So predictable.
I spent a small fortune at the grocery store this afternoon, and I didn't even get everything I needed, I realized as I got home and started putting things away. This is the drawback of winging it.
The store was, as expected, totally nuts. I was just about to give up and go to the smaller Whole Foods (that used to be Bread & Circus), and if that lot were full too then East Side Marketplace, but then a spot opened up right in front of me. Navigating packs of SUVs and dazed shoppers was fun, as my spot was pretty far from the entry.
I had to put this on my credit card, the one I'm trying to pay down, because quillon and I are both tapped out this month. It's been an expensive month, between the trip to DC (they did pay me back for the plane ticket, and they did provide a couple of meals, but I still spent money while I was there) and the multiple write-ins for NaNoWriMo (those silly places actually expect you to buy something to eat or drink when you take up their space!) and I made a donation to NaNo and a couple of small but significant impulse purchases at the beginning of the month and anyway, it's been an expensive month, and there's nothing in the joint account, and Q just bought a computer so he's kind of not able to shore it up. So I just whipped out my dandy credit card to pay for our Thanksgiving feast. And I think there's something that kind of came over me, between the fact that I had to go into the I'll pay for it later mindset and there's so fucking many people out there who are all crazed and in that buybuybuy mentality, yanno, gotta do it big big big consume consume consume! and all that, gawd we are such herd animals, but the bill ended up being kinda painful to look at. Ouch. I was gonna go next door to the liquor store and grab a bottle of wine on my way out but decided to skip it.
And as I got home I thought, holy fucking shit I forgot to get dill and we're totally out of pepper and what do you mean the Tofurky doesn't come with gravy anymore? and then I took a deep breath, and realized that it's not the end of the world. We're not totally out of dill, and pepper is a spice that I can work around, and I've got enough mushrooms to insulate a five story building as well as butter and milk and three different kinds of cheeses (wait, no, four) and flour, so I can make my own gravy tomorrow, and besides Q kinda thinks the Tofurky gravy is scary anyway so maybe that's actually a bonus. But I also thought, is this really worth it? Why do we, as a group of people, periodically have these spending, consumption orgies? and why do I get sucked into that mindset?
And then I think, it's not really like that, at least not here. It's a day for us to be together and have a nice meal, and not the normal pizza or whatever-I-can-throw-together pasta thing, and take a moment to appreciate each other and all we have. And part of the reason that the bill was so high was that I was replacing a couple of things, like olive oil, that demand an investment. I wasn't just buying Thanksgiving dinner today. Part of it, too, was that I bought stuff we don't normally get, as a treat, like the really yummy chocolate truffles and those funky blue potatoes. Sure, the lasagna is going to be excessive, and I ended up buying enough to make two (which is good, come to think about it, since we might have company drop in tomorrow afternoon), but really it's a lot of little things that added up.
So why does it have to be so expensive?
I think that next year, if I remember to look at this entry, I'll try to plan better and make it not so spendy. I think that this year I got caught up, off and on, in NaNo, and I can blame part of my distraction and last minuteness on that. But part of it is that I was lazy and procrastinated, which is nothing new, and I let myself get swept into the mass consciousness of the Day Before A Holiday And Also Maybe The First Snow That Sticks, and yeah, I got excessive. I think I bought enough cheese to constipate a whale[1], for example. There's something that's at once disturbing and comforting that I am, at times, just like everyone else.
[1] And immediately, I think about how I can incorporate that imagery into my NaNo story.
Alanis Morissette, Crazy (James Michael Mix)
The store was, as expected, totally nuts. I was just about to give up and go to the smaller Whole Foods (that used to be Bread & Circus), and if that lot were full too then East Side Marketplace, but then a spot opened up right in front of me. Navigating packs of SUVs and dazed shoppers was fun, as my spot was pretty far from the entry.
I had to put this on my credit card, the one I'm trying to pay down, because quillon and I are both tapped out this month. It's been an expensive month, between the trip to DC (they did pay me back for the plane ticket, and they did provide a couple of meals, but I still spent money while I was there) and the multiple write-ins for NaNoWriMo (those silly places actually expect you to buy something to eat or drink when you take up their space!) and I made a donation to NaNo and a couple of small but significant impulse purchases at the beginning of the month and anyway, it's been an expensive month, and there's nothing in the joint account, and Q just bought a computer so he's kind of not able to shore it up. So I just whipped out my dandy credit card to pay for our Thanksgiving feast. And I think there's something that kind of came over me, between the fact that I had to go into the I'll pay for it later mindset and there's so fucking many people out there who are all crazed and in that buybuybuy mentality, yanno, gotta do it big big big consume consume consume! and all that, gawd we are such herd animals, but the bill ended up being kinda painful to look at. Ouch. I was gonna go next door to the liquor store and grab a bottle of wine on my way out but decided to skip it.
And as I got home I thought, holy fucking shit I forgot to get dill and we're totally out of pepper and what do you mean the Tofurky doesn't come with gravy anymore? and then I took a deep breath, and realized that it's not the end of the world. We're not totally out of dill, and pepper is a spice that I can work around, and I've got enough mushrooms to insulate a five story building as well as butter and milk and three different kinds of cheeses (wait, no, four) and flour, so I can make my own gravy tomorrow, and besides Q kinda thinks the Tofurky gravy is scary anyway so maybe that's actually a bonus. But I also thought, is this really worth it? Why do we, as a group of people, periodically have these spending, consumption orgies? and why do I get sucked into that mindset?
And then I think, it's not really like that, at least not here. It's a day for us to be together and have a nice meal, and not the normal pizza or whatever-I-can-throw-together pasta thing, and take a moment to appreciate each other and all we have. And part of the reason that the bill was so high was that I was replacing a couple of things, like olive oil, that demand an investment. I wasn't just buying Thanksgiving dinner today. Part of it, too, was that I bought stuff we don't normally get, as a treat, like the really yummy chocolate truffles and those funky blue potatoes. Sure, the lasagna is going to be excessive, and I ended up buying enough to make two (which is good, come to think about it, since we might have company drop in tomorrow afternoon), but really it's a lot of little things that added up.
So why does it have to be so expensive?
I think that next year, if I remember to look at this entry, I'll try to plan better and make it not so spendy. I think that this year I got caught up, off and on, in NaNo, and I can blame part of my distraction and last minuteness on that. But part of it is that I was lazy and procrastinated, which is nothing new, and I let myself get swept into the mass consciousness of the Day Before A Holiday And Also Maybe The First Snow That Sticks, and yeah, I got excessive. I think I bought enough cheese to constipate a whale[1], for example. There's something that's at once disturbing and comforting that I am, at times, just like everyone else.
[1] And immediately, I think about how I can incorporate that imagery into my NaNo story.
Alanis Morissette, Crazy (James Michael Mix)