Cheap Chickie March 23, 2009

Since Unemployment Fest ’09 began, I have turned cheap. Sounds logical, sounds like the right move, sounds natural.

Except that it is so unnatural.

When employed, I am the opposite of cheap. I don’t use coupons, I don’t shop sales. I declare bans on shoes using only man-made, petroleum-based products. I am not a shopping fiend, but if I’m going to venture out I want the experience to not be full of screaming babies, messy dressing rooms and choosing brands based on the special.

The first weekend of unemployment, I announced that my new hobby would be saving money on shopping trips. Since the only shopping trip left available to my unemployed self was the trip to the grocery store, that was where I focused my cheap energy.

I scoured the specials online. Collected my coupons. Absorbed pricing information. Kicked grocery butt.

But now I am concerned. I’ve come home from the grocery with coffee for 3 weeks straight. Week 1: We needed coffee and it killed me to pay so much for a little brick of it. Week 2: We don’t need coffee, but there’s a buy one get one. Week 3: the huge gallon container of Maxwell House is on sale for $3 less than usual.

Husband saw the huge container and gave me the raised eyebrow. It doesn’t even fit in the cabinet with the other abundance of bags and blocks, it needs to go in the pantry where there is room for such things.

“Coffee sales come and go,” I offered. “Once they’re done, you won’t see another for months. I’m just stocking up now.”

I think he bought it, but I’m not sure. I’m not sure I even bought it.

I got a look from the cashier the other day. I went in and purchased only the buy one get one offers. It looked like Noah’s ark on loading day. Two cereals, two breads, two spray butters, they all moved in orderly fashion down the conveyor belt. Just in case anyone had a doubt that the buy one get one strategy was working, here I come. A marketer’s dream. Just call me ROI.

The one thing that I know will keep this from busting wide open into a full-blown obsession is that, just like drinking or drug addiction, this habit comes with messy side effects. Like shopping at discount stores. The kinds of stores that are busy at all hours of the day or night, bursting with people in cheap clothes, eating cheap food, sporting cheap acrylic nails, but driving a Lexus bus. Its not a pretty site.

Lucky for me, I don’t have the extra cash to buy the $8 pair of short shorts with “Juicy” written on the ass. I’ll just have to stick to the coffee aisle for now, spending my government money on my caffinated essentials. That’s fine with me. At this point I have enough to last through to the next recession.

Half Baked March 22, 2009

A normal family having a Meal.

A typical result of unemployment is home cooking.

The term is loosely applied in this house.

I’ve always been aware that my cooking skills were a little weak. I did nothing to allay the situation as I didn’t feel it necessary. Husband knows how to microwave his fish sticks. I know how to scramble some eggs. We’ve survived quite well so far, thank you very much.

But now, in an effort to conserve our savings, I’ve been trying to make us Meals. Meals differ from our usual fare of frozen dinners and Boca Burgers. When a Meal is made, the stove is employed, pots are dirtied and timers are set. The house usually also smells good, which is a plus. The rest of it will probably turn out to be tedious, but for now it is just a novelty.

It was a given that I would be the only one participating in the Grand Experiment. Husband has no interest in the stove, and I get the feeling he’s not even fond of scrambling an egg when the occasion arrises.

My interest in the stove starts and ends with the fact that we’ve cut the food budget by 60-70%. That’s quite nice. I also have free time now and am good with spending some of it cooking, though it’s usually being done with a very puzzled look on my face.

My family holds good cooks in very high esteem. People still comment on my Great Grandmother’s cooking with a look of longing. A Grandmother on the other side of the family made amazing dishes and could even convince me to eat liverwerst. Where did it all go wrong?

It was a winter evening.

Inside the house we were cozy and warm in my mother’s kitchen, sitting at the dinner table, waiting breathlessly for dinner.

Just a cute little family; mother, father, and sweet FaithieP.

“Ug, steak again, do I have to?” whined FaithieP. “Can I have hotdogs?”

“Wow, I can tell that meat is well-done again, isn’t it?” opined the husband.

Mother stands over the serving dish of blackened steaks. She knew to take them out of the broiler when the fire alarm went off. In later years – when pressed – she may have admitted that her steaks were a little tough, and that the meat was not what some may consider a choice cut, and yes, she was always pretty concerned with making sure they were ‘well-done’ and didn’t give us all worms. But none of that was on her mind that chilly evening.

“Fine, just fine. You’re always complaining about my cooking. Well, you win. From now on, get your own dinners.”

And she quit. Just like that. She made herself a bowl of raisin bran, left the smoking hulks of meat on the drainboard, and went into another room to read.

Father and FaithieP laughed it off nervously. Surely mothers weren’t allowed to quit like that? Surely there would be another assault on the fire alarm tomorrow night?

But it never came. She was serious. In the days and weeks and years to follow, she was true to her word.

This was all well and good up until today. When I met a friend at the store and compared carts. Mine had raisin bran, hot dogs and processed cheese slices. His had flower, vinegar, cornstarch and other assorted items I couldn’t recognize. I started to laugh. I’ve purchased one can of cornstarch in my life and it has lasted me at least a decade. I move into new places with it. At my current rate of consumption, it will be empty in another 70 years.

“You’re, like, cooking and stuff?”

He talked about the rabbit they had the other night. The dinner he was planning tonight. The bread he was making to go with it. Then he told me about the cheese they made the other day at his house. Cheese.

“On purpose?” I’ve had milk bottles that might have contained cheese before, but never on purpose.

Tonight (perhaps inspired by his on-purpose cheese) I made myself a grilled cheese, a break from the Meals I’ve been making of shells and (store bought) cheese, or black bean soup concoctions, or hot dogs and baked beans.

Should I go to the market and purchase vinegar and cornstarch and whatever else he had? Should I endeavor to make Meals with real Ingredients? Recipies you find in books, not just on the back of the box?

Eh. I’m glad I picked up some raisin bran while I was there.

Just to let you know March 21, 2009

Sorry folks. I got them. Both of them.

No need to be alarmed. I am sure you will find one that’s nice enough, good enough, cute enough.

But I have the pinnacle in their class.

I am talking about my cats. They are hands down the cutest ones out there. By far. Don’t worry, I won’t take them to some cat show and embarrass your cats with 5 names that cost the earth with my little DSH beauties. 

Mine are just the best ones, that’s all.

I say this while being held down by them. BabyCat, the 9 week old kitten, is holding me down with all her might. She has been sleeping across my chest and made some noise about me waking up and shifting. Outside the window, the sounds of a saturday morning are begining. Lawnmowers, kids on bikes yelling, the neighbor’s motorcycle and its deep-throated growl.

But this means nothing to the little black kitten. To her, we’re always making noise. Garage doors, radios, conversations. Right now, she’d much rather lay here. And her 1.4 pound weight goes up to 500 as she gives a cute little yawn, blinks, stretches, and puts her head back down in some exceptionally cute fashion. She’s working it.

The other cat is also cuter than any cat out there. I mean it, I have the two cutest. My tabby tiger with white paws and bib. She’s 2 years old and a whole 6.5 pounds. I have to tell the vet techs that she’s full grown, everyone assumes she is still a baby. Retaining her kitten good looks, she too works her nap status, streatching luxuriously and kneading her way into my theigh and my heart. Showing the little one how it goes, as if she needs lessons.

There is no hope for me. The BabyCat and the 6-pound roaster have the upperhand. I’ll never make it. The cuteness!

I relax into my sofa, overwhelmed. Five more minutes, I tell them. They know the truth.

Something in the air March 20, 2009

“I think somehting’s in bloom,” I say, wiping my nose for maybe the 1000th time today.

I’m getting the incredulous look from Husband. “You think?” Oh yes, quite incredulous.

“Didn’t you see it all at the store today?”

“All the what?” I have to speak up because the leaf blowers are going outside again and the windows are open. Next thing I know the coffee table is covered in green haze.

Apparently the rest of the world is quite aware of the crazy high pollen levels. It is why the carwashes are so busy, why the porch furniture is dusted with green and why the leafblowers are going like mad at the houses with oaks. Well, the houses with oaks that care about such things (We have 3 oaks and no leafblower).

I just know that we’re running out of tissues and sneezing is routinely causing the cats to scatter. We’ve had the windows open for the past two weeks (see the “unemployment” category).

I never used to be affected, but I never used to sit in a room with open windows and a cross breeze all day by a computer (see “unemployment”). Now I understand what all those allergy commercials are about.

And with my new relevations and the Thursday night leaf blowing extravaganza, all those windows came crashing down and the AC was turned up. Sudafed was also employed. It’s nice to see someone getting work.

Retirement Rocks March 19, 2009

“You’re going to lose the house!”

 

It was a statement, not a question. Howled into the phone at tremendous volume, the kind of volume you are liable to believe.

 

Except that we’re not going to lose the house. Yes, we were both laid off within two days of each other. Yes, it is an unfortunate event. Yes, unemployment is up, the economy is in the toilet and lots of other bad stuff. And if we hadn’t just disconnected the cable, I might have more dire statistics. But as it is, I mostly just have this one: We are both at home and loving it.

 

Andy had just told his mother about the layoff when she shrieked the house announcement. He tried to calm her, but she stayed in a high-speed wobble over the news for the rest of the conversation. And as she called most of the relatives over on that side to relay the news and beg people to find her son and his wife a job. Because the house is in jeopardy, you know.

 

All this as we basked in the glory of sleeping in, wearing PJs all day and fussing with projects around the house that we’ve been putting off. In effect, we are retired. And loving it.

 

Yes, we know we can’t live off the government dole forever. Yes, we’re going to get tired of watching Hulu instead of a real TV with a remote. And of course, we are looking on all the major job sites. But for the time being, we are luxuriating in our newfound availability to run errands at 10am instead of 6pm.

 

In fact, we’ve been luxuriating a little too much. We only just started going to the gym again, and even now, it is sporatic. I think I’ve got myself on track by promising myself that if I get to the gym by 4pm I can watch Oprah on their TVs. Hulu doesn’t have Oprah. This is a big incentive.

 

I also promised myself I would write myself silly with all the free time I was going to have while unemployed. This thought buoyed me though the layoff at the office, signing all the papers to get my paltry severance check, the driving around in order to make my separation from the company official. All this I did with a smile just thinking about writing.

 

And what do I have to show for it? Zip. Apparently Hulu is more time consuming than I expected. Oh, and all the wine. There’s some lost time there too.

 

But in actuality it seems all day is just not enough time for me to get all my activities done.

 

Getting dressed in the morning is a significant roadblock. First I have to decide to what level I am getting dressed. Full makeup or half? Hair washed, moussed and tressed out, or a pony tail? Pants with a zipper or elastic waist?

 

Husband an I are seeing a lot of each other. A lot. Like we are finishing sentences for each other. My husband spends a lot of time in rooms that I am not in. If I move closer to him he finds a reason to scoot out and do something on the other end of the house. Sometimes we just end up looking at each other. We spend a lot of time talking about the cats.

 

At some point one of us is going to stab the other in the head over something very important, like the “Did you lock the back door?” conversation we have every time we leave the house. Every flipping time. Not sure if the stabbing will happen because I forgot to lock it again or because he asked again, but know this, if we are stuck here with each other for another month or so, it will happen.

 

But we won’t have lost the house.