The Return of Fortune Cookie, Part 2

Okay, it's been my job to harass you readers, all 1 or 2 of you, about reading my older blogs and remembering their contents. Yep, today is one of those days. Being a 'Part 2' you can bet your pretty little bum there's a 'Part 1' laying about somewhere buried in the annals of my blogs. If you are unfamiliar with it go find it. If you have forgotten it, maybe you want a refresher. If you are disinterested get out. I'm grouchy.

Well... once upon a time, after lunch finished up, me and my co-workers received the dish of fortune cookies customary at a Chinese restaurant once dining has come to an end. How wordy is that? I have a thing about fortune cookies. There is another fortune cookie post besides 'Part 1' as well, should you be interested about my things. One of my 'things' is I don't choose which fortune cookie I receive. I allow the plate to go around and grab whichever cookie is left or whichever is chosen for me by another or whatever other happenstance decides which cookie for me. It's part of fortune I suppose. Or I'm just a goofball. Probably the latter.

In any regard, my cookie comes my way. The very cookie destined for me and me alone. On that day, in that restaurant, that cookie and I came to an inevitable meeting. One more sentence here, building anticipation. Of course, if you've read 'Part 1' you already know all of this, including what's next. This is sort of the long version of the recap you get at the start of some serial television show, where they basically show the entire previous episode. Humour me. Remember, I'm grouchy today.

And so there it was. In my hands. My fate wrapped in a tasty crunchy cookie shell. I busted it open and ate the cookie. And read my fortune.

"You will have a close encounter of a serious kind."

Well, that struck me right away as not a good thing. And honestly, as much as I tried to shake it, I had a bad feeling after reading that. As if Dracula himself was clawing at my bedroom window, waiting for me to invite him in to feast...

Several days later my ex-wife calls me up and says we are being audited by the IRS.

This is where the story will get less elaborate, partly I'm just not interested in it, partly because there you've got the fortune delivered and the story is pretty much over, and partly because I do not want to give the details of the audit out. Because it was bad. Because it's about trust betrayed. Because I spent over a month digging back through our taxes, and the more I dug, the worse it got. There was a lot of BS in there I didn't know about. People can surprise you with the things they'll do, no doubt about that...

In the end things went fairly well considering how bad it could have been, as sometimes you are able to correct problems. Some of them anyway, others you just shell out for. That's no fun. And I'm still recovering from the financial attack. But you take your lumps and you carry on.

So the close encounter was the IRS. Everything else was just dessert.

It's kind of funny, the timing of events, the fortune cookie, the audit. It really did strike me as odd, and a bit spooky. So laugh. Never mind that I got heavy there. Just laugh, because this event has sunk into the depths of the past... and is now relegated to life as a funny story...