Almost exactly a year ago (wow), I was contacting potential clients to learn what kind of opportunities I had available to me.  One client that I was very interested in working with, for a multitude of reasons, was also very interested in me, but they currently didn't have the work available and were waiting on clients of their own to get up to speed before they could offer a contract to yours truly.  Since I didn't have a couple of months to wait around on them, I had to accept a contract with someone else (read: the gig where I ended up wanting to rip out someone else's hair).

A few months into that gig, Client #1 contacted me again, but I was out of town and was late in replying back.  I also wasn't 100% that I would want to stop working with The Maddening Client yet (ha! silly me!), but by then, they were booked up again anyway. 

Now, I've left The Maddening Client in the dust, ever so happily, and moved on to another client where things have not gone exactly as I'd planned or hoped, but I'm still quite happy with what I have managed to do there so far.  I've learned a few more things about my options there and am not totally sure that I would want to follow the exact path I'd initially imagined, which is fine and I actually feel grateful for finding out before having just jumped on that bandwagon.  Of course, that in mind, I've been wondering how that new knowledge would affect my financial planning since the finances of what I had planned on happening are more of a requirement than an option.  Which brings us to:

9:49 p.m.   I'm playing Rock Band, the rest of the house is in bed (it's been a long week around here), and the phone rings.  For the record, the phone does not ring around here after about 9 p.m., virtually ever.  This is odd.

Client #1 is on the phone, calling to offer me not one, but two jobs.

Because I am certifiably insane, I accepted.  It's a damn good thing that school started when it did!  I'm looking forward to it, and I'm really hoping that I'll be able to make some money without, ya know, killing myself at all 3 jobs.  Wish me luck - I think I'm going to need it!

this is not what I had planned . . .

As those of you who read me know, this is the first year that we've had all our school-aged children enrolled in private schools. We home schooled for over 25 years because home schooling was the best available option for supporting our educational, spiritual, and characterological goals for our children. But some years ago, the Catholic church built and staffed a wonderful school nearby, and last year it seemed time to enroll one, and then two, of our older kids there. They did well, and we realized that the local Catholic schools were excellent options for our children. Home schooling through high school is demanding and very often, even in a university community like ours, we've been unable to find the resources to educate our bright children adequately. They've arrived at college and, in spite of tutors and external home school co-op classes, they've needed extra help in mathematics and science. Both home schooling and public schools let our oldest children down in those areas, and as our youngest children grow up, I work at correcting the missteps I've made as a home educator.  So. Here we are, organized and ready to be educated, waiting to see what these highly-rated Catholic schools will do for our children.

My daughter Ivy teaches at the elementary school across the street from the high school our sons attend. She drives them to school early and brings them home late. We discovered yesterday that every week she'll have a staff meeting that has them at school almost two hours later than usual, coming home ravenously hungry, and then hurrying through dinner so they can get to church youth group on time. Their Wednesdays will be slammed.

I got into a teary, motherly, hand-wringing state over this last night because this was not what I wanted for my children. I resist absolutely the pressure to make our children into miniature versions of the typical American who works too long at too dead a job to earn too much money to buy too many things at the cost of too much stress, too much chaos, and too much unconscious striving for emptiness. This is not what I wanted for my children.

And yet here I am, sidetracked into forcing upon my sons the very sort of day that they all tell me is "typical." My son Cedar said, "Mom, everyone does it. Lots of kids just have to sit at school and wait for their parents to get off work and pick them up. That's just the way it is." Ivy came over and tried to be helpful, seeing my distress and perhaps even feeling somehow responsible. I reassured her that I was having a freakish motherly hand-wringing moment and it would pass eventually. I appealed to my husband, asking him if he would take off work two hours early every Wednesday to go get our boys, for I cannot possibly be at the elementary school and at the high school at the same time picking up all these different children. My husband, knowing our financial situation, looked at me with some alarm when I suggested he take time off work to pick up children at school. I could see the wheels turning, see him wondering, "What are you thinking?!"

All because I didn't want my almost six-foot-tall baby boys to sit at the school all day long, having 10-hour days like we adults whose childhoods are over and who had our chance at not being forced into day care and after care and sitting for 10 hours a day in an institutional setting because that's the way it is when there's no mother at home, because she has to work too long at too dead a job to earn too much money to buy too many things at the cost of too much stress, too much chaos, and too much unconscious striving for emptiness, because that's the American Way.

I do not want my children to have the American Way forced on them without their knowing what we're forcing on them. This is not what I had planned.

. . . but god is here with me

This has happened to me before---many times before. One particular time stands out, the year I came up pregnant with twins. Because I was just a little over the hill as a mother and insurance costs were prohibitive, our midwives would not deliver the babies at their midwifery center. The only choice I had, if I wanted to use them, was to use a physician at a hospital and allow the midwives to work with the doctor. I had a freakish motherly hand-wringing moment when I learned this, I can tell you. But my dear midwife Judy, who had delivered two of our other children and all of our grandchildren, looked me in the eye and said, "God is in hospitals, too." To this day I invoke Judy's words, for they changed my life and put a new song in my mouth, a song that goes, this is not what I had planned, but God is here with me.

I'm not sure what I'll do about the school detour. It's probably reactive to think that one 10-hour school day followed by several hours at church every week is going to somehow ruin my sons' lives. But I think this one situation is a good opportunity to review the facts: we don't know what we're doing. We think we know; we think we know a good thing when we see it. But the truth is that we're finite and we're not omniscient. We can't possibly know everything we're getting ourselves into when we get into something. This is probably why Jesus said that people should count the cost of building something before they build it, lest they be unable to finish and end up humiliated and scorned. But I think he knew that we'd end up humiliated and scorned anyway. We're not omniscient. We just have to do the best we can.

Now I know that school costs far more than dollars spent on tuition, books, and uniforms. It costs a lot of time. I also know that elementary education must be one of the worst professions possible, and that teachers are over-worked and have too many required out-of-school meetings, trainings, and social events. It doesn't surprise me that our educational system in this country is in trouble. In fact, it doesn't surprise me that our whole country is over-stressed, overweight, and largely unconscious, because of the lifestyles we lead. We watch too much television and read too few books, we spend too much time in our cars and eating on the fly. We don't eat properly because we don't have time to plan, shop, and cook properly. It's a crazy culture, yet the most prosperous in the world. I wonder if this is what our forefathers intended when they said that we have the right to pursue happiness?

Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Happiness: that's the goal. That's where we were headed when we started out. But detours occurred. I turned this way and that. And suddenly I noticed that I was far away from happiness.

the pursuit of happiness

My friend Yvonne and I were talking once about how poor we both were when we were married. She lived in Costa Rica with her husband and her first child, and they had dirt floors and no modern conveniences, but they were happier than they have ever been since. The sun shined every day, and they had all kinds of fresh fruit growing right outside their small house. She could reach outside her kitchen window and pull a fresh mango off the tree. Hearing this, I grew wistful for my first tiny house, where my husband and I and our first child lived together. We had next to nothing, not even a television or a washer and dryer. When we could finally afford a washing machine, I hung the clothes out on the clothes line to dry, and it was glorious, breathing in the smell of clean linens and clothing as they dried in the breeze.

We were young and we didn't need anything much. But as the children came and our husbands worked hard and succeeded, our needs increased and our spending did, too. We became sidetracked, taking our eyes off the goal, which had been happiness. We had it, and we had nothing. Eventually, maybe our goal became happiness and comfort, or maybe it became happiness and my-child-is-good-enough, or maybe it ran by now-you-won't-look-down-on-me. The detour stopped along it's-too-difficult and it's-not-convenient, everyone-does-it and it's-not-important. We stopped at I-don't-have-time-to-analyze-it and absolutely fell off into a ditch near we-need-this-we-do.

There is a map. It shows the places to where we want to go. When we look at the map, the way seems so simple: there it is. I put my finger on it. But after I fold the map up, and put it in my pocket, as I go along I'm distracted by the scenery. Things happen along the way; I meet people and there are caravans, hamlets, villages, county fairs, dancing bears, markets, catastrophes, accidents, robberies, illness, injury. Soon, the image of the map and the way I was to go are dim in my mind's eye. But I tell myself that it's all right, I still know the way. I feel I'm going the right way.

One month or one year later, I realize I'm lost. I've tarried too long in this place, and I've lost the way to where my finger was, so long ago. To that, right there: my goal. I unfold my map and can see how far away I've gotten from my intended goal, and I see I've got miles and miles to go, weeks or even months and years, before I can get close to where I thought I was going. Maybe I'm not even sure I still want to go there.

I'm sidetracked, because I haven't watched my way.

The thought manifests as the word;

The word manifests as the deed;

The deed develops into habit;

And habit hardens into character;

So watch the thought and its ways with care,

And let it spring from love

Born out of concern for all beings . . .

As the shadow follows the body,

As we think, so we become.

~ Buddha, Dhammapada

No matter what you are doing, keep your focus on your real work, your real calling. Make the time to pursue it, to work on it. It is imperative that you remain focussed your real work.

Perhaps your time in your current business or occupation or situation is about to come to an end. Agitation you may feel in your spirit is a precursor to or a sign of the ending this phase in your life.  

Dedicate yourself to hearing God's voice – obeying his commands, trusting in him. Pray to become more trusting, break down the barrier of defensiveness, soften your heart. God has great and interesting plans for you and will let you know when the time is right.

Please visit www.lusciousplace.com.

Volume 5, Issue 7 AUGUST 2008

Popular so-called “419 Insurance Welfare Benefit Plans”, which are sold by most insurance professionals, are getting accountants and their clients into more and more trouble. ACPA who is approached by a client about one of the abusive arrangements and/or situations to be described and discussed in this article must exercise the utmost degree of caution, not only on behalf of the client but for his/her own good as well. The penalties noted in this article can also be applied to practitioners who prepare and/or sign returns that fail to properly disclose listed transactions, including those discussed herein.

On October 17, 2007, the IRS issued Notice 2007-83, Notice 2007-84, and Revenue Ruling 2007-65. Notice 2007-83 essentially lists the characteristics of welfare benefit plans that the Service regards as listed transactions. Put simply, to be a listed transaction, a plan cannot rely on the union exception set forth in IRC Section 419A(f)(5),.there must be cash value life insurance within the plan and excessive tax deductions for life insurance, in excess of what may be permitted by Sections 419 and 419A, must have been claimed.

1.

Do not boast about tomorrow, for you do not know what a day may bring forth. Let another praise you, and not your own mouth; someone else, and not your own lips.