Budgets, Cheese Sculptures, and Assorted Childhood Memories.

I decided to make a budget for the upcoming school year. I opened Excel and got to work. I began this task with a pleasant sense of accomplishment. Look at me. I'm 366 months old and I can organize and plan ahead. I can add and subtract. Who cares that I'm eating Cheerios out of a plastic baby bowl? I'm an ADULT. But somewhere between credit card payment number 1 and credit card payment number 43,678, I realized that there is no freakin' way to make the numbers positive. I seemed to remember some trick about adding/subtracting negative numbers to make a positive number or some other nonsense from middle school. I believe the following poem explains it quite clearly:

Good things happening to good people: a good thing
Good things happening to bad people: a bad thing
Bad things happening to good people: a bad thing
Bad things happening to bad people: a good thing

I am good people. Bad debt things are happening to me. That's a bad thing. Bad is negative. Why are my numbers always negative?! But... wait a minute, bad things happening to bad people is good? Are you saying if I am a bad person, that's a good thing? What the hell kind of sorcery is this new math? What kind of lessons are we teaching our children? (Disregard the fact that I am a teacher and allow me my righteous indignation please.)

So now I'm furiously stuffing Cheerios into my face, crumbs and saliva flying, jabbing at keys with concentrated rage, cursing at my computer... -2,459.00 - 312.01 -112.14 - 77.63 = Doooooom!

Deep breaths. Put down the Cheerios. There is only one thing that can make me feel better.

My husband? Exercise? Meditation? A financial planner? Slot machines?

No silly...

Cheese sculptures.

Allow me to blow your mind.

Hello beautiful seahorse. You are a loyal species, making music, and sweet, monogamous seahorse love only during a full moon.You could be in a Nicholas Spark's novel if only you were real. But you're not. You're made of Wisconsin cheddar. Sad.

Violin. I played the violin for 8 years. Our orchestra teacher desperately wanted to steal a bit of glory from the marching band. He was the mastermind behind "Strolling Strings." A group of sullen adolescent string players, roaming the hallways of our high school, playing zippy favorites like Ode to Joy and Ashokan Farewell. I was very seriously ill during every scheduled performance, so I could not tell you much more about it.

Abe. Good guy. Nice beard. No painful adolescent memories here.

My mom listened to the oldies station throughout my childhood. I liked most of the jams (excluding Classical Gas, which is garbage), but I really took a liking to a religious ballad they sometimes played. It went a little something like this: "One toke over the line, sweet Jesus, one toke over the line. Sitting downtown in a railway station, one toke over the line." Cheesus makes me think of that song. 

This cheese sculpture is a genuine piece of art. I think the artist really captured the rage and helplessness that one might possibly feel while creating a budget. Brilliant.

This cheese sculpture is supposed to be the former CEO of Apple. I think it looks a bit like my dad.

Brilliant.