Musician's Widow

One thing I love about living in a house versus an apartment is having a yard. Sure, there’s something nice about not having to ever worry about mowing or landscaping. But there’s also something very satisfying about mowing and landscaping.

Yesterday ended up being a yard day for me and my husband. The last time we’d mowed, it was 95 degrees with a heat index of around 98. Needless to say, we did good to get the front yard mowed. The whole back part of our yard was left tall. We were just too tired to try to do all of it. To add insult to heat stroke, my weed eater died. Just… died. Mid-edging of the sidewalk.

We were treated yesterday to a high of only about 92 with practically no heat index. So we started our day with a trip to the store for a new weed eater. (This of course after we discovered the warranty on our last one that we bought LAST YEAR went out a month before. Guess I should have popped for the extra year of warranty after all.) After talking with a store associate, we chose a new (way better!) trimmer with a three year warranty and I bought the two years extended warranty past that. None of this new weed eater in a year crap again!

After putting my new toy together for me (because for some reason I totally get a kick out of edging) my husband started mowing and I started trimming. It was hot, but we worked at a much more steady pace than the last time. Near the end of our project, my husband and I traded jobs so he could try out the new weed eater. We both agreed it was way better than the last one, and it didn’t wear you our nearly as bad. (The old one would leave my arms shaking for hours afterwards. Ever try to put eyeliner on with a hand that can’t stay still?? This one, however, didn’t phase me.)  I successfully stalled out the mower a few times on the super thick grass in the back where we didn’t mow last time. But still… the job got done.

It felt good to get up this morning, look outside, and admire our well manicured lawn. We haven’t looked this good since we moved in, I don’t think!!

Oh I have several bug bites from our task. One on my left wrist. Another on the back of my right hand. Which is making typing interesting, since all I want to do is scratch! But, hey, no good task really ever ends without some sort of injury, right?

I enjoy yard work. I don’t do it as often as I should. My flower beds are usually very pathetic. And how my flowers on the porch are still alive is beyond my comprehension. However, when I do get out to mow or weed or just enjoy my porch swing (which is when the flowers usually get watered), I enjoy it so much. Its satisfying. You can step back and see your hard work’s product and success. It gives you time to think and reflect. For me and my husband, it reflects good team work. It makes us sit back and go, “Go us!”

A big reason why I want to make writing and photography happen for me as a career (outside of a sheer love and passion for them) is that I love the personal flexibility it provides me. Oh, don’t get me wrong, I know I have to stay focused and on-task to be successful. However, I like being able to be at home when my husband is home.

Right now its touring season, and my husband is on the road more than he’s at home. A fact we are both extremely thankful for, and a fact I strive to work around as much as possible. On his few days at home, I want to be able to move my projects around to step away from the computer and sit on the front step with him watching fireflies, listening to the high school band in the distance.

I like to sleep later than usual, when he’s at home. My rush to get up and start the day disappears for a few days. I’d rather snuggle down and stay where he is for another hour… or two. If he has a meeting to be at, I like to tag along… even if I just sit in the car and people watch, waiting for him to come out.

In the same breath, even when he’s tired from the road and wants to go to bed “early,” he’ll push forward awhile so we can go to bed at the same time. If I have a meeting of my own, he too tags along. He’s always game to any hair-brained idea I may have for us to go do, “Just to get out of the house for awhile.”

We strive hard to coordinate our schedules when we are both at home, knowing the hours together are precious before I’m dropping him back off at the bus to head to another show in another state.

Sometimes… sometimes we aren’t too successful. Take tonight, as I write this. I am trying to keep my schedule a bit “off” for upcoming nights working downtown in a bar. My husband, however, has a session bright and early in the morning. So in an odd move, he went to bed hours ago while I sit doing some work on the computer. In the morning, he’ll get up and head into town, while I snuggle back down under the covers for a few more hours of sleep.

As always, we are thankful for the work. Oh, once in a blue moon, I get a little grumbly, wanting more time together than working, but it never lasts too long. I quickly remember that work is what we prayed to get, and work is what we are thankful to have. We make the most of our time together, and I aim to continue to be able to do that. I don’t want to be ships passing in the night, if I can at all help it.

We survived another tax season. Every year, my parents and I say at least once twice a few dozen times, “This year is going to be the death of me!” That’s the stress talking. We aren’t being literal.

We hope.

Every year, we find new ways to make the process smoother, just as the government finds ways to complicate things. You can claim that this year, but not next year. You can itemize this but not that. You get this credit but only if you stand on your head and drink water while saying the alphabet backwards.

You think I’m kidding? I swear that one is in the tax code somewhere. If it isn’t, it should be. If for no other reason that to give tax preparers something to laugh about as they wade through the idiosyncrasies of the tax code.

What makes the job so stressful is the fact that you’re dealing with people’s financial outlook. Mistakes can cost your client thousands of dollars and can even land a huge fine (or worse!) on the tax preparer. We strive to do the job RIGHT. No law bending or “personal interpretation” being done here!

So, within that, I present to you my tax season pet peeves for 2011 (in no particular order):

• Please don’t wait until the last minute to bring in your tax work and discover you have items missing… then STILL expect the return done by deadline. Let me introduce you to Mr. Extension. He will be taking care of you this trip, and we’ll attack your lack of information sometime AFTER deadline.
• We aren’t mind readers. We don’t sit with a crystal ball to consult on every return. Did you have a child this year? Did you get married? Divorced? Move? Go self-employed? Buy stocks? Did your nephew come to live with you for the year? These are all things we NEED to know to properly do your return. Just because your baby’s birth announcement ran in the newspaper back in July of last year doesn’t mean we saw it. Help us out here. (And when we DO ask, don’t get snippy with us. Just give us the information… please?)
• The old idea of throwing your receipts in a shoe box for your preparer to wade through is just not happening these days. Either wade through them yourself and put them in some sort of order or be prepared to be charged extra for the extra work/stress you’ve brought to our office. Or, you know, meet Mr. Extension.
• Bigger and better refunds than the competition! Bull corn. If you’re going to get a refund its based on tax codes and how everything falls together on your return. If you owe, it doesn’t mean WE (the preparer) screwed up. It just means you owe money. When a software or tax company promises you bigger refunds than the competition, it doesn’t mean they have this magic dust they sprinkle on the paper to make it appear. It just means its a gimmick to get you in the door.
• Please don’t try to get us to lower our fees. I had a whole blog post on this earlier this year. See it for more on THAT whole rant of mine.
• If we take a message instead of patch you through to the preparer you wish to speak with, its not because we don’t love you anymore. Its because they are doing a return and need to focus to do the job right. You get mad if we make a mistake (and we’re human, so it happens), but you have to understand that often mistakes occur due to constant interruption while the work is being done. We might not take you call because we DO love you. See?
• If you feel like I might be treating you like a 5th grader, its because I’ve found its just a good rule of thumb. It never fails that when I assume someone already knows where to sign, etc… they don’t. So its just easier to assume you DON’T know and risk offending you than it is to assume you DO know and then get us ALL in a heap of trouble.
• We have over 400 clients. Yes, over half of you have been coming to us for 5 – 10 years (or longer). Still… help me out with your name when you come in to pick up your return or if you want to see someone. It’s not that I don’t love you, its that sometimes I just haven’t had enough coffee to put a name to a face. Some days, there just isn’t enough coffee in the world. Feel free, in that moment, to treat ME like a fifth grader. I won’t mind. I promise.
• If I give you that deer in the headlight look its because you just asked me something I can’t answer. I figure you know that, but, hey, sometimes people reword the question thinking maybe I’ll know the answer if they do that. Nope. I still don’t know the answer, and now you’ve made me feel dumb twice. Give me a moment to find someone who CAN answer the question. Thanks.
• Please don’t ask us to bend the rules. We won’t. And when we refuse, don’t get angry. We’re telling you no for your own good. Kinda like the time your Mom said you couldn’t have that candy bar before supper, because she knew if you ate it you wouldn’t want that yummy pizza she was making. Remember? Yeah, kinda like that. Only we are saying you can’t fudge the rules because we don’t want anyone to go to jail, nor anyone pay a huge fine and yucky stuff like that. We’re licensed professionals. We do things by the book.
• Finally, please don’t ask me to discuss politics. Not only do I just not want to go there, but with the work we’re doing, it just isn’t appropriate. I’m so glad you’re so passionate about it, but please don’t ask me to jump on your bandwagon for the sake of making you happy. Lets do the work at hand and move on from there.

Oh I’m sure I have plenty more little things that either made me cover my face or beat my head on the desk over the last few months, but I figure these suffice.

Ah. We did it. Another season in the books. A lot of extensions to do in the coming weeks/months, but we’re always grateful for that as well. Thankful for another successful season, and thankful for the loyalty of our clients. Without them, we’d be nowhere. So even as I have my little pet peeves, at the end of the day… I don’t really mind. It keeps things interesting at least.

When I was a kid, I learned all my prayers for my religious education classes. I memorized them carefully, and over the years they became second nature. I could spout off any number of prayers almost like a robot.

Then, one day, in church we were challenged to really sit and think about those prayers. What were we really saying as we said our prayers at night, and did we mean them?

So I did just that. I sat down that night and really thought about the prayers I was praying… I couldn’t get past the first line. I was stuck. If I didn’t say them in the same rhythm and speed as I always said them, I couldn’t remember them. I couldn’t do it! I couldn’t think about it. I had to just do it.

Yesterday, I was brought back to that moment as I wrote up the steps to do one of the jobs I do at work. I’m going back to Nashville for the next week, and I wanted to make sure that anyone who sat down to do this one task could do it right. So I sat down to type up directions.

And I promptly got stuck. It’s so automatic for me today that I don’t think too hard about what I am doing. I just do it. I wasn’t sure if I should find it funny or alarming! Its often in doing things without thinking that mistakes are made.

So, I did the task one step at a time, stopping after each move to type up in detail what I did.

It was nerve wracking! As I’d finish typing up the last step, I’d go back to the task and go, “Okay, now what do I do?”  What’s the next step???

I got through it. A normal 15 minute job took me closer to an hour, but I’m quite proud of my little 12-step process now taped to the side of my desktop computer. I even peppered it with humor like, “Just do it right the first time, because I don’t feel like typing up the steps of how to fix it if things go wrong.” and my second to last step is, “Throw your hands in the air and yell, ‘DONE!’”

No reason to not find humor in my challenge of typing up the directions, right?

But, this isn’t a bad idea to do of any number of things, simply because it makes me stop and think about what I am doing. Heck, I might find I’ve been doing something wrong all along! Or I might find a BETTER way to do things, simply by taking the time to think about it more.

So, is there any tasks YOU would find it beneficial to write out the steps to?  Laundry? Dishes? How to give your cat a bath?

With my husband as a musician, I’m “used to” saying good bye for long periods of time. (Hence, “Musician’s Widow” of course.) I only “like” it because it means income into the household. But good-byes are never what you’d call fun.

Right now, it was my turn to “go on the road for work” and I said good-bye to my husband for a few weeks.

Confession: I still get sad saying good-bye, even if I’m “used to it.”

I woke up in a funk this morning of good-bye. I kept telling myself to not ruin our last few hours by moping, but it was HARD. My logical side said it had to be, but my emotional side wanted to make him stay with me a few more days. (He drove me to Texas for work, and he was leaving to go back home to Nashville while I stayed behind.)  Cancel gigs. Ignore the winter weather warnings. Stay!

But, no, he had to go. So I hugged and kissed him and waved as he drove away.

We’ll both get in an old rhythm that we get into when we’re apart. Phone calls. Chat session on AIM. Etc. We’re good at this, and at the end of the day it’s not REALLY that big of a deal. It’s our life and “how we roll.” We will both be so busy during this time that the days will fly by for us. It’s all good.

I’m fine now. Miss him like crazy, of course, but I’m doing fine.  But… I do still get sad to say good-bye.

A question I get a lot is, “So what DO you do?” Answering that question tends to stump me a bit. How do I explain what I do exactly when its kind of all over the board?

Then, I recently got introduced to the title “Virtual Assistant” and I went, “AH HA! THAT’S what I do!” My problem is two-fold: I don’t have enough jobs and what jobs I do have tend to end up being for free. This is head meeting keyboard, over and over again. I love what I do. I can easily make a living doing what I want to do. People do it all the time! My problem for awhile now has been having a hard time explaining what I do, and within that conveying that I should get paid to do it.

So here I am to explain what I do, and within that say, “I am at your service!”

First off, I have my degree in Journalism. I have a serious love for writing, photography and page design. All of these were easily wrapped up in my journo degree, and I am proud to say I found a knack for it! I actually held an award-winning column when I worked at a newspaper, and this blog has become my continuation of that column. My readership is definitely up, and I hope people enjoy reading it as much as I enjoy writing it.

I am a blogger.

I aim to be starting on a book proposal within the next couple of weeks to pitch. I have an interest in fiction writing, but I have a non-fiction book hanging out over my shoulder poking me with its sharp edge going, “Write me! Write me NOW!”

GOAL: Pitch my book to agents and preferably have one secured by the end of the year. There is absolutely NO reason why this is not an attainable goal.

I design flyers, business cards, and any other various items. I’ve designed laminates, postcards, programs and invitations as well. A few samples of my work:

See more in this Facebook photo album. I guess its pretty obvious, I’m proud of my work. Note that I use my own photos on a majority of my work.

I’ve also designed and handled various web-sites. I don’t do anything super fancy, though. Not to downplay my work! I am proud of what I have done! I’ve even successfully converted one site into a WordPress Blog that’s increased its traffic and usefulness. However, I don’t do anything with Flash, etc. I’m still fairly basic in my web-page design work, but I also think that sometimes basic is all you need. I also have done MySpace pages. I feel those are on their way out of favor, but I am still very comfortable working in that venue.

Some of my sites:

My husband’s MySpace Page || Fiddle & Steel Guitar Bar MySpace Page

Trim Polish || From the Ground Up (BRAND NEW… VERY rough site. WIP)

Middle Tennessee Texas A&M Club || Schoppe’s Bookkeeping & Tax Service, Inc

I write and edit letters and email. This can be personal or business.  I’ve taken technical writing courses, and I do have the knowledge for how to put together business letters. I have recently handled multiple cease and desist letters, cover letters, and other correspondence between an agency and their clients.

Everything is guaranteed to be completely confidential.

I also offer the ability to send out Electronic Blasts, which are basically full-color flyers and announcements sent via email using your own mailing list.

I also offer any number of typical office-assistant services. Excel spreadsheets, word documents, fax cover sheets, etc. are something I can handle.

I already offer many of these services to various people, but up until now its been on a more casual level. I plan to soon have a full web-site with all of this information available, along with price lists. If you are interested in any of these services, though, please drop me an email!! With email, fax, Paypal, etc. I work with anyone any where. Most of my current clients are still based out of Texas!

Feels good to put together “on paper,” finally, “This is what I do.” Its the first step on making this truly take off!