if you know...

me, you know of my willingness to admit to being hopelessly math impaired. I have this problem with all things numerical. My story, maybe not 100% accurate, but still my story. I got behind in the fifth grade one day when I was out sick, probably something like chicken pox, that was going through the class as a routine childhood illness being passed from body to body. On the day I was not in attendance, they took up multiplication. I started off behind and never got caught up. I still cannot multiply to this day. I'm ok with things up to the fives or sixes, mostly due to learning to count by fives, and six isn't all that complicated either. But after that: I'm lost until you get to ten. I can do a few of the nines as a result of remembering the numerals in the answer will add up to nine. Like 72 and 81.

So, you should be as impressed as I was when I got up this morning, early, to have a clear, fresh start.  Ready to tackle the chore of reconciling my checkbook register with the monthly bank statement. And lo-and-behold, it happened on the first attempt. There were a couple of things I had not listed, like a monthly debit and the funds that automatically transfer into a savings account. But after those odd ball items were inserted in the proper sequence, and I got out the calculator: Voila!

It was perfectly perfect.  I wish I had a video of me doing the happy dance, when I got up to put all my tools away. But even if I had some to make the photo of me delightedly hopping around, I would not know how to post it... So you will just have to imagine how amusing it was: me in my pajamas, dancing in a circle, pleased as punch to have all the numbers come out even on the first try.

Even more impressive as I admit that there have been times in the past when I would work and work and work at it, with great frustration, and no success. Then finally give up, deciding that the people at the bank/computer generated statement is surely better at this figgerin' than I am, so inserting the number the bank had decided would be my final balance after adding and subtracting. Throw up my hands, pencils, pen, calculator, register, white-out in an admission of defeat and say: "OK. I give up."