Morning all and happy Monday. I hope everyone had a great weekend. I spent the weekend pulling up old growth from the garden. We had so much rain that it was loose so even if it was cold, it was easy work. And now the garden looks ready to go. I just have to wait for the seedlings to grow and the last frost to pass. As well as mu muscles to be less sore. But for now it is time to stretch the brains, so lets set those timers and see what happens.
I like this. I think I rushed towards the end as I could see where it was going, but I will probably take some time at lunch to add more. All in all not a bad start to the week.
Monday, March 4th: “And you are just telling me this now?”
“And you are just telling me this now?” Iris looked at Stan. He shrugged.
“I forgot about it until now,” he said. She fought back a sigh. He stared at her unconcerned.
“Give me the receipts,” she said. She held out her hand. He shuffled his feet.
“I don’t think I kept them,” he said. She lifted an eyebrow. “But I wrote down the numbers.”
“Then let me have them,” she told him. He nodded and shuffled off, returning a moment later with a notebook. It was a spiral bound notebook, cheaply bought at the beginning of the school year when there was a sale when she stocked up for the office. It was stuffed fat with folded receipts and notecards with scraps of information.
“You know I think some of the receipts might actually be in there,” he told her as he handed it over. “I’m getting better at remembering to keep them.”
He smiled as though he firmly believed in his own improvement and walked away, leaving Iris with the notebook and a building headache. She could feel her eye twitch in reaction. All her life she had been told that Stan as the oldest, the son that her parents dreamed of, would inherit the business. And in time their father retired and passed the reigns to Stan. He proudly took them and then passed most of the work to others. Since Iris had always been good with numbers and organization, she did the books and made certain supplies were ordered. If the books didn’t balance, then it was always considered her fault.
Yet Stan did the ordering, the purchasing. He decided what they needed and all she had to do was make the numbers balance and that they weren’t in the red The fact that he often forgot to tell her when he purchased things as well as lost the receipts and couldn’t remember what he paid for things made her job infinitely harder.
Once she was told that people didn’t value what they didn’t pay for. Stan never paid her for her assistance and seemed to take it for granted that she would always be there. ‘He certainly doesn’t value me,’ she thought as she took the notebook back to the paperwork explosion Stan called his office. It was where all papers as well as any odd bit that came into Stan’s rbit ended up living. She doubted he ever bothered cleaning it out.
‘I wonder if he realizes this s the last time,’ she thought. She snorted and shook her head as she picked her way between piles to reach the desk. There she unearthed the computer’s keyboard and set his notebook on top of a teetering stack. When not helping Stan out, Iris had a job as an accountant. She worked for a company that served the accounting needs of companies without their own accountant. Iris did good work and the firm was growing. They were opening up another office and she was asked if she would like the transfer. It was a substantial pay raise and the chance to go somewhere new. After much deliberation she decided to take it. She told Stan she would no longer be around. In fact in three days, she would be leaving town. Stan would be on his own.
‘I wonder if he even remembers I am moving,’ she thought as she began to input the information she could find.
Ten til Midnight 