So this past week was Taxes week for me. The downside of being self-employed is that my taxes are much, much more complicated than were back when I had a regular 9 to 5 marketing job. I have to track royalties, self pub sales from Rabbit Trick, audio and other rights sales, and freelance gigs along with all my expenses (like travel to San Diego ComicCon to speak, poor me) in one large database and double-check my numbers every year at tax time. This inevitably takes days, as I’m a bit detail oriented at this time of year.

At the end of the several-day push, I went to hit “print” and found… my printer was broken. Like, really, intensely, cannot be resurrected broken. Even Sam couldn’t get the poor thing to work. So it was time to go to Target and buy a new effing printer to print my tax info on to take to the accountant. But then, of course, it took another 3 hours to figure out the software drivers and more Sam time to get the new effing thing to work. Sigh. And then more spreadsheets. But it finally got done.

And then we went to the accountant. Don’t get me wrong, I love my accountant–he used to be a financial advisor as well, and he answers all sorts of difficult and cool self-employed business questions–but I don’t like going to his office at tax time. Because, you know, taxes. But Sam and I got a refund, so that was okay. We came home and watched a marathon House of Cards session to cleanse the mental pallet afterwards, so that was fun.

And then Sunday. Have I mentioned I love Facebook? An old friend from high school contacted me out of the blue this week to say she’d gotten a pair of free tickets to the ballet and did I want to go. Did I want to go? Hell, yeah I wanted to go. I danced ballet from age 4 to age 13, and for two brief seconds thought I’d become a pro (delusion, but it was far more realistic than my hyperspace pilot thing, just saying). So I jumped into the car and went to meet her, thrilled.

Not only was this ballet, it was amazing experimental ballet as a retelling of Tennessee Williams’s play Camino Real. Astonishing set design. Gorgeous, well-thought-out music. And beautiful, haunting, sad choreography that really touched me. The play, as near as I could tell, was set around a washed up old town and a brothel run by a very bad guy. One of the prostitutes dances this incredibly complex number on pointe lurching like she’s drunk–it was astonishingly difficult and cool. I was blown away.

And I got to see an old friend, now 15 years older. She and I were much the same, and much different. We both still love ballet, and we both still have parents in the same town.

And I did taxes.

All in all, a good week.