sistawendy: me in a Gorey vamp costume looking up (skeptic coy Gorey tilted down)
I'm staying in the Devil Girl Pad this weekend because getting around on crutches due to my broken ankle is a botheration.

Funny Lady brought me Korean eats for dinner last night, but in classic FL fashion, she missed my message about timing so I never got to see her. She's the sweetest thing and I love her to bits, but she does have ADHD for reals.

At 0318 this morning my smoke alarm started its low battery chirp - or so I thought. (Foreshadowing!) Being on a bus route, I sleep with ear plugs. I really didn't want to hear that chirp up close more than I had to, so I left them in. I took the smoke alarm off the ceiling only to discover that it's a sealed unit. Faaabulous. Well, I wanted to sleep, dammit, so I broke it open and pulled the battery. Still chirping. I cut wires. Still chirping.

It was coming from the carbon monoxide alarm maybe a foot from where the smoke alarm was. Luckily, that unit is not sealed. Replacements for everything are on order. It occurs to me that I agree with some disabled folks that Amazon is not an unmitigated evil for them.

I've got my packing & to-do list ready for London over two months in advance because that's how I roll.

I got a needed reimbursement from Good Sister for what I spent on Mom's glasses. I'd forgotten I had that money coming.

There has been epic napping in an attempt to elevate my foot and get that swelling & bruising to go away. I think I'll resume that shortly.
sistawendy: me in a Gorey vamp costume looking up (skeptic coy Gorey tilted down)
Ex emailed me last night to tell me that she'd broken a tooth, and she needed $2K to get it fixed. She offered to take that off the end of my alimony, so I wouldn't have to pay all the way through February of 2022, just half way.

If you'll recall, I had most of my tax refund still in the bank, potentially needed for getting my mom's house back from the reverse mortgage. It's occurred to me that at the rate things are going, we may need to get her in dementia care even sooner than we could fight any legal battles.

So against my better judgment I gave Ex the money. She promised to marry me if we ever need to bug out of the country and move to Ireland*.

Either I practice good karmic and financial hygiene, or I'm a damn fool. There is no third possibility. Time to start saving back up what I just paid out.



*Thanks to her first husband, Ex has been able to obtain an Irish passport.
sistawendy: me at a house party cradling a taco like a baby (taco madonna)
In lieu of riding my bike this morning, I took the bus to the post office to pick up an item of clothing. It's beautiful, entirely too expensive, immodest even by my standards, and for that among other reasons perfect for both the Folsom Street Fair and Pride. I'm going to be a horrible tease and not post a photo of it until I wear it in earnest.

I guess this entry is my way of holding myself to not buying anything else for Pride until the second half of next year. Until this year, I was spending too much on shoes. Until summer, I was spending too much on art. Maybe I've gotten spending too much on clothes out of my system. Running out of wall & closet space helps. But there's always the danger of seeing something at Folsom that I Simply Must Have. Come to think of it, there was something I saw at the Vampire Ball that I wouldn't mind having, and from a local vendor, even. OK, maybe I haven't gotten it out of my system.

I must remind myself that a) the United Sister Front may find itself in an expensive legal battle, if not a mad scramble to keep our mother off the streets, and b) there's still work I'd like done to my face.
sistawendy: me in profile in a Renaissance dress at a party (contemplative red)
The last thing that I wrote about my mom and her financial situation was that her guardian had sent bank statements to Good Sister for some CPA crunching. GS received the statements this past Saturday and has done a whole lot of crunching on them, producing a spreadsheet that she's shared with the United Sister Front, her guardianship lawyer K, and the fellow we hope will be the lawyer to get Mom's house back, A.

I had a long chat with GS from the bus this morning (Thanks, AirPods!) wherein I learned all sorts of stuff about the situation, pleasant and otherwise. It's complicated. I'll try to summarize:
  • The spreadsheet is a portrait of advancing dementia painted in numbers. Mom's credit card bills ballooned as early as '13; GS pointed out plenty of evidence that much of that activity was fraud.
  • Before we put Mom in guardianship, she liquidated some of her retirement plans to pay credit card bills. This was long a low-level fear of mine, but now it's been confirmed; Mom really is that addled, and has been for some time. This may be the answer to where she's been getting money to pay for "psychics". That makes it all the more important for us to get the house back if we can.
  • The guardian didn't send the statements for '18, so GS has requested those via K. GS suspects the guardian of attempting to cover his butt.
On the subject of the guardian, I was relieved not to hear GS talking about (completely) replacing him. She doesn't want his (whole) job, but she's making plans to talk to K in person to look into becoming "co-guardian". She may want to involve me in keeping tabs on Mom, but a) I'm not sure I'd be that useful, and b) I don't want the job any more than GS does. I may be of more use to them both, however, in securing Mom's internet access. Getting rid of Mom's internet access is definitely on the table. GS wants to lock down Mom's spending tighter, which I'm a-OK with no matter how much Mom doesn't like it.

GS is genuinely heartbroken that Mom is letting scammers feed her delusions. She even asked K, "Is this how you would want your mother to go through life?" To tell you the truth, I don't care what's going on in Mom's head anymore. As I told GS this morning, we don't control that. GS didn't want to hear it, but I'm willing to let that slide for now. All three members of the United Sister Front have concluded independently that the veneer of education & civilization that Mom fought to maintain throughout her adult life is peeling off, revealing the nasty hillbilly she always was at heart. Why, no, I didn't lock this post.

And what of the third member of the USF, Evil Sister? She helped us find A, but she says she wants no part of guardianship; GS doesn't think ES could handle the aggro anyway. Sheeut, I'm not sure I can, but I'll try if I have to. The other two of us are ambivalent enough about it ourselves that we don't hold it against her. ES only left Florida in '17, and still has one minor child and a husband who travels a lot, so we're willing to cut her a lot of slack.

Oh, and what of the reverse mortgage, the end of which was supposed to be the rationale for all this in the first place? GS has restarted discussions with A. Some of the value of the house may be recoverable, but that means we'll have to pay back the remainder.
sistawendy: me in a Gorey vamp costume looking up (skeptic coy Gorey tilted down)
The IRS is still ruminating my tax refund, two weeks after they said they got it. I won't start to worry until another week goes by.

Meanwhile, since it's a substantial sum, I've made plans for it:
  • Pay off my credit card.
  • Get more Chanel Chance; I'm almost out.
  • Art. I don't mean to go too crazy, but I think it's about my time my bedroom had all NC-17 art.
  • Charitable donations. RAICES is next on my list.
  • Two out of the three detached keyboards I use are the same. Time to make the third one match.
  • Replace the sports bras that I've worn out by doing actual sports in them. Once upon a time I used them to hide my boobs, but that time is happily long gone.
  • Replace the pairs of black cotton leggings that I nearly live in at least half the year.
  • Sun clips for my new specs. Sooner or later I'll need to drive toward the sun, and I need to drive with my specs on.
  • The bulk of this refund, however, I need to hold in reserve for potential legal action to recover the assets that Mom transferred to scammers. I say potential because my sisters are still doing the detective work to find out if that's possible; we should know in about a month. If it is possible, I'll likely need to pay more than my one-third share of legal fees.
These are just a couple of several things I'm waiting for right now. I'm a little burnt out on waiting.
sistawendy: Me at the start of my 50th birthday party at Mokedo. Photo & makeup credit: Codee Bradley. (50th birthday)
Adulting #0: An epic evening at Lambert House: first trans group with every seat filled and then some, followed by two hours of database-cum-GUI* deployment. I'm just hoping that the other volunteers don't hate me for the sudden expansion of the GUI, and that the house's funding agencies are appeased by the data we collect. We, especially the director & I, really do make a good faith effort, and the director says we're doing a much better job than agencies with bigger, looser budgets.

Adulting #1: Forgot to sign check to Dr. Kidshrink. Resent.

Adulting #2: Months ago I ordered two Emerald City Comicon badges for 3/3 before I realized that that's also the day of Sydney's Mardi Gras parade. My son said he'd be going with Ex's beau Mr. Right Now, but failed to consult him, which is typical of the Wendling. Mr. Right Now declined the offer, but his daughter, who isn't much younger than my son and has known him for years and is a fellow comics fan, might not. I confess to thinking it would be really, really nice if the Wendling and Miss Right Now were friends. My son needs them, and I'm not even sure he knows that.

Adulting #3: The gummint says I should be getting my tax refund within a week, right when I need it. Go me!

Adulting #4: The embarrassing, time-consuming slog of learning end-to-end testing for a big feature that's new to me. I've almost got something important out the door, and another team is already trying to get a piece of me.

"Adulting" #5: Wearing my birthday boots to work with a knee-length skirt. Because I'm a grownup and I can do that.

ETA: #4 is now shipped, baybee.



*Because in Microsoft Access, they're joined at the hip, and about as wieldy as conjoined twins.
sistawendy: me in a Gorey vamp costume looking up (skeptic coy Gorey tilted down)
I know the answer to the question in the subject: no more than two days, and possibly only one. The accounts receivable department, or whatever it's called, of the IRS must be the most efficient organization in the entire US government.

I mailed a four-figure back tax payment on the 7th to Ogden, UT via the usual first class mail. It was cashed on the 11th. There's no way it took fewer than two days to get there.
sistawendy: me looking stern in a blue velvet 1890s walking suit (lizzy)
Irritation #1: Killed half an hour in PCC yesterday waiting for my debit card to be unblocked. All those donations I attempted yesterday? Flagged as suspicious activity. The robot that called me said everything was hunky dory after I said the activity was legit, but as everyone who works in the tech industry knows, sometimes robots lie. Silver lining: while I was on the phone, the credit union dude clued me into a savings account with higher interest. Them what has, gets.

Irritation #2: LiveJournal is, as a company whose servers are now entirely within Russia, complying with Russia's homo- and transphobic laws that censor blogs, and various other creepy shit. Yeah, I agreed to their stupid TOS, but only to say this:

IF YOU'RE READING THIS, LEAVE LJ FOR DREAMWIDTH NOW and please tell me what your username over there is.

There are still a few more people I'd like to see over there who haven't migrated, but I'm going to delete my LJ in about 24 hours.
sistawendy: me smirking in my Hester Pryne costume (smartass hester)
Last night I fired up my new printer to do its first legit job: tax forms for me & m'boy. Not post-worthy, you may protest, but wait.

As I read my 1040 - this will be the first year in decades that I've done my own taxes - I was informed of something that makes perfect sense but hadn't occurred to me: alimony is tax deductible. I pay quite a bit of what Washington state calls "maintenance" to my ex. I should have a hefty refund check coming, something with which I am a-OK.

The flip side of this is, of course, that Ex has to pay taxes on that income from me. But she's always been smart about that sort of thing, and it's not my problem anyway.
sistawendy: me in a Gorey vamp costume with the back of my hand to my forehead (hand staple forehead)
For the first time ever, I completely blew off trans group at Lambert House. Well, not so much deliberately blew off as failed to make the appointment repeat in my online calendar, thereby eliminating my reminder. Group starts at 1900. The house called me at 1925, but by then I was in Kirkland, eating like the very hungry nun I was, feeling light-headed from ick, and picking up the check I needed to pay my taxes. There was no way I'd make it in time to make most of group, and oh by the way, I had m'boy with me.

Wayell, at least when Uncle Sam cashes his check it will now clear. Oh yeah: I think I'll go change my withholding now to say I'm single. *Facepalm!* You all know I'd love to find Ms. Right and marry the bejeezus out of her, but no way in hell do I want to do this divorce crap again.

I love those perfect summer days, but I'm a bit worried that Seattle is having them in April. Come July, only the Burners may be left standing.

Slept 9.5 hours again last night. I'd really like to shake this crud, if only so I could get all the boxes & crates out of my living room, a.k.a. my son's bedroom. I'm so tired I still haven't properly tried out my new Lelo, which means I'm having dreams about making out with women it would be better for me not to make out with.
sistawendy: me in profile in a Renaissance dress at a party (contemplative red)
I've almost recovered from the physical ravages of Pride; my ankle is only sore when I first get out of bed in the morning.

Speaking of Pride, I saw something happy-making as I was on my way home from a walk that I couldn't help taking in last night's warm twilight. At 74th & Fremont, in front of a newish-looking house, is a tall, stout flagpole with a Pride flag on it. As luck would have it, a couple of the residents were on the porch. I wished them happy Pride, and they thanked me. Oh by the way, there's another Pride flag hanging from somebody's third-floor balcony on 74th & Winona, which is on my way to the bus to work.
Worried about an imminent rise in my rent. I'll soon be spending more than 50% of what I put in my checking account (as opposed to what I send to the one Aspiring Ex uses*) on it.

On a related note, I'm all gussied up for a date with Temptress, but she postponed due to ill health. That's just as well: I don't need to spend money on restaurants at the moment.



*Before anyone gets too worked up, let me point out that AX pays both our credit card bills and nearly all m'boy's expenses out of that account. She doesn't wanna, but we haven't gotten around to splitting all those joint accounts yet. If we did, she'd likely be screwed.
sistawendy: me in profile in a Renaissance dress at a party (contemplative red)
I had the hottest non-date of my life today: the Siberian Siren. If you'll recall, I met the SS way back in February at Bang for the Buck when I encountered an absolutely stunning little femme who proved to be, yes, queer and nice enough, but taken.

From the Dept. of Small World: the SS's girlfriend L works at one of my favorite places, Re-bar. That's why L recognized me at her DJ gig at ETG the night before Pride, thereby freaking me out because I couldn't remember her name (I didn't even know it until the SS told me a few minutes later.) and how I recognized her.

Naturally, the SS was there too, looking lovely on the dance floor. This time I tracked down L and then the SS using Zuckerberg's Data Mine, sent the SS a message, didn't hear back, and uncharacteristically forgot about it.

Until the SS responded two weeks ago on the first day of my new job. We made plans for coffee today, which morphed into brunch at Glo's when minor calamities befell the SS. While waiting the 45 minutes (!) for Glo's mighty fine food, we hit Mishu and got our femme on, but good.* When it was time for me to go, the SS lamented that she didn't have anyone to shop with. "Well, now you do," I said. I meant it. We have even more in common than I thought earlier. It's not that bad that she's not into me.

And yes, she looks as good on a Saturday morning as she does when she's going out at night. I felt distinctly under-accessorized, but I'm glad I at least made an effort; I couldn't have lived with myself otherwise.

I spent so much time with the SS that I couldn't get to the one branch of my bank in Seattle before they closed. I ran from the bus stop, and that's probably how the check that Nibs wrote from the other account got dislodged from the outer pocket of my bag. (Yeah, I should have put it in my wallet. Shush.) If I'm lucky, that check is still blowing around South Lake Union, and no one will ever try to cash it. Nibs is justifiably peeved.

Hey, I needed some nice, work-appropriate tops. And goths, you should see what's upstairs at the back!
sistawendy: me in a Gorey vamp costume with the back of my hand to my forehead (hand staple forehead)
I've been keeping receipts for the last few weeks, i.e. since I got my most recent monthly chunk of the Abbey net. Lessons learned
  1. I need to track expenses more closely. The largest, but not by much, is just labelled "cash".
  2. I need to stop eating at the company cafeteria quite so often, she says, remembering that she has not one but two lunch dates therein this week.
  3. I really need to thaw my ground beef and make spaghetti sauce. For what I spend on groceries, I should be taking care of my own dinner, too.
  4. Project Girlfriend is costly, but I'll economize on food before I economize on that.
sistawendy: a butterfly in the style of a street sign (butterfly)
I've put my new name on the credit union account that isn't a joint account, and both my credit cards. No longer does Maura consist of mere flesh and a name change order. Now she has begun to leave a paper trail.
sistawendy: me in the Mercury's alley with the wind catching my hair (smoldering windblown Merc alley)
Bopped up to Bothell to a) work on the new voice and b) scrub a bathtub for [livejournal.com profile] kathrynt, who's no longer in any condition to do so herself. Happiness for me is being told I look like a girl when I'm on my hands and knees. Really.
Over in Bellevue, I told the Wendling's shrink about my transition. To my surprise, he, Nibs, and I managed to use up an hour talking mostly about what's going to happen when. It was then that I (re-?)learned that m'boy will be going to Nibsmother's place in San Francisco August 6th through 9th. Dr. Kidshrink advised us to tell m'boy no less than two weeks before school, so that works out to around 8/19. It's a tad later than my previous plan, but no biggie. I'll just have to tell my shrink that no, really, I'm not procrastinating.
Went to a dog "adoption event" at the Petsmart in Issaquah, only to find that all the dogs were too small. Duh, they had to be portable.
Also in Issaquah, we tried XXX burgers. It's a small, busy, family-owned joint, decorated in 50's auto memorabilia taken to charmingly tacky excess. Fries? Excellent. Homemade root beer & shake? OK. Burgers? Not awful, but certainly not Red Mill. Maybe on a level with Kidd Valley.
Nibs had a jeweler value our wedding rings. Nibs' fifty-year-old diamond that my grandfather bought in South America is too damaged to be worth anything. My ring? $60 for the metal, even at today's gold prices. Nibs was insulted. How metaphorical.
Finally, back at the Abbey in Kirkland, I'm about two thirds of the way through Jennifer Boylan's She's Not There. Boylan is a professor of literature at Colby College; her first name used to be James. The book is a memoir of her transition. I tell you, I'm that woman's evil twin. It's a lovely, often hilarious book that does as good a job as any book could of explaining us, and to me it's absolutely uncanny. Much more on this after I finish the book.
sistawendy: me in my suffraget costume raising a finger in front of the Vogue (oh yeah)
A little birdie tells me that electrolysis is not deductible after all, even as a transition expense. A federal tax court in New York decided just last month that gender reassignment surgery is a deductible medical expense. I'm pretty sure this is what Ms. Zappy was talking about, but in the decision I found a footnote saying, "The deductibility of the expenses related to electrolysis is not at issue." Medical necessity may carry the day, but I'm not about to test it in court myself...

...Not least because medical expenses have to exceed 7% of adjusted gross income. 7% is not an upper limit. I heard wrong the first time.
sistawendy: a butterfly in the style of a street sign (butterfly)
Good: Ms. Zappy tells me that electrolysis costs are tax deductible as medical expenses! Considering how much electrolysis for MtFs typically costs, this is very good news.

Bad: Nibs' workouts, etc. eat most if not all of the Abbey's 7%-of-adjusted-gross limit for medical deductions, she says.

On a related note, Ms. Zappy was positively gleeful at the progress she was able to make yesterday. She chalked it up mainly to the amount of regrowth on my face, because it's easier to remove than virgin hairs. I would think, though, that that's been true for a few months now. Hormones? Maybe.

Question for those of you who've grown breasts: How did your volume progress as a function of time? Linear? Cosine? Inverse tangent? What?
sistawendy: a butterfly in the style of a street sign (butterfly)
I did the budget spreadsheet I've been putting off, and it looks OK - until I actually go full time. The thing is, Nibs' income is less than a third of what it was at its peak four or five years ago, and both of us want me to have my own apartment.

Personally, I think I'd cope with my continuing to live in the Abbey better than she would, but a new benefit of having my own place occurs to me at least as many times a day as Muslims are supposed to pray. I'm not holding my breath for a return to Nibs' pre-recession income. We are, after all, talking about the journalism business.
Pup: much perkier now that she has her arthritis pills again. Shame on us for not having them for a couple of days. She even bounced a little for her dinner. She also made it through last night without a diaper.
Weekend plan: Usual Haunts, Saturday. I haven't made it there yet this month.
sistawendy: a butterfly in the style of a street sign (butterfly)
Believe it or not, Nibs has been urging me to open a bank account in my name only for clothes and for establishing a separate credit history. I did just that at my local credit union yesterday.

Speaking of clothes, I didn't get cheap new clothes as promised. I keep seeing opportunities for cheap used ones, opportunities that keep getting delayed by forces of nature (viruses, babies).
sistawendy: me in a Gorey vamp costume looking up (skeptic coy Gorey tilted down)
The big paper bags are free-standing and will hold together even if their bottoms get slightly damp.
The corn starch bags, however, are flimsy and prone to bursting and puncturing.
It's amazing what you find out when you spend an hour and a half schlepping weeds to the curb.
I've refinanced my house for the second time, making me slightly less poor. I can has more zappy?

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