Death, Resurrection, and Taxes

I hope everyone had a lovely Easter. We didn't really do much to celebrate. We dyed some eggs, which, in retrospect, was probably not a good idea as it inspired our daughter to dye herself. Her face, hair, hands, feet, and legs now sport several color splotches reminiscent of Jackson Pollock. I'm glad I didn't go out and buy a pretty Easter dress; she surely would have clashed.

Actually, I've not been feeling very well this weekend, so we didn't make it out to church on Sunday at all. I feel like I've missed the whole Easter season this year. Our former church celebrated Easter in a very big way and not being a part of everything this year made it a little harder for me to really feel like we've been in a holy season.

I can't remember if I mentioned it earlier, but I started doing our taxes on January 3rd. Unfortunately, there was one statement I was waiting for from the Illinois Department of Employment Security that never showed up. After waiting past the January 31st deadline, Adam called the customer service number on at least two separate occasions (but I'm pretty sure it was three).

The first time, we were told we had to change our address. No problem. Done. But rather than sending us the form I was looking for, they sent a packet on how to collect unemployment insurance from out of state. After resisting the temptation to see if we could file a claim, he called again. Either on the second call or the third, but certainly after he'd talked to a number of different people, he was finally able to speak to someone who looked into our account and said we didn't have any payments in 2008 because the last check was dated December 31, 2007. Sigh.

So I'm finally getting back to our taxes this week. Since I have all the stuff I need. Apparently.

Oh, and earlier this year, we got a fat booklet in the mail from the Illinois Department of Revenue. When I say "fat" I mean, this thing is 56 pages long. The front cover has a picture of a tree with tax forms on it and says in big black letters "Save A Tree (and fuel too) ... file electronically." There's also a cute little blue box that tells me "Last year Illinois taxpayers saved more than 12 million pieces of paper by filing their tax returns electronically." Uhm, yeah. Was this before or after the state government printed and mailed all these forms?