To prepare for this bankruptcy, my fella and I have to get together a bunch of paper work.  Part of this paper work entails adding up all that we made in each month of this last year in each of our businesses…and all that we spent each month of this last year in each of our businesses.

I have pretty folders that I keep all of my receipts in, and a pretty book that I write down all of the payments from my clients.  I also have a pretty purple calculator…and very cool pencils.   I gather all of my stuff and place it in organized piles on the kitchen table.  Oh, and I have good music on just to make this even more fun!

I open my calculator, and begin to add up numbers: 247.63+100+50+326.54+ 436.63+ on and on it goes.  Once I get the total, I write it down: $3,057.89.   Hmmmmmm, that doesn’t seem right.  So, I add up the numbers again….$2,036.89. Hmmmmm, a different amount.  Let’s try this again…2 out of 3! $1805.87.  Hmmmmm 2 out of 4.  Again and again.

No total is the same.

You see, in my world, it doesn’t matter how pretty the files are, how cool the pencils are, how purple the calculator is…how organized I am…numbers have a mind of their own.  I rarely get the same answer twice.  If I do…I jump up and down feeling great excitement…like I finally figured out the meaning of life!!

My oldest son (strangely enough) is a mathematics major…he used to love to do word problems in the mornings with breakfast!  He loves that he can count on numbers to be consistent and solid.  What????  Not in my world.  In my world numbers are slippery little suckers that move around alot. Nothin’ solid about them!

The funny thing is…I don’t give up.  I kept on…and on….and on….until 3 hours went by and I still could only get the totals to work out for 2 of the months.  Finally, I stopped and asked my fella if he could help me in the morning.  If I could read him the numbers, and he calculate them, and then I write them down…maybe that would work.  He said “Of course I can help you!”  At that point my brain was so exhausted that I did one of those laugh cry things!

The next morning we sat down with large steaming hot cups of coffee.  Doing it together worked!  We could even add the totals for each month twice (just to make sure) and get the same number.  As long as I didn’t invert the numbers…which happened a few times…my fella just had to watch and make sure I wrote down the numbers right…we were good to go.

So, now that is done and I am ready to organize it all and type it up.  Maybe I should use a cool font with a purple colored text and print it up on really nice paper?!

Well, this is an official document…maybe a cool font with black ink.

I guess the moral of this story is when things don’t add up….ask for help:~)