Day 66: Budgets and Marriage

Every prosperous organization must employ a wise accountant or two. Someone who oversees the books and pays the bills. The one who sets the budget and write the checks. In the Maynard's house, I am the accountant. Every month I erase our giant white board calendar and pencil in new bills and benchmarks for saving. And every month I am thrown these wild curve balls that threaten to derail my plan and our budget. Two thousand dollars for part on the ruck. The mechanic uses words like calipers and fuel tank. Shocks and drum brakes. But all I hear is the slow leak of our savings account and another monthly budget gone to pieces. The computer crashes. A certain husband downloaded a blinking advertisement that promised faster speeds in downloading and web browsing. It's a virus, of course. We could have bought a brand new system for what we paid to restore the old.

One of these months my budget will stick, I say to Rich. He says yeah, right and we both roll our eyes and laugh because we know that anything can happen. And usually does.

Sometimes I'm tempted to look at marriage like a budget. I want to plan out each step of our union, of our growth. A house within two years, a child within five. Then a business of our own. And it's so easy to get carried away planning for a tomorrow without living today. So it's the unexpected flips that keep me grounded. The way we end up having tickle wars in bed at 2am on a work night. Or how I stumble across him in the morning with his man mug of coffee as he listens to the high tide thunder against our shores. The long look he gives me when he comes home from work. I'm covered in flour and still in my pajamas. It's a look that says I love you, you're beautiful; even when I'm obviously not. These are the pieces of a marriage that cannot be contained or planned. The moments that remind me how good this marriage really is.