The audit was a big deal. I cleaned the house, vacuuming yesterday and dusting the cobwebs right up to the last minute. I boxed up all the loose papers on the dining table so that it would be clear (and so that she wouldn't see them and judge me). I woke up early this morning and thought of more records I could give her, so I got up and made copies and then bound them into the two-inch three-ring binder I'd prepared for her.

The audit was a very big deal. I was nervous as a freshman on his first date. I was in and out of the bathroom all morning. I paced and wrung my hands. I had absolutely no ability to concentrate on anything. I gave birth to twins. (No, wait. That wasn't me.)

The audit was a big deal, right up until the moment the auditor walked through the door. She shook my hand and sat down and asked me a couple of questions about the company, easy ones that I could answer without thinking hard. Then she told me that the insurance company wanted to know our gross receipts for the last year.

That's all. She didn't want to look at the payroll records I had so meticulously prepared for her. She didn't care about twelve months of daily disbursements, all carefully coded so that each and every transaction could be tracked back to the invoice, the check and the project. She didn't want to see workers compensation or subcontract payments. Just gross receipts.

In fact, she didn't look at the two-inch three-ring binder at all. I leafed through it and found the numbers she wanted and read them off to her. And that was it. She knocked on my door at 11:00 am, and she left at 11:08. All that fretting and stewing, and all the prep work, was for eight minutes of nothing much.

That's why I worry, though. If I hadn't worried, it would have been a disaster. I just know it.

Meanwhile, across the state, the Boss's ne'er-do-well son Tim was putting the final touches on a proposal package for a big project that's due Monday morning at 10:00 am. He started working on this job six months ago, and it's very important to him because he sees it as securing his future with the company. So naturally, he left ninety percent of the work for this last weekend. And of course, he dumped about fifty percent of that on me today. So I did it to the best of my ability (of which I had very little left after the week I've been through) and dumped it back on him.

If you like what I've done, feel free to use it. If not, feel free to do it yourself. You're welcome.