It's hard to be the object of abject humiliation, but this afternoon I certainly was. My husband and I had the (dreaded) yearly appointment with our accountant to go over our records for our taxes. And there I sat, with eyes downcast as our accountant let me know (in not so many words) that I really wasn't making his job any easier. I had failed on a grand scale to keep very accurate books for my husband's and my joint endeavors for the past year. The three of us had decided a year ago that we would start to put all of our accounts on computer software, thereby making our accountant's job easier to reconcile our tax bill. I'm sure he must have left our meeting scratching his head at my incompetence to do something as easy as using bookkeeping software.

If it were just this easy enough to explain away, but as I look back I see what I was doing to 'us' by not keeping our records straight. I think that I was merely 'checking out' of our entire business situation. I wanted to yell across that conference table today that my husband and I were divorcing because of this very thing; why should I put any effort into one of the key endeavors that left such heartache for me? For the past three years or so I have been all but begging my husband to make some changes in our business so we don't lose our shirts. And, until very recently he has turned a deaf ear to me. Our business dealings are only one of the (many) topics that I have been giving practically silent witness to for the past twenty years or so. And that silence wasn't of my own choosing- I just couldn't get heard by my husband. Apparently, the fact that he is currently my business partner really doesn't have much to do with anything.

Over the past month or so, ever since my husband has told me about his future plans, he has said to me, 'I guess I should have listened to you. You were right about...' as if that statement would cause me to go rushing right back into his arms for another twenty-nine years of wedded bliss. Well, as we all know his words certainly didn't have that effect on me. Actually, after the second or third time of hearing this I got mad and told my husband that his lack of paying real attention to me is a huge reason why I don't love him any longer. Plain respect. Such a simple concept for most people who are bound to one another to master, but not for my husband. I'm just not sure what buffoonery I committed to cause this reaction to me.

So, this afternoon as I sat listening to my well deserved scolding I thought about how I was going to change this situation. I guess that now that I'm going to be on my own it's time for me to step up to the plate and start anew. I think I'll finally take the time to learn this software and start keeping our accounts a bit better. I guess that I've finally been heard by my husband. And, if I really haven't been, then at least we'll have better kept records. That will surely please our accountant.