On Saturday, Charlie and I attended a birthday party for an old friend, Barbara Card, at her home in Bear Creek. We’ve known her for 29 years since Charlie first met her when she was a “pledge” with the Assistance League of Temecula Valley. Barbara later became President of ALTV, as did Charlie a few years later (in 1997).
For the most part, the attendees at this small party were Bear Creek old timers. We came to the new Jack Nicklaus’ master planned golf community in 1988. Not too many residents that are here today have been in Bear Creek longer than us. There were lots of old stories to revisit among the old timers at this birthday party, harkening all of us back to the “good old day” when we were all starting out the new adventure (the country club community) together. Oh, those were fun times!
Charlie is now fully-absorbed in her “tax season” mode. She hand-holds clients and puts out fires, as usual, but I do my best to keep her up-to-date on her regular bookkeeping chores so that she can tackle her tax work. She has (maybe) six dozen of them, so she will need to do a dozen a week for the foreseeable future.
She recently completed our tax submittal, subject to review by our accountant buddy, Jim Houle. I was amazed that Charlie earned $177K in bookkeeping fees this past year, which is considerably more than ever before, and way more than we need. She needs to divest some of this work to her son Jonathan and others so that we can drop a tax bracket or two. We had to fork over an extra $8,000 by the time she was done massaging our tax submittal. Ouch!
On Sunday, I took our little Boston Terrier puppy, “Baby”, to her first doggie obedience training session in Temecula. She did pretty good, once she figured out that she would be rewarded with a treat for good response to commands. I think she will be a quick learner, as she figured out (on her own) how to use the doggie door in six days (when she was just over 9 weeks old!), and I taught her how to “sit” in about 15 minutes earlier this week. It is imperative that we get her trained ASAP (both obedience and “potty”) so that we can relax when we throw her in the RV and hit the road in a few months. If she’s like Booger and JayJay, she will love life on the road.
Here she is sleeping with Booger:
Here she is pooped-out after obedience lessons:
Tuesday was Valentine’s Day. Charlie got flowers, ice cream, and 11 lipomas surgically removed from her arms and legs. Don’t ever accuse me of not being romantic! She’s pretty sore right now, but she should bounce back in a few days. And, she will have lost some weight, too.!