20 year rule?

My Mom, because she is the best, gave Ben and I an Easter basket. She even used the same Easter basket I've had since Aunt Dudie made it for me when I was eight. She filled it it full with chocolates and caramels and at the bottom she she dumped in Starburst Jelly Beans. Those are the BEST! You seriously cannot beat those jelly beans!

This is where Ben gets grossed out.

My basket has beautiful purple Easter grass that matches the basket. It always has. Ever since Aunt Dudie bought it. The grass never gets thrown out. It just stays in the basket, get stored in the attic and then once a year I eat candy off of it. This is also true for all my siblings Easter baskets. Every year we comment on how unsainitary it is, but we can't resist the CANDY! Sure the grass was made in the 80's and sure it probably has some awful chemical in it, but it's a tradition. That makes us exempt from food safety rules right? The bonus to this is that I think Ben and my sister's husband are going to refuse to eat anything that is unwrapped and placed in that basket. Which really works out well for me. More CANDY for me!

So what do you think? Would you eat it?

There's a new post up at Our Old Shoes. Today we look at how we can take care of the environment through "green" cleaners.

Death and that other thing....

So today is tax day. Hope you remembered...

We were up late last night doing ours. I know. Why did we wait until the last minute to do our taxes? Well there was this thing and then that other thing and then Ben had that empty promise from his school of a Spring Break and then some more stuff came up and did you see what happened on The Office? So yeah. Didn't do them until last night.

I learned a lot of stuff last night. Like that Ben's work-study money isn't tax free. Which we thought it was since taxes weren't being taken out. Oops. I also learned a lot more about the tax code than I ever wanted to know. Did you know that you can claim the saline solution you buy for your contacts? You would have to be a VERY detailed record keeper to claim that...

Our taxes were somewhat complicated this year since we lived and worked for two weeks in Ohio. Two weeks. Ben figured it would be pretty simple to file the Ohio taxes using their online tools. He was wrong. By the time I had filed our federal, Kentucky and local taxes Ben was yelling at the computer, "I DON'T OWE YOU $830! YOU OWE ME MONEY OHIO!" After some ice cream and an exciting read of the Ohio tax code we finally figured out how to claim part-time resident status. Sigh. I hope your tax filing was simpler than ours. Next year we are having them done...

Random

There is, FINALLY, another post up at Our Old Shoes. This post was written by my old friend, Chris.

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Today I went to the doctor and learned 3 things:

1. I gained 4 pounds. This explains why my pants have stopped fitting. I was hoping that it was because I had dried them too long...

2. 3 sips of coffee an hour before my appointment will raise my heart rate 15 bpm. Which means that the girl I saw at the gym drinking a red bull while running on an elliptical had to have had a heart rate of about 300.

3. My doctor lacks bedside manners. At one point I wanted to punch her.