Brace yerself ...

When someone (a normal someone, that is) says "that's a bracing wind," they probably mean it's chilly, cool, bordering on cold.

You might need a jacket, is what they're saying.

When someone from Wyoming says "that's a bracing wind," they mean you'd better find a sturdy structure to brace yourself against if you don't want to accidentally wind up in Nebraska or South Dakota. You might not want to wear anything that could be flung open/up/around at embarrassing and inopportune times, is what they're saying.

And you might need a jacket.

Tuesday's wind was bracing. In the Wyoming sense of the word.

I wouldn't mind it so much if it was blowing me to Oz or some other exciting place. Middle Earth. Narnia. Hogwarts. Nebraska is so not those places. I've driven across it. I know.

*****

I did my taxes tonight.

The problem with doing taxes is that you need all those bits of paper that were mailed piecemeal to you over an erratic span of time, and for someone like me, that just doesn't work. I hope the IRS understands why I'm attaching a copy of my latest student loan account statement instead of the handy Form Something-or-Other that Wells Fargo was kind enough to mail to me on a losable piece of paper.

I've searched all the piles of random paper in my apartment; I've even searched the logical boxes of semi-neatly filed paper in my apartment. Lots of receipts. Some paycheck stubs (!!). Some health insurance forms, 401(k) paperwork, life insurance stuff (I'm worth more to my family dead than alive, but don't tell them that - I'd like to think they like me for me), prescription papers, World Vision updates, Campus Crusade and Navigators newsletters, a letter I started writing to my brother (and apparently never finished) ... but none of the papers I needed (except my W-2 — I was just brilliant enough to hang on to that ... in a cookbook).

So here I am at the office at 2 a.m., because in this Thank-God-it's-the-Era-of-Electronic-Information age, I can download what I was dumb enough to lose in the first place. And I needed a Form Something-or-Other that wasn't conveniently included with the Other Important Forms and Such and Such Schedules in my booklet. (Unfortunately, I still can't access the Wells Fargo form ... hence the account statement).

In the end, the little bit I owe is much better than the $500+ I initially thought I owed (insert mild heart attack and a few tears), but worse than the refund I thought I was getting (small moment of jig-dancing glee).

I'm bordering on goofy under the influence Diet Coke — three cans of it. Who needs to sleep? Anyway ...

*****

Sholty, I am your sparring partner ...

I borrowed Jason's shinguards tonight, and from my vantage point, they made me look like a Darth Vader-in-the-making. With very thick shins.

They did not, however, block the frickin' ouch of checking one of Sholty's kicks, and my moment of "hang on — that hurt — give me a sec" has become "dang, that's kind of a goose egg growing on my shin ..." It'll be fun colors tomorrow.

Imagine if I hadn't had pads on ... eek.