yay?

busy. season. is. over. 

i should be ecstatic. and i am {somewhere in here}. but there is this weird let down period after all the craziness is over that makes me feel completely drained. like i was hooked up to an iv of adrenaline & caffeine for 4 months straight, and someone just yanked it out of my arm and said "go on living." ...spoken like a true drug addict. excellent.

i don't remember what i used to do for fun. i don't remember what it's like to sleep in, or stay up late. or have girls' night. or stay awake for more than one movie. i have no motivation to go to the grocery store or start on the 1,600 pounds of laundry waiting for me in our bedroom. i just want to crawl into a cave of fleece and jammies and kitties and never come out.

i'll tell you what i do know how to do like a boss:

• record & report a multi-state, multi-property {44 separate residences to be exact} section 1031 tax deferred exchange with a section 754 adjustment on an income tax basis of accounting
• prepare extension estimates for an enggaement involving multi-tier, multi-state real estate family partnerships which all flow into several different individuals {with crap numbers and no time...because why would we want to make that any easier?}
• calculate tax gain on separate interests in the sale of a $60 million dollar commercial building 
• calculate non-resident state composite pass-through withholding
• reconcile open & close of put & call stock option sales for schedule d reporting and miraculously tie to the year end investment summary
• coordinate with the defined benefit plan people for calculation of tax deductible plan contributions based on current year self employment income
• report ordinary and capital basis adjustments for publicly traded partnership investments
• report final distribution of assets in a family wealth structure upon dissolution of the irrevocable trust {ughhh i haate estates. i just don't get them, ya know? they are my tax kryptonite.}
• work on sundays {a new one for me this year...but it needed to happen}
• considering easy 1040s to be an actual treat
• having dreams about allocating exchange basis
• having nightmares about forgetting to allocate qualified nonrecourse partnership debt on k-1s
• defend irs & ftb audits that end in no change {victory}.
• ...and that's just the tip of the iceberg of all the fun i had during the last few months.

and i just enjoyed writing that. how depressing. 

this has been the hardest busy season to date i think. some interesting things happened in our department and that shifted a lot more responsibility my way. also, people made a ton of money in 2013, and then they spent that money, and didn't keep track of what they did with it {and forgot to tell us about any of it, of course}. which means as a common trend, there were a lot of fun {messy} surprises; and i got to tell a ton of people they owed a ton of tax that they weren't expecting. awesome!

hopefully, in a few days, my brain will make its annual transition from tax-queen-robot to oatmeal-brained vegetable. in the meantime, i'll be self-medicating during the process by watching hours of mindless reality television. once my brain chemicals equalize, i'll be back to my old simple-minded, shopping-loving, diamond-gazing, lipstick-wearing, vegetable-chopping self. can't wait.