Aden and I finished our last shoot for the show yesterday, and on the one hand we're glad to have it done with... not that it wasn't a good experience, nor that the people we worked with weren't great, but it's just something off our plate.
Let me tell you something about our plate, it's basically looks like my dad's plate at Thanksgiving. You know, start with a solid foundation of mashed potatoes in the center, flank on either side with green beans, cooked carrots, broccoli and maybe peas. Blanket with white meat from the turkey breast, drop a leg on top, whoops forgot the stuffing, so fit that on there somewhere, with some cranberry sauce and pour the gravy on top. Yeah, that's our plate right now. So with the show done, we've just polished off that turkey leg and now it's time to dig out some potato, but first that broccoli.
I'm getting lost in my metaphor here, but I think the veggies represent our taxes, which I tackled this past weekend. No, I'm not some keener go-getter when it comes to tax time, quite the opposite. Back taxes. Oops. Aden and I are both quite bad and doing that stuff, and when I screw up the numbers and scare myself into thinking I owe $2500, well, there's a reason I don't like doing it (turns out its only about $500 - stupid health tax -, but still bleh... thankfully, having a kid is great for tax deductions, so Aden's getting some healthy sums back to even it out) Well, we're all caught up now and ready for this years', which will be our first joint filing, so I'm feeling a little intimidated, but have another month before our paperworks are ready for filing.
It's interesting what you learn when you have a better understanding of your finances when you do your taxes. Suddenly various entries on the tax form begin to make sense when they didn't before, and you start to see the benefit to living lighter, putting more money away on RRSPs and paying for monthy transit passes (tax deductable... hrm... so despite the fact that we'd spend about fifty dollars more per month buying passes as opposed to tokens, we'd get to write hundreds of dollars off of our taxes for doing so. Sounds like a good idea frankly. Hadn't thought of it that way before.)
Anyway, back to the beginning, as part of the show we agreed to do a little house hunting, even though we're still a year and a half to two years away from that (it's actually looking like we can fast track a little though, which may have seemed unbelievable at one time, but now is filling us with delight) and at first we questioned why we would want to, but now I get it... getting comfortable with the process of looking at houses, talking with real estate people and in general establishing familiarity with the whole ordeal. Despite the fact that we aren't yet looking, I think the more we look and the more we're at ease with the idea of looking the better we'll be able to handle it when we actually get out there in the market. We talked casually with a great guy, Max, who, even just in conversation, educated us both on some of the aspects of property purchasing procedure and the follies and foibles of first-time buyers, not to mention some of the less attractive side of real estate shopping.
It's quite amazing the little things we've wound up taking out of this experience that will obviously have some lasting value, alongside the big things that were intended to have an impact on our lives. The process of shooting for television can be an arduous or tedious one at times, but honestly, the show has provided us even more than we thought we'd initially get out of it. Much of it is thanks to the process, but equally it's been on Aden and myself to run with it and carry it forward. There's no easy answers and we need to invest our time and energy (and money) into making the solutions work, but through close monitoring, open conversation and a lot of mutual support, we're going to make it out of debt quickly, build our down payment for a house and support ourselves in the future.
Our coming days will be filled with banking, birthday parties, good-byes, and our typical busywork (as well as much atypical busy work). We're organizing and planning some sales of comics and DVDs which should hopefully give me a helping hand in debt repayment and move us that much more quickly to the end result. Yes our plate is full, but soon our bellies will be too.
I have no idea what that means.