Flubbered

Jan. 2026

Rent

Car

Food

Dining

Grooming

Household

Misc.

Spending

Clothes

Utilities

INCOME

Life is where you find it. My life is in words but sometimes my words are not where I left them. There’s this thing called “One Drive” on my computer & it resides somewhere in the atmosphere, I’m told – the ‘cloud’. I’d rather have it in a kitchen drawer where I can get to it.

Specifically, I keep a spreadsheet of expenses. It’s more decorative than all else as I don’t really follow how much I’ve spent on food or gas or getting breakfast at Millie’s. I just log in the receipts in case I ever want to check these. However, I’m quite compulsive on this data entry so I keep up with it. Now that it’s January, I want a summary of what went where in 2025. Guess where it went? Into the cloud.

So I pulled up the old/old one ending with June & just copied off the headers. Why didn’t June go into the stupid cloud? I don’t need the one that ends in June & perhaps that is why. I started one for 2026 & put it on the desktop. I see a year ahead of filling up the desktop like I sneer at others for doing. “Why don’t you put these into files?” I ask with a slight curl to my lip.

I can’t stand when universe catches up to me – like my Mom not having a sense of smell & making me smell hamburger thru my entire childhood just as I was getting to Chapter 5 of some Black Stallion book. “Carol!” she’d call in that Command Voice which only mothers possess & maybe 4-star generals, I’m not sure, never having served.

My heart would seize. I would slam the book shut, (losing my place) & dash into the kitchen, certain I’d left something on fire. “Smell this for me?” she’d demand, holding out a brown-paper-wrapped package of bloody meat. I wanted to just back away, but would dutifully take a sniff & say, “I don’t smell anything, Mom.” She’d whip the package into the sink to rinse the meat & I was dismissed with the gesture. That is, until she realized I must have been doing something like reading in my room as the Voice would again snag me mid-stride, “Why are  you in the house anyway Go outside & play!? You have the whole beach, go play!”

Beach? The beach is empty except for the cold wind sweeping across it, tugging the trash out of the wire baskets. The sky is gray as a prisoner’s underwear. The boardwalk is shivering, the railing forming a rime of ice. “Mooooommmmm” would rise the whine within; the one never spoken aloud. Trudging to my bedroom to put on my Keds, I’d grab a jacket & mumble down the cellar stairs to wrest my bike from the wall as tho it was all the bike’s fault I had a mom who believed one could never get enough Fresh Air. I’d head to the playground & dispiritedly climb on the cold swing, grabbing the clanking chains & launch. Then I’d think about why I allowed her to upset me so much I even forgot my book! Reading can be done on a winter beach & can even be entertaining if the story’s good enough.

Well, all that to say that I do not have a sense of smell anymore thanks to Government Covid & I buy chicken tenders to cook right away when I get home. With onions.

What was I on about? Oh yeah, people not filing their stuff ‘correctly.’ My righteousness about that topic.

So, I called up my spreadsheet & the computer said, effectively, you can’t get there from here. What it really said was “make sure you have access to One Drive & try again.” How did it get to One Drive anyway? Who moved my cheese? And, like the nasty blue screen of death I never understood, I’m flubbered. I can’t recreate six months of recycled receipts. I have no idea what I spent except about a third of it went for something besides hamburger & the rest for rent & the car lease.

2026. Rent / car / household / miscellaneous / entertainment / clothes / grooming. 

Sigh.