Tax

​Yesterday was one of those days.  I definitely prefer not to have them, but they happen.  If something can go wrong it will.  It was not like I did not try to remain positive.  I did.  But it was just good for me, and had no positive effect on the circumstances.  They just got worse.
I had determined it was tax day.  No matter what happened, the day was dedicated to preparing Merril and my paperwork for our visit to the tax man.
It started well.  The first 10 minutes were great.  Then I could not find the statements.  Printing them had been time consuming, and going through each month highlighting what was important took hours. But they were nowhere to be found.
After an hour or so looking I decided it was time for a break.  I thought, “I’ll just need to print them again.”  The first four went according to plan.  Then the printer stopped and said more black toner was needed.  No problem I thought.  We have that.  So I swapped toner cartridges.  The printer did not recognize it.  Not good I thought.  I’ll try another.    We had three from the same place and all would not be recognized.
I would like to say at this point I had a spring in my step and was whistling, but I would be lying.  I was trying to stay positive and think all the right things, but things just continued to get worse.
I rang Merril and she suggested I ask my brother to print them out.  It was a good idea, so I downloaded them and sent them by email.  I rang him to confirm he had the email.  No answer.  So I rang him again.  Still no answer.  I sent a text and left it at that.  I rang again a few hours later and he was just doing it.  Then he rang later to say he may run out of paper and not be able to finish.  We agreed I would bring over more paper when I picked up what was there and perhaps finish off if I needed.  I knew he had no more toner so I was hoping it would last. 
Things were definitely not going as planned.  I decided to have lunch and a nap.  I went back to it and things worked until the computer said the page I was just on could not be found.
I was zombie like at that point.  Merril can home and it turned out the printer was asking for another colour.  According to her she knew as it had happened before.  I didn’t know.
TV seemed attractive.  As did Merril’s idea of waking early to finish.  That was more of a sacrifice for her as I wake early anyway.
We did that and our visit to the tax man was uneventful.  In fact, the final tax bill was thousands less than anticipated (we thought capital gains would be more).  The service was less costly than last time also.
All through the day I knew it was about choice.  My heart felt as cold as a stone.  To me that was not the point.  The point was to get through the day without causing damage to myself or others.  My consolation was someone understood and this would pass.  For me, sometimes things are about choice not feelings.  It is easy to do stuff when I feel good and things go well.  When they are not - now there’s a test.
Only about 365 days till the next visit.  But who’s counting.