i've got the know-how

one thing that i find particularly silly and wrong is when people say that you don't need to use much math in real life. i love math. i'm not trying to hide it. it makes sense. it's easy. it's logical. you learn some things, memorize a few concepts, and there you have it: you know math. i use math at work all the time. if i didn't understand a few juicy tidbits about the order of operations and how parentheses work, i could be in a lot of trouble. math also allows me to worry alternatively more and less about life - less when i use it to make a budget, plan for the future, blah blah blah, boring, sensible me...and allows me to worry all the more when i see mortgage payments and car payments and vacation payments adding up...because i can add well in my head, thank you, and i can multiply those payments for any number of months with the best of them, and sometimes the sums and products of those amounts make me a little panicky. i've got the know-how, and the results can be frightening. we've got the facts, and we're voting yes. but the worrying isn't math's fault...it's just what i do.

sometimes i hate how responsible i am. i can't stop myself from reading 40 msn money articles before buying a house or hold off on saving for retirement or blow all of my money on trips and shoes and trinkets. i wish a had a little more spontaneity and a little more faith that no matter what i do, things will work out in the end. because ultimately i believe they will. but i tend to plan as if it's all up to me. it's good and bad. it's a mixed bag. it's like 10,000 spoons when all you need is a knife.

it's not really like that - but that really happened to me! on the way back from the pearl jam concerts at the gorge, when my brother looked like an unwashed lunatic and we didn't get home until very late, we also hadn't eaten much because the extreme heat made everything sound oh so unappetizing. except a cherry slurpee-esque thing, which i don't even like under normal circumstances. so we stopped at mcdonalds in moses lake. the drive through line inched along for days and weeks and years. finally we received our orders - mine was an asian chicken salad. i took the bag and asked mcdonalds lady if she had included any forks. she grabbed a bunch and stuffed them in the bag and basically slammed her little mcdonalds window shut. we pulled over to switch drivers and i distributed the food and utensils - AND - she gave me four spoons!! not one single fork!!! as brad drove home to spokane, i ate the mandarin orange slices and edamame and lettuce in the creepy darkness with my bare hands and couldn't help but imagine that the slimy things i was touching were worms and bugs and assorted unsavory items. the second-worst teacher i've ever had was from moses lake; maybe it's just a bad place.