Mr. Man, the Accountant

After two years of struggling to look like I knew what I was doing with a computerized bookkeeping program, my accountant finally said, "You know, I think it's time you let me take over." I breathed a sigh of relief, glad for the excuse to stop.

"Well, I could do it," I hear. Mr. Man has stepped in again.

"Knock yourself out, "I said, but I still planned on handing everything over to Mr. Accountant in March.

So one weekend, Mr. got out the IBM and surrounded himself with my Adidas shoebox full of receipts, and the endless stacks of papers I had thrown on and around my desk.  This was going to take a while.

After a few questions about the program and where everything was in my "tracking system" of cake orders, he started inputting my income.

"Where are the customer receipts?"
"Um, well, I kind of stopped doing that since nobody wanted one."
"Well, how do you know what you sold?"
"It's on the calendar...see here I've written the cake title and who it was for."
"But where's the price?"
"Oh..maybe it's on an email...er, no, they contacted me through facebook...  Let me look."

And for the next half an hour I showed him the insides of my head: I had filed away every order in my photographic memory instead of writing it down.  Some came from email (I have three accounts), some from Facebook (I have two accounts), some from phone (written in a book, a  notepad, and a few illegible sticky notes (written while the oven timer was going off), and then there were the online sales on a totally different website...

And that was just the income.

It was all coming to light: the reason I had trouble preparing for tax season.  Okay, but I found each and every customer! For the next day and a half, there was a lot of sighing, muttering, and Mr.'s hands waving in the air, shaking an invisible head. He had to wake me up a few times that night to ask me where a certain invoice was.  Invoice? What's that?

Mom stopped by for a visit while this was all going on.  She looked at the steaming redhead on the couch, with his head in the computer screen, and his arms waving, out of the corner of her eye.  She raised her eyebrows.

I smiled at her. "This is what keeps our marriage alive, mom." I said, a little loudly, "I mess things up, and he rescues me!"

All I can hear is some growling, and muttering about "constant" and "crazy" coming from the other room.

Now everything is labelled, I have strict instructions and have to stick to them.  I think he's saved Mr. Accountant a lot of trouble (and a big pay check).  But, despite all this, Mr. is impressed with how well the cake business does ;)

Happy 12th Anniversary, to my super, Mr. Man.  May I continue to bring spice to your life, and craziness to your day - and may you continue to rescue me from myself, and never get bored!

Erin