Gun control thoughts.

Ok, here is something I’ve thought of. It is not *the* solution, or the end all answer. But maybe it would be something. 

A lot of people are destroying their ARs as a show of support. My thought is that someone should send a fancy letter to or ask the maker of the AR, and ask them to offer to everyone who sells back their AR that they will donate a handgun to someone who works with a school who would be willing to get their concealed carry, and also pay for training and concealed carry permit. Or the AR can be donated to a local school, who can trade it in for a credit for the above things. And the maker of the AR will promise to melt them down for materials and not use it to make more ARs or resell the weapons donated. 

Then the “arm teachers” and the “less AR” groups would both have a small victory each. 

I feel like we need something to unify people at this point in time. 

Choosing a business type. Link and research.

https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/38822

Sole proprietorship 

File 3 tax forms. Individual (1040), Schedule C which calculates profits and loss, and final numbers are put into 1040, and Schedule SE which calculates self employment tax cost. 

Allowed to pay self employment tax 4 times a year instead of all at once. 

Liable for expenses, damages, lawsuits. But a good insurance umbrella plan could cover this. 

First, must file a assumed name certificate with register of deeds in our county. Form attached. 

https://edpnc.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/A-NEW-AssumedBusNameCert-final-10.03.17corrected.pdf

Also need to copywriter or trademark my business name so no one else can use it. 

Corporation

File taxes separate from individual tax forms. AS a corporation. 

Pay double tax as a corporation. 

Must keep pristine records, keep all money 100% separate, probably hire someone to do it and taxes. 

Less liability but only if you follow all laws exactly. 

Life updates

Shea and gent finally came over so Shea could make soap even though they brought all the stuff for it over here over a month ago. Turns out she had been really nervous about not having enough room to make everything work and had been avoiding it. She had basically enough space, could use another table down there, but was extremely happy about the shelf in the basement. 

Note: need to buy another online target shelf for basement. (We only got 2 7’ tall, 48x18 metal rack shelves, one for office, one for workroom, and if we want to replace all of them, we need one more)

We all had food from this amazing Mexican restaurant near here. Everyone ate until they were too full. It was great. 

We bought ourselves lava lamps, and Relly uses mine every night in the bedroom to help him sleep. 

Relly has been helping me exercise. It was every day until I caught the flu, and now we are trying so hard to get back to doing it every day, but it’s so hard with his class schedule to find the right time to do it. Before, he was really pushing me, and I was seeing a lot of improvement, but I’m back to doing stuff at weird times, and squeezing it in means I’m doing a set number that isn’t super high. I’m not pushing myself, I’m just hitting my minimum total. It’s really frustrating because Relly and I were getting so close when I was working out every day. And it also really helps my pain management. My wrists weren’t hurting as often when I was working out before. Now I’m back to limiting my computer time because of wrist pain. 

The shelves! Ok, so in January I finally said ok we have the money to get you a desk. So we bought Relly a desk, it was his late Christmas present. I put it together for him, but he still needed some shelves or his room wouldn’t work to fit all his stuff. There were boxes everywhere and it was super cluttered. So he said he wanted the wire shelves from the container store. We went there, and even though it was a couple hundred bucks or more, we bought a shelf. 

The shelf was freaking awesome. It holds all his minis and d&d related stuff except books, he likes those elsewhere. And his room even had enough space in it to put the chaise lounge in there! When before there wasn’t any room at all. So we bought MORE shelves, thinking one set would go in my workroom and one set would go in the kitchen. One went in my workroom, and the one for the kitchen ended up being way too big, (same size as other ones because they didn’t have the size we needed at the store) so we put it downstairs for Shea. 

Anyway, less than a week later, I get an email from target about a furniture sale, and when I open it, I see the exact same shelves, only they’re $60 ish for one whole setup, instead of $25 a shelf tray plus poles and anything else you want for it, like feet or baskets etc. the baskets are still awesome and we may keep those. So I did some quick math, and for the price of basically one of the shelves we bought (we got 3 mind you) we could buy 2 or 3 of the ones from target. So we ordered 2 of the size we already had 7’x18”x”48”, 2 short ones that are 30 inches tall, one fits beside the fridge and haven’t figured out the other one yet, and one 7’x 18”x36” the perfect size for a corner of my workroom. 

So we plan on taking back all the other shelves, after putting the new ones up and moving everything over, because we will literally be saving hundreds of dollars. Sure the new shelves are barely a touch lighter, but they are still sturdy! Very sturdy. So proud of us for that. 

We are making plans to get Sela spayed and should have her an appointment made shortly for some time in March. 

After doing almost nothing with my business since November, I’ve started working seriously on my item tags again, and have seen a lot more views since, and a purchase as well. I’m holding an average of 350 views a week, from 100 visits. With my workroom on it’s way to being organized and much easier to use, I hope to work on my goal of getting 100 listings in my Etsy shop this year. 

Dungeons and dragons game is still going strong, with 6 people. I’m not doing great as secretary but hey I never asked for that job. 

Overall I’m super proud of us. I feel like Relly and I are focusing on us more than events and social stuff and blah, and I’m seeing a big improvement in our lives. 

Oh, and we haven’t visited my family for Christmas yet. Didn’t want to give nana the flu, plus we had some money issues in December. 

Downy Woodpecker Pair

Originally posted on facebook

There is a pair of woodpeckers that live near our house. And they are smart! If I don’t put birdseed out by 10 am, they start pecking on the side of the house. Today, I tried to ignore them and see if they would stop after a while. They didn’t. So, around 1:30, I went outside on the porch and they were both perched on the side of the house. 

“Come on guys, stop that!” And one of them flew away. The other one stayed there a minute and made his squeaky toy chirping conversation with me for a good minute, and didn’t fly off until I started putting birdseed down. 

The woman at the bird store pointed me in the right direction and I’ve discovered that they are downy woodpeckers. I’m sure I’ve seen at least one male and one female, but of the two this morning I wasn’t able to tell. (The difference is one has red on the back of its head, and one doesn’t.) they were both looking at me, so no chance to see the identifying marks.