Inevitable

Death and taxes are the only certainty in our mortal lives. We all know that...I would add dust to the list, it's always there again and again. Alas, returning to the subject of today's musing, death should be the end of taxes. NOPE, not necessarily. Ol' Abner's uncle died last fall. He was the executor of the estate. Previous discussions with living Uncle and review of the will left them both comfortable that clear directions for Uncle's wishes were in place and properly communicated in the will. Of course nuances of parts of the will and purposes therof were shared verbally by Uncle with Ol' Abner through the years prior to the inevitable death. Should have been fairly simple to just arrange for supporting documentation of death, accumumulation of all assets and writing out the checks to the heirs. TAXES! That was the kink in the works.

Try getting the same answer to the same question more than once from the IRS! Whatever you do, don't attempt to find the answer in the current pages of the tax code. A huge "Caution, Do not attempt to search for answers without weeks and weeks of your time available" should be posted on their website. The estate was small enough to be exempt from inheritance taxes. The funds, however, were in IRA accounts at a large investment firm. To further complicate matters, those pre-tax funds were moved to the estate during two different tax years. Now we all know that $$ in an Individual Retirement Account are taxable at the current rate of the taxpayer at the time of withdrawel. Great system for maximizing savings for growth and deferring taxes until after our high wage years.

Abner's delimma...how much tax is due and when should it be paid. Answers ranged from $0 to 49% of the total. Now that's a pretty wide range. Tax professionals interviewed all offered variations on the amounts with only limited facts supplied by Ol' Abner. Finally he bit into the proverbial bullet and hired a CPA to advise and assist in distribution of the checks to the heirs. Today he just mailed checks to nine heirs with no taxes deducted. The CPA is sending a form K to the IRS and to each recipient showing the IRA distribution. Some of them are on small fixed incomes and will owe little or no taxes on the money. Each will pay taxes at his current taxable rate.

A bit of nostalgia stings as we talk about Uncle and Aunt. He was the oldest of four siblings and the first to pass on. Memories of his kindness are bubbling over along with his stubborn streak and sense of authority that seems to be inate in oldest children. He took responsibility for his siblings whenever they were in need, always standing back and saying little, but supportive none the less. Aunt died a few years ago. She watched as both of her sons died from progressive deseases while she herself suffered deteriorating health. Uncle's stoic efforts to make each of their final days better is at the forefront of our mind. Now this bit of inheritance may make the lives of siblings and grandchildren a little easier for a time. I do hope they will be thankful that these two wonderful people were in their lives.

Bulldozer

Ol' Abner shares an occasional (well actually most days) late afternoon visit with other old codgers in the area. They mosey in one by one to the back porch of Ol' Excavator to discuss the highlights of the day. Most days it's just a notch below the gossip session attributed to the female counterpart. Lately though, the discussion, as relayed to me, has taken a rather gloomy turn. Government corruption, crime and inability to hire adequate personnel dominate concerns previously allocated to which widow woman was after Ol' Taxidermist or which point to fish for walleye. Ol' Pharmacist suffered a break-in during the power outage of the recent ice storm, the city can't seem to get it's share of the $$ needed for storm clean up in place, but Ol' Excavator is truly the most underwater in this downturn. He sent his truck wrecker, tractor breaker employee down around the bend and behind the mountain with his bulldozer on a trailer. Now if you haven't ever had occasion to purchase a bulldozer...just take my word for it...it is a valuable piece of equipment. A new home being built near the river required some serious lot leveling before construction could begin. Equipment wrangler was instructed to take it to the backside of the lot and off load it so the work could begin the following day. Now mind you this guy is not a newcomer to the area. Signs are posted all along the river cautioning that water can rise rapidly. Said lot was many feet above the river even when the water released rose to it's maximum level...or so Ol' Excavator thought. The next morning he arrived at the construction site to begin his work. Not seeing his dozer, he feared the worst (that someone had stolen this tool for his livelyhood). As he walked the property looking for tracks, he looked over the cliff at the back of the property, there sat his bulldozer on a rock ledge now underwater. Now mind you, this was not the "top this" tale any of the ol' boys really wanted to win. In the spirit of dogpatch though, they sipped their beer, wine, diet coke, scotch and branch water. Not one of them could really remember any employee quite that dumb in recent history. It was worth a pretty good laugh. Ol' Realtor says the builder will wait for the dozer to be repaired, cause Ol' Excavator is the best at what HE does, just not too good at picking employees.

Details

My dear Mammy used the phrase "devil is in the details" frequently during my teen years, most often when I was evading the more detailed answer. As I whined about the need to keep multiple "unnecessary" doctor's appointments yesterday, a bit of guilt crept into my empty brain. A friend died yesterday. She was only five years my senior and appeared perfectly healthy just a few months ago. In fact, we were all praying for her spouse's recovery from serious illness late last summer, and offering her supportive euphemisms as we asked for daily updates on his condition. Now she is gone after a sudden but brief illness. Maybe my doctor is on to something and I should be grateful for his diligence. I promise to quit complaining as he insists on monitoring details of my health I'd rather not address. I will no longer evade his advice to seek my own comfort level. Observing details brings hope. I hope that grabbing a handful of raw veggies instead of the cinnamon roll will keep another detail (pound) from expanding. I hope that by spending a few dollars wisely will help our flagging economy. Better yet, I can see details of hope spring up already. The "naked ladies" are peeking up through the soil. In a few weeks they will provide beautiful foilage under the trees. In a few months, the flowers they will display will take my breath away with their beauty. Right now they are tiny details...but I know they are just the beginning of something beautiful.

Uphill

I do like to find ways to improve my circumstance. My biggest issue lately has evolved into a daily struggle to determine which part of my happy place will I tackle today. Good health is something I have always taken for granted. I would like to continue to do so. My doctor seems determined to find something wrong with me just because I am of a certain age. All the tests he insists I undergo "just as a screening" continue to be unremarkable. OK, so what is the obsession for testing away the remaining good days of my life? I am overweight and he seems totally unconcerned about that. My theory is that his strategy is totally in reverse. If he could just find some disease plagueing me, then he could blame excessive weight as the cause of the ailment. Since nothing has turned up in the many wasted days of my life, he just "hmmmm"s when I complain about my aching knees and allergies. A baby aspirin daily he thinks would prevent possible stroke or heart attack, calcium at night wouldn't hurt...but my bone density is fine, fish oil with each meal might keep my HDL cholesterol from moving uphill and he will be in touch when additional tests have been scheduled. Seems like we did all this a year ago..and oh yeh, he wants to see me in six months. Maybe today I will start a weight loss plan of better food choices and exercise. Don't know if he will notice...but I am sure he will find a new diagnostic test to ascertain the cause of anything he doesn't see.

Normal

Here on the mountain things are starting to look fit for human habitation again. Illustrious Mayor came by yesterday to give Belle the Swell a treat and update us after comments made at the Town Hall meeting the previous night. Ol' Abner stood up near the end of the gathering and suggested that those moving here from elsewhere shouldn't change our little town to resemble the old hometown...just go back to the old hometown. His comment drew applause from one side of the crowd and horrified Illustrious Mayor since he hails from same old hometown as the target of Ol' Abner's disdain. IM wanted us to know that "Tin Can Telephone Co" was still cruising the streets to see if repairs should be attempted yet. Meanwhile Ol' Abner had pulled the dangling telephone lines out of the trees and raised them high enough to allow us to exit the driveway. Bare wires were still showing, but the missing dialtone was restored. Just minutes later, said telephone company called to see if we had a working phone...duh...did I lose them at "hello". I asked that the service order not be cancelled because of bare threads of wires transmitting our voices. She promised to keep it open but advised that we would be dropped to the lower priority. Ol' Abner had plenty to say about that. Herein lies the paradox. The "old hometown" we came from was served by a "real telephone company"...maybe we will just enjoy the (almost) service provided by Tin Can Telephone Co. The truck drove slowly by several times today, didn't stop, but the driver looked our house over really well. I waved, he waved back. Maybe we won't have to follow our own advice.

Lost

Freezing rain, sleet, and icicles hanging from trees and rooftops were the norm for over a week. I may have aged an extra decade during that week...maybe not. Chilling or freezing are methods of preservation, Yeah that's better. Let's put a positive spin on wearing a hood and gloves with scarf wrapped around the face with four layers of clothing under my heaviest coat. Still I was cold...COLD! Somehow I do not feel younger...maybe a little naive (as opposed to just plain dumb). Living in the beautiful tree covered mountains with never waivering electricity, phone lines and clean running water, we were blissfully ignorant. Neighbors accumulated enormous stacks of firewood covered by awful blue tarps. Many have those ugly propane tanks located somewhere on the back of their property near their all-electric homes. About a cord of wood stacked neatly at the edge of the holler seemed totally adequate to us and we absolutely would not cover the natural beauty of the woodstack with a (shudder)plastic tarp. Then..ice covered trees dropped bombs of ice. Power lines were no match for the awesome weight as giant limbs and whole trees fell. Tuesday night we recalled descriptions of London air raid survivors from World War II. Constant popping and huge thunks followed whooshing just outside the windows in the total darkness. Suddenly those tales of woe came to life for us. Dry wood burns more easily in a fireplace and a cord of wood can disappear quickly when fueling the only source of warmth in a household. We survived but lessons have been learned. Alternate heat sources are being researched and downed wood is being cut and stacked for next year's use when it will be covered with a shiny tarp of any color to keep it dry. A battery powered radio is on the shopping list and we'll beef up the outdoor cooking utensils to better utilize the gas grill and fish fryer...just in case the propane powered generator(yep, we are shopping for that) cannot handle the necessary load. The sun is shining again on the mountain and these happy grasshoppers have now become worker ants preparing the mound for disaster.