Yesterday marked the spending of our very last nickel. We are now in forced hybernation until next payday.

I�d been hanging on to the Prince�s mileage check for the past week, planning to spend half of it on groceries and half on my schoolbooks for the classes which start next week. Which would have been a dandy plan, were it not for the fact that a rather large check I had forgotten about, specifically 80 bucks to the Evil Childe�s school written almost a MONTH ago, finally posted to the checking account yesterday. Which also would have been just dandy except I had forgotten it was out there just waiting to come back and bite me in the ass, and so the account was about $60 short to cover it.

No, I don�t balance my checkbook, thank you very much for asking, and yes, I know that I SHOULD, thank you very much for pointing this out. We use duplicate checks, and about once a week I sit down with the checkbook and check off all the checks that have posted and figure out how much we have left for spending. I don�t bounce checks in this particular manner very often, so it�s not a horrible system, although I guess it�s kind of inefficient now that I think about it. If I kept a running tally I�d only have to sit down once a month and balance the damn thing, wouldn�t I? Except that I probably wouldn�t because it would no longer be at the forefront of my mind threatening to blow up, and I am horrible about taking care of things that aren�t at the forefront of my mind threatening to blow up. So I�m thinking I might just bounce more checks that way... because I�m sure I�d procrastinate on the balancing of the account, and never remember to factor in the damn service charges when trying to estimate how much money is actually in the damn account at any given time.

So anyway... yesterday after stopping at the bank to cover the bounced check, I went to WalMart and the grocery store to pick up a few things and walked out $104.73 poorer. I�m beginning to hate the grocery store with a fury. No matter how short my list, I simply cannot get out of there with less than $50 worth of stuff, and usually a lot more than that, because walking around the store I'm constantly reminded of things I needed and forgot to put on the damn list. And we don�t eat real high on the hog these days, either. I don�t buy things I love like salmon and shrimp and avocados and blueberries any more because they cost so terribly much. But I�m still amazed at the prices of basic stuff around here. Where do they get off charging $5 for a jar of honey?? Or $3 for a pack of hotdogs, or $3.69 for a gallon of milk??? Why is a box of tampons almost 5-stinking-dollars, for crying out loud?

I shop at Aldi�s for most stuff, and I do pretty good there. Last week I got a whole heaping cart full of food�and I mean heaping in the sense that I was having trouble keeping the topper-most layer of stuff from sliding off�for around $120. No, it�s not gourmet food, but it�s pretty decent stuff, and we�re not exactly on a gourmet budget these days, now are we? Does it really matter if each corn kernel is plump and perfectly formed, if the difference between the pristine corn and the slightly more raggedy-looking but still perfectly nutritious and tasty corn is 40 cents a can? Not to me, it doesn�t.

I�ve got a whole lot of tasty, cheap recipes floating around in my head from previous poverty times, though many are no longer usable, since they heavily feature cream of mushroom soup or homemade white sauce and we�re on Weight Watchers these days. But still I�m able to whip up something decent most every night. Stir-fry, green bean soup, chili, quesadillas, omelets, black beans and rice�which is so good I cook it at least once a month even when we�re not so poor.

Trouble is, there are a few things we need I just can�t get at Aldi�s, or I don�t like their brand or whatever. So I still must foray into the Jewel for things like fat-free sour cream and cheddar cheese and salad dressing, low-fat popcorn, black beans, decent coffee and Diet Vanilla Crack. Which is really only a short listing of the things I need to purchase there, but I�ll spare you the boring expanded version. (You�re welcome.)

The point is, the grocery thing is driving me CRAZY because we�re always running out of this-or-that in the middle of the week and spending money that would be better left unspent. If we weren�t trying to diet it wouldn�t be so bad... there were plenty of times in my past life that we went a week without any fresh produce in the house, or milk or yogurt or really anything nutritious at all. Tuna casserole costs about $2 to make a potful that will feed three people supper two times. French toast made with day-old bread from the bakery outlet is dirt-cheap and filling. Not the height of nutrition, obviously, but enough to keep body and soul from experiencing a tragic premature breakup during the occasional particularly meager between-paydays week. But these days we�re trying to keep the momentum going with Weight Watchers, and anyway we�re not THAT poor... during the former life, often there simply WAS no money to eat better. Yesterday, I had a choice... buy the things we needed and become broke, or hang on to the money for other things and eat crap and blow the diet, which is also costing us money to be on. (What a grammatically sound sentence THAT was.)

So... broke. Real real broke. And payday a week away, and the motherfucking child support check STILL hasn�t arrived for some reason (even though I know Dick took care of his end of things a few weeks ago because I called the enforcement place to make sure.) And even if the check DOES arrive, it does us no damn good because the Boy and the Evil Childe have inexplicably decided they want to go to the Homecoming dance and now we need to get her a dress before the end of the month.

I thought the Prince had enough money in his wallet to keep him in cigarettes and gas til the end of the week, but as it turns out, not so much. I haven�t filled up the gas tank in fucking forever because I hardly ever drive any more, but the Prince tells me that $2 a gallon for gas is taking quite a bite out of his personal budget. AND he has meds that need getting, and our insurance copay is fucking sky-high now too.

So I hit upon the bright idea to go sell some of our books at the used bookstore in the next town, since I don�t know of anywhere you can sell blood in this area and we�re too lazy to roll up all of our pennies. The bookstore doesn�t pay very much per book at all, but I figured we�d get at least a few bucks out of the shitload we took in, and we desperately needed to clear out some shelf space in our poor overworked bookshelves anyway. Of course, I called ahead to make sure they were actually buying books before we went dragging all our shit in there.

The guy who runs the bookstore, Methusalah�for he is 969 years old if he�s a day�had neglected to tell us on the phone that, although he IS buying books today, he won�t actually be able to look over our books and give us actual MONEY today, for he has many books ahead of ours. We�ll have to leave them (in exchange for a receipt, of course) and he�ll get back to us on Monday or Tuesday to tell us how much he�ll give us for the ones he can use. It probably won�t even be worth the time and gas we spent to haul them in there.

We browsed around the musty shelves for a few minutes anyway, at the Evil Childe�s request. I saw her perusing the religion section and told her that her type of books would probably be in the New Age section... and muttered in a smart-aleck aside to no one in particular that my books would probably be in the Old Age section. This drew a chuckle from the bookstore guy from clear across the store. Who knew he could hear? Seriously... the dude looks like the Crypt Keeper. While we were browsing I overheard Methusalah cackling with one of his minions over the fact that they NEVER have to go out looking for books to replenish their stock any more, because they have so many people bringing them in to sell. Seems we�re not the only ones reduced to desperate measures these days.

The next week should be interesting, and payday isn�t promising to be much better, what with bills and schoolbooks and fucking GROCERIES AGAIN. My new mission in life is to figure out how to reduce our expenses. No place seems like a good place to cut back because we already don�t live extravagently, except for a few things that are not really changeable right now, like our exhorbitant rent and car payment. A normal family with good credit and a positive bank account balance and a cat balance of zero or one could probably reduce their spending in those areas, but not us. We�re fucked on those accounts. But somehow, some way, there has got to be a way to reduce expenses that won�t prove to be horribly depressing and inconvenient.

Of course, our idea of entertainment will have to undergo a radical change. Dinners out, our weekly 20 dollar�s worth of coffee at Borders, $10-a-week in late fees for videos and Xbox games from Ballbusters�all these must become a thing of the past. Telephone, long distance service, cell phone, cable? Surely there are cuts to be made in there somewhere. No more will the Evil Childe get $2 a day to buy junk food at school. Either she can bring lunch from home or starve�not my problem. The cats? I guess if they are going to be so persnickety that they won�t do their business in the litter unless it�s changed every goddamn day, then they can jolly well pee in the cheap stuff.

So that�s where we�re at these days. There has GOT to be a way to do this that doesn�t involve my going out and getting another job. Which I�ve thought about, believe me... but the trouble with THAT is, it hasn�t really helped us in the past. It just means I have less time and willingness to cook so we eat out more, and spend more money for junk food because I tend to eat my way through boring work afternoons; and it means that I have to spend money to have better clothes for work, and I buy more books and magazines so I won�t be bored on the bus, and we spend more on entertainment because I get all stressed and depressed when I feel like I�m working my ass off and can�t even do anything fun on the weekends.

So my �job� really needs to be figuring out where we can save. I�ve got about another year before I graduate from school, and I need to believe that by then there will be some jobs out there in my field so we can finally start making up for all this lost time, financially speaking. Or possibly the world will have blown up by then, and it won�t matter anyway. But I�d rather believe that things are only going to suck until... oh, right around January of 2005. If all goes well, I�ll graduate right around the time a brand spanking new president takes office. A girl�s gotta look on the bright side.

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Last Five
Crappy job crap, weird neighbor, and someone whose baby I apparently want to have - 2006-05-08
Live from the dump - 2006-04-09
Kind of like a muzzle for your brain - 2006-03-29
...and then she fell ass-first into my cereal bowl - 2006-03-28
Playing catch-up - 2006-03-27

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