Had I known that getting a new computer meant TurboTax stopped being easy to use, I would have stuck with the crappy, broke-down laptop we used for way too many years. Had I know that buying TurboTax in disk form from Costco for the past two years would mess with my day so much, I would have paid the extra 10 bucks each year to download it directly from TurboTax’s website like I used to do, and also I would have felt virtuous and green.

TurboTax 2014 (which I just downloaded to our new computer) can’t import information from the PDF file I saved for our 2013 returns, 81 pages of forms and worksheets saved on our external drive for posterity and the love of god. I can’t re-download the 2013 software to create an importable source, because I lost the disk and I don’t want to pay for it a second time. I would have been able to do it just fine if I had purchased it as a download. Bah.

I need to get the taxes done early because we’re planning a fairly substantial renovation on our home (shhh, don’t ask about it, don’t talk about it, pretend I didn’t say that; I don’t want to jinx it) and we need to finance some of the costs into a mortgage (rates are so low right now!), and the bank wants two years’ tax returns. I’m guessing that 2012 and 2013 won’t cut it, and we need to get them our financials by the end of February if we want to stay on-track for a spring demolition schedule. Our hope is to get this whole business wrapped up before mortgage rates go up too much, as they inevitably must unless Putin does something super stupid to help me out on this front. So I really can’t put this off.

Here I sit with 81 pages of incomprehensible returns and worksheets, which jammed the printer twice, hoping against hope that I will be able to enter the necessary data into 2014 TurboTax manually, without too many mistakes. I have no idea how that’ll go down on things like “IRA tax basis.” What IS my IRA tax basis? I never bothered to know or even comprehend, because TurboTax held my hand and made me feel safe and fuzzy about it all. Now I just hope I can find an IRA tax basis worksheet in this massive PDF document.

Maybe I’ll look for it later on today. Right now I think I might go work out instead, or maybe just skip the workout and go straight to the shower. Actually, I have less than an hour before I have to pick the kids up from school. Hm. Maybe I’ll just take a look at that logic game I downloaded onto Nick’s iPad when he wasn’t looking. I need to get my atrophied brain in fighting shape for doing these taxes. I know this because last night Jesse head-butted me at least three times while I was trying to help her with her homework. She’s struggling with reading time, for some reason. After the third blow, a back-of-the-head to my cheekbone, I got pissed off and told her (surprisingly calmly) that I’m not helping her with her homework for one week. She retorted in fine style. That’s just fine, because you’re not smart anyway. Daddy’s the teacher and you’re just a mom. You’re good at taking care of us and keeping us safe and things like that, but you’re not smart like a teacher. I’m better off with Daddy helping me.

Ppphhhhttthsphttthhhpsthdfphhh.

She didn’t know what a low blow it was. I didn’t defend myself. I just got huffy and told her she’s right, I’m just a stupid housewife. It pained me to hear my daughter ideate like this about the limited scope of a house-mom’s intelligence. If she only knew what a smarty-pants I am. Seriously. I was the top of my class in third grade.