Twitching

Oh, help -- can anyone help me? I am lost in an eddy of the space-time continuum in which addition is not commutative.

I have a confession: I am a checkbook obsessive. I will spend an hour searching for a nine-cent error. You can tell me all you want to about the value of my time being higher than that, but I get an absurd amount of satisfaction out of tidy rows of numbers, all of them RIGHT. Conversely, if one (or, horrors, more) is wrong, then something is deeply wrong in my little world.

Tell me tomorrow if you think that's whacked. The acoustics are too bad here in my eddy for me to hear you today.

The bank and I agree that the last time I balanced the checkbook, we were square. We also agree on amounts deposited, checks cleared, and electronic transactions. So if I go back to my last balance and add the deposits and subtract the withdrawals and remove the transactions that haven't cleared yet from consideration, I should get the same number as the bank, right? Right???

Euclid help me, it's not working. I have added up and down and sideways. I have combed through my entries for errors. No dice. There is a stubborn $24.92 difference between my bottom line and the bank's. Aaaarrrggghhhhh.

I decided that there was a maniacal little gremlin in my calculator, cackling away as he spat out the wrong numbers. I decided to use the calculator that lives in the computer instead. But I also decided to share the woe before I tried again to paddle out of my eddy. Any fellow obsessives out there? Please send chocolate.