This has been a very taxing week (I really did not mean to make a pun)

As I believe I've written before, I have a payment plan with the IRS to pay off my taxes. Back in March I set up the agreement and then signed paperwork to have the amount automatically taken from my bank account each month. But there was a catch--it would take awhile before that would happen, so I had to make payments in the interim either by cheque or through an online third party by the 25th of each month. They were supposed to let me know when the first payment would come out. I think you can see where I'm going with this. The last I heard from them was in May, a duplicate set of letters saying it was taking a little longer to review my account, and that was it. So I've been checking each 25th of the month to see if anything has come out of my account, then going through an third party payer and paying the amount that night, so it's still on time.

I did this on Saturday. Apparently on Monday, the money came out automatically, sending my account into quite the negative. Since the online payer took out the amount owed and a second debit of their fee, and then the IRS took out the amount owed in two instalments as well, there were four insufficient fund fees (even though there was enough money for what I paid on Saturday).

I've talked to the IRS, the third party payer, and the bank. The IRS says it sent a letter telling me when it would start. I suspect I was supposed to get two different letters back in May and somehow a duplicate letter was sent instead. I have no way of proving that, of course. They will still require a payment next month; the double payment just lessens the timeframe of the payments. They suggested talking to the payer. The payer said that it would take 6-8 weeks to investigate things, that it would ultimately depend on the IRS, and since I still have some time to pay on the money I owe, it would be ultimately denied. The bank was sympathetic, but because there was no bank error they 'split it with me', taking off two of the charges.

The upshot of this is I cannot pay my rent on time this month. I am going to talk to the leasing manager tomorrow. Normally this is how things unfold: You have until the 5th to pay the rent. On the 6th, there is a $50 charge and normally you get a seven-day notice to ante up or they'll file for eviction. Sometimes they don't send the notice out for a day or two. Then you have seven days, with each additional day after the 6th costing $5 more. If I get the notice on the 6th, I have until the 13th. I get paid on the 14th, but could pay first thing that morning (late payments must be made by money order). So it will be a close thing, which is why I'm going to discuss it with them first. It also means I have to pay $90 in late fees. If they file in court, I think (if I recall from some of my less fortunate financial times), it's $100 on top of that for court costs, but you get to stay.

:(

So that's where I stand on that. I can get my bus pass, pay my phone bill, and eat for the next two weeks, but not pay my rent. I have checked and I think I will be able to pay my other bills (including the IRS) even with the additional charges when I get paid on the 14th.

Boy this is a pain. The sad thing is that it's really no one's fault (well, the IRS maybe a bit, for sending me the wrong notice), and if it hadn't been for the fact that it was on a weekend, the money would have come out and I would have known not to pay any more.

I will say that when I found this all out (before talking to the various agencies), I called YKWIA, who is oddly comforting at times even though he generally is not. In this case he was, I suspect because he realised through my disjointed blubberings that it was not, in fact, my fault for a change and that I'd been screwed over by karma or whatever whilst trying to be responsible.

I called him whilst waiting for the bus, then got into work a total mess. I'd obviously been crying. I hadn't eaten yet, so I stopped by the cafeteria and my satchel fell off my arm, scattering the salad I was making all over the bar. I did not lose my cool, but it was a close call. Then I went back to my office, stopped by the bathroom to wash my face, ate my salad, and hid in my cubicle doing what work I could do to take my mind off of things and letting my face return to normal rather than the reddened mass that weeping had created. It took a good two hours to truly calm down, and then I got caught up in teaching someone who is my backup what to do, and so I didn't call the others until the next day.

On Tuesday I also found out the results of my MRI. I have three bulging discs and a congenital stenosis (narrowing of the spinal canal) made worse through bone growths called osteophytes. The combination means the nerves are being compressed, causing my arm and shoulder to hurt and my lower arm to go numb. The good news is that it is not severe enough to require surgery, although they are going to send me to a neck surgeon to oversee my care (the doctor I'd seen was a hand/upper extremity specialist). Since I can't see the neck specialist until mid-July, they want me to start physical therapy for relief from the pain and numbness. I start tomorrow morning at 7:30 am. Yeah. That early. And when I made the appointment I told them early because I didn't want to miss work, and totally forgot that I'm off tomorrow. :)

Another theme that has been continuing throughout the week is trying to fix a computer where Internet Explorer opens and then shuts down immediately. The first day I tried several things, had no luck, mainly because most of Microsoft's solutions required a working browser, and got home late and went on to bed without blogging. Tuesday, the day of horribleness, I got over there only to find that the disk I'd made with Firefox on it was not in my satchel. I got home late that night as well. Yesterday I managed to take the disk with me, but even trying the other things and updating to IE 9, there was no luck fixing IE, but Firefox works. Last night we discovered that .mth files weren't opening in Firefox so I went over again and within a few minutes had the problem solved by downloading an add-on for that. I still haven't given up on the IE issue, as the person is used to that browser, but for now online browsing is a go, favourites have been imported to bookmarks, and saved files will open. I actually got home by dusk tonight, called to make sure he knew I was home, and took his suggestion to kick back and watch 'Bones' and relax for a bit. If anyone has suggestions for what to do about fixing Internet Explorer, I'm all ears. But for now, I'm not going to think about it. I'm home at a reasonable hour for the first time in days, when I didn't just fall into bed. And I have four days off! Here's to getting some things done, and getting some rest, and knowing that things will eventually get better. It'll be rough for the next month or so, and then hopefully improve. Wish me luck!