The Number on the Paper

June twenty-sixth. The pottery class kiln results are still sitting in a box at the community center, waiting to be picked up, and I have been thinking about money.

Not in a crisis way. In the way where you open your banking app expecting one number and find a slightly smaller one, and you sit very still for a moment doing the math you should have done three weeks ago. The pottery registration and Simone's open-studio Thursday and my phone bill all landed in the same two-week window, which is the kind of thing that happens when you sign up for things before you have consulted the notebook. I keep a rough monthly number written in pencil in a spiral notebook, not a spreadsheet, not an app, just a number I worked out last August that I use as a reference point. It is not a budget exactly. It is more like a standing question: is this still okay? Most months the answer is yes, sometimes narrowly.

This was a narrowly month. The pottery class was worth it. The phone bill was non-negotiable. The open-studio Thursday is four dollars for the session, which I found out after I had already written the date on my bus pass, so that part worked out.

recalculating, as one does

I recalculated at the kitchen counter for about ten minutes, crossing out one line and circling another, and eventually arrived back at okay. Not comfortable. Okay. I have learned to treat those as the same thing for now.

The collapsed bowl is still on the windowsill.

the windowsill knows everything

I looked at it while I was doing the math, which is maybe why the math came out fine. There is something about an object that cost me six weeks of Wednesday evenings and came out lopsided and still held, it makes the narrowly months feel less catastrophic than they used to. I wrote the open-studio date in the notebook next to the number, which is probably the closest I come to a financial plan.