We weighed the anvil on the bathroom scale to find out that it weighed 195 pounds. We thought that 1-2-27 stamped on the side was the date it was made, but that turns out to be the weight in hundredweight notation. Inputting the numbers into an Internet calculator confirmed that the anvil was 195 pounds. More research suggested that this was a "London-patterned" anvil made by Peter Wright between the 1860s and 1920s, often used as ballast in sailing ships when being delivered to the United States. Dad found it in a blacksmith shop on an old farm in Boise, Idaho, in the late 1950s.  It's at least 100 years old since it was on the farm for 50 years and he had it for 50 years after that. An anvil collector would pay anywhere from $400 USD to $1,000 USD.

When I was a little child, I sat on the anvil one night to watch Dad work around the garage. I was rocking back and forth when I fell off backwards. The back of my head stuck the lawnmower blade, leaving an inch-long scar that I didn't know about until I got a crew cut as teenager, and I blacked out. The next thing I remembered was waking up in the truck with my parents as  pulled up to the hospital. Then I blacked out for good when I was put on the operating table and a gas mask was put over my face. I woke up in a recovery room that had six tables. The only other patient was a Hell's Angels biker with a broken arm and stitches for multiple knife wounds who was handcuffed to the table. That was the beginning of a very interesting childhood for me.

Ever since then I wanted to have that anvil, which was customary handed down from father to son through the ages. Dad knows I want the anvil but he haven't given it to me yet and keeps mentioning that he wants to sell it. I think he fears that I'll stop visiting him if I took the anvil home. Not true but I'm not pressing him for it. I did made it very clear that the anvil was the only possession that I wanted from him if he kicks the bucket. My brother can have everything else. Knowing my luck, I'll have to pry the anvil out of his dead hands when the time comes.

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I stopped the truck in the middle of the road.  "Oooo!" sounded liked I was going to drive his truck through the glass, nails and rocks to blow out all four tires.  "Oooo!" to him meant that I didn't see the turnout and I needed to start making the U-turn. I blew up at him since he still didn't trust my driving.  When I drove down the street and made the U-turn in a parking lot, he had the decency not to argue with me this time.

The common experience from my other relatives is that when a person reaches the age to be an Angry Senior Citizen, they loose the ability to ask for help and communicate verbally.  Seldom does Dad ever ask for something.  He wants me to read his mind and decode the various throat clearing, Morse code tapping and other noises that he creates to gain attention. When I don't respond the way he wants me to, he gets mad at me.

After putting up with this for two months, I was going bonkers.

We had visited every Wal-Mart in the area except for the one in Morgan Hill that was smaller even by Wal-Mart standards. This Wal-Mart on Story Road turns out to be a short freeway hop from my place. I thought it was further out since it was on the east side of San Jose. According to expert opinions when I was growing up in the 1980s, east side is the wrong side of the railroad tracks (Mom at home) and the "ghetto side" (Geraldo Rivera on national TV). Times have change and the area looks better than I remembered. The store itself was cramped for space since it was being convered to a super store.  That's good since the nearest super store is about 30 miles in Gilroy. I might start shopping here in the future when I have money to blow.  I usually spend $100 USD whenever I'm at a Wal-Mart. Dad was shopping to restock his trailer when he returns home.

Naturally, Angry Senior Citizen had to drive like a bat out of hell on the electric shopping cart.

The doctor cancelled his appointment the next morning and he did what I'd been telling everyone for months what he would do: loaded up his truck and took off down the road.  He left behind trash and dirty laundry, and stiffed me on the rent. He claimed that paying $800 USD to fix my car was enough compensation to cover the second month's rent.  I told him that those repairs were for pre-existing conditions that he should've fixed before he gave me the car.  Since he was tighter than Ebenezer Scrooge with money, he never gone to the mechanic to fix a problem that he could've gotten on by with. Never mind that I did his taxes to get an $800 USD return that covered the car repairs, and saved him $1,800 USD in car insurance when I help him switch to AAA.

Of course, none of that counted to Angry Senior Citizen.

That was two weeks ago. My place is finally back to normal after a thorough cleaning to kill all the dust bunnies and remove all traces of Angry Senior Citizen.  Except for the carpets that had dribbles from the wheelchair.  I don't have the extra money to rent a rug cleaner yet. Meanwhile, I'm driving up to Sacramento every two weeks to make sure Dad is doing okay. The first time I went up to his place by myself was on the Saturday before Mother's Day, he paid me $50 USD for gas and wanted the spare change back.

Some things never change.

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We also visited four different Wal-Marts (San Jose, Gilroy, Mountain View and Roseville).  The San Jose (Monterey Road) and Mountain View stores were smaller than average with a limited grocery selection.  The first time Dad and I visited the Mountain View store was 6:30AM on Black Friday after Thanksgiving in 2005 where 16 police cars were outside for a riot that broke out over a cheap flat screen TV. On these two recent occasions, he was able to drive an electric cart around the store.  If he was driving the truck, he would've been arrested for DUI because of his medications.  Although he managed to run over my feet a half-dozen times, he didn't kill anyone despite all the near misses and plowing through the crowds.  He didn't like the Gilroy super store because the grocery department was on the wrong side (left instead of right), selection was limited and prices were higher than the local grocery stores.  The Roseville super store was, of course, perfect.  Except he was mad that three electric carts were out of order and the other two were being used by people more mobile than him.  Angry Senior Citizen in a wheelchair was less frightening than Angry Senior Citizen in an electric cart on full throttle.

Last month I had to take my car to the shop to replace the vacuum hose, fix a ground fault and install a new Interstate battery.  I was able to take the old battery back to Kragen for a warranty exchange and the shop bought back the battery.   However, that wasn't the end of my car troubles.  This month I started having trouble starting up the car.  Went back into the shop where all the mechanics groaned when I drove up.  This time the ignition switch and right headlight was replaced.  Dad took the ignition switch apart to confirm that the contacts inside were worn down, which might've been the cause of all the electrical problems in the car.  The brand new Kragen battery was diagnosed as bad—the third one in a year.  I bought an Interstate battery from the shop.  When the clerks at Kragen found no record that the recent battery was exchanged under warranty six weeks before, they took back the battery and gave me a full refund.  Dad paid $800 USD in repair bills to get my car up and running again.  Whenever he complains about that, I remind him that he gave me a lemon—or a lime, the car is green—for my birthday three years ago and the yearly cost of insurance, registration and smog is more than the blue book value of the car.

Dad will have his last doctor appointment next week.  Whether he gets a clean bill of health or not, I'm kicking him out.  After two months of putting up with Angry Senior Citizen, I'm looking forward to getting my own place back.  He'll be happy to get his own place back in Sacramento where all the over-the-air TV channels are in English and his neighbors are white as slice bread.  (He's not racist, just stuck in the 1950s.)  I'm treating his departure the same way I treated the departure of the bedbugs a few summers ago: renting a rug shampooer to clean the carpets, putting my dedicated office space back together, and cleaning the apartment from top to bottom. I'll be driving up to Sacramento every week or two to visit him and make sure he's doing fine now that I know how to get to his trailer park and have the endurance to put up with the long drives.

Fortunately, my car doesn't come with a backseat driver in the passenger seat.

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For the first time in ten years, I was filing my own federal tax return on paper.  I entered all the numbers into TurboTax and then figured out where to put all the numbers on the paper form.  I owed the federal government $452 in taxes on my unemployment benefits.  I wasn’t going to pay $150 to file through TurboTax.  My tax situation is somewhat complicated by the business side of being a writer.  If I didn’t have that, I would’ve followed the same steps that I did with Dad’s tax returns.  Fortunately, state owed me $338.  With Dad helping out with half the rent and covering my newest car repair bill for a replacement ignition switch and battery, I was able to pay off the tax.  I filed my state return for free using CalFile.

Doing my own taxes made me appreciate the small business angle that I haven’t considered before.  I’ve been writing in red for the last five years from buying all those red pens to revise my work.  I haven’t started making money until now and I’m hoping to break even this year.  After struggling to fill out my own tax return, I took some steps to avoid repeating this awful annual ritual.

First, breaking down the numbers on a quarterly basis.  Shoving all the receipts into an envelope all year long is the easy part.  Figuring out how to break down the numbers at tax time is very time consuming.  Doing that every three months will make putting the final numbers together a snap.  I also did my first profit and loss statement.  I haven’t done one of those since I took business courses in college.  I’m updating that every two weeks to keep tabs on my income and expenses.  Ideally, income goes up and expenses come down.

Second, I started filing estimated taxes for both federal and state.  Technically, I’m not required to do so.  This is a preventive measure on my part to avoid not paying enough tax when I file my return next year.  If you start making some serious money as a writer, you want your tax bill to be current at all times.  Since I’ve shown a loss on tax returns for five years with little income, I need to prove that I’m running a business.  Only an honest small business would fork over money to the tax man.

Third, if I do reach the break even point and make more than $400 in profits, I will have to pay a 15% self-employment tax.  At first, that made me mad.  Looking into this deeper, this is half of what I would be paying in a regular job plus the employer contribution.  This amount is then reduced in half as a personal deduction.  Doesn't make much sense but that's how the tax law works.

I’m hoping that this year will be very profitable indeed—even if I do have to pay more in taxes.

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The moment we got out of hospital, he tried to assert his independence and insisted on driving to San Jose in his truck.  That was a scary ride with him straddling the lanes and nearly hitting some cars in a zero visibility rain storm.  My brother and I forced him to give up the keys at a gas station in Fairfield.  Only later when I went through the medication that he's taking did I discovered that he was driving under the influence.

I drove his truck back.  A big Dodge Ram with a Hemi engine that my Dad was reluctant to let me drive.  I have never driven a truck before and never a vehicle with an engine that powerful.  However, I did followed my brother all the way back without incident and Dad fell asleep because I'm a careful driver.  My brother is the one who routinely gets tickets for speeding and tossing his cigarette butts out on the highway.  I went into computers and he went into cars, which I have to constantly remind Dad about when he thinks I'm driving too carefully.

He's been getting better since I'm taking care of him now.  I used to take care of a roommate for four years who died from Lou Gerhig's Disease.  All the old habits of denying myself to take care of someone else kicked back in.  Although I'm squeamish about needles, I got used to injecting Dad with insulin four times a day.  The swelling in his legs has gone down and the sores on his feet are healing.  A home nurse visits us once or twice a week and we been to Kaiser in Santa Clara for doctor appointments.

While I been driving Dad around in his truck to doctor appointments at Kaiser in Santa Clara, my own car ended up in the shop.  For the last two months, the engine been stalling out in idle every two weeks in the parking lot at my apartment complex.  Then it started happening more frequently at intersections and once on the highway.  When I drove back from seeing Alice in Wonderland at Oakridge Mall last Saturday night, I noticed the battery light flickering on the dashboard and told my friend that the engine would stall out a moment before it did at my apartment complex.  I went over to Kragen to have the battery tested and it appeared that the alternator was overcharging the battery.  I took the car over to the John's Bascom Auto for troubleshooting and the mechanics couldn't figured out the problem.

Then Dad mentioned a loose ground cable may be the cause.

My car used to be his car.  Unless I'm having a problem with the car, he never tells me what problems he had.  (After having the car for two years now, everything should be fixed.)  When I informed the mechanics, they fixed two ground faults, replaced a vacuum hose to the brake booster and installed a brand new battery.  Seems like I'm driving a completely different car and the brakes are no longer stiff.  I'm taking the old battery back to Kragen to exchange under warranty.  The mechanics said they would buy back their battery if I got mine replaced.  Dad is paying for the repairs since I been fixing all the problems that he had worked around to avoid fixing.

How is this affecting me as a writer?  A lot.  My dedicated office space was cut in half to make room for another twin bed.  Since Dad has the TV running 24 hours a day, he's been respecting my privacy to work on writing after dinner.  I had submitted my short story collection to the Prairie Schooner Book Prizes contest last weekend after spending months editing the 28 short stories that I written over the last three years.  This week I'm finalizing my vampire novella to submit to an ebook publisher.  I had reviewed two-third of the current draft today while in a waiting room at Kaiser today.  Next week I start editing my first novel in earnest for the next nine months.  Plus being in a hospital environment is giving me a lot of useful medical information for future stories.  If Dad is going to stay with me for a while, writing is the only escape I have from the TV and his snoring.

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