Couch 129: The Semiprime Couch

I've tried giving Girl Scouts money without taking the cookies and they seem distressed. They don't get the point that I'm trying to help but don't need the empty calories.

I suspect it's because they get prizes for the number of actual boxes sold.

When I was a kid in Girl Scouts, there was no standing in front of grocery stores or parents taking the forms to work with them. We were forced to go door-to-door haranguing our neighbors like some jr willy lomans or something. Well, that's how I felt about it anyway. I hated being forced to go up and down the street basically begging people to spend money they didn't have on stupid cookies. At that age, what I liked about Girl Scouts was going to meetings once a week on the way home from school (less time I had to be at home that day). Once I got older then the camping and backpacking started in 9th grade, which I loved of course and by then we left the begging the neighbors to buy cookies to the younger scouts! I don't even buy their cookies anymore. They're probably up to $10 a box by now, I haven't seen any yet this year.

I live in a very military area so most troops have an option for you to buy a box to send overseas for soldiers. I like that!

One of my coworkers sold them for her daughter and made a judgy comment when I bought three boxes (which she thought was a lot). Next year I'll buy from local scouts instead.

Holy cow how incredibly RUDE of her!! She ought to have been grateful to you for helping out her daughter instead of making herself the Cookie Judge.

I used to have an HSA that I contributed to (self employed at the time). I could get any information I needed about the account online. Can you look yours up online and add up the deposits and withdrawals for the year? They usually even have the forms available to download. They should be available by now.

The Girl Scouts around here are in the malls, outside and inside grocery and convenience stores. Last week a group was outside Walgreens pharmacy. Can't escape them. Usually if I am asked if I want to buy them-I just say-here is a $5.00 donation and when they say take the cookies..I tell them to just give the box to the next person. They seem to accept that more than just telling them you don't want cookies. Here they are $4.00 a box.

Thread Killer, much?..✌️

They are $5 a box where I live! I bought one obligatory box which I'll put out in the lunch room at work for others to eat. I haven't eaten desserts, candy, ice cream or breakfast pastries for more than a year now and don't plan on starting any time soon although I used to love the thin mints!

My t made me listen to a relaxation to get in touch with my parts. The guy kept on saying to extend loving energy and be kind to the parts but it made me so uncomfortable inside we stopped. My t said possibly because I have not experienced much kindness in my past. He asked what the kindest thing anyone had done forme. I said I did not believe people were genuinely kind and struggled for a long time before I came up with the couple who helped me with groceries though I secretly believe they did it help the cripple and get brownie points with guy upstairs. The

I believe you guys are genuinely kind wish you were part of my real life.

Say what you like about the Nazis, they never sold cookies door to door.

A couple times I did inner child work in therapy where I would close my eyes and go back to a time when things were bad. To actually connect to the child part was one of the hardest things I did in therapy. I didn't find it particularly healing. I told the T I didn't need to go there again after those few times and didn't feel like I needed to make peace with it. She told me she would not be a T if she didn't think healing was possible. I told her me not needing to do inner child work and make peace with it did not mean I wasn't healing. Quite the opposite, actually. During those times I couldn't remember a time when anyone was kind to me. In my adult life, I started to realize that although it's few and far between, there are some kind people out there. I lost a lot of faith in humanity a long time ago and as soon as I think it's completely gone to s h i t, I read something or hear something that gives me a slight glimmer of hope. I only have 2 friends in real life. I'd rather have only 2 than a bunch of fakes. And all the political crap going on in the US is tearing the world apart even more. But I digress.

Good job on resisting that stuff for a whole year. I guess after a period of time you lose the taste of it. I don't eat junk food either and I don't crave it.

That was.....

She actually had Mussolini in mind, but point taken.

Maybe he would have made the Dolce de Leche cookies the Scouts sell Duce de Leche...

Thanks for this. I did go online and found the form. Unfortunately, h got upset with me earlier wanting to wait and find it and he submitted our taxes already without HSA Distribution information. Grr. We use Turbo Tax, so I searched the knowledge base and found out that now we just have to wait until it is fully processed and then submit an amended return in February. Oh well. I really need to learn how to make that man LISTEN to me when I know I am right about something. He was just in such a huge hurry to get it done he refused to hear what I was saying, that the distributions from it are likely going to change what we owe. I guess you only get in trouble if you don't file the amended return and they figure it out, right? My 'good little girl' complex is so activated today. Ugh. I hate knowing I did something wrong. This is going to eat at me all night and I will lay awake and stare at the ceiling convinced that we are both going to hell or jail or probably both. I am about to go into a full blown panic over this. Breathe, breathe, breathe. I see that I am catastrophising. I recognize this, I know it's what I'm doing, I'm not going to panic. I'm not. Maybe someday I will realize how ridiculous my catastrophizing is. I mean it's not like we make a ton of money and don't pay any taxes at all on it. I live in fear of being audited anyway, because of h being self-employed and his 1099/schedule c stuff. He is just so damn sure that the government isn't worried about our peanuts income, he said that it would cost them more to audit us than they would find to make us pay so he tells me not to worry about it. But I do. Every year when we do our taxes and he rushes us through it in late January, I'm scared that we've done something incorrectly, he gets mad and yells at me, I cry, he submits it anyway, and then I worry about it for months. Wash, rinse, repeat. And the cycle begins again. Sigh.

It doesn't always result in an audit that you have to defend with a tax attorney or accountant. Once, I forgot a 1099 and they wrote to me a couple years later with an amount due. I went down to the local IRS office and paid it. In that case, as with yours, it's pretty straightforward.

It's a horrible out of control feeling, so I get that, but it doesn't mean you have to hire someone to defend you. If they send a letter stating you owe, and you agree, then just send them the check.

The bigger problem isn't the IRS, it's your h, seems to me.

Art, this is more my issue, but your comments about h's financial decisions sometimes remind me of one of my brothers who has historically bad ideas when it comes to anything financial--from buying crap cars to overpriced houses and taking out payday loans. I mean, he's so reliable with the bad decisions, you can set the clock by it. So in dealing with settling a parent's estate recently, he had one hairbrained idea after the next. Each idea, not surprisingly, was something that benefited him but would be risky for the estate. Other sib and me were like--uh, no, not gonna happen, but thanks for playing along. I could probably make money off the one brother just by placing bets against him.

Thank you for your calming response. And that last sentence. It made me have quite an insight. I don't think I can even put it into words that make sense right now but i'll try, it has something to do with what t has said - that sometimes knowing why we react a certain way helps us change how we react - and I'm absolutely seeing here that when h yells at me for something I think I'm being absolutely logical about, it's like I become that scared little girl all over again facing her father's wrath and that's why I go into panic mode because of what would come next when I was little. Even though h would never. I'm glad I'm seeing t again in 3 days, I want to really dig into this and figure out how to break this pattern.

But yes. I do believe you are right about h being a bigger problem than the IRS in this.

From Amazon's Top 40 bestseller list:

1. 1984 (sold out)
4. It Can't Happen Here (sold out)
15. Brave New World
20. The Origins of Totalitarianism
24. The Handmaid's Tale
31. Fahrenheit 451
35. Animal Farm

The ones on Overdrive are waitlisted.

Americans are reading quality literature!

i named the little stuffed animal moose my T gave me Moosolini

i played games with my T. i won the game!!! that rarely happens... i had fun

I hope you still feel that way when we come seek refuge with you

My t will eat this joke up!