There’s just nothing normal about this month

February is my 12^th favorite month. It’s not even close, either. I think January is probably No. 11, but it having the bulk of the bowl games makes it a high No. 11. February is just far, far in the distance.

Thank God it only has 28 days in a normal year. (There’s nothing normal about election years.) I’m cheered to know that even though I’m not quite halfway through, we just got started and already we’re in double digits. By this time next week, we’ll be halfway over AND inchallah I will have my taxes done.

Oh yeah, THAT. Welcome back to the US! I finally got my W2 – it’s been since pre-PC that I even had a W2 – and, according to TurboTax, had a taxable income of $-2k in 2012. Woo-hoo!

Although I still lack two 1099s to file federal, I took a stab at filing North Dakota taxes this past week. My AmeriCorps is the only taxable I have for ND; bank interest isn’t their business. I finished – nothing due, nothing owed – and got it ready to mail and then realized they want a copy of my federal form, too.

Sigh. I don’t have this yet. But since I planned to mail that in and will e-file federal, my hope is that by the time they get around to processing it in Bismarck, I’ll have everything in place. If not, well, I’ll just have to mail a federal copy later. With my booming income, I’m hoping they won’t care.

My last partial year in Detroit, I didn’t even bother filing. Since traditionally Detroit wound up owing me about $8 a year, I figured if they really wanted to go through the trouble to pay me they could.  Since that was while Kwame was in the federal slammer, I think they had other issues going on.

Detroit. It’s so much better as a distant memory.

So will February, but I have to get through it first. It’s just a really weird month, work-wise.

It’s been slow since mid-November or so, but I’m fine with this. After all, I did average about nine and a half hours a day, seven days a week through the summer. I don’t feel guilty about not doing a whole lot right now.

But it’s picking up a bit; I’ve got a newsletter going out tomorrow and have done a couple of recruitment pieces lately. Right now, we have about 40 teams registered for the rebuild season. I feel like that’s low, but in reality, it’s ahead of where we were last year, because at this time last year, Hope Village didn’t exist. It started in April.

I’m pretty much on my own this month, too. My supervisor had the Cancun trip the first week and this past week had to go to Phoenix and heads straight from there to a cruise.

He gets back the 16^th or something like that, and then I leave the 27^th for North Augusta to help Karen with some catering.

So it’s just a really, really odd month. I’m looking so forward to the trip out of here; I changed my flight back this week to return Sunday, March 10 instead of the Thursday before. Originally I could only spare 10 days but as it turns out, taking one more day, I can work another event and visit Charles, Mary Lynn and Anna.

Realistically, it’s not even as much time off as it seems because I’ll be working at least a couple of hours a day. Most of my work is done via computer – my computer. So I can take it with me. I work via email primarily, even when I’m communicating with people in Minot, or on the Hope Village campus. So working remotely isn’t a big deal.

Until this week, that was my only out-of-town plan until I finish up here, but I just got my new date to re-take the foreign service oral assessment. So now I am headed to Washington in late April. I’d hoped for a May date, but this is close enough. I feel I’ve pushed my luck enough already.

So I used a frequent flyer ticket and got my flight. I’m holding on the hotel because it’s possible Zippy and/or Laurie will come, too. If I go alone, I’m staying at the $40-a-night guesthouse I’ve stayed at twice before but if they go we’ll get a hotel room.

Now I have to plan on time to study for that interview. I am already on the hiring list but scored low, so I might not get an offer. Passing a second time would give me 18 more months to get an offer. And right now, I am on the do-not-call list because I couldn’t accept an offer until after June. (At least as it stands now – the AmeriCorps extension is still up in the air.)

So I’m getting ahead of myself, I know. I try not to think about it outside of preparing for the interview.

But thinking about it gives me something to look forward to. And helps me remember that there’s life after February.