This Grant Business

Did you know that math is beautiful? I didn't. It's so graceful. It knows exactly what it wants. When you give it what it wants, it does what you want it to do. Math is the perfect mistress.

Writing this grant and bringing it to fruition has been one of the more frustrating things I've ever done, but damn. I didn't know I liked math. I've hated it. Hated it more than a year of eating nothing but red beet borsch.

Granted, all I'm doing is entering percentage formulae and currency exchange formulae, but I have not yet been proven wrong from my long hand calculations to Excel's affirmations. And now, holy of all holies, Excel will keep up with me every time I do something. Change the price of a chair: It subtracts I from one cell, adds it to three others, and divides it by two different things in two further cells, multiplies in one, and finally sticks the end product in an extra, more Budget Reader-friendly place at the top of the page! How amazing is that?

New found respect for past-hated things does not stop there. Totalitarian or authoritarian regimes are amazing at cutting through red tape. If you're on the right side of it, have the cryptonite scissors, you only have to cut it once. Things can happen so quickly.

In the meeting the over lord of the committee dolling out cash to the deserving, asked, “Are there other people in your school?”

Renata had been referring to her as “our manager” at which I'd wondered, and I of her as “our director” possibly making the one lady into two. In the tangle of other questions about security, schedules, and jealousy I referred to her simply as “Claudia.”

“Claudia?”

“Yes, our director, sorry, Doamna Claudia,” I hastened, sticking the polite Madam appendage on the front, like a glorious buttress of authority.

“Are there other people in your school? You seem to present this Claudia as a queen.”

“She would have you believe that is true!”

Renata rallied and addressed a different issue.

This presider of stuffs great and small decided the only thing we have to change is the percentage amount of money collected by the community. That is we have to up the amount by (let me consult my spreadsheet) .47%. Which comes out to the price of some verb and practice test books! Woo.

I must go to the supreme leaders of the school and ask them if the PTA might have some spare cash to cover the verb and test books. Because they want the windows and doors I'm offering, they agree. Done. No more consultations, no more haggling. Done. They know what they want, they know what they need to do to exact this, they do it. Totalitarians are mathematicians. Did you know this? I did not.