By Elissa Caterfino Mandel

I just ate my dog’s body weight in Trader Joe’s dark chocolate almond candy. Maybe I should get a pass because at least the candy had coconut flavoring in it. According to some nutrition tables, coconut is considered a fruit. It’s also, according to what I read, known as a dry drupe. That’s exactly how I feel about myself after my chocolate orgy — like a dry drupe. I behaved like a veritable savage in my own kitchen, all because I didn’t feel like doing my taxes.

My friend Julie tells me when I feel this way about something, I should go to the basement and work out on my exercise bike and stay as far away from my pantry as possible. I did not do this. I walked right into the caloric minefield, having told myself it was okay because I had no carbs at dinner. Really?

I used to think when I stopped getting my period, I would no longer do this horrible thing with the candy. Yes, there’s that and the other fairy tale I live by, that I’ll do 13,000 steps a day, including on days I do other forms of exercise.

To make myself feel better about the shock of chocolate my body has just absorbed, I think about something I read that said if you eat enough chocolate, it will make your skin shiny.

So with a shiny sheen, I begin combing through what is left of 2018, a pile of composite statements that should be beyond familiar to me because I see them year after year. I put them in piles, aware that because I can’t find the tax organizer that was sent over email six weeks ago, I’m collecting papers without a map. I feel like I do when I agree to play video games with my sons. I’m pressing buttons randomly and getting nowhere.

This process of “getting the taxes ready” plays into my biggest fear: that I’ll miss something and get audited and not be able to account for my own financial behavior.

First off, I don’t remember year to year how many papers I should be looking for. Yes there are my husband’s K-1s. But in terms of tracking expenses for my own small business? I love to throw things away, especially crumpled pieces of paper that invariably end up not in my files but instead in my pockets.

And then there are charitable donations — there’s no reason to be chasing them down like an animal in heat at the end of March. I could be disciplined and track them as I go. Nope. I never do this. So I end up spending hours reading through old credit card statements and scrolling through old accounts to find out how generous I was back in September.

Based on my search, I discover what I already know. There’s no set time during which I contribute, and while a few regulars appear every year, many donations are new, unexpected, and hard to ferret out. I make charitable contributions spontaneously, the way I buy art.

I’d rather be doing anything than this: shopping on Amazon, paying bills, sweeping out my garage. Taxes point up every one my shortcomings. I don’t enjoy reading directions. I’m kind of lukewarm about numbers. Look, I get numbers as a concept but I don’t particularly enjoy them as individuals.

It turns out that in 2018 I was generous, clearly to everybody –except myself. It is now a lovely end-of-March evening. The Voice is on. I am stuck in my office, filled with regret not solely because of taxes but also because of all the chocolate I ate

Finally I’m done at least for the night. And I do what I should have done when the evening began. I go back into the pantry and pick up what’s left of the Trader Joe’s box of coconut-flavored chocolate almonds — and unceremoniously dump it into the garbage.