21 day fix. r2d5. give me back my black t-shirt.

why don't you just go ahead and let the above video play while you read the following.

"give me my money back you b*tch" is apparently the war cry of both the federal and minnesota government as they persist in demanding money from us. for anyone who cared to notice my signature last night (certified mail is never good news) we received a notice in the mail that a couple of certified letters were waiting for us at the post office. a couple of them! how lovely!


i would like to say that i have the grace and good nature to handle this sort of thing with patience and faith that "all will work out", but i do not. i was spiraling in a dark panic within three seconds, and that swirling lasted from 5:30pm when i saw the note in the mail until 8:05am this morning when the badger picked up the letters.

 my piece of advice for anyone who receives notice of a cerified letter? do NOT google "what gets sent via certified mail." you will find out the following items are often sent this way:

• a notice that you are being sued
• a notice that you are part of a lawsuit
• a notice to vacate your property; can come from the bank, your neighbor (apparently?), your city, your state, the government, etc.
• requirement to attend jury duty (that wouldn't have been so bad)
• anything from the IRS
• a notice that there is intention to garnish your wages from a collector
• ... and other very bad, bad things

and sometimes, only occasionally, a certified letter can be good news, like, a large sum of money from an inheritance. given that no one in my family has that much money and/or has died recently that i'm aware of, i knew it was likely one of the above mentioned bullet points.

so we owe both the IRS and the great state of minnesota some money from our 2013 taxes. this we have known since april, and have been paying off since april. no big deal. well the two certified letters were from this the great state of minnesota to the tune of "we intend to file a claim with the federal goverment to take any refunds owed to you and apply it towards your minnesota tax bill..." blah blah blah. yeah? good f*cking luck minnesota because we owe them too.

basically, it's nothing to panic about and some standard letter that they send everyone who owes them money?

i gotta tell ya. canada keeps looking better and better. oh, and hey! my company has some offices up there! so...

on to today.
due to the aforementioned dark spiraling panic of last night into this morning, i did not sleep. i predicted this before getting into bed and therefore made a double-strong batch of coffee and set the timer for 6am, knowing that the morning would likely be rough.

7:00. hoo-boy! that coffee was something else. once i was at work, i got this note from the badger:

butter cheeks? BUTTER CHEEKS?

lesson learned. a lost night of sleep cannot be made up for with strong coffee. i drank a smoothie to help absorb some of the caffeine:

i drew a picture of my smoothie! j/k.
the picture was really shitty, so i made it a cartoon to cover up my bad art.

12:30. i fought a raging headache most of the morning. the only thing i could think to do other than ask someone to rip my head off was eat again. i had leftover black bean soup from last night with some shredded chicken and a sliced bell pepper.

anyone remember cup-o-soup? do they still make that stuff?!

2:00. still fighting the headache, so i ate more food.

that's a glass jar of peanut butter. but it looks like caramel sauce.
now i want some caramel sauce.

i left work at 2:30 and squeezed in a workout. i did the "dirty 30", which sounds a lot naughtier than it is. it's my favorite workout of the fix. a nice mix of strength training and toning. i was all drippy by the end of the 30 minutes. perfect.

the rest of our evening involves pizza and a movie with the kids. john recommended that we watch "fight club", but i don't think they're ready for that yet.
until tomorrow,
ashley "bringing in the shieves" rebekah