Back to School! Are you kidding?

Yep, you heard it right. I started some tax courses last night. Our wonderful Internal Revenue Service in their infinite wisdom has decided that we tax preparers and Accountants don’t have enough to do. I understand the need for furthering your education, that’s not the issue.

The thing that gripes me is that not only do we have to be tested to see if we can continue to do our job, but now we’re required by the end of the year to have 15 credit hours of schooling. I’ve always kept up my education, but this is going beyond. I know they are trying to get out the shady characters that call themselves tax preparers but most have not set a foot in a classroom, much less a tax forum, but this has gone a little over board.

The funny thing is we now have to pay for the privilege to do what we went to college and paid high dollars to learn how to do. We have to pay to get a number to practice under the IRS and we also have to pay to take high dollar classes and now the required testing that was not supposed to cost much has not gone up. What next?

Well, I started going over the study courses last night. I realized I’m out of study practice. Hand me a real world scenario any day, but some of the garbage they’re handing out is purely laughable. Oh well, guess the writing will be put to a minimum until I finish all 8 courses, yes 8! Not to mention the quizzes and final exams for each. Like my life was not busy enough.

Oh well, I’ll get off my soapbox and get to work, since I now have less time in the day. Hope all of you have a wonderful Tuesday and May God always bless you in all you do!

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Levels of Love…

As I write this I ponder the different levels of love I’ve had in my 43 years of life. I am by no means an expert. This is just my outtake on the subject, so take it as you may.

Here goes:

Baby Love: I feel like as a baby you feel love, not positive because I do not remember being a baby, but I do remember how my son was as a baby. He would brighten up when I would walk in the room, so I feel like he was feeling love for me. So…

Child’s love: As a child you have such a reserve for real love. You have not been challenged by the things of the real world so you can be open to love with your whole heart. Children love unconditionally, well most of the time.

First crush love: You know the love I am talking about. Usually you experience it in your early teens or earlier for some. It is that feeling when you look across the aisle in class and lock eyes with a cute boy. You instantly think you are in love and you will just die if he looks back. Yeah, you remember that don’t you. Ok, you can quit laughing now.

Idol love: Well as a teenager usually you develop huge love issues for movie stars, musicians or even someone older in your life. It is the kind of thing that causes you to post pictures all over your walls and spend your whole allowance on anything with their picture on it. Yeah, been there done that…

First young love: Well this is the one that usually hurts and makes you think you will never love again. You are usually dating by the time this one hits and you think that nobody else can ever take their place. Well, you have not quite got to the real love stage, so you soon learn there is more out there. (Was engaged for 4 years to my first young love. Boy am I glad that went away.)

First real love: This is the love that comes and your heart just is taken away. It no longer belongs to you. Sadly, sometimes this is the love that we mistake for some other feeling and we don’t act on it as our heart tells us to. This is usually the love that if you don’t keep, you end up keeping it with you forever in your dreams. If you don’t realize it is real and you let it go, you spend a lot of time later in life thinking about that lost love.

LOVE: Sometimes when we think we feel love we do things that are not in character for us. We may even marry someone thinking that it is love only to find out after the stars are out of our eyes that we were wrong. That is really sad, but it happens everyday. The divorce rate is prime example. A scary percentage of people are in marriages that started with misguided love.

Obsessive love: This is the sick kind of love where one person thinks that they can’t live without the other person who 9 out of ten times does not return their love. (I had a stalker that did that to me. I went out with him one time and Bam! he thought he was madly in love with me. He served 18 months for stalking me. I was only 17 and it was a scary time.)

Forever Love: This is the love we are strive for. It is the kind that when the person walks in the room, you almost swoon from the heart palpitations. Hopefully you all have felt this kind of love. Maybe it is with the person you are married to, hopefully. It is the kind of love that stops everything around you. When you lock eyes you know and it scares you sometimes the depths it can go. Now that is great love.

As I said before, this is just my take. There are so many more levels of love. It is endless. Hope you have Forever Love. It is always a great thing to have. Hopefully it is with your spouse or spouse to be, if you gave up on Forever Love and went in another direction, well try not to dwell on it too much, because it will drive you insane. Just my opinion.

As always, great writing and May God Bless!

Two weddings, two nights, Romance!

Ok, so those of you that follow my blogs or know me personally have a handle on my views on romance. You just can’t get enough of it. Well, when you want to get romance in the raw, go to a wedding. In the last two weeks I have had the privilege of going to two outdoor weddings. It has been bittersweet.

The first one was between two good friends that were meant for one another. The wedding was beside the grooms lake that is right beside his house. It was a country wedding complete with the girls wearing cowboy boots. My husband had to sing two songs, one for the unity ceremony and one for their first dance. The unity ceremony was so unique. They used two different colored sand and pour them into one vase to make them one. It was so sweet and romantic. And yes I cried as usual, that is until the grooms rooster started crowing during the vows. It was priceless.

The second one was my cousin’s wedding. They were married in the brides parents back yard. It was very pretty decked out in lanterns and fall colors. The back drop to the ceremony was hall bails with mums and pumpkins. So cute. They have a five month old daughter. She was brought into the ceremony in a wagon pulled by the ring bearer and flower girl. Yep, I cried again.

The only drawback to two weddings in two weeks was all the good food and cake. Definitely eating light this week. But the plus to the weddings was all the romance in the air. It really spurred my writing, since romance is my main genre. I was sitting at both weddings thinking how romance was still alive and well. Sometimes you have to wonder.

So, as always, keep the romance going and good writing. May God bless and keep you!