
I confess to being stuck on patches right now … not sure how to navigate the political unrest in a way that makes sense for now and the future
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I learned to not measure from my mother…who says the problem with it is that when you get it right you can’t always repeat. Ah well, more variety that way.
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I live by the motto that recipes are merely suggestions of how one might go … and the related problem of never having things come out the same way twice (sometimes that’s a good thing … ha!)
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