It’s 15 degrees and I’m wearing my long-dead auntie’s mink. On the train ride to work the conductor forgets to punch my ticket. I must look to have boarded at a wealthier, outlying suburb.

+ $2.45

I meet Gale for lunch and she barely has cash enough for the bus to Urbana, where she’ll wait for good news about her novel. My Cosi card has been stamped ten times, so I buy her salad. This is a selfish ploy, angling for good karma in return.

- $7.65

The scanner on the bus fails to read my pass when I bring my son downtown to the Chinese consulate for his visa to study in Beijing. He rides free.

+ $1.75

For months I don’t realize that the express bus I take when it rains is just a dollar, and I scan full fare on my CTA pass.

- $25.00

I stroll to the train station from work because something is wrong with this planet; fifty degrees in January.

+ $17.50

I park downtown for Marla and me to see Pericles at the Goodman. From the moment we arrive, there’s magic. On line in the ladies room, when it’s Marla’s turn to pee, her mother exits the stall. Ye gods! Serendipity! The play, too, is spectacle and kismet. I am so bewitched by dance, music, lights and glitter, that when I pay the garage’s computer teller, I forget my change.

- $7.00

I buy stamps at the postal dispenser, and pay for one booklet. The machine gives me two.

+ $7.40

My daughter has chronic headaches for five months. A CAT scan, an MRI, blood tests, doctors—they disclose nothing. The health insurance company rejects our claim for bio-feedback.

- $1,750.00

The health insurance company mistakenly sends a refund check.

+ $40.00

Guilty over being unable to give me a raise, my boss re-gifts me with a re-wrapped box of Cora Lee toffee. I saw them in his office weeks before, a present from a politician. He’s forgotten that I teased him, “Is she Sara Lee’s sister?” He adds an unexpected bonus check.

+ $1,000.00

The first time I met my husband’s rich second-cousin, he criticized my hair at dinner, saying it looked better pulled back. Thirty years later, he sends a check, plus investment advice.

+ $1,000.00

In her rush home for curfew, our daughter takes a short-cut through an alley and crashes into a dumpster, knocks out two windows and a door.

- $1,798.00

The carpenter’s bill to heat the basement is lower than his estimate.

+ $120.00

My parents pay for a weekend in Michigan. My oldest brother’s wife doesn’t come until the second day because she’s with her boyfriend. My younger brother has left by then, his body erupting in welts from MS, his fever leaving him too weak to walk. In secret, my sister shows me photos of her boyfriend, without mentioning him to my parents since he’s twelve years her junior. My parents beam through each stilted meal, celebrating their close, happy family.

+ $800.00

After boarding the dog for the Michigan trip, he contracts kennel cough, chronic vomiting and diarrhea. Blood tests and treatments stretch across six months.

- $759.00

I forget my coupon for the grocer and they refuse to credit me when I return with it later.

- $5.00

The honey bear rings up full price, not sale price, and the manager arranges a refund.

+ $3.49

When my daughter overdoses, I forget to mail the paid bills, already sealed into tidy, stamped envelopes with sunny, return address stickers. Late fees pile up like dirty dishes.

- $300.00

I tell the customer service representative for Marshall Field’s that I forgot to mail the check and she says, “It happens all the time.”

“You don’t understand,” I say. “My daughter could have died.” My voice cracks. I offer to send copies of hospital discharge papers. She lowers her voice and says it again. It happens all the time.

+ $35.00