I finally filled out the form for my 2018 renter's property-tax
refund this morning (one week before the deadline), and then I read
the fine print:
You don't get a refund if a relative provided 50+ percent of your income.
I could lie about it, but before I got the job at the thrift store, for half of last year, money from my father's death did pay my bills. It seems fair that I therefore pay my share. Property taxes pay for schools and other important stuff.
I tore up my refund form.
While I have no trouble accepting state health care (because there are no affordable options), I don't take food stamps and most other government programs, because there's not enough for everyone who needs it and who is not poor by choice, like I am.
"Poor by choice" is a weird way of putting it...
I'm not like Saint Francis, who sees Sister Poverty in herself as a Good. It's more that poverty tags along with other Goods I want, most especially free time.
(Hm. Actually, Francis would agree--poverty in itself is not the point––God is.)
And yet, Sister Poverty does benefit me too, and she fits my philosophy that it's good to be aware that we humans share limited resources. ("Take care of library books." "Leave some for the others.")
She serves my laziness too--or, my sense of what's worth expending effort on. That does not include cleaning multiple, futzy kitchen gadgets.
Just give me a knife and a pan.
I've enjoyed house sitting in this expensive house, because it's quiet. (Freedom from noise is among the best things money can buy.)
But, mygod, the work of taking care of all the stuff?
What a boring waste of time.
Of course you can be poor and own a ton of stuff--this is America--but still, this house comes with so much space, the stuff that fills it needs a lot of attending to:
You have to take the lawn-furniture pillows in at night; water house plants on two floors, and the porch plants, front and back; stock four bathrooms, etc.
I understand that some people love all this--including, presumably, the house-owners I'm sitting for. But I don't.
I'm excited about getting rid of stuff as I prepare to move at the end of this month.
I'm even jettisoning family history stuff. My parents are dead and my sister, brother, and I have no children, so I'm not hostage to the future in that "must save these photos" way.
I threw away years of my mother's letters a couple weeks ago. (I saved one representative one.)
That would have been unthinkable in the past... but now it's a relief.
It's not like we're ever free of history, anyway, no matter what we own: I carry my mother in my genes and my memory.
That's good enough.
A word modern people use for this choice isn't poverty, it's simplicity.
But I cringe at that word––a magazine called Simple Living is among the mail that has arrived here where I'm house sitting--so much mail, it fills a laundry basket.
Anyway, I do have riches and clutter--it's just in space!
Blogger won't be around forever, but for now, my history is recorded here. I didn't think of this in 2007 when I named my blog l'astronave––starship in Italian (I was thinking at the time of Star Trek)––but it does carry my story in space.
That's good enough too.
You don't get a refund if a relative provided 50+ percent of your income.
I could lie about it, but before I got the job at the thrift store, for half of last year, money from my father's death did pay my bills. It seems fair that I therefore pay my share. Property taxes pay for schools and other important stuff.
I tore up my refund form.
While I have no trouble accepting state health care (because there are no affordable options), I don't take food stamps and most other government programs, because there's not enough for everyone who needs it and who is not poor by choice, like I am.
"Poor by choice" is a weird way of putting it...
I'm not like Saint Francis, who sees Sister Poverty in herself as a Good. It's more that poverty tags along with other Goods I want, most especially free time.
(Hm. Actually, Francis would agree--poverty in itself is not the point––God is.)
And yet, Sister Poverty does benefit me too, and she fits my philosophy that it's good to be aware that we humans share limited resources. ("Take care of library books." "Leave some for the others.")
She serves my laziness too--or, my sense of what's worth expending effort on. That does not include cleaning multiple, futzy kitchen gadgets.
Just give me a knife and a pan.
I've enjoyed house sitting in this expensive house, because it's quiet. (Freedom from noise is among the best things money can buy.)
But, mygod, the work of taking care of all the stuff?
What a boring waste of time.
Of course you can be poor and own a ton of stuff--this is America--but still, this house comes with so much space, the stuff that fills it needs a lot of attending to:
You have to take the lawn-furniture pillows in at night; water house plants on two floors, and the porch plants, front and back; stock four bathrooms, etc.
I understand that some people love all this--including, presumably, the house-owners I'm sitting for. But I don't.
I'm excited about getting rid of stuff as I prepare to move at the end of this month.
I'm even jettisoning family history stuff. My parents are dead and my sister, brother, and I have no children, so I'm not hostage to the future in that "must save these photos" way.
I threw away years of my mother's letters a couple weeks ago. (I saved one representative one.)
That would have been unthinkable in the past... but now it's a relief.
It's not like we're ever free of history, anyway, no matter what we own: I carry my mother in my genes and my memory.
That's good enough.
A word modern people use for this choice isn't poverty, it's simplicity.
But I cringe at that word––a magazine called Simple Living is among the mail that has arrived here where I'm house sitting--so much mail, it fills a laundry basket.
Anyway, I do have riches and clutter--it's just in space!
Blogger won't be around forever, but for now, my history is recorded here. I didn't think of this in 2007 when I named my blog l'astronave––starship in Italian (I was thinking at the time of Star Trek)––but it does carry my story in space.
That's good enough too.
