chicken noodle soup

Smitten has been progressively more ill the last couple of weeks. The wednesday night ("didn't try to fix it" night) was bad. Smitten went to her doctor. He figures she had an infection in her colon that was a result of the medication he gave her for a urinary tract infection she had a short while ago. he gave her some new stuff that was supposed to fix things.

Smitten wasn't eating for the last couple of days - everything she ate made her hurt and caused troubles.

I went over to her place after work to make her something to eat - i stopped by my place to pick up some spelt flour and other stuff for making chicken noodle soup - no chicken, just soup base/bouillon and spelt noodles. I was trying to get something hot with some nutrients and food energy that she could actually survive eating.

I didn't have a pasta maker, so i had to do it by hand. I had quick grabbed a recipe off the internet - who would think someone could go wrong with noodles...

i made a larger batch because i was going to leave some fresh pasta for her kids and her to eat today. well - this internet recipe was a little messed. i ended up with batter, not pasta dough. i added more flour but it was too much water. so i poured a bit out into a smaller bowl and added flour until it was right. that was a little frustrating. i had a lot of batter...

spelt dough tends to be way stickier than wheat dough, so i had a lot of trouble with the dough sticking and tearing as i tried to roll it thin enough for noodles. i end up making pretty fat noodles which i dropped in the soup. they swelled up a lot. it looked like it was going to be long skinny dumpling soup, not noodle soup.

Smitten worked on her books. she hadn't eaten in a couple of days, hadn't slept well, and was on her last legs. she began to cry at one point because her books were not making sense.

she had always kept a time based set of books - essentially a historical cash flow statement, and had never built a set of books out of incomplete records before. without going into details, let's just say i have a little experience in this regard... or, a lot of experience.

because things had been a little messed up this year with her time, and because she had been pressured into being treasurer again (4 years in a row) she hadn't been as diligent as she should/could have been. especially during the critical period - cookie sales (her Dad was in the hospital and was having serious problems). she had accepted all the records as provided by the other leaders as being accurate instead of checking them at the time. she had also bundled deposits instead of making each deposit match each leader's money.

fast forward - she was unable to make it work. i stayed silent while cooking. she talks to herself while figuring out stuff she's having problems with (i do this while doing books and programming, so i don't find it especially weird). i had a good idea of what problems she was encountering. after an hour and a half, she said "I just can't make this work". I had stayed out to that point. I asked if she wanted any feedback. She said yes, because anything would be better than where she was.

I discussed the concept of breaking down their activities into activity groupings rather than on a time basis. That way she could construct how much she is supposed to have and compare it to how much they actually had. That way she wouldn't have to actually match up the deposits to the activity. If she made each activity set a sub ledger, made the revenue balance against the expenditure by activity, and then put the net revenue against their bank balance she would be able to see if they were OK - and even if it didn't quite match, if it was under a $100 out, it really didn't matter that much. The Girl Guides organization wouldn't be crabby about that situation and it would be off her plate.

Smitten wasn't happy with the notion of everything not balancing, but liked the idea of getting it out the door.

When she began to break down her activity areas she found that two of the leaders had done their numbers incorrectly when providing her with their information. That solved most of the problem.

In the end she was about $36.00 out.

Meanwhile, the soup was done. she had not had a homemade chicken noodle soup before.

with most of the weight of the books off her shoulders, and some food in her she began to feel better.

we went to the drugstore and got her prescription filled. we did a walk by on a house i'm looking to buy - it's not on the market yet, but my real estate agent is working with the folks.

by morning Smitten was feeling much better. sleep, food, and the medication appeared to be working its magic.

she is off work sick today - her boss told her to take the day off, and Smitten relented under pressure.

as i packed all my stuff up, she wanted me to leave the chicken soup so she'd have something to eat.

i am hoping a day in the sun just getting her world in order will do what it needs to do for her.

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Update: as of this morning's review of the documentation, Smitten was only out $6