Monday, February 23, 2009

Money Monday: February 23

I know I’m not alone in the whole reevaluating my relationship to spending thing right now. In that one thing leads to another kind of way, I’ve been reevaluating this week is my relationship to money this last week.

Which led me to realize something rather surprising about myself that I honestly hadn’t realized before: I actually have an aversion to the idea of being wealthy. I’m fine with ‘comfortable,’ I’m good with the old middle class thing.

But when I start thinking about things like having enough cash to buy a rental property and start being a landlord, things that start smacking of actual wealth building…I turn all skittish and start making excuses. I diss my own strengths, call myself stupid, and tell myself that I should be grateful we can manage to have merely enough.

What’s even weirder is, I have no problem with somebody else being wealthy. Somebody else builds a business, makes and keeps bank, and is then obscenely rich…well, good on ‘em. More power to ‘em. May the cork of their wine bottles never rot.

It’s just not OK for me.

Weird, huh? The things you realize, when a massive global recession has you thinking more about your money and how you square off with it. I have a certain comfort zone when it comes to how much wealth we’ve accumulated, and once we hit it I start doing things to ensure we don’t go over it.

I’m going to need to talk myself out of that little quirk, PDQ. It’s already shot us in the foot at least twice, and I certainly don’t want to be here again the next time a recession rolls around – out of cash, scrambling to keep the bills paid, and wishing with all my heart and soul we’d hoarded up more of the jaded dross back when the trees were loaded with fruit and we could eat ourselves sick with ease.

Anywho...I’m going to have to go to Costco tomorrow.

Pray for me.

I don’t wanna, but I gotta. We’re out of everything from milk to eggs and flour and even sugar. Ugh. I’m just not feeling the love for the journey, you know? These are the moments I wish they provided free delivery. Or even reasonably cheap delivery. Or that it would be less than twenty bucks for delivery.

I really am not looking forward to it.

This week I’m using beans a fair bit in the menu. They’re cheap, healthy and filling – a perfect food. Plus they can provide hours of cheap entertainment later. Especially if you have some arrested adolescence going on, which guess what? We do!

I’ve already made one batch of navy bean soup. It’s partially pureed, which gives it both velvety body and nice, firm whole beans to nom. It was supposed to be for dinner last night, but it sort of never got eaten so it’s magically transformed itself into lunch meals. Flexibility, it’s what’s for dinner lunch.

The other one I’m making later in the week is a honey-baked pinto bean as a side dish. Mostly I wanted to make that one because it will use up some salt pork I acquired a while back, ostensibly to make Boston baked beans but then it turned out they weren’t needed and well. The salt pork has been in the fridge ever since.

We’ll be having spaghetti tomorrow night because it is fast and cheap. I will be grateful for both because I will have gone to Costco in the morning. I will not want to look at or think about food for two DAYS after shopping at Costco. It sucks the starch right out of me.

Wednesday is a baked maple-honey chicken and a wild rice and mushroom soup. The grownups love that soup…the kids loathe it. Which is fine, because more for me, neener-neener. Wild rice is expensive, fancy food...which should erase the taste of the cheap, prepackaged food samples shoved at me from all directions in Costco tomorrow.

Thursday I’m going for pineapple-baked pork chops, rice and green beans. Gotten from Costco. So I will just have to get over my Costco aversion, now, won't I.

Friday is looking like a homemade pizza kind of night. And I won't even think about Costco at that point because time heals all wounds and all.

And Saturday I’m shooting for a roast chicken, mashed potatoes and corn. Because it sounds like comfort food to me, and I have a feeling I’m going to need it by then. I’ve got a long week ahead of me (in addition to the Costco thing), and I’m starting it by staying up way too late writing a blog post.

Mixed up priorites – I haz them.

Good night, all. Sweet dreams, and may nobody else fart under your covers.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

It's not the farting under the covers, it's the flapping of said covers afterwards....