Just numbers

There's a horrible trend lately for the price of everything to go shooting up. From one week to the next, my son's favourite cereal is suddenly 3 bucks more expensive per box. Milk up by a Rand or more (though still less than inland). Bread... well I just put the things in the basket and forget the price. We gotta eat. Last Friday night I came home with 5 bags of "only the essentials" groceries - and R500 poorer. Where does it all end?

If you want anything these days, it's going to take cash. And likely more than less. I've had that brought home as I start fixing up Olivia. It's the little things - a tool here, a bolt there, a container of oil or degreaser... and before you know it you're wondering how you ended up spending all that cash. It simply leaks out.

It's very tempting to adopt the "just numbers" attitude. It's all just numbers on a computer somewhere that wax and wane, that come and go. OK, it actually IS all just numbers - but you still have to ensure the numbers coming in at least balance out the numbers diminishing.

I've been playing with numbers this past week in my dreamings and schemings. Represented by "cold, hard cash" (yah right - it's paper, mostly, or pixels on a screen), it's a matter of doing sums, figuring out where to plug this in and where to put that. How it all flows together so somehow you end up with more than you started with. Sometimes a very difficult dance to tread when everyone wants a piece of your numbers.

But I'm getting there. Baby steps (frustrating as those can be), at least to start. And once the numbers are crunched and the loose ends pulled together, we'll see what kind of numbers I end up with.