Even though I wrote “July 28” all day today, it’s really only the twenty-seventh. The significance is that I finished all the payroll and sales tax returns four days before the end of the month, instead of just three. Since I ordinarily finish on the very day of the very deadline, this is a huge relief. It’s not necessarily much of an accomplishment, because anybody could do it and most people leave themselves weeks to spare, I’m sure. But it is a relief.

What it means is that I can sleep all weekend. Boy howdy, do I ever need to do that.

That’s not what I’ll end up doing, of course. But if I do, it’ll be okay. But I won’t. Probably.

This was the first week this summer that I haven’t done enough yard work to fill the yard waste container before recycle pickup day. I blame it all on Harry Potter, but really, it’s my own fault. The weather has been perfect for being outside in the late afternoons, and I could have spared an hour a day if I’d wanted to. Well, I did want to, but apparently not enough.

Since I won’t spend the whole weekend reading (or, most likely, sleeping), I will almost probably get some significant yard work done. If I don’t, and if I fall behind, I’ll drop back into that mode of misery that wafted over me before John brought his tractor and leveled the fields for me. I wouldn’t ask him to do that again this year, as long as I’m able to keep things under control myself. I am able; I just need to be willing.

One reason I got finished earlier is that I learned I’ve been doing the state sales tax return wrong all these years. After I sent the last one in, I got a call from a state examiner, who had caught my error. It wasn’t exactly an error, just that I’d been making it more complicated than it should be for our kind of business. At least I’d been paying the right amount all this time, and the agent worked it out so that I didn’t have to submit any corrected returns. That would have been a job and a half.

But now I know, and this time it took me less than half the time I’ve been spending on it. And I’ve been doing it that way, four times a year, for about twenty years. I don’t know if I’m more upset with myself for not knowing what I was doing, or for the state employees who have been letting this go on for so long. I’m just happy I found one who set me straight.