A few days ago Chris decided to tackle the not so small problem of a missing $1,000 tax return that the State of Utah had not yet decided to mail or deposit into our account. When Chris was deployed I took care of all of the tax issues, and I must say the federal return came speedily and was eaten up in an instant by my greedy bills. Nevertheless, I was pleased at my efficiency. The State taxes were completed at the base tax center and I was told by the pimply nineteen year old tax kid that he couldn’t e-file to Utah so I would have to mail in the paperwork. He told me what to mail, I went home, hauled out the envelopes and stamps and sent it off.

When the return hadn’t arrived before Chris arrived home, we decided something must be up, but in the chaos of everyday life, my ridiculous health failings, Chris applying to college and various other stressors, it hit the back burner with the pitiful hope of, “well, maybe it will show up.”

Finally, a few days ago, Chris decided the time had come to investigate, and upon calling Utah the informed us that, why, yes, they had received our taxes, but hadn’t sent the return because they only had one of the papers and apparently, they needed two. So, I only sent in half the taxes. In my defense I did what the little tax dude said to do. In his defense, he was very confuzzled by the whole “Utah” thing. Who lives there anyway, right?

At any rate, it boiled down to the fact that I now needed to present Chris with a copy of our taxes. This involves me retaining where I put them six months ago, so you can pretty much give up hope here, people, because the babies stole my brain and I can hardly recall what I did six minutes ago, let alone six months!

Well, I made a good effort of it. I checked our tiny little file box that on a good day has our birth certificates and car registration paperwork in it, and which ALWAYS has the ten million warranties that came with our various wedding gifts, and which are now, after six years, probably defunct. Oh, but they have such good memories behind them! Look at the one for the teeny tiny crockpot that was soooooo cute until I realized that I only knew how to cook for an army of ten people.

After searching that, I approached the abyss that is my husband’s desk out in the garage. Then I searched the various Rubbermaid containers that I bought with the idea of Organized Storage in mind, and which my husband decided to use as a dumping ground for all wires and paperwork he didn’t have time to deal with ( I think this started when the stacks on the desk topped into a halfway open container and he just kinda “went with it”.

I searched my desk even though I knew for a fact that it couldn’t be there since I’ve reorganized and cleaned MY desk off recently. ( I shoved all excess disks and papers onto Chris’ desk, cause people, you can’t even tell the difference! And now I only have the past five meals’ worth of dishes and some cat beds on mine!)

I then went through the drawer where I stashed the dental insurance cards and my Petco card (tucked ever so gently by an almost completed sewing project that brings me guilt every time I open that darn drawer searching for a needle.) No such luck in there. I actually began to question myself, “Did I even make copies of the taxes? It seems like the logical thing to do. . .” Fully realizing that “my thought processes” and the word “logical” don’t really belong in the same sentence, I abandoned all hope.

Finally, it dawned on me that I never checked the little organizer that sits by our phone and gets doused every time the dishwasher regurgitates it’s dirty water into the sink and it over flows the weird spigot thing by the faucet. This organizer is supposed to be the kind of thing in which you plop the days’ mail and an address book as a stop-gap measure between the table and the recycling bin, but at our house it has become a catch all for anything flat and cluttering up a household surface. It is in this mess of papers that I found the taxes and made my husband very, very happy.

Why am I telling you all this? Because Jessica over at Kerflop is giving away a JOYS organizational system, and clearly, it would bring me great joy to actually have a filing system that works for me- as opposed to a filing non system that makes me so ticked off I occasional circular file important documents. In order to win said filing system, I gotta write an essay on what brings me joy. As you can see, this essay on how utterly disorganized I am probably doesn’t qualify. ( I usually prefer the terms “creative and artistic”as gentler, kinder euphemisms- but we’re being real here, so disorganized it is).

So, off to think of something joyful.