For me, it’s 100% cotton, durable fabric but not ugly, button down long sleeve, no collar buttons, 16" neck and 38" sleeve and tapered at the waist. The last part is especially important, because most men’s clothing companies apparently assume any guy over 6’2" is built like an offensive tackle
Oh, and it can’t be a plain white button down, nor can it be whatever ugly-ass shirt is left over.
For me, it’s less the fabric than the weave. A rough silk or linen is worse for me than a satiny polyester.
It needs to be either sleek or soft – and definitely not acrylic yarn. Flowy rather than clingy and able to handle a change in size in a day. This leaves out most clothes in my price and size range and means internet shopping is right out. I need to feel it before I buy it. Oh, and I have overlong legs for my height and a correspondingly short torso.
But me sewing is definitely off the table. Not in this lifetime or the next.
Portland is back to our triennial ritual of making fun of ourselves, snow edition. The parking lots at the grocery store last night, it was like the day before the 4th of July. Or some kind of Preznit-day-sale that people took seriously, like out of the nineties.
I don’t know if any of you have done your taxes for this year yet, but that fucking tax cut in no way helped me this year. I’m paying roughly double what I had to pay last year. Fucking Trump and the fucking Republicans.
So. NOT only did my work fuck up my birthdate so that I couldn’t obtain my pay stubs to turn them in to MI-DHHS in November so I could have FOOD in November, December, AND January - there will be none in February, due to the government shutdown! February funds were allotted last month to folks with active accounts, of which I was not one. Ends up, after speaking with a worker in Lansing, I had to fucking REAPPLY and resubmit all my documents. Possibly, this may be expedited. Possibly, the state will help me with my car. I made the call on Friday, and guess what - it takes FIVE business days and the first day is…next MONDAY!
And my car. I can’t get even a used-car loan because I only made $716 last month, and I need $1500 per month in income to qualify! My current car needs brakes all around (fronts complete, rears just wheel cylinders), new tires, a control arm bushing and wheel bearing for the left front tire. Total: $1287 and some cents.
I have $2.50 in my checking account as I speak. Pay day is next Friday.
I’m out of milk, coffee, and cannabis (remember, I have an MM card). Only one of my IRL friends is able to help me. My own brother won’t co-sign on a car loan for even a little cheapie used car.
I’m not liking this. I’m trying to keep my spirits up but…UGH! It ain’t easy! And yeah, I know, no one every said it would be, but COME ON!
The withholding form is the one thing that I’ve never been able to understand about taxes. It’s just deliberately confusing. Filling it out is gambling on random numbers. I think I over-committed last year, but I guess I’ll find out once I get all the forms. Would be much easier if you could just get next year’s tax form, calculate estimated taxes, and divide that by the number of pay periods to get withholding.
I can’t remember where I recently read/heard it, but I think the federal withholding rules and forms are designed to work so that about 75% of tax payers get a refund. The justification was that, purely as a practical matter, it’s a lot easier for the feds to cut a whole bunch of refund checks than it is for them to collect a few hundred or thousand dollars from all the individual folks for whom such an irregular bill would be a burden.
Personally, I always end up owing a few hundred dollars to someone, but I have a really bog-simple tax situation (aside from living and working in different states), and I’m totally fine with that. I don’t think I’ve gotten a refund since I graduated college.
I haven’t filed yet this year, but when I do it should be pretty easy to see if I’m paying more or fewer taxes due to the trump tax bs, regardless of what my W2 made my paychecks look like over the course of this last year. I expect to see an increase, frankly, but that might just be me being cynical.
ETA: I will say that I have been experiencing a certain amount of glum schadenfreude at all the MAGA-hats getting indignant about not getting refunds and finally starting to see materially undeniable evidence of the lies they’ve so wholeheartedly swallowed.