Month-end reporting today. I know I whine about month-end reporting sometimes, but I whine about everything.

Truth is, I like month-end reporting. It's my one chance to spend several hours staring at today's numbers in the context of the numbers from the past three years and decide if I'm an abject failure or just not quite "good" yet.* To add to the excitement, I change how I capture data each year, so it's never quite an apples-to-apples comparison. This, along with the tendency of any spreadsheet full of numbers to adjust itself to produce whatever results it thinks will give you the fastest aneurysm**--regardless of "truth"--means that month-end reporting can be fairly amusing.

My boss is doing Lent. People think I don't know anything about religion, but I know things. Lent comes before Easter. People do Lent--deprive themselves--because Jesus died--they were deprived of him--and then they stop Lenting (I'm pretty sure that's not a word) and celebrate Easter, which is when it turned out he wasn't all that dead after, all, he'd just gone off to live in a cave for a while until the lynch mob dispersed.

Ashes come into it somehow, on your face, but I've never been quite clear about that bit. Also, communion, but I'm incapable of talking about that without Stranger In a Strange Land references, so I'll move on.

Maybe they--the ashes--are something Jewish people do. I know very little about Judaism (except that a close inspection of many of their religious "rules" reveals a foundation more sensible and more logical than most other religions can offer).

Also, getting back to the Lent thing, I think there was something about bees or honey in the wilderness. Maybe bees and honey, which would make more sense. There were fish, but that came earlier on. And hearing voices, but bibles are full of a lot of that kind of thing. ***

I don't know why they call it Lent. Maybe you're supposed to give back? (ba-da-boom!)

Anyhow. I also know that when my boss is done Lenting (definitely not a word), she'll be allowed to eat chocolate again. The reason I know this is because ever since she saw I have a big bowl of bite-sized candy bars at my desk, she's been coming over to check the chocolate level in the bowl at least once a day. She thinks I don't notice, but I know she's checking to see if there will still be any left by the time she's allowed to eat chocolate again.

What I know and she doesn't is that I saved half the bag of candy bars to put out next week, when she's post-Lent. I couldn't decide whether or not to tell her.

It might be against the rules, you know? Maybe when they're giving things up, they're not allowed to console themselves with the thought that one day soon they'll be able to have them again? Because, you know, Back In the Day, no one knew Jesus was off in the cave, they thought he was gone forever.

Or, maybe because now they know he was going to come back, they're allowed to think of how the stuff they loved and gave up will come back?

Both possibilities are equally likely, aren't they?

I'm really just working on my story at the moment. I'm pondering the uses of ambiguity--writing events where the real meaning isn't immediately clear. Precisely why my brain chose to work out this question in terms of Lent is a mystery to me.

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*I'm the latter this month, which is about as good as it gets.

** No, really. They do that. It's like--it's like horses.

A horse can tell by the way you walk up to it whether or not you know what you're doing. If it thinks you don't, then nothing you do will induce it to behave properly. Nudges, commands, and directions that, if delivered by an "expert" would produce walking, trotting, or even dancing a polka, are rewarded with stolid indifference until eventually you're reduced to the humiliation of having someone lead the stupid beast along the trail while you sit on its back like a bag o'rocks.

Numbers are like that. If they know you don't really like them, that you prefer words, they wait until you blink and then scurry around the page, landing in strange and unfamiliar places. Then they laugh at you, and not quietly.

***I am aware that much of that was erroneous. I wouldn't want you to think I'm quite that culturally ignorant.