I'm Giving Up Food

I've decided the only solution is to give up food.  I can't afford to buy it any more.

I rarely go shopping these days.  I have to be out of absolutely everything before I go to the store..the thrill is definitely gone!

Walking into Nugget supermarket I saw a "sale" on blueberries.  A container that amounted to about one cup of berries for "only" $4.00.  You could get two containers of blackberries, about the same amount in each container for $7.00 each.

Strawberries, which were in a slightly larger container, were $5.   I love berries.  I eat a lot of berries on cereal, in cottage cheese, and just as snacks, but I passed on the berries.  I couldn't justify the luxury of the price.

Continuing through the produce aisle, I decided to look at the price of artichokes, which Walt and I both like a lot.  $3 each.  For one artichoke.   I've seen them higher, but I wasn't about to pay $6 for two artichokes.

But it wasn't until I came to the mushrooms that I had apoplexy.   $16 (well, $15.99) for mushrooms.  These aren't fancy schmancy mushrooms either.  Just the same old mushrooms I buy whenever I want to buy mushrooms.  Safe to say there will be no risotto or sauteed mushrooms in our foreseeable future.  The other mushrooms were every so slightly less (at least they were in single digits), but still not a price that I felt I could reasonably afford.

I moved on to the meat aisle.  What had brought me to the supermarket was having nothing for dinner.  Meat?  Pfwww.  Who can afford meat?  I didn't write down the price, but I wasn't going to pay $25 for a very small roast anything. It's been so long since lamb was affordable (and I love lamb...almost as much as I love crab) that I can hardly remember what it tastes like.   Hamburger now costs per pound what I used to pay for steaks.

It's not that the prices have suddenly jumped up.  They've been going up right along, but I usually go through the store with my eyes closed.  We need the stuff, and I grab it without checking the price.  Today my eyes were open.   (Well, really it was the mushrooms that opened my eyes!)

I finished the shopping, rejecting item after item after item because I wasn't going to pay that much.  In the end I had half a shopping cart full of food and it still cost me $100.  I had given up and bought some meat -- a pound of the lowest grade ground beef, and chicken that will last us two meals.  I also will make a "clean out the freezer" soup this week.  I don't have a clue what it will taste like, but it will be hearty and healthy.

As I left the supermarket, I was thinking about what they say will be the financial implications for the little guy with the financial downgrading this damn sequester will bring.  Walt and I aren't poor.  We have enough money to buy the food we want for dinner; it's just the principle of the thing that kept me from buying more stuff.  How in the world do people who are less well off manage?

Before I went to the store, Walt and I sat in the living room and listened to Says You on the radio.  Our dogs are so frustratingly weird.   Whenever there is anything unusually "social" going on (visitors, or Walt and me sitting in the living room) they feel that their way of participating is to wrestle at our feet.  Every. time.

I got my iPad and decided to make a video of it.  Unfortunately Sheila had tired by the time I got it, but Lizzie and Polly played all the way through the end of "Says You."  Windows Movie Maker doesn't permit me to edit video any more, but it will, at least, put together a few clips and turn them into a movie, which I have added to the "Photo of the Day" block.

One of these 

days I am either going to try to reinstall Windows Movie Maker or set aside time I don't really have to learn Adobe Premier Elements, which Ned loves and which I just can't seem to wrap my head around. Yet.

The Milk of Human Kindness

I'm starting to upload photos to Flickr.  It's going to take a long time, because (a) there are tons of photos to sort through, and (b) the upload is very slow.  With luck, I can get a set done every other day and maybe have them all up within the next two weeks.  But for now there are only the photos from the 3 days in Prague.

Today my faith in humanity was, for a moment, restored.  I have my own bank account out of which I pay for the Compassion kids' stuff and for what Walt and I in several years of "discussions" over purchases, came to lump together as "miscellaneous sundries at Long's," those "gotta have it" impulse purchases I would grab when picking up some household stuff at the local Long's (which no longer exists anyway).  Since I started keeping my own checking account, money "discussions" have, for the most part, disappeared.  Impulse purchases, charitable donations, stamps and Kindle boooks come out of my own account.

And it is pretty much a wash each month.  My only "big" income is my Social Security check and then the payment for whatever reviews I do...which can be as much as $100 a month or as little as $20.  I do have a little (very little) savings account cushion and try not to tap into that.

Well, as I looked over what was going to be due on my charge account and what I expected to be in my checking account after the Social Security check was deposited (especially since there would be NO income from reviews, since I would be out of the country), I saw that I was going to be about $75 short of being able to pay the whole bill.  Now that little savings account cushion would roll over the money, but I'm trying to keep that at a certain level.  I could, of course, pay only part of the bill, but then I would incur an interest charge for not paying the bill in full, which I always do.

But--aHA!  I had an idea!  My bank has a rewards program which I rarely even think about, but when I checked how much was in that account, it would slightly more than cover my shortage.  I went to Europe with a clear conscience.

When I got home and went to pay the bill, I dutifully rolled over my rewards points to my account but then--oh horror!-- I realized that all it did was to subtract it from the total of my bill, which included charges that had been made since the original bill was calculated.  What to do?  What to do?  I would have to go ahead and pay the whole bill anyway and let the bank subtract from my savings account, but I just hated to do that.

But then I decided to call Customer Service.  I spoke with a lovely Indian man who made the right sympathetic sounds, but agreed that there wasn't anything else I could do.  But then he put me on hold and said he wanted to see if he had any options.  He came back and related that he could tell I had been a customer for a very long time (I don't remember for how long, but I think I got the account in the early 1990s) and that I had been a very loyal customer, never missing a payment and never having anything like this happen before.  So, dear man, he suppressed the interest charges for this month.  I could go ahead and pay what I could afford and it would trigger no interest.

Now, no fool I, I did get his name in case I get dinged, but I am feeling the milk of human kindness transfused through my veins at the moment and glad that I have not changed banks since I first got this account! Makes me want to run out and do something good for someone else, to pay it forward.

---

Last night we had one of those special theatrical moments that I will remember for a long time.  I was reviewing The Music Man, one of my favorite musicals, at Music Circus in Sacramento.  Since we have been out of the country, I hadn't seen any of the promos on TV for the show and so was surprised to discover that Shirley Jones -- Mrs. Partridge herself -- who originated the role of Marian Paroo on Broadway and who played the role in the classic movie, was playing Marian's mother, Mrs. Paroo.  Her real life son, Patrick Cassidy, was doing the role of Harold Hill.

At the end of this wonderful production, when all the bows had been taken, Ms. Jones took the microphone and shared memories of making the movie with actor Robert Preston.  She then sang a brief duet with her son, to tumultous applause.   It was a real "wow" moment and brought down the house. Perks like this don't come along often for a theater critic, but when they do...it's magic.

 

Patrick Cassidy and Shirley Jones

Cutting the Budget

A couple on The Today Show volunteered to cut their budget in half. Everyone was amazed at their bravery. These are some of the ways they saved money:

1. Made their own coffee instead of going to Starbucks

2. Actually cooked dinner instead of going out to eat.

3. Traded babysitting with friends instead of hiring a sitter.

3. Made the kids' lunches instead of going to a fast food place.

4. Gave up manicures and pedicures ($35 week)

5. Went to a park with the kids instead of going shopping and having lunch at the mall.

6. Shopped at the Farmers Market

7. Washed their own car instead of paying -- $25!!!!! -- to have it washed.

8, Mowed their own lawn, saving $25

I was appalled at the things that the family had considered "normal expenses" and how amazed the Today Show staff was that they would actually be able to go without these "necessities."

Starbucks for breakfast? Good grief. We have never gone out to get coffee in the morning. We've been grinding our own beans (our luxury--we do pay $11 a pound for Peets French Roast) for 35 years and making our own gourmet coffee.

I recently wrote an entry about our dinner-a-month with the kids, how we each took turns taking one kid a month out to a restaurant meal. Going out to eat routinely with all the kids, or routinely picking up fast food meals because Mom doesn't cook well was unheard of. Even when I was working, I still came home from work cooked dinner at night. It never occurred to me not to.

We occasionally went to fast food joints, but it certainly wasn't the routine for lunches.

Manicures and pedicures? Sounds lovely, but I've had two in my life -- the day before my wedding, and the day before Walt's sister's wedding a year and a half ago. I can't even imagine getting a regular manicure and/or pedicure on a regular basis. (Even my mother's weekly appointment with her hairdresser seems extravagant to me, since I go to Supercuts and have my hair cut, but wash and brush it myself.)

Walt has never hired anybody to mow the lawn. He's always done it himself--and in the early years without a motorized lawnmower!

"Going shopping" in a mall has never been an enjoyable occupation for me (unless it's in a book store). I really hate wandering around a mall looking at all the stuff that I really can't justify buying.

As for the Farmers Market, you can't live in Davis without knowing about the Farmers Market. We used to go together when I could still bike, but Walt still goes about once a week to pick up fruit, which is so much better (and cheaper) than at the local supermarket.

Who in the world pays $25 to have the car washed. We DO use a car wash around here, mostly because the water is so hard and not good for the finish of the car. But we get the $5 wash that comes with a gas fill-up and the car always looks good. What more could cost $20?

Looking at this news story makes me realize that I am so far below the "average" person in spending that I wonder why Walt still looks askance when I purchase something he considers "frivolous." (Those "miscellaneous sundries at Longs")

And the Today Show, in a segment talking about "cheap" places to stay on vacation are focusing on places that are "under $200-250 a night." We would have a heart attack at paying that much for a place to sleep!

I remember the Disneyland ad where the parents realize that for only $1600 a week they can visit the park with their kids.

I think I'm getting an idea why there is so much debt in this country!!!!