Allergies, Taxes, and Waiting (these are a few of my least favorite things)

:Ran drags her sneezy self to her computer to write this post:

Being that this is our second spring here in Northern California, I feel like I should already know about the times of the year when the pollen is a flyin'. Apparently, I wasn't ready for my allergies to hit me like a ton of bricks when I woke up a couple days ago to the worst pounding headache I've ever had. And it continued alllllllll day long. Silly me, I thought I was getting the flu! So after rearranging my entire day's schedule to accommodate my sickness (I love my new job for this very reason) and taking Advil faithfully every four hours to no avail, my lovely husband pointed out that the so-called flu might actually just be allergies instead. So I turned on the news and listened to report after report of how bad the tree pollen is, popped a daytime allergy pill, and BAM, no more headache!! Much thanks to my wonderful hubbs for his suggestion, he really knows me better than I know myself sometimes!

Onto other news, we recently completed the arduous task of filing our taxes. Well, that's not completely true. We recently met with our tax guy, who we paid to complete the arduous task of filing our taxes for us. When he called me yesterday to report back the results, we were less than thrilled. Even though our income was significantly higher than it was last year, our refund is about 1/3 of what we were expecting. My CA friends who have heard this have given us a couple helpful suggestions for decreasing our tax liability: have a child or buy a house. My older brother, however, recommends against the latter (and for good reason). We are still not convinced that real estate is a worthwhile investment in this state for the short amount of time that we plan on staying here.

Still no word on my grad school application. I work with quite a few graduates of the MSW program at Sac State, and they've all told me the same thing. The Social Work office moves at a snail's pace and will wait until the last possible day to inform applicants of their decision. And that decision might not be a concrete answer, at that. There still is the possibility of getting wait-listed, which would mean another 2 months of waiting before I would have a for-sure answer. Better put on my patience hat!

And with that, I will sign off. I am constantly reminded by the news media of how fortunate we are to have what we have in this shaky economy. We have college degrees, stable jobs, and great health insurance. God is good.