• Last week I was getting along just fine. Things were being accomplished and I was rather enjoying myself. Dutifully, I was checking off item after item on my "to-do-list." I love it when a plan comes together. However, at the top of my exuberance, the Gracious Mistress of the Parsonage stopped me dead in my tracks with a query.
• She is quite famous, or is it infamous, for pulling these kinds of things on Yours Truly. She has a question for just about every event. Most of her questions are beyond answering, at least for me.
• For instance, when we are traveling, she will wait for the right moment and then put to me this query. "Do you know where you're going?"
• A variety of ways to answer that question immediately suggests itself, not all of which would endear me to her. However, to be honest, and who doesn't want to be honest these days, the answer to that question is usually a mumbled "No."
• Just as we get into the car and get ready to go, she asks another question. "Do you have everything you need?"
• Invariably, I do not, and have to go back into the house and pick up what I left behind. I could do my own Left Behind series.
• Then there is the all time favorite question. "Does this dress make me look fat?"
• Just between you and me, one of these times, I am going to answer, "No, Honey, it's not the dress making you look fat." I am saving that one for a deathbed confession.
• However, this past week when I was flying high, she dropped me dead in my tracks with another question. "Have you filed our income tax yet?"
• It was at that moment my whole world came crashing down. I had not even given it a first thought, let alone a second thought. Why is it, although income tax filing day comes every year on the same day I always forget? I am getting either senile or moving towards going into politics. I am hoping for the former.
• Of all the things I love doing in this world, and there are plenty, paying my income tax each year does not rate number one. Do not get me wrong, I really enjoy shelling out my hard-earned money and sending it to politicians to invest in one of their pork projects.
• Every time I have a little extra cash in my pocket, I always wonder what that happy crowd in Washington DC could do with it. Usually I am tempted to send it to them along with a little note that says, "Spend it with my compliments."

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