About sixteen years ago, I met him for the first time. My trainwreck sibling brought home this adorable puppy he had no business adopting because he had not one thing in his life that wasn’t a mess. I was furious at my sibling – he didn’t even take care of himself, how could he drag
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June 19, 2008
Walking out the door, I caught myself glancing at my closet and assessing what kind of day it would be, and what outfits I could put together for the rest of the week. It seems my lunch organization is bleeding into other areas of my life.
It also seems like after being on a spending and splurging cycle for the last three weeks where I couldn’t stop the budget bleeding out on little things I’d normally control very carefully, I’m back to being content with what I’ve got, and even in the mood to go through and clear things out. Thank goodness!! I’m not into self-flagellation over this stuff, but it’s such a relief to be back in the right mindset that doesn’t undermine my efforts to keep it together.
While my personal damages weren’t on a large scale, it definitely turned into a hefty bill when combined with the insane gas prices. I think the gas expenditures have gone up to about $300+/month! I’ve been diligently trying to reduce other fixed costs to compensate, but I’ve been spending like I have money: going out, the trench coat ($23), going out to lunch last weekend ($10), new shoes ($11), buying a graduation gift for a work friend ($24), and having to give my cousin a fat $50 check for graduation. In short, enjoying life a liiiiitle more than I can afford.
Ok, that last one was not negotiable, I’m the only cousin who came to the graduation and it’s only fair that I give him what I gave his sister. It’s a family tradition that at least one older cousin will gift the younger cousins a check for their graduations.
It might not seem like much, but when the budget’s stretched tight, it makes a difference. The end of the splurge cycle comes none too soon, because I hate the feeling of treading to keep my head above water.
I had to wonder, why is it so hard for someone who is normally so at peace with being frugal to break out of a spending/splurging mentality? Sure, I figured it was temporary, but heck, I felt like I was in the grips of a six armed bear for a while! I knew I needed to NOT spend money, but there was always a reason that overrode my “Uh, well, you don’t have the budget for that …” hesitation.
And if it’s this hard for me? When I’m accustomed to self denial and maximizing returns and stretching every resource to cover the necessities? Heck, I spent half an hour deciding whether or not to get a haircut this week. Then I realized that after spending over a hundred dollars I shouldn’t have, I should pass on my $14 cut. *sigh* How incredibly hard must it be for people who haven’t had to practice this?
June 18, 2008
After making sure that I’d asked for refills on everything I needed, and asked for a new note for my fibro treatments on Monday, I thought I was set for at least two or three months.
Turns out I forgot one. Dangit! I like the pharmacy that’s attached to my medical building, but it’s a good 20 miles away and I really don’t want to make another drive out there solely to pick up one medication.
Experimentally, I logged onto the Kaiser website to test their pharmacy order option and found that they have a mail delivery option. Huzzah! I don’t like that they won’t show me the price before I order because there’s no mention of shipping charges, but I can cancel the order if I decide that the emailed price is too high for shipping costs. Likely, they just won’t show a price because they have to check for the copay when they fill the RX.
Note: I wrote this last Friday before all the hullaballoo. A week later, I have only been charged my copay, and I have a three month supply of medication without having to spend another $5-7 on gas. This is wonderful!
is Sense to Dollars who says she can put up with anything for 4 months. I sure thought I could, but it seems that other people have other plans for me. Like driving me HALF MAD.
Frustrating person: “So that big stack (of about 200-300 pages worth of work) that you took with you, you’re not done with it all?”
Me: “Uh, no, did you expect me to be? That’s a LOT of work.”
FP: “Well, no, but you took it all over there.”
Me: “Yes, but I always take all my work so that if I’m working faster than usual, I’ll have all my work there and ready.”
FP: “Well, so you’re saying you’re not done with all of it?”
Me: “No, that’s a LOT of work. I just put in 3 hard hours on the two hardest chunks of work (100 pages).”
FP: “Well, you said that you had to do all of it.”
*sizzle*
How in the Good Lord’s name am I going to manage to get through months of this? Or days of this?
I don’t think it’s healthy to have your blood pressure skyrocket at least two times a day.
June 17, 2008
Oh, my goodness. I never thought that our sometimes grossly extravagant tradition of prom would take on such a life of its own in England. This Wall Street Journal article talks about proms becoming popular thanks to “movies like “American Pie” and television shows such as “The O.C.,” and they want the chance to dress up and rent limousines themselves.”
P’raps I’m just an old fuddy duddy now, or our prom just wasn’t that fun, but I can’t recall prom feeling like it was worth more than a couple hundred, all told, much less willingly spending the kind of money these parents are spending on their high school children for a single night:
Sue Clarke and her husband at first balked when their 16-year-old son, Michael, begged them to rent him a bright yellow Lamborghini plus driver for prom night. But they gave in after their son promised to study harder in return.
“We didn’t have proms or things like that when we were younger,” says the 39-year-old Ms. Clarke, who, all told, spent $1,180 on Michael’s prom. She says it was worth every bit of it to see her son so happy.
June 16, 2008
and running.
I briefly considered updating the scenery too, but I’m sort of exhausted from all this other Damage Control work.
Thanks to all!
June 15, 2008
Due to a possible compromise/penetration of my cover by an untrustworthy soul, I’ve had to block public access to the blog.
I’m undergoing an identity cleanse and hope to be back up and running within 24 hours. I can still be reached at this name @ yahoo.com for now, but I’m going to have to make as clean a break as possible with regards to pseudonym and address. Thanks for helping me preserve my anonymity, I would hate to have to delete this blog or stop blogging entirely because of this.
I’m still trying to figure out how to reach regular readers, or irregular readers, whose email addresses I don’t have, without publicly stating that Ms.M has become such and such a blogger, and making it easy for my privacy-invader to trace me to the new blog.
Edit: I’m specifically thinking of Chocoholic, Karen, Beautiful, and a few others who comment every so often but don’t have profiles, comments enabled on their blogs, or blogs at all so that I can contact them.
June 13, 2008
*sigh* So after my rant about American’s decision, United has decided to follow suit and charge for the first piece of luggage as well.
Kacie has a good point: Southwest just plans to fly a little bit slower and save money that way; I wonder if these other airlines can’t or won’t follow suit because they’re so frequently late anyway that they can’t afford to spend time instead of gas?
And perhaps it’s simply easier and quicker to charge the customer extra than it is to implement gas efficient solutions? It seems to me that it’s smarter to reduce the requirements for gas, since the price-related scarcity is the root of the problem, than it is to simply wring another fifteen to forty bucks out of customers who may be able to choose to fly less frequently as a result of the increased costs. Yes, I sure do have a stake in saying that, but I also like to have more than one solution to a problem, especially such a major one. Sure they’ll have to raise prices to compensate as well, but let’s look at the overall picture, not just the most obvious, glaring issue.
Personally, I’m looking at alternatives to traveling with either of these airlines when I have a choice, though I don’t have a say when it comes to business travel. Since all expenses are paid for business trips, I suppose I don’t have to take it as personally, and continue to be a super-condensed packer.
