Flowers and Candles and Beers (Oh, My!) | How Much Did I Spend Last Week? Jan 16-22, 2023
This will shock you, but the answer is: too much!
I feel as though the past few weeks – Brandin losing his job, realising that perhaps buying things from Target every week is not reasonable – have really crystallised for me what’s important, at least in purchasing terms, and what isn’t, and what I am willing to give up (and what I’m not).
My several-times-a-week Starbucks habit? I genuinely haven’t noticed its loss, and since watching @yourrichbff on Instagram talking about how Starbucks is the worst bank in the world, I won’t be topping up my Starbs card any time soon.
Taking my takeaway habit from five times a week to one or two? Again, this hasn’t made a huge difference to my daily life – and it’s forced me to rediscover my love of toasted cheese sandwiches.
But there are other things I don’t think I’ll ever be able to give up. The once-or-twice-a-week takeaway, sure. I’m not giving it up. I love my chicken tikka masala too much! Ditto: the occasional lunch or dinner or coffee with friends, of whom God knows I don’t have enough in Fort Wayne to be turning down chances to socialise.
And I don’t think I’ll ever give up the sporadic, random moments I find myself needing to spend money to let someone know I’m thinking of them. I know that I can just tell people, but you’ll never convince me that a text is the same as a bunch of flowers. It’s just not.
So basically, this week I’ve remembered that I’m essentially a very capitalism-oriented saint. Saint Flaithiúl.
Monday
It’s Martin Luther King Jr Day, another day on the US calendar that confounds and confuses me. The schools are off, but most workplaces are still very much on – I even have a vet appointment for Vinny this morning, made when we realised that he was behind on his vaccinations and his annual heartworm injection, an essential step in keeping him heartworm-free – which makes no sense to me.
What if we all worked full-time? Where would our kids go on random days like today, when school is out but business is in?!
This clearly is not a concern I have to think too much about because we are not in work and the boys are with their mum.
I do some work in the morning for an hour or two, then while Atlas is napping, I take Vinny to the vet.
He is the best boy, chomping down his medicine and barely reacting when he gets his injections, all the while refusing to so much as look at the peanut butter they smeared on the table as a distraction. He also does an enormous, smelly wee in the examination room, but y’know, dogs will be dogs. ($280.75)
The vet is across town, close to where we used to live – and we like them so we never bothered changing – but it means that I’ll be right next to Kasey’s house, so it makes sense for me to pick the boys up when we’re done at noon.
So I grab them and we head home, but somehow on the way they convince me that they are starving; that the only thing that will sate their hunger is Dairy Queen; and that we must, in fact, eat in Dairy Queen in order for lunch to be in any way enjoyable.
Well. Let me give you some advice: never go into a Dairy Queen. There’s nothing wrong with it, per se, but it just looks like nothing’s been updated since 1995; they’re out of ice for the soda fountain (and there is nothing grosser than a lukewarm Mountain Dew, I discover); and we’re the only people there, which makes any sense of decorum go out the window. (My usual tactic is to hiss, “there are other people here!” when they start acting particularly unruly.)
Anyway, we each get a meal – Finn orders a chili dog and then announces it’s too spicy, so that gets thrown in the bin – and a Blizzard ice-cream before heading home around 4pm. ($34.72)
When we get home I retreat to my office to take a breath and be alone do some more work and later on Brandin makes some pasta for dinner.
We watch the last episode of Willow before bed. Very much enjoyed. Have a massive crush on Boorman. 5 stars.
Daily total: $315.47
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