A column of fractions, and one number underlined twice

Ten fractions, pencil, one under the other on a ruled notebook page. 1/1. 1/1. 3/4. 1/2. 1/2. 1/4. 0. 1/2. 3/4. 1/1. The 0 is underlined twice, hard enough to score the page.

Nothing else on the sheet is underlined. One meal got singled out from the other nine.

What is a fraction like this actually recording?

How much of the bowl came back, meal by meal, in a unit nobody weighed.

Quarters, halves, and whole — a scale invented on the spot by whoever was holding the bowl, without a kitchen scale involved at all. It doesn't need to be precise to be useful. It only needs to be consistent enough, from one meal to the next, that a column of ten fractions shows a shape rather than ten disconnected guesses.

Why record it as a fraction instead of weighing the food?

Because the fraction is the number the person standing there can actually produce, at the moment they need to produce it.

Weighing what's left would mean a scale in the kitchen, a tare, a second measurement — more apparatus than the moment calls for. Looking at a bowl and calling it "a half" takes no time and no tools, and it's close enough to travel down a column the same way a weight written on the same scale every week does: not exact, but comparable against itself.

Why is the 0 underlined twice?

Because it's the one entry in ten that broke the pattern, and underlining is the fastest way to mark that without writing a sentence about it.

Every other line in the column is a routine fraction, filled in the way the line above it was filled in. The 0 isn't routine, and the double underline is the diary's only piece of editorial — the rest of the page states facts without commentary, and this is the one moment it doesn't. What that single meal meant for the animal is a question for the vet; what's on the page is a number, underlined, and nine other numbers that aren't.

Why does the column matter more than any single entry?

Because the sequence ends where it started.

Read the ten fractions in order and the shape is a fall to 0 and a climb back to 1/1 — not a straight line down, not a straight line up, a dip and a recovery. A single entry, even the 0, can't show that shape. Only the whole column, read top to bottom, tells a household whether one bad meal was the start of something or just one bad meal.

Does a diary like this only make sense next to a decline?

No — the same column works exactly the same way when the fractions are steady, or climbing, which is just as worth having written down as a fall would be. A run of ten fractions all reading 1/1 is still a record, and still tells a household something a single meal never could.

Does the format only work for food, or for water too?

The same logic — a crude, consistent unit recorded every time — carries across to a mark drawn on tape up the side of a bowl, and to whatever else in a kitchen ends up getting measured this way. Fractions suit food because a bowl divides naturally into quarters; a different object usually wants a different unit.

Does it work for an animal who steals food rather than refuses it?

The opposite problem gets its own kind of attention, not a diary — what he steals is a story on its own terms, and it isn't this one. This diary only exists because, for a stretch of ten meals, what went in the bowl stopped being something to take for granted.

Does it print well?

Yes — soft pencil on notebook stock reproduces well if the graphite isn't pushed too dark.

Keep the strokes light and slightly uneven, the way an actual pencil column looks after ten separate sittings, rather than evening them into a single pass. One tone is enough — near-black graphite grey on oatmeal or a pale notebook cream — with the double underline on the 0 as the one place the line gets noticeably heavier than the rest.

How do I get one made?

Describe the ten meals at JustOG — the fractions, and which one gets the double underline. Pick a direction, drag the crop frame, see it composited on the real garment, and it's made to order and shipped.

Designs other people have published are in the shop.

Ten fractions in pencil, and a bowl back on the floor for an eleventh.