Girl Just Wants to Have Fun: How I Spent my Tax Day Holiday

Much like Opening Day of baseball season, Opening Day of Accountant Party Season always begins with high hopes, warm weather, and withdrawal. But unlike baseball season, the high hopes are for finding ways to spend 5-11 p.m., the warm weather becomes anything over 70 degrees, and withdrawal has nothing to do with drugs, steroids, or growth hormones. Yesterday I had the WHOLE DAY to do whatever I wanted, provided it wasn't illegal, immoral, or involved using more than 1/4 tank of gas. The sky (and roughly eastern Henrico County) was my limit.

I kicked off Accountingstock 2012 in true Elyse style... sleeping in until 8:00 and being woken up by my coffee dependency. There I was, chilling in bed with my coffee and the cast of The Today show, which may as well change it's name to "The US Weekly Morning Show, plus Irrelevant National Weather in a Place where you Don't Live." That show is to "news" what "The Lizzie McGuire Movie" is to classical cinema. Crap news on TV, crap literature in my Kindle, partially-hydrogenated palm oil coagulate crap in my coffee (don't ever, EVER look on the indredients list for Almond Joy coffee creamer); I thought to myself, This is what the people on the Edward Jones retirement commercials must feel like EVERY DAY!

I watched M get dressed for work, kiss my forehead and head out to protect 'Merica. His parting words: "If you decide to straighten your hair in bed again, please don't fall asleep before you finish. Don't drink the whole pot of coffee by yourself. Whatever cardigan you decide on will be fine. Yes Kathy Lee Gifford looks like a Teddy Graham. Keys are on the counter. Have fun today. Love you, bye."

With him gone, I felt a lot less indulgent than before. 60% of the pleasure from indulgence comes from gloating about it. I decided to counter-balance the morning's lack of productivity with a run. Several non-fast miles later I opted for a quick shower, mostly out of respect for the person about to cut my hair. I allow my "1/4 tank of gas" radius to expand to Midlothian where I plan to sit and read mindless trashy mags while someone attends to my hair needs...namely the 5-inch thick rough patch where I fell asleep during the aforementioned straightener fiasco. I make the required general announcement to the mostly-empty hair salon about how  I'm just off today for tax day and everyone nods beatifically. I sweep the lobby, collecting every trashy mag in sight. My only requirement is that it be < intelligent and mind-expanding than People Magazine. Meeting these qualifications: Us Weekly, Star and Cosmo. (Side note, Kim Karcrashian is on 3 different magazine covers; one for her butt, one for her face, and one for Most Influential Feminist.) One of those is a lie.

...seems that I've missed quite a lot.


I take my stack on SmutBibles and thumb through them for the next 2 hours (yes really) while my crispy hair is brought back to life. I switch to '50 Shades of Pray Nobody Sees me Reading This' and ponder the need for a Kindle privacy screen. By the time this process is over, it's about 2 p.m. and I still need to hit the mall (a.k.a. the non-working person's Mothership) to procure some 80's clothes for a concert this Saturday night. The lack of having a set schedule has messed up my meal times and I decide to make food a priority before the 80's wear. Nothing says "I'm celebrating being a life winner" quite like eating Chik-Fil-A alone in an empty food court at 3 p.m. Nuggets, by the way, not even a sandwich. And I got ketchup on my cardigan.

Since pretty much everything there either looks like something that could be worn on Halloween or Lady Gaga's leisurewear, I head to H&M. I encounter my typical "Ohmygod I am so overwhelmed by the clothes choices" panic attack and  I summon my friend Julia to come help me with the process. I decide on a tulle ballet skirt and a cropped tank top that will never see the light of day after Saturday because it is neon Mickey Mouse. Julia and I remind ourselves that--truth be told--we were wearing onesies and diapers in the 80's so this is a good compromise. I managed to also get M a birthday present.

40 miles, one cardigan, and approximately $983,657 dollars later I am ready to get my obligatory "sip in the car" Starbucks drink and head out. I technically only have 2 bags, and I calmly remind myself that even though my debit card took a flogging, I got a lot accomplished today. Maybe bank karma will decide to throw a couple of credit dollars on there for 'good self-control.'

It was a day full of frivolity and triumph. I did exactly what I'd set out to do, while taking the time to pause and reflect on the road behind me. Sure I have plenty of vacation days to look forward to, but somehow it's just not the same as having an entire day to yourself while everyone else works. You can keep your President's Day, Columbus Day, 4:20, and so on... I'll take my middle-of-the-week Tax Day anytime.


- Elyse

Tax Season: A Memoir

As tax season draws to a close and I prepare to vasectomize the inflow of tax returns stacked on my shelf, I've found myself reflecting on how I've managed to prioritize and even more notably NOT prioritize my life in the past few weeks when I've been working 12+ hour days and weekends.

We've all been there; the crunch-time phase. Whether it's an exam to study for, a newborn child to take care of (I mean, how different are they?) or the busy time of year in your adult job, you've had to vote certain things, people, and activities off of the Biggest Loser Survivor Island of your life. (I intentionally mixed up TV shows there to show everyone how little time I've had to watch TV. Also, to be snide.)

Here are some things that I have elected to NOT give a rose to during Taxelorette Season:

- Washing my hair has gone completely by the wayside. I'm so sorry. It's probably gross. People in my office now go out of their way to compliment me on my hair on days that I've washed it. "Did you do something to your hair?! It looks good today!" Yep. I actually washed 3 days of hair-product buildup, bobby pins and sweat out of it. Because I'm worth it...every third day.

- Laundry. It has gotten completely out of hand. A cardigan covers all manner of sins, but as for the rest of it, I've gotten into the habit of rounding up an entire load of "essential underthings", washing them, and leaving the rest in the laundry basket which is mostly the floor. I also now put things on the floor when I've THOUGHT about wearing them but never did. Because I am too lazy to hang them up.

- I'm going to get away from the personal-hygiene bullets because I'm starting to sound like a coherent version of Ke$ha.


- I don't remember the last time I put more than $20 of gas in my car at a time. It takes forever to fill up my tank and frankly, I can't be bothered. I like to think that I'm 'hedging' fuel prices by doing this; hoping that when I need to fill up again, gas prices will have gone down. But to most everyone else filling up their tanks at the gas station, I just look poor.

- Those who know me know that one of my great, great passions in life involves giving my opinion to people I disagree with, especially on Facebook where if nothing else I can attack their punctuation and grammar for the whole world to see. I've seen a lot of ridiculousness recently that I've let slide because I don't have time to do my typical "type out a coherent argument on a Word document, spell-check and paste it into the comment window" charade. Not enough hours in the day. I miss this simple frivolity. So just so we're clear, the Internet is not safe anymore. I will be giving my opinions out on everything.

- I haven't read anything longer than a Facebook status in about 3 months. How I've managed to keep running yet not read anything that wouldn't fit in a Pinterest comment window is beyond me, but that's the way things have shaken out. Last night I downloaded "50 Shades of Did-She-Just-Say-What-I-Think-She-Just-Said" and was up until 3 a.m. reading it and by reading it I mean skipping to the interesting parts and neglecting the horrendous storyline. Why don't we just call this book what it really is: X-Rated Lit for Women who Read But Wish They Could Just Watch Dirty Movies? I mean, really. And if I were the title character, I'd be borderline-choke holding the protagonist female too. She's obnoxious.

- I'm pretty sure they're now showing The Hunger Games on ABC Family at 2 p.m. nowadays and everyone from the Duggar children to indigenous tribesmen in Mongolia have seen it at least twice, with bootlegged copies of "Child Lovers Hungry Death Game" arriving by alpaca every day. I still haven't seen the damn thing.

"I VOLUNTEER!!!! I volunteer to come in on Saturday!!!!"

- My temper has been occasionally snippy. Example: I crawled in to work on Sunday afternoon after an evening/morning of frolicking around Shockoe bottom. I really didn't NEED to come in, but I knew it would help my boss out a lot if I did. I was only vaguely aware of what I was wearing, certain only that I'd covered the Hustler Magazine parts. My dear, dear coworker made the unfortunate mistake of giving me a genuine compliment. "What a cute tee shirt!!! Where is that from? I love it!" I look down, reminded that I pulled a men's size L V-neck white tee shirt out of what I'd presumed to be the clean laundry pile and threw it over some gym shorts. Oh, and I added a necklace to cover what I hoped was latent coffee stains. Anyway, she was being honest and yet I responded by sorta biting her head off and telling her that it was nothing special, I'd gotten it from WalMart. So then I had a bad-attitude hangover as well as a real hangover. That plus the coffee stains= not a good look.

The good news is, tax season is over. I can go back to being overly involved in the lives of my friends and spending my time irresponsibly. And blogging. I've missed the blogging.

With that, everyone have a fantastic tax day, and may the I.R.S. be ever in your favor. We'll chat again soon!