three-ring cirkus

when i opened my computer this morning there was a message saying 'federal tax return rejected-- action needed!'

oh sheesh.

the email itself contained a whole lot of computer jargon explaining why it was rejected.  and when i say jargon, i mean computer coding language (is that a real phrase?).  i used my awesome computer skills (that is, copying and pasting random parts of the computer coding language into google search and looking for the most laymen's explanation possible) to try to make sense of what i'd done wrong.

seriously, i'm going to admit something now-- danish taxes are easy-- i mean, absolutely nothing compared to u.s. taxes-- and still (here's the admission), i messed mine up somehow and got a letter from the danish taxman telling me so.  (i blame the inadequacy of my danish language skills in technical areas like taxation (...without representation??))... anyway, my point being... if there's somebody like me (a foreigner) over in the u.s. trying to file a u.s. tax return, it's all around probably a hundred times harder.  maybe our u.s. taxes are just complicated by the fact that we have to file extra 'living outside the country' forms and decide e.g., which one's best and figure out how many days we were back in the country last year and how many of those days were business-related and go through the motions of the child tax credit and figure out we can't get it (but can get the additional child tax credit) and is it because we didn't choose the best 'living outside the country' form and do we want to start over (because one form affects another) filling out the other one instead to see if that makes a difference, and then wake up and get a bunch of computer jargon in place of an explanation in plain english, telling us where we went wrong... but we figured it out.  don't ever type the wrong thing in box c of line 44.

i resubmitted it and got an email right away telling me it was accepted.  later in the day i got an email telling me it was submitted and i would get an email within 24 to 48 hours telling me whether it was accepted or rejected.  okay...

after that i spent the rest of the day doing some proofreading for a new english-language magazine in denmark.  which is probably scary for those of you who notice my ambivalence toward commas and how forgiving i am with incomplete sentences, while doing nothing whatsoever to protect the endangered capital letter on this site (just a few of my offenses), but you can be sure i try to get it right when it really counts.

and it was just as well that i sat inside all day, as the day outside was just a steady rain blown against the windows by a steady wind.  not exactly like the summery day we had just this weekend.

then i went to cook again for the night's dinner.  (my two shifts for the month now being over.)

and so this time i didn't take even a single picture.  but then i did take one, just so you'd have something to look at.  i picked these up this morning for a circus show/summer fest at henry's preschool later in the month.  our tickets to get in and our popcorn vouchers.

(billet = ticket; barn = child; voksen = adult)

the cuteness speaks for itself.