with the addition of dogs, well. OMG. Such a clusterfuck of gross is our house.

Oh god, the pet grime. Not the shedding (though there is a lot of fur), the actual grime. Slinky manages to filth up everything at cat level. It's so nasty. We need to wash the curtains because of her. Kato mostly just slops water around his bowl and sheds a lot. Slinky is a 1-cat force of concentrated nastiness.

Since we are selling the house, we have to get all sorts of things cleaned that we wouldn't normally. You bet your ass we are paying for it.

Oh, my mother did confirm that she meant WE aren't the neatest. Phew!

There is no swelling at all in my foot, but it hurts like hell to try to push off with the toes on that foot. I managed to hobble to the train and I guess I'll hobble around work all day. If it's still a problem on Monday I'll get it checked out.

Ugh. Do you have stiffer-soled shoes you can wear in the meantime?

I talked to H&R Block about the inbound mineral rights check. This is getting complicated, tax wise. The agent thinks this falls under capital gains, because it's coming from an asset that was apparently purchased for investment, and to calculate it right I need to know what it was worth when it came into my possession. For all I know, no one in my family knew my grandfather had bought this land until the gas drilling people knocked on our doors. If my father knew, he never did anything with that knowledge. So somehow I should find out what my portion of that piece of land was worth in 1982, when my father died, and that would be deducted from the amount I'm getting for the mineral rights and reduce the amount I claim as income. I think. Or I claim it with no cost basis and claim the whole amount. I can't help thinking that the cost of finding someone to do that research would negate the savings.

I can understand why this is being treated differently from the lease payment, because this is actually a transfer of property instead of a rent payment. It'll be interesting to see what the documents I get with the payment will say.

Oh yeah, my mother just had to find out the value of stocks her father bought her a million years ago, because she sold them this year and had to pay taxes on the capital gains. And that sounds way easier than finding the old value of mineral rights!

I suppose there'd have to be a title deed search to find out what Grandpa paid for it, but I have no idea when it was bought. I wonder if there would be a penalty if I didn't find out.

ION, I'm finally eating tots!

Ummm, tots.

I have never had a tater tot.

McCain's calls them Tasti Taters.