Reflections - A Stressful Process

The Monkey in the Room

“I feel like the monkey in the room again,” Carol said, her face ashen and shoulders slumped. She pointed a long slender index finger at her head. “It’s not sinking in.”

Five years earlier I had been the monkey in the room. Crowded around the small kitchen table in Nancy’s old farm house, I added columns of figures with no idea of what they meant. Nancy stood at the end of the table, took my totals, and pulled all-nighters to turn in final French Creek Township audit reports.

In my fourth year of auditing, Nancy showed signs of confusion and asked for my help. That gave me some insight into the process. But Nancy’s rapid decline and unexpected death left me in charge. Carol and I took auditor training. I assured the supervisors we could do the audit. As a result Carol, with only two years doing the meaningless adding, and I worked with Nancy’s replacement, Sandi. We made a pact. No all-nighters. And working every step together, the three of us successfully completed the 2021 audit.

This February, we gathered again in the room for Vacation Bible School at the Milledgeville Presbyterian Church to do the 2022 township audit. The ten commandments were written on the chalkboard. Rulers, pens, post it notes, and papers for balancing the state funds were spread over the table.

The first Thursday of the audit I attempted to assure Carol that she added value to our effort. “We’re a team. Everyone brings strengths.” I shuffled through the November checking account statement. “Yours is organizing. Your color coding makes us more efficient.”

“What’s getting me is the reports are organized differently this year.” Sandi made a left-handed check mark. “It would be easier to find things if the reports were organized like last year’s.”

“Jill’s new. She has her own way of doing things.” I bit my lip. I should have agreed with Sandi instead of trying to reason her feelings away. She had a valid point. In our township, no two audits are alike. This gave me the advantage. As a former teacher, I’m used to exploring and making mistakes—that’s how we encourage elementary school students to learn. Those techniques horrified Sandi and Carol. Both former nurses, they expected to learn one way of doing things. Patients could suffer or die if nurses made mistakes. 

Keeping to the pact that Carol and I made when Nancy died, we verified transactions and balanced accounts in every detail—together. I hoped to retire, leaving Carol and Sandi qualified to balance the books so the township wouldn’t have to hire expensive public auditors.

But the process stressed me. The first two nights of the audit I woke hourly. Other nights I dreamed of holding a ruler under ledger lines. My stomach continually clenched as if I were straining to maintain the yoga boat pose. And I wrote about auditing in my morning journal searching for a way to keep the team together and focused.

Friday morning as I scribbled at my secretary desk, Ande jumped up beside me. Purring, he plopped his bottom on the left side of the composition notebook. He rested his front paws on the laptop keyboard.

Stalled over how to express the next thought, I jiggled the mouse to switch from the email tab to AccuWeather on the computer. I’d figure out what to wear then before writing more.

The computer didn’t respond.

I pressed my finger on the touch screen tab.

Still nothing.

Ande must have been pressing a key that blocked my access.

Still wondering what to wear, I shouted to the resident weather expert in the great room. “What’s the temperature going to be today, Spence?”

“Upper fifties, I think.”

“Thanks.” Ending my diversion, I concluded there was no way to reason Carol out of her feelings, but I might divert her into releasing some tension. Maybe I could get her to celebrate little successes like I did. The time we matched our state expenditures to the penny with Jill’s state report, for example, I wiggled my fanny, pumped my fists, and yelled woo-hoo. Carol and Sandi had exchanged tolerant smiles. If Carol would let out a whoop now and then, she might feel more relaxed about auditing.

Feeling pleased with my idea, I glanced over at Ande.

He was calmly observing a video of a bald eagle on the computer screen. Beak tucked under its wings, the back of the sleeping bird’s white head rose and fell among dark brown feathers. The video appeared courtesy of the Big Bear Bald Eagle Nest live cam in California.

Ande Observing the Bald Eagle

I had opened tabs for Gmail, Google Drive, and my farm journal on the computer. How did Ande select a bald eagle out of over a billion websites?

As soon as the auditors scraped their chairs into place around the table Friday, I blurted, “I’ve got a story to tell about what my cat Ande did today.

The two put their pens down and faced me. When I finished, Sandi smiled politely, but Carol squealed and clapped her hands. She wiped a slender finger under her eye and her rosy complexion lasted midway through a morning of verifying amounts of bills with numbers written on the general ledger.

She returned from our lunch break and said in a bubbling voice, “I told my husband about your cat. He laughed and laughed.” Carol slapped her thigh. “If you put a video of that on the internet, you’d get thousands of hits.”

The story of Ande’s eagle got Carol through auditing Friday.

Laughs came less frequently Monday. We tackled the credit card bills—Carol glaring at ledgers, Sandi inspecting bank statements, and me sifting through months of stapled bills. Starting with January seemed logical but proved disastrous.

“This makes no sense.” Carol slammed her pen on the ledger. “Why did they change credit card companies?”

“Damnation! The paperwork is worse than last year.” Sandi rolled her eyes toward the ceiling. “Sorry, Lord. I shouldn’t have said that in church.”

“It’s a new company and two people use the account this year, not one.” I flipped through the crumpled strips looking yet again for the January documents. “The old card belonged to Zina. Since she no longer works for us, we can’t keep using her card.” That fact satisfied the two auditors momentarily. Neither wanted to deal with the notorious past secretary who wrote fictitious reports.

I’d flipped through the bills long enough to realize that the January statement was missing. I would ask Jill to email us a copy. “Let’s look for the February charges and come back to January.” We managed to account for transactions in three months before my co-workers grew uneasy.

“This is taking a lot of time,” Carol said.

“It would make more sense to keep things the same.” Sandi grumbled. “Sorry. I’m venting.”

“Vent all you want.” They had expressed my feelings. “Get it all out.”

Carol and Sandi sang a nonsensical duet, stamped their feet, and grinned ear to ear. Then they dissolved into laughter that rang like pealing church bells.

Carol sighed. “Could we get a list of just the credit card transactions so I don’t have to flip through the whole ledger?”

 

Sandi closed the bank statements. “In the meantime we could work on general revenues.”

“Done.” I stuffed the credit card bills into a folder. “I’ll email Jill during our lunch break.”

After lunch, Carol straightened taller in her chair. “I’ve got something to tell you, Janet.” She paused as if swallowing a tablespoon of dill pickle juice. “I’m not understanding this.” She waved her hand at the plastic tote boxes holding the township folders. “I should know more by now. I’ve prayed to God.” She paused once more—as if praying. “I got my answer this weekend. I’m not running for auditor again. I could never do your job.”

Sandi flashed Carol an indulgent smile. “I can take over, but I’m not ready yet. So Janet has to run for re-election this year.”

Good grief! Running for election meant collecting signatures from registered Democrats in a township populated by Republicans. Besides having wanted to retire after my six year term, the thought of knocking on strangers’ doors to ask them to sign my petition gave me the willies.

At home, I vented.

Charlie waved his arms. “Don’t do it! You don’t like the work. You don’t need the money.”

“I never took the job for the money. I do it as a civic duty.”

“Of course, she’ll run. She complains but she’s venting.” Spence picked up Ande and put him in my arms. “I’ll help you get signatures.”

Petting the cat, I reflected on the stressful job of resolving messes—the auditors did pull together to get every detail right.

Ande nuzzled my neck.

If he could find an eagle on the world wide web, surely I could find at least ten Democrats in the township—even if circulating petitions made me feel like the monkey in the room.

 

Petition without Signatures

 

 Reflections - Cat Lady 

Cat Lady

“You need to stop.” Fists on hips, Spence stood by the stove and scowled. “It’s not fair to the boy. He’ll get depressed losing constantly.”

Glancing down the empty hall where our grown-son Charlie had retreated moments earlier that cloudy January afternoon, I put a rubber band around the deck of Cat Lady cards. “You’ve got a point.” But I resisted taking advice from Spence, a notorious game hater. The Cat Lady game meant more to Charlie and me than a score.

For years, we’d bonded over games. Charlie had given me plenty—cribbage, Pandemic, Ticket to Ride, Flash Point, Agricola, Marrying Mr. Darcy, all their extensions, plus enough others to fill two bookcases in the loft. When he visited on vacations, I spent many an hour dithering over which one to play—until my birthday this past July.

That’s when Charlie gave me a pastel box with a picture of a cat, ball of yarn, and mouse. Inside were wooden cubes representing food, a gray cat row marker, and two decks of cards. That’s also about the time UPS transferred Charlie to Meadville and he moved into Wells Wood with us.

Because Charlie and I only had a few precious hours together on his workdays, Cat Lady fit our schedule. It didn’t take long to play.

Charlie works the morning shift at UPS. He wakes in the wee hours.

Occasionally, on groggy trips to the bathroom, I passed his door and spotted him. Wearing a hoodie and Bermuda shorts, he sat in lotus pose on a chair by his antique desk to smash video game monsters. Other times from my bed, I heard pots and pans clanging in the kitchen or gravel crunching under his tires in the driveway at 5:30. Mostly, I slept through his prework activities. I woke to find his empty bedroom and a poem, which he’d scribbled on a small whiteboard that morning, propped against the empty coffee pot.

Poems fresh as dewy roads

Lie stuck upon the lawn

Mired like a fog-horn toad

They’ll never see the dawn

On a typical day, he returned around 1:00 p.m. and we made our lunches—well, my lunch. With his schedule he didn't label meals as breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Heating Spence’s homemade chicken-barley soup in the microwave, I quizzed Charlie about his workday starting with the miniature dog that accompanies his owner picking up her business packages. “How was Divit?”

“Feisty.” Charlie chopped cheddar cheese. Whack, whack.

“Were the customers nice to you?”

He shrugged, added the cheese to celery, onions, and sausage heating in a skillet on the stove. Tired, at the end of his day, he didn’t offer many answers.

Just being together satisfied me.

After we ate, he washed his bowl. I cleared my dishes and asked, “Do you want to play Cat Lady?”

He pursed his lips, stood silently for two moments, then spit out, “Sure.”

I dealt a three-by-three array of cards. He dumped the bag of wooden cubes. We were ready to adopt cats and provide them with food, toys, catnip, and costumes. From the frowns on the costumed cat-card faces, the game cats enjoyed the costumes as much as our three tabbies would—if I could get them into any. 

 

But our tabbies did enjoy the Cat Lady game. Ande jumped onto the table, sat on the array, and batted food cubes off cat cards.

Inspecting my empty cards, I asked, “Did I feed Pablo Picatso or Jazz?”

“It doesn’t matter.” Charlie petted Ande and selected the row of cards not under his rump.

Waltzing across the table, Gilbert wagged his tail which swept cards, food cubes, and the gray cat row marker to the floor.

Charlie lifted Gilbert to my shoulder. “Sweater, Gilbert. Sweater!”

The cat kneaded my sweater while Charlie and I replaced game pieces in approximate order.

Only Rills stayed off the table during the games. His ears twitched, however, if either Charlie or I mentioned “chicken.”

A few days before my September operation, Charlie whisked an Amazon envelope from behind his back and handed it to me. “I got you this for Christmas.”

“I can wait.”

“No.” He shook his shaved head and grasped my hands to prevent me from giving the package back. “You need it now.”

Yielding, I opened the envelope and pulled out Cat Lady Box of Treats, an extension of the original game.

Passing the instruction book back and forth, we studied the new rules. I shuffled the slippery white-edged new cards—rip, whoosh, tap-tap—with the worn finger-stained brown edged old cards. Little Nicky joined Shadow and Chairman Meow on the array.

Charlie took a vacation the week following my surgery. Perched on two pillows, I played Cat Lady Box of Treats with him. Ande and Gilbert took turns pawing through the new treat pieces.

 

Ande Playing Cat Lady

Throughout the fall, when Charlie stuffed the food cubes into their plastic bag and I put a rubber band around the cards, Spence looked up from his computer to ask, “Who won?” Though an odd question for a man who disliked playing games, his face glowed under his beard if we’d split the games. “That’s great.”

Christmas came. Charlie, who must have a Santa gene in his DNA, showered me with Jane Austen gifts—not a single game. “You only play one. There’s no use buying you anything else.”

But Spence told me to stop playing Cat Lady.

Though I didn’t stop, I observed.

Did Charlie choose cards at random? During my first study, he chose the best row or column except to scarf up chicken cards because I’d muttered I needed more chicken to feed my hungry cats. He wasn’t sabotaging the games.

The next day a soft buzz distracted my debate over which cards left me with fewer unfed cats. I glanced at Charlie.

Elbow on the table, he leaned his head against his fist. A blue light blinked on the earbud tucked in his exposed ear. Perhaps he was concentrating on a European history podcast rather than the game. 

“Am I taking too long?”

“No. You’re fine.” He sat straighter in his chair. 

Another day, I caught his eyelids drooping and he rubbed his shoulders. He dragged down the hall and plopped onto his bed as soon as we finished. Whether tired, sore, or bored, he was playing at his proverbial midnight while I played at midday. I shuffled the deck—now all edged in brown finger-sweat—and decided I would suggest playing the card game Spence had given me for Christmas. 

The following day I asked, “How about playing Exploding Kittens?”

He jerked as if I’d jabbed him with the fire poker. “No!” His face registered shock and disbelief. Sitting, he opened the Cat Lady box and spilled the bag of food cubes.

Ande raced across the great room, leapt onto the table, and glanced from Charlie to me. Whatever tension the cat had sensed dissipated. He curled beside the cubes and accepted Charlie’s pets.

Charlie came within two points of winning the first game and tied the second. No blue light blinked on his earbud that afternoon.

We resumed our fall routine. Spence called from the sofa, “Who won?” I reported splits, ties, and game winners—until Charlie’s losing streak returned.

Once, while Charlie sorted his hand into piles of catnip, costumes, and toys, I mustered the courage to say, “We don’t have to keep score.”

He paused with a card mid-air between two piles and cast puzzled eyes on me. Without comment, he set the card on the toy pile.

Cowardly, I totaled the points.

A couple days later, I said, “We don’t have to tally the score. You probably won.”

He stared at me.

I added the points. He did win.

After winning the second game, I braved delivering the mom-speech that had fermented in my brain for days. “When your sister and I play Dutch Blitz, we don’t count points.”

 

Charlie scooped a handful of food cubes and dropped them in the plastic bag.

“Ellen suggested we stop scoring and just play for fun. You and I could try that with Cat Lady.”

Charlie’s face wore his little boy’s look of wait-for-Mom-to-finish-so-I-can-go.

I bit my tongue so I wouldn’t blather on.

Charlie dropped the cube bag. “It doesn’t matter to me.” He walked to his room. Box springs creaked.

The next day I stuffed the instruction booklet and recycled envelopes I used for scoring into the box—Charlie had said it didn’t matter—and closed the lid.

Charlie raised his eyebrows.

At the end of the game, we sorted cards, and I scanned both our hands. “Wow! You got lots of toys!”

The corners of his lips twitched.

“And we both had a cat that didn’t get fed.” I scooped up the cards and shuffled them for the second game.

We played and sorted again. This time I compared silently—content that we’d had our bonding time and no one lost.

Spence and I layered for a walk. Snowflakes meandered through the frosty air and road snow creaked under boots. “We didn’t keep score in Cat Lady today,” I said through my breath dampened ski mask.

“Oh?” Spence kicked a twig to the berm. “So, who won?”

Gritting my teeth, I raised both fists intending to shake them for emphasis while repeating in my teacher-voice that Charlie and I hadn’t kept score. I did neither because—

Spence grinned from one beanie covered ear to the other.

 

Snow Capped Seeds