As many of you will know, I returned from my trip to Malaysia on Sunday night.
As many of you will suspect, I wasn't quite ready to come home.
As many of you will have guessed from my social media updates, I returned to absolute chaos.
The house wasn't in too bad a shape, apart from the colony of ants that had set up headquarters in my kitchen, and the piles of dirty clothes breeding on my kids' bedroom floors. The kids weren't in too bad a shape, apart from the youngest having an ear infection, and the eldest having a bad case of I Hate Homework.
Sadly, though, there were some other issues.
For one, there was the small detail of there being NO INTERNET, for reasons no-one at Telstra could quite explain. For another, there was the even more minor detail of there being NO FOXTEL, because of an outage in the area which Telstra assured me had nothing to do with my internet failure*.
There was also the very small issue of me having no car. Having taken my car in for a small repair before I left, the car was, apparently, still siting in the service centre's garage, as no-one had bothered to get authority from the insurer. Helpful.
So I had reached the Tragic Trifecta. No car, no internet and no TV. Oh, and no electricity, because although it is connected, the staggering cost of the energy bill that was waiting for me precludes me from ever using electricity again. Which at least means I don't have to worry about getting the internet and Foxtel reconnected.
Still, it's lovely coming home. I can't think of any reasons why right now, but I know they're there. And at least I've got my health, right? Except that I did my back in on the long flight home, and I can't get out to the physio...
*It has since been confirmed to have everything to do with it
Showing posts with label bills. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bills. Show all posts
August 14, 2012
February 22, 2011
Giving Bills The Finger
So I just sent off all my tax documents to my accountant. This is phenomenally early, considering that it’s only February, and the financial year doesn’t end until June. Except that the tax is for last year, and my accountant has been hassling me for them for months. So in fact I am completely useless.
I hate preparing my tax. I hate collating information. I hate going through files, finding details, and writing them down. I hate filling out forms. I hate paying bills. I hate doing anything that involves inputting data (unless the data is a Tweet or Facebook update, in which case I could do it all day).
And I can’t keep up with all the data to be inputted, just to maintain a functional 21st century Western lifestyle. Paperwork comes in at an extraordinary rate, and I lose track of it all the time. With five people in the house, there's a lot of data input, and when I forget, I can make some colossal mistakes.
I’m not just talking about having the phone cut off because I forgot to pay the bill, though that has certainly happened, and oh, how I laughed at my silly error (using ‘laugh’ in the sense of ‘wept when I found I was unable to make a call’). In the past few years I have also:
- Forgotten to transfer money into my husband’s account before a business trip so he found himself overseas and penniless;
- Forgotten to re-register my car so I found myself booked and shamed by two gleeful looking police officers, and fined about a billion dollars;
- Forgotten to renew my daughter’s passport and found myself panic stricken in line behind seventy five others at 5pm on a Friday afternoon;
- Forgotten to lodge insurance claims, which led to all sorts of problems, I can assure you;
- Forgotten to sign school permission slips, which leads to very cross teachers and extremely embarrassed kids;
- Forgotten to invoice for work I’ve done, which is just plain stupid;
- Forgotten to pay parking fines, which, as I’ve discovered, leads to even more fines;
- Forgotten to leave feedback on ebay purchases, which leads to very agitated sellers;
- Forgotten to bank two birthday cheques from my grandmother, which really hurt her feelings.
I don’t want to have to fill out forms anymore. In fact, I would quite cheerfully give up some freedom and privacy to never have to input data again. I’d be more than happy to have a microchip inserted in my finger – hey, inserted in my forehead! – into which every detail of my life could be programmed, including money in, money out, and money owed. The government could just take what is theirs from my online account after calculating their share, my creditors could do the same, and I could give up record keeping forever. It sounds like heaven.
Either that, or I could find a full time bookkeeper to live with me. As long as he pays himself. After all, the last thing I need is an employee. Too much paperwork.
I hate preparing my tax. I hate collating information. I hate going through files, finding details, and writing them down. I hate filling out forms. I hate paying bills. I hate doing anything that involves inputting data (unless the data is a Tweet or Facebook update, in which case I could do it all day).
And I can’t keep up with all the data to be inputted, just to maintain a functional 21st century Western lifestyle. Paperwork comes in at an extraordinary rate, and I lose track of it all the time. With five people in the house, there's a lot of data input, and when I forget, I can make some colossal mistakes.
I’m not just talking about having the phone cut off because I forgot to pay the bill, though that has certainly happened, and oh, how I laughed at my silly error (using ‘laugh’ in the sense of ‘wept when I found I was unable to make a call’). In the past few years I have also:
- Forgotten to transfer money into my husband’s account before a business trip so he found himself overseas and penniless;
- Forgotten to re-register my car so I found myself booked and shamed by two gleeful looking police officers, and fined about a billion dollars;
- Forgotten to renew my daughter’s passport and found myself panic stricken in line behind seventy five others at 5pm on a Friday afternoon;
- Forgotten to lodge insurance claims, which led to all sorts of problems, I can assure you;
- Forgotten to sign school permission slips, which leads to very cross teachers and extremely embarrassed kids;
- Forgotten to invoice for work I’ve done, which is just plain stupid;
- Forgotten to pay parking fines, which, as I’ve discovered, leads to even more fines;
- Forgotten to leave feedback on ebay purchases, which leads to very agitated sellers;
- Forgotten to bank two birthday cheques from my grandmother, which really hurt her feelings.
I don’t want to have to fill out forms anymore. In fact, I would quite cheerfully give up some freedom and privacy to never have to input data again. I’d be more than happy to have a microchip inserted in my finger – hey, inserted in my forehead! – into which every detail of my life could be programmed, including money in, money out, and money owed. The government could just take what is theirs from my online account after calculating their share, my creditors could do the same, and I could give up record keeping forever. It sounds like heaven.
Either that, or I could find a full time bookkeeper to live with me. As long as he pays himself. After all, the last thing I need is an employee. Too much paperwork.
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