It’s the Arctic Outside

It’s freezing out. Seriously. Freezing. At 10 p.m. it has already dropped to -18F. It’s easy to stay home when the air hurts my face to even take out the garbage.

I think I’ll just enjoy this requirement of working remotely and not leave indefinitely. Tuesday night is a choir concert my kid just told me. Other than that requirement I’m staying inside. Forever. Guess that’s one way to slow the drinking.

Of course my furnace is also practicing going out. It’s just doing the short cycle restart thing again. It just can’t handle this level of cold. So it kicks on, runs, makes a god awful sound, tries to kick on again. Safety off. Repeat later. At least it’s working. But it’s obviously considering not to. Ugh. The hot water heater guy said the furnace was 20 years old and with the restart thing he heard whole installing to be saving and plan we’d need one within a year. I’m simply hoping it can make it through this bitter cold.

So, I need to get my life together to file taxes. We will have one less dependent this year. We made probably $10K more. Sounds like a perfect storm to pay in. We will see. I’m hoping we just get a reallllly small amount back and don’t pay in. I’ll still have the college student credit which helps.  I need to figure this out THIS week. For sure. And I haven’t even started the self employment part. Ugh.

Basically I just need to know if we also need to budget paying into the IRS too. If not, then it’s just the $8K for the furnace. (Top of the line central air/heat/etc. might as well do it right for hopefully another 20 years.) If we could get some taxes back to put towards it that would be even more amazing but I’m not holding my breath there.

We will see. Maybe I’ll get brave and cross my fingers. I wish I could get new “fun” items – A gorgeous fridge. My first ever brand new matching washer/dryer set. Someday. Someday. Next up after the furnace we definitely need a new patio door. Maybe new windows. At least new curtains to help keep out the weather. Small steps.

Rome wasn’t built in a day – But gosh I’d like instant gratification and a money tree.