I know you don't really care about what we've been doing for the past two weeks. I wish we didn't have to care. But we do. And in a way, by making ourselves care about this process we are trying to turn it into something more than just the random reading of dollar amounts out loud for twelve thousand receipts while an electronic spread sheet grows like a tapestry in front of us. We're trying to make the task at hand an exercise in personal identification - what the cultural studies texts call the making of 'selfhood'.

That's right: we're filing our taxes as 'Self Employed' in this country and in this province for the first time ever.

Don't get me wrong - we have been filing our taxes here (okay, a few years late, I admit) - but never as Self Employed. While living in the UK for the past four years we laboured through their medieval system and wasted money on a bad accountant in order to fill out the labyrinthine (and fairly useless) paperwork that was part of what Inland Revenue called 'Self Assessment.' It felt more like self-immolation. Anyway, we still get weekly notices from IR about National Insurance payments that we apparently didn't make in 2004 (for the National Health Service most people think the government should have been paying us!) and we're still getting dinged for late filing fees from the tax offices on Bridge Street in Manchester even though we've now sent them three letters proving they misplaced our forms.

Anyway, maybe it was because the British tax experience has been so horrific that we've embraced this exercise in provincial and federal filing with such gusto. Or maybe it's because we've had such tremendous support and good advice from friends in the arts who also file as Self Employed and have totally figued out the system. Or maybe it's because every time I've phoned Revenue Canada I actually get to speak to a human being within three minutes of dialling (and, in my case, very nice human beings with - get this - a sense of humour!) Or maybe it's because plowing through so many receipts faded from having gone through the laundry or crunched from living in David's Schwitterian pockets for days on end has allowed us to recall, fondly, our move back to Canada.

Bill by bill (blow by blow), receipt by receipt, we have tracked our whereabouts since we stepped off the plane last June. It's a wierd kind of accounting this one - accounting for one's life - but at least the balance sheet is not only a financial one.