it's not worth it.

I'm done with taxes.

I'm not really done. I'm just done dealing with them myself.

When I first started working, my aunt helped me do my taxes, using the simple 1040 EZ form. At some point during college, I started doing my own taxes. Turns out it was easy enough.

Then I got a real job. I made charitable contributions. I started to pay back student loans. And the kicker, I signed up for a Health Savings Account. I'm a big proponent of HSAs ... until tax time. The HSA is always, always the piece that messes me up. And then this year, I bought a house and paid interest on the mortgage.

My HSA doesn't give me the information I need. My bank didn't send me the correct form for my mortgage. And my 2007 tax return is nowhere to be found. All these documents can be retrieved, but it will take at least two weeks for the IRS to process my request, and who knows how much time I'm going to waste on the phone trying to get the correct information from the banks.

So I decided it's not worth it.

It's not worth the two Cadbury Eggs and the 4 Peeps I downed, thinking that somehow that jolt of sugar was going to make the tax filing process happy or joyful or whatever. It's not worth tearing my house apart to find one document that isn't there. It's not worth the headache and the high blood pressure.

And that's just for my taxes. Although we can't file jointly for 2008, I told CJ I'd do his too. He didn't buy the house, nor does he have a HSA, but he has student loans, 3 W-2s, rent payments, union dues...

From here on out, our tax preparation is going to be someone else's problem. I'll pay ... I don't even care how much.

It's nap time.