Clouds, Rain, Auroras and Taxes

Hey! What happened to the Blog? At least that is what I am hoping viewers might have been thinking since it has been months since I finally took the time to write another instalment. If that wasn’t on your mind, don’t tell me as my delicate ego just couldn’t take it :)  Seriously, this time of the year with the grey windy rainy unfulfilled promises of snow days, it is hard to be in the mood to sit down and write something. Although, we did have fun and do enjoy being able to cocoon in the first house we have lived in since we retired almost nine years ago.

Starting with the obvious, yes, the weather was high on our agenda. It seems that have been in a cycle of high winds, driving rain, a bracket of low temperatures and muted auroras. The plants love all the attention they are getting with profuse moisture, followed by periods of sun as well as being stirred up with the fresh winds. The range of temperatures have generally been in the 35 to 45 degree range, but nights sometimes dipped down to the 18 to 33 settings. We get many yellow warnings about pending snow and horrendous windy heavy rains with thunder. Fortunately, they don’t ofter materialise in our area. The warnings may be “yellow”, but the only yellow we ever get is yellow melting snow in the early morning that is gone before noon. Most people would think that is fine, but I really like snow. Since we only use public transportation and don’t have a driveway to shovel and shovelling the sidewalks is taken care of by the county, it is a bit of a letdown. 

Oh, we have had three or four episodes of Northern Lights and we have seen the red in the skies, but so far, they have only happened on cloudy nights., They are still exciting but we are hopeful that we will get a better view of them on a clear night. Our bedroom window faces north, so we have a good chance to get more chances especially since the sun has been very active lately in sending magnetic disturbances our way.

In other developments, we are mostly settled in and have had some opportunities to explore in tourist mode. We have added Stirling, Dunfermline, Sterling, Glenrothes, Tillicoultry and will add Kirkcaldy this week. Susi was down with the flu for two weeks so that slowed us down a bit. Tomorrow we plan to take advantage of some nice weather to explore Scotland Well and Bishop’s Hill that is behind it. The hike might be a challenge, but it will be great to be out and about.

Income tax difficulties, and house glitches have added to the excitement (also called stress) too. For some reason the feds don’t want to accept our current Income tax return based on something that happened with last year’s filing. My guess is that there was information leak from one of the government sites that compromised our social security numbers. Last year quite some time after I filed they sent me a message that I needed to verify my identity. I did that and was given a tax id number to use instead of my SSN and supposedly all was well, but I have not yet gotten a return for last year which of course includes the stimulus money. 

So far this year, when I try to submit the return, it is refused stating that they need to confirm Susi’s income from last year’s return as recorded in box 19. Of, course she had no income, but no matter what I enter (even leaving it blank) the return is refused. I won’t go into further details, but my feeling is her SSN was also compromised and that is the reason that this year’s and last returns are having problems. So, why am I sharing this? Well it is all complicated because it is a real chore to communicate with them as they only want to use a US phone number to assist us. We are working on several ways around all this, but so far progress has been snail paced. 

That all said, every day when I get up and realise I am here it brings a smile to my face. The wind may blow, the rain may thunder on the window panes and the auroras may be muted due to overcast skies but there is so many positives that outweigh that. The country is amazing, the people are friendly and helpful, the cost of living is manageable and overall it is low key relaxing as well as exciting in all the right ways.