I Coulda Been A

CPA! Not really. As well as I always did in math in school, I never really liked it. Even now, I prefer words to numbers. But since I’m the one who’s always on the computer, I get to do all the online business matters – such as income tax. When we both worked and had lovely incomes, my husband turned the chore over to an accountant. After I disabled-retired, and he had already taken early retirement, the accountant was still hired for the next year. Once we settled into our new normal (also defined as much lower on the income scale) the accountant was an expense we could remove. The next year, my husband tried it long hand, and the air was blue with all his comments. So two years ago, he asked me to do it online. I will admit that the format is user friendly, and it goes fairly quickly, but I see figures swimming in front of my eyes. Now, it’s that time again, and I see myself putting it off for as long as I can. In the past, he would read the figures to me, but I had to slow up to read each direction, and I usually ended up screaming at him to stop reading numbers. It wasn’t our finest hour! This year I plan to enter the figures on my own and preserve some peace around here. So far, I’ve established an account, and today I’ll start to enter the numbers. Tomorrow, I’ll have him proofread everything with me, which may be easier said than done. It’s funny, but my Dad always commended me on my math skills, and by the time I hit Calculus in college, most people thought I’d do something in the math field. No way! I may be able to add a string of numbers in my head, and I can ascertain the solution to difficult problems, but on the whole, I hate math. Even the look of numbers isn’t pretty – there’s no cursive number system, and they just look funky. Now, look at the flow of beautiful words – they dance across a page. Plus, there are so many words – numbers just keep using the same ten over and over. I’m sure that mathematicians see it as an orderly progression, and they rely on that consistency. For me, it’s so confining to have to use the same figures over and over. I love puzzles, and there’s always a Sudoku or ken-ken in the paper, but I go to the crosswords, cryptograms, and scrabble sections. Once in a while I’ll do the number ones, but I don’t enjoy them. If it’s a choice between reading a good book and working on numbers, the former always wins. Guess I’m a hopeless case. Well, enough of these words – I need to pull out the paperwork and enter some figures. I’ll have my headache meds ready! Peace, Muff