Well, That Was Disappointing

What a crazy day.  The weather NOAA had predicted for yesterday never transpired so I elected to stay at the cabin last night rather than take a room at the Golden Buff Lodge in Boulder, which I considered to insure I would make my appointment at the senior center to have my taxes done by the AARP volunteer service. 

Got up this morning at 7 a.m.  Lifted the curtain.  No snow overnight, no wind.  Great.  I made the right decision.  Forty-five minutes later it is snowing so hard I can't see across the road.  It keeps on snowing.  I decide I'm going to have to cancel my appointment.  I try to call the West Side Senior Center and keep getting rerouted to the East Side Senior Center.  After three attempts, I give up and the snow stops.  Must be meant to be. 

By this time, the water, which has been heating on the wood stove, is almost warm enough to wash in so I clean up, shampoo, decide what to wear, get dressed, get bundled up and head to the car.  The wind is starting to pick up. 

I get to Boulder an hour early, so make a quick trip to the bank and then circle back to the senior center.  I'm asked to complete a form with some basic information for the tax preparer and after about a 20-minute wait, during which I read, I'm called in.  The tax preparer assigned to do my taxes verifies that I've started a little editing business and informs me that filing a Schedule C is not within the purview of the AARP volunteers. 

She's apologetic and spends quite a bit of time trying to get the contact information for a possible alternative, Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA), which operates out of the Leeds School of Business at the University of Colorado in Boulder, but cautions that they also may not be able to help me if I'm filing a Schedule C. 

Since I'm combining this appointment with laundry, I decide to go ahead and do laundry and call the School of Business tomorrow and find out if they can assist m, gratis, or if I'm going to have to bite the bullet and pay to have a tax service prepare my return.  I'd do it myself, but last year, having lived in Arizona for the first four months of the previous year, I had to prepare my Arizona return myself--the Colorado AARP volunteer could not do this either--and got a different result each of five times I did the calculations, picked one, paid it in two payments and decided I was never going to even attempt preparing any tax return ever again.

When I finish doing laundry, I stop to get some cat food for the foxes, and from the supermarket parking lot I look toward the mountains and see this right over Eldora...

Yep, those are clouds. Do they contain snow or just wind?  Do I really want to drive up the canyon into this?  Well, I do it and it's all clear until I get right to the outskirts of Nederland where it is windy with blowing snow, but when I get to the cabin, it's perfectly quiet.  However, there's no visible walkway.  It has totally drifted in and the snow is almost up to my knees.  It's about 15F degrees outside and 32F degrees inside the cabin.  I'd left some coffee unfinished in my rush this morning and it wasn't frozen, but was so cold it hurt my teeth. 

I was glad I came home, though.  Both foxes came to eat at the same time this evening.  And, of course, my camera succumbed before I could get a good photo of the two of them together, but I did get one good shot of one of them.

A wonderful ending to a crazy day.  How was yours?  Teddee