When a kid’s first attempt at filing bounces…

…When you realize BYU lets out mid-April so she didn’t quite make it to five months in college for the year, so technically then she’s not a dependent anymore…

…When she doesn’t want to be one anyway because of grad school issues…

That’s when you stifle chuckles while the hubby goes But I just DID that! at the not-helpful tax software chasing itself in circles, just like it did to me for hours before he came home.

And then–we’ve never done this before.  A once-in-a-lifetime chase.  The great American cultural experience of finding an open post office on the night of April 15th.  There are a lot fewer of them than there used to be, and after I looked up the possibilities, I told Richard, It’s a date! We’re going exploring new places! Out into the hinterlands!

This is supposed to be fun?  He wasn’t convinced.  Was I sure there wasn’t one closer?  Uh, Pleasanton and Oakland are your next closest.

Oh. We weren’t sure we needed to get the amends in that fast anyway, since we’d all filed, but better safe.

Forty-five minutes of waiting in line to turn left onto the road it was on, with the usual cut-ins by the cheerful types who like to wave hi while showing you their sore finger for your sympathy.

Big wheeled mailbags at the curb, a tired postal worker who genuinely smiled when I told him “Thank you!” as he took my mail through the car window, lights on inside behind him and people clearly still working on their returns in there. Ouch.

And you know? Really?  Isn’t it wonderful that these are the kinds of problems we’re having this year?

But I gotta say–Sam, this is why your due date was April 11. I tried my best to make that work out, really, I did (hand me that pogo stick…) But the skies were holding a party and throwing sparkly-white confetti on the 15th, and you held out for that. You knew a good thing coming.

So did we, in our anticipation, whenever the day might be, and boy were we right.  Happy Birthday!