Secret Stash

I thought I had come up with a great idea.

I was having a hard time getting myself to do a really hateful chore: inputting information from our financial statements into the software QuickBooks for our accountant.

We have an extension, so, for us, October 15^th is April 15^th.

And no, I couldn’t just have the statements automatically download. That was my first question when this chore arose years ago. According to the accountants, there are too many glitches and errors when you just let things download.

And no, smarty-pants organized person, while I realize it would have been ideal to input the monthly statements as I got them so they didn’t pile up at the end of the year, I didn’t do that.

And it is just a peculiar kind of torture: being forced to review every single purchase and deposit we made over the past year.

So, working under JK Rowling’s theory that chocolate keeps dementors at bay (which, incidentally, it actually does), I stashed a pack of chocolate bars at my desk.

Every time I got myself to sit down and input those statements, I could have a chocolate bar.

I didn’t tell anyone in the family about my secret stash. A. My kids, being my kids, would have immediately devoured it. And B. My sweet husband, who lost 60 pounds a few years back, is dedicated to healthy eating and exercise. But if he knows there’s something sweet in the house, even if it is hidden away, the idea, as he puts it, “starts burning a hole in my brain,” until he’s begging to know where it is.

Alas, the strategy was not without its problems for me either.

The last day of getting those QuickBooks files together?  It took 3 candy bars.