Idiot Taxes

I took off almost empty on Grewinck Lake today. It's the child of Grewinck Glacier which has receded a couple miles in the last hundred years and left an icy pool of water behind. I had to give the park service a bunch of documents proving I am authorized to operate an aircraft in the confines of Kachemak Bay State Park, where the glacial lake is located. I wonder if my driver's license and EMT card authorize me to take icebergs out of the lake to resell to tourists in town as Alaskan martini ice? If so, this might be a lucrative summer after all.
I waited to buy a plane ticket until the last minute. I have checked the price on it every week for the last month. It has gone up every week. I officially paid $200 more than needed by waiting. Some of you are thinking: "Pilots buy plane tickets?" Yes, we do. But I think that if the captain and the first officer have the fish for dinner and pass out and I have to take over and save the day, they will give me a $200 voucher for my next purchase, black out dates excluded.
Only in this unlikely event will I break even on spending way too much on a flight I have known for years I was going to take.
My life is not as foreign to these idiot taxes as I would like it to be. I pay a late fee on my phone bill every month. I buy new sunglasses every week because I can't find the old ones and am 'too cool' to wear one of those leash things. In the winter, I do the same with mittens. I bank at Wells Fargo, which charges more fees than a foreign ATM.
If I had hired an assistant (glorified adult babysitter) five years ago to manage the money under my mattress for me, I would have saved enough in Idiot Fees by now to pay him. So, next time I go to Grewinck, I am going to fill the float compartments with ice and test the market. I will put any earnings into an assistant salary fund. Not at Wells Fargo.