Tax-Inspired Year (’16) in Review

Today is tax day so it’s time, once again, to take a look at the saved receipts and records from eight years ago before tossing them, and review what was going on in my life back in 2016. Here are some of the highlights that got my attention this spring as I prepared the annual packet for my CPA:

~ a January gig took me to North Palm Beach, in an election year, where the candidate many of us thought was a joke had a home. (Well, according to the local zoning rules, it shouldn’t have been considered—or used—as a primary residence but, like everything else in his life, he subsequently got away with that. And technically it’s located further south on the barrier island than North Palm Beach, but it was still closer than I wanted to be!) The good news is that the day my host and I walked around the island site seeing, I got over 20,000 steps in, according to my Fitbit, which was a first for me. I often struggle to get the daily 10,000 step goal accomplished so it was an exhilarating feeling when my wrist started to vibrate and I was privy to not one but two celebratory digital fireworks that day. Woohoo!

~ I was hired by an Eastern Shore Conference-wide United Methodist MEN’S group for a weekend retreat. Usually it’s the ladies who seek me out, so I was tickled that the men likely branched out from their norm and sought the wisdom I had to offer.

~ I was still selling DVDs of my story performances, pulling in $282 that year.

~ I remodeled my kitchen. I distinctly remember the first time I walked in after completion and how I struggled a bit to remember what the old kitchen had looked like. Only about three weeks had passed since I’d been in the former reality, a reality I had used for over 16 years! But the new look was clearly so … right … it immediately eclipsed all the prior experiences from that space. Being in there still makes me happy today.

~ I led a 10-day mini-course at St. George’s College in East Jerusalem and had to wait over a month to get paid the remaining $3000 owed to me when something went wrong with the direct deposit of it. For a freelancer who lives on a shoestring and plans my budget with the expectation that I’ll get paid immediately after providing the services I was hired to do (something my contract clearly states) and who was somewhat strapped for cash after having laid out an enormous sum of money to remodel my kitchen, this was a BIG deal. And this “deal” was exacerbated by the fact that the dean of the college sent me a curt message saying that he didn’t need to be cc’d on all the emails sent trying to right this wrong. Gee, excuse me for assuming that the dean would want to know if his institution’s systems and employees were functioning properly and who might have ideas for rectifying the situation in a satisfactory way for all involved! 🤨 (He didn’t last long as dean!)

~Prior to that gig, I was able to spend almost three weeks on vacation in Europe with first-time visits to Romania (including Dracula’s Castle) and Slovenia (my AirBnB host’s opinion of Melania was that “She’s not that bright”), and Croatia for the second time (where I had the best day of my life—see earlier post on May 28, 2023). It was also the one time to date that I’ve set foot on Serbian soil—at the Belgrade airport where I briefly popped outside during a short layover. I didn’t want to linger because, somehow, I had ended up with a first-class ticket (trust me, I hadn’t paid for it!) which also entitled me to the first-class lounge at the airport. So many treats and amenities, so little time …

~ Prior to that vacation time, the thing that had gotten me across the ocean in the first place was leading my first Footsteps of Paul pilgrimage in Greece and Turkey. It was early in that trip that my right vitreous detached from the retina. Not nearly as serious as the retina itself detaching but still enough of an ordeal that I wasn’t supposed to lift anything heavy for three weeks, including my suitcase. So that made all the ensuing travel (which included lugging said suitcase in and out of old rickety Romanian trains, up and down flights of stairs in places of lodging with no elevators, and hoisted into overhead airplane bins to avoid the risk of it getting lost in transit as checked baggage) more than a little extra challenging! I ended up having my eye checked three times while abroad: twice in Greece and once in Jerusalem. The total out-of-pocket amount I paid was $50. That’s it. Back home, with my $10,000 deductible, who knows how much I would have shelled out. In fact, shortly thereafter, a friend told me about an upcoming foreign trip he and his wife were planning and how he had opted to get the insurance that would provide airlift back to the States in the case of a medical emergency. I laughed and said that my prayer was to be out of the country if I needed medical care!

~ Speaking of medical care, I had my first colonoscopy. I got it scheduled just prior to turning 51. When I got there for the procedure, the nurse asked why I was having a colonoscopy. “Uh … because I’m 50 …” “Good for you!” “Uh … doesn’t everybody do this when they’re 50?” “Heavens no!” I took pills instead of drinking fluid to cleanse my colon the night before, which was a lot easier (and also could lead to kidney problems, I found out later!). I woke up in the middle of the procedure and when the anesthesiologist made eye contact with me, he just about cleansed his colon! A tiny, benign, polyp was found, putting me on the every-5-year-instead-of-every-10-year colonoscopy track. (sigh …)

~ A few years earlier, when I was following the “healthcare by Groupon plan” I had gotten a partial porcelain inlay on one of my molars. Well, in 2016, it came out, while I was out of town. I was on the coast of NC, in a little town where I had interned at a church back in 1988. One of the church members was a dentist and she was able to fit me in with a day’s notice. She only charged me $83 and told me that the repair was temporary. “It could last two months or two years but you should at least be good until you get back to Baltimore.” It lasted over five years!