Piling higher and higher

I can always tell when I am stressed because my eyelashes fall out. I don't sit and yank them out in some sort of repetitive stress induced motion, like if I were to be pulling out my hair. No they just sort of fall out on their own. This general fact leads me to constantly check for loose eyelashes as I hate getting eyelashes in my eyes.

The holidays have ended and I find myself more stressed than I was the entire month of December. Mostly my stress stems from the husbeast being unemployed. We are currently in week 10 of no job, and while he isn't panicking yet, I sort of am.

I can't blame him for not having a new job yet as he is trying really hard. He is getting a good number of interviews but every one has been for a sales position with little to no base salary. If he was in his early 20's and didn't have a mortgage and two car payments, maybe that would cut it. Lets face it, we do have a mortgage and two car payments, and an average amount of personal debt; he needs a good base pay. Besides do you know how much they tax a commission check?

Speaking of taxes, I am beginning to stress over filing taxes and our W-2s haven't even come in yet. For the first few years of our marriage we managed to mostly not owe anything, while at the same time not getting much back. After we bought the house this changed. We went two or three years with a return of nearly $2000. I was a big fan of this.

Then three years ago when the economy tanked the husbeast was hit with his first layoff. Tax time rolled around and we owed money. Like a lot of money; nearly $1500. I was so confused we made nearly 50k less that year, and we went from a $2000 return to owing $1500? That made no sense. We do our taxes ourselves though, and no matter how many times we checked the numbers they always came out the same.

In the end we decided it had to be the crappy company he had gotten hired on with after the lay off not taking out enough taxes. He got laid off from that company as well, and we once again were looking at a new job for him. We checked to make sure we were having all the right deductions this time. We didn't want another surprise.

Surprise! We owed nearly $2000 the next year. Same story only worse. We couldn't figure it out. Nothing was changing other than we were making so much less money. We thought perhaps it was because he suddenly wasn't getting fat commission checks that were having close to 40% taken in taxes. That had to be what the problem was. A very expensive problem.

So we are still paying on that tax bill and I find myself hugely anxious about running our numbers this year. I had extra money taken out of all my checks in the vain hope that we wouldn't owe money again this year, or at least that it wouldn't be so damn much.

Then add to all that the fact that faire is going into full swing any moment now. All of the planning and preparations have started and I find myself already feeling a little overwhelmed. I am having to design and build a new costume for the husbeast since he is returning with a new character.  I have no idea how we are really going to pay for that, and the new costume pieces I need, and gas to get to and from faire, and everything else that goes along with it.

Plus there is also the added stress of being one of the costumers which often makes me feel like I am herding cats when I have to deal with the performers and seamstresses. Don't get me wrong, I love what I do. I wouldn't give it up for anything. In fact faire is my little slice of sanity. It is just a lot of work and a lot of stress.

It is probably a very good thing that I have an abundance eyelashes. If I didn't I could see myself looking very strange very quickly. I am sure everything will right itself soon, and everything will be fine. I just hope it happens before I have to start thinking about investing in false lashes.