Kage Baker said that apologies are not as much use as explanations. If you can explain, in a coherent manner, why you failed in some enterprise, your victim will be more inclined to cut you some slack than if you unload a weepy apology on them.

At the least, you may get credit for entertainment value.

I haven’t posted in days, mostly because I’ve been doing other things. Not more important things, just things that would not leave me alone. I had a writing deadline (which I made, to the apparent satisfaction of my patron), then it was tax time. My taxes are a little complicated – though easier than last year, thank all the mercantile dieties! – but I tried a new tax prep program and it turned out to have some … difficulties. Nothing that couldn’t be solved by reading the instructions carefully, but it took time. And of course I didn’t read the instructions carefully.

What took even more time was discovering I had never gotten one critical 1099, and then trying to scrape together the pertinent information: all I needed for the electronic submission was the gross amount paid to me, and the payor’s Federal ID Number. Easier said than done! hard as it may be to believe, very few people have their Employer Tax IDs memorized.  At one point, it looked like it would take several days to get the information – due to family disasters among the staff of the company that owed me the 1099, and their tax accountant getting run over by a dog … really. A dog.

And so I filed a request for an extension, to cover all bases and my derriere. The extension kept getting returned, with the IRS insisting my name and SS # didn’t match their records. Nonsense, cried I. And re-submitted it. Several times. I finally got around to actually looking at what I’d input and, lo! I’d entered my SS# wrong! After 40 years of entering that damn number a dozen times a year, I screwed it up! Rapidly correcting my idiocy, I got the extension in just at the deadline; and then I got it approved; and then I got the return in  just at the deadline and … finally got all my taxes done.

A hard few days, I had.

On the other hand, I did go out yestreday and purchase a new clothes dryer. Kimberly’s dryer has recently deceased; which happens with alarming frequency when I start using one. (As Kelly Rettinhouse knows!) It’s my habit, when I help kill a dryer, to replace it.  And this dryer is something Kage and I had wanted for years: a bright red one. Chinese lacquer red, glowing metallic gorgeous red!  Low energy usage, huge drum, tons of different cycles and the mere sight of it lowers my blood pressure and raises low blood sugar.

However, Sears was full of fractious, glassy-eyed children, all running amok compromising adults with weak immune systems. First I developed a FOO, probably from the stress of tearing around, doing taxes and shopping. And in the middle of last night, I woke up with a stomach ache and realized I had some sort of vile gastric upset.  I always feel, at times like that, as if I’m some kind of protozooan who has only just developed a gastro-intestinal tract and hasn’t worked out which end does what yet.

So I slept all day.

But today I am better! I have my 7-layer dip of an explanation for you all, and I hope it at least entertains. So thank you for your patience. Now, back to writing regularly, and waiting for the Sears guys to deliver my beautiful new red dryer …