I am doing the spreadsheet I need to do for taxes, and I am motoring through it all right. I am embarrassed to admit this, but I have not balanced the checkbook for one business since April 2005. My dad (one of my business partners) would kill me if he read that. He wants to know, to the second and to the penny, exactly how much is in every account that I have. I usually look it up right before a meeting, to sound like I know what I am talking about. The cold was finally getting to my little toesies, though, so I have on two pairs of socks. They still haven't thawed though.

Mower and I waited tables for years. We have no real formal training in business, finance, or overall management. It sounded like a peachy keen idea to form businesses with my family (actually, I was for them at first, and then against it when I found out my brother was going to be involved, then for it, then my dad was against my mom being involved, then we all got involved and then we finally bought my mom and brother out of two of them). But I swear, I just am not good at this stuff. More precisely, I am not good at remembering to do this stuff. I'd rather have a full Brazilian bikini wax than crunch these numbers. Almost. The pain of getting my underarms waxed while pregnant with Handsome is still fresh. So scratch that. I'd rather watch The Wiggles than do this crap. Thank God they aren't on. I don't want to test that theory.

We used to just have a PAY ME wall. We would tack up the bills in order of which needed to be paid first. We tried to track how much we brought in and went out on a dry-erase board with red for out and green for in. The money itself went into envelopes in the drawer for specific bills, and we'd only deposit it when we needed to write checks. Whatever we could pay for in cash, we did. We deposited our paychecks, but here in my state, you only make $2.13 an hour as a server, so our paychecks were usually nothing after taxes and insurance were removed.

So this whole system of keeping up with every little detail still hasn't sunk in that it's pretty important to do, every single withdrawal and every single penny balanced. I always leave it until the last minute, and then get caught up for a month or so. I am trying to do it early this year so we can know where we stand and move forward. Yeah, good luck with that! I really do want to do better, so I should just get the whole, "I wasn't trained for this" shit out of my head and do it. I wasn't trained to be a mommy either, but I think I'm doing an okay job of that. Back to the grindstone.