Dog with a bone

Honestly, you would think I was getting paid for this - many many years ago I was a chaperone/leader on the worlds most frustrating (particularly for a fundy survivor) high school church group mission trip - ostensibly to build an orphanage (or, apparently, an "orpahnge") in the middle of the freaking desert, Mexico. Of the rattlesnakes-were-killed-on-this-trip sort of middle of the freaking desert. And frustration? This trip spawned bi-monthly meetings of the local women survivors to drink and continue to release our venom until it was (mostly) containable.

At one of the 'tell me how you *really* feel about it' drinks-fests, we got to speculating about the money making potential of an orphanage that will never get finished and will never house children. (This thought was a natural spin off when considering that the buildings we mostly worked on were meant for staff and that the first priority in building the orphanage was to build a freaking wall around 27 acres of land. 27 acres!!!! That'll help the children.) (Oh, and I note that priorities remain oddly skewed - the website is currently over the moon because they finally were able to put up the - no - I can't paraphrase - I must quote directly - I won't even bother to put in the necessary sic - maybe it is a pun:

Our 600 lb. Granite Plaque goes up above the front doorway to the children's home. We've been waiting for 10 yrs. for this day! The plaque states; Solomente por la Gloria de Dios ~ Only for the Glory of God! It is a beautiful site to see!

needless to say, the plaque is beautifully mounted on an unfinished building.)

Considering that the project began around 1997 (or, at least, tax returns are available from 1997) and we went in maybe 1999? 2000? I block a lot of this out. And here we are at 2007 with a long 'to do' list yet to go - little things like the home for the orphans, a water supply, a septic system, a fund to support the orphans... (happily the US headquarters, U.S. warehouse and U.S. office building (where the founder and his family lives and works) has been completed - phew.)

So - back to the title - I've been making like a dog with a bone over the tax returns - and it was when I started delving into prior year returns, figuring out the 'overhead to services' ratio and filling up a page with notes that I realized I might still be just a teensy bit bitter about the whole thing, and it might be best to stop, blog it out, and go home!