I don't need a man, I need an accountant...

Today I started my day with all those wonderful morning things. Birds chirping. sunlight pouring in the window. Little kitty faces nuzzling me to "get the hell up already!" An email from my bank gentling letting me know that if I was hoping to overdraw my bank account by about $100 then Mission Accomplished!

Oh crap.

See, here's the deal: I don't balance my checking account. I never have. Or more to say I've tried a couple of times, but it doesn't work w/ my sad little brain.

But I also just about NEVER write checks, and this is exactly why: the time delay thing. That's what got me here. Checks I wrote a couple of weeks ago just finally, yesterday, hit my bank. Why? I have no idea. Either the businesses that I wrote these checks to don't really need the money or they are as bad at managing their funds as I am, but whatever. It doesn't matter why. They get to do that, because I'm supposed to remember that I wrote these checks and until they come out of the bank I'm supposed to remember that they're out there. That's what I'm supposed to do.

That's clearly, though, not what I do. Or did. For me it's much more "once spent, it's gone." I'd written these checks weeks ago and I'd mentally called them "done" and so when I paid my bills online the other night I failed to say to myself "oh yeah, and remember that the balance you're seeing here now is actually $200 LESS then that. Even though it doesn't look like it now. But remember that. Because it is."

The other funny part (funny like "god, what the HELL is wrong with me really?" funny) is that I have a check for $250 in my purse. With a deposit slip clipped jauntily to it. All ready for depositing and enjoying in all it's monetary goodness. This has been there for a while, but I keep forgetting to GO to the bank. Because not only do I hate to write checks, but I hate to get them too. In my perfect world we'd get rid of actual cash and little paper slips that pretend to be cash and we'd all just have the little magic chip in our thumb that we stick on the magic thumbchip reader and it KNOWS how much money we have and moves it from person's bank acct A to retail person's acct B. Right then. Done and done.

The only reason that I wrote a bunch of checks in the first place, thereby confusing my normal money management system, is because the purse got stolen. So here's the big punchline to that story: Though the DoucheBage who stole my purse got only $3 in cash, he has since cost me (figuring in my head, carry the 2, picture me w/ tongue sticking out corner of mouth while I have to think about numbers...) about $400. Ha. ha. ha...

The Queen has told me many times about how in her relationship with the King it's very clear who manages the money: he does. Not because she can't (she can do math. She's smart and also hot.) but because she's like me: she doesn't WANT to manage the money. She knows that they have different strengths and weaknesses, and one of his strengths is being really good at keeping their money situation copasetic, and one of her strengths is buying super-cool shoes. And as long as he does his part, and then tells her how much money there is in the super-cool shoe budget, she can do her part.

So as I build my idea of the perfect dude here's absolutely one of my requirements: money-management-man. I'd be happy making that money, putting it into the bank (via direct deposit of course), fixing the car, wiring the stereo and disposing of the cat poop and dead snakes. If he'll make dinner, clean the bathroom and manage the money. Anybody know someone like that? Anybody? Anybody?