As usual, Saturday got away from me, but this time I think I know how it happened, more or less.

Obviously, the first part of the answer is that I slept most of the morning away. It’s hard to make a strong comeback if the day’s already half gone when you get started. Tomorrow will be different, not because I’m going to get up and go to seven o’clock mass at St. Rose (I’m not), but because we’re having an Easter brunch (egg hunt included) at Tammy and David’s at the unholy hour of 10:30 am.

No, the real reason today got away is that I spent way too much of it trying to figure my income taxes. I have this K-1 form from my partnership in The Kennel, and it’s going to force me to file long forms instead of short, with extra schedules and attachments and all kinds of mean, nasty, ugly things.

I started at the IRS site at the crack of noon, and by the time the shadows were getting long (or would have been, if the sun hadn’t kept ducking behind the clouds), I had gone from Form 1040 to Schedule C to Form 8582, and I still didn’t know what I was going to do with my share of The Kennel’s loss (on paper) for the two months of last year that I was part-owner.

So I did what I always do. I gave up. Not in the sense of throwing up my hands and saying, “I can’t,” but in the sense of throwing up my hands and saying, “I have three weeks left. Why the heck am I killing myself over this today?” And walking away, leaving all the IRS browser windows open and all the forms strewn over the bed, in case I changed my mind and got a crazy burst of energy later.

Then tonight I was talking to Tammy, and she told me I shouldn’t try to bake my tax returns from scratch when it would be so easy with Turbo Tax, with its interactive recipe. She could be a salesperson (not that she needs anything else to sell, what with her toys and her home décor and the candy and stuff for the various schools attended by her various children). I asked smart questions, and she gave me smarter answers. Anyway, I was sold.

I didn’t do anything more about it today, of course. I should have known that once I gave up on it, laziness would set in and prevent me from moving forward again. (Spinning your wheels on the restart, they call it in auto racing.) But I’ll be taking Tammy’s suggestion (as any sane person would do), and maybe even e-filing. It’s just possible that this twenty-first century is going to be okay after all. (On this I am not so much sold, however.)