Zero. Nada. Zilch. Nothing.

My friend Carrin and I aren't asking for much. Seriously.

Just like Sacramento County Executive Terry Schutten and the Board of Supervisors, who are finally coming to terms with a horrendous budget deficit, we've been dragged kicking and screaming into accepting hard economic truths, no longer aspiring to live grand.

Sure, it was fun playing "rich" for a while, but over the last couple of years, that pesky reality thing sort of got in the way.

And these days, akin to Sacramento County, our goals are no longer lofty. Carrin and I just want to get out of debt, dig our way out of a financial abyss and make the slow climb back up. Not to a fiscal mountaintop, mind you, just to break-even status.

You know: Ta-da! Here we are at glorious ground level, finally reaching our target – a big, fat, whopping zero.

"What's our goal?" Carrin asks every time she sees me. "Yahoo! We're gonna be zeros," we cheer, followed by an enthusiastic high-five.

At the recent Sac County budget hearings, where supervisors wrestled with a $180 million shortfall, folks were reduced to survival mode. In the beginning, most advocates, including sheriff's deputies, had difficulty accepting that all the pleasant options were gone, each insisting, instead, that their programs should be a priority and considered too essential for cuts.

But as the hearings progressed, what once seemed incomprehensible became obvious – that no matter the importance of the program, moving elusive money around, like a cheap card trick, just doesn't work forever.

Because deep inside we know: Actions have consequences. We've been indulgent, spent too much at the party, and the inevitable fiscal hangover is going to be ugly.

For some, reality came full circle: In response to the shortfall and the anticipation of massive layoffs, sheriff's deputies voted overwhelmingly to forgo partial pay raises, to save some of their colleagues from heading straight to the unemployment line.

Colleagues with families. Colleagues with mortgages. Colleagues who are terrified of losing their jobs, with or without a pay raise.

And that's the only way it's going to work. We're on an economic Titanic. There are not enough lifeboats, and although some are heroically helping one another, there are others shamefully pushing their way onto the last remaining flotation devices while their neighbors helplessly drown in front of them.

At the June 10 hearing, Deputy Margaret Taylor stepped to the podium, offering eloquent testimony. Although the audience responded positively to her insistence that public safety should be a budgetary priority, her willingness to throw other essential programs overboard wasn't met with the same enthusiasm.

Some citizens audibly sighed, as she encouraged the supes to balance the budget by saying "no" to a group of programs, including In-Home Supportive Services – which is set up to care for the most vulnerable in society: at-risk children, the elderly and the disabled.

And because there's more than one way to view a crisis, the very next day, another hearing took place addressing those precise cuts. Hundreds of people filled the board chambers as a steady flow of speakers testified of their concern for looming financial eliminations that threatened to extinguish programs for rape crisis, the mentally ill, homeless children, needy elderly and the physically disabled.

On a short break, a member of the audience shared her disillusionment with me: "I never believed, in a civilized nation, I'd have to fight for even the most basic needs of humanity. Never." Mid-morning, a soft-spoken woman from Mather Community Campus for the Homeless testified, accompanied by a young child – a youngster, by the way, who'd managed to make his way to the podium with more than one female speaker. When Board Chairwoman Susan Peters gently teased that the little boy seemed to have a "lot of moms," several women in the audience responded in proud agreement: "Yes! That's it! We're all his mom. Because we're a community!" Loving community or not, the at-risk children's program at Mather Community has been left to tread rough economic waters. Unfortunately, in this bleak financial struggle for survival, it seems that little is sacred. And as more individuals, employees, safety-net organizations and unions scramble for the last remaining government dollars, it's only going to get worse.

Adjusting to a fiscal downward spiral hasn't been easy for anyone, but perhaps, through this challenge, we'll learn to expect less, appreciate more and share with compassion.

And maybe, just maybe, we'll discover the simple satisfaction of a budget balanced to zero.

Candy Chand is a writer living in Rancho Murieta whose sixth book will be released this fall. Reach Chand at PatCan85@hotmail.com.