$30/30 days

Has anyone else seen the story that's been circulating recently about the two married high school teachers in Southern California who gave themselves a food budget of $30 each for a month? For the month of September they spent $60 total on food - three meals a day for two people for thirty days. And they blogged about it, too. It's a very interesting read, if you have the chance. And not terribly long either.


According to their story, there was no political agenda behind this. They just wanted to see if they could. The rules were minimal - ramen noodles only when absolutely necessary, attempt a varied diet, any "freebies" they ate had to be available to everyone (such as fast food hand outs like ketchup and maple syrup). I got the impression that part of their motivation was to make people think about what and how they ate, and the fact that a huge number of people eat this way not to challenge themselves, but because they have to.


I've got to say - it sure made me think. Like an armchair quarterback, I found myself thinking of what I'd do differently. Things I'd eat that they never even contemplated. Ways to buy food cheaper so you could eat more for less. Bulk cooking to provide more variety and be less time consuming. In my head I worked out the whole scenario as it would apply to my family.


And then I remembered. One dollar per person per day. For a month.


More power to them. But count me out.

on tape

What's the proper answer for the following scenario?


You've removed an IV from a patient in readiness to discharge them. This, unfortunately, involves a fair amount of tape pulling which admittedly doesn't feel great. The patient - college aged, preppy and surrounded by her sorority friends - has howled and cried her way through the tape and IV removal, at one point pitifully imploring me to "just get it out". One friend is stroking her head and another is grasping her hand. By the time we're done (thirty seconds), she's in tears.


She then proceeds to ask me my opinion of drug-free and natural childbirth. (Out of nowhere. No context whatsoever). At my baffled face, she informs me that even though she is years away from having children, she knows that she won't consider any kind of drugs at all in her labor and is already filing away information about how to go about this. Clearly, the fact that I'm wearing a stethoscope makes me some sort of labor and delivery expert, and she expects some kind of a relevant answer.


Would you go with:


A. It's totally your choice how you have your baby - whenever that may be.


B. You have plenty of time to think about this. No need to make a decision right now.


C. Let me give you my phone number so you can call me when you go into labor - because this I've got to see.


There's an epidural riding on the answer.

analyze this

This is kind of interesting. I'm not sure I agree with it, but it's still fun.


Here's what it came up with for this blog:

ESFP - The Performers

The entertaining and friendly type. They are especially attuned to pleasure and beauty and like to fill their surroundings with soft fabrics, bright colors and sweet smells. They live in the present moment and don´t like to plan ahead - they are always in risk of exhausting themselves.

They enjoy work that makes them able to help other people in a concrete and visible way. They tend to avoid conflicts and rarely initiate confrontation - qualities that can make it hard for them in management positions.



Hmmm...

The Thursday Three

Perhaps you all overlooked my plea last week for Thursday Three ideas? Hmm? Oh, well. You're stuck with this today. Consider it incentive for next week.



Three Things I (Stupidly) Refuse To Spend Money On Unless I Absolutely HAVE To




1. Parking. I have a parking meter aversion that I can't seem to shake. Unless the weather is horrific or I have a whining kid in the car, I'll park blocks away to avoid a meter. (Or a funky ankle, but that's another post). This meter phobia was a lot worse in LA, but is still something that I have to deal with in Liberal Collegeville. What makes this just plain stupid is the fact that you can park downtown for two hours for fifty cents - not a sum that is going to break the bank.Even my bank.


And if your meter runs out and you get a ticket? Two dollars. The first time I got one, I swore until I saw the amount. I looked for extra zeros. Then I laughed out loud. Two dollars. That's not something you'll see in LA. Maybe two dollars a minute.



2. Stamps. Almost all of my bills get paid on-line or by automatic withdrawal, both to save time and money. Most of my personal correspondence is done by e-mail or on the phone. And although I aspire to sending personal little notes and cards by mail, I almost never do. So I very rarely have stamps in the house, and hate buying them with a passion. Like the meters, forty two cents is not a big deal, so I don't have a clue what my problem is.


Unfortunately though, there are things that can't be done on-line or in person - things like legal documents and medical bills. For those things you need stamps, so I'll bite the bullet and go out and buy them. But only the amount I need. (This is especially stupid because I keep extras of everything on hand. I hate running to the store for every little thing. Evidently, this doesn't apply to stamps).


Today, however, I had to mail two things and I bought six stamps. Woo Hoo. Maybe she's finally seeing the light, folks.




3. Bagged Salad. We eat a lot of salad. For a long time we couldn't find the lid to the salad spinner. And I hate wet lettuce. This is a bad combination all around. The obvious answer was to either buy a new salad spinner or bagged, already washed, lettuce. Well, lets go for the not obvious. I kept buying lettuce (romaine, our very favorite) and washing it. Then I would struggle to get it dry enough to make me happy - an impossibility. I would think of this every time I passed the pretty little expensive bags of salad in the produce aisle, but I still wouldn't buy them. (I buy bagged spinach every week as part of my "staples" list. I have no idea why I consider that different). Finally last week I couldn't take it anymore. I broke down and bought a new salad spinner.


And a big head of romaine.



Your turn.

our regularly scheduled programming

Sorry. It's Holiday Bunco night and I've just rolled in the door, long after midnight. Yikes. In light of the fact that I currently have 80 proof blood, how about we just agree to come back for tomorrow's post?

Trust me. It's better this way.

lost time

The sound of the helicopter landing outside was growing louder as all of us in the room scurried around. The man on the bed had woken up this morning the same way he always did, with no clue that the day would take the turn it did. In two minutes, we would load him into the chopper for the fifteen minute ride that would, hopefully, save his life. His wife stood watching, her fist pressed against her mouth. I gave her a map and directions to the hospital he was headed to, and suggested that she might want to get a jump start on him and leave, since it would take her considerably longer on the ground than it would take him in the air.


She leaned in toward him and said, "Don't leave me. Please. We have three boys. We aren't done yet, you and I."


My eyes filled with tears and I had to turn my head quickly to the back wall. It wasn't an unexpected reaction on my part. This job makes me tear up more than I like to admit. What was unexpected was my next response.


I was furious. In the unlikeliest of settings, I had accidentally stumbled onto what it is that is making me so "blue" at the moment.


I am really, really angry at the FX, and don't have any problems saying so. The reasons I'm angry at him are not, I'm sure, the reasons he would expect me to give, but I think we've proved repeatedly this year that he doesn't know me nearly as well as he always thought he did. How telling it is that he never thought I was worth the effort of figuring out. Just as telling is that I never trusted him enough to show him the real me. Should I be surprised that my reasons to be mad would be perceived differently?


Here's why I'm NOT angry:


I'm not angry that I'm not married to him anymore. I am - honest to god - more at peace with the world now than I've been in my entire adult life. It's like I'm me again. He's been out of the house for six months, and in that period of time I haven't missed him one single time. He's fine in small doses, but then he starts doing the things that always drove me crazy, and I'm thrilled that I don't HAVE to deal with them anymore. That's not anger. It's relief.


I'm not angry about his job success. Lately, he has had some accolades for a couple of the projects he's done recently. I have mixed feelings about this. The first thing that popped into my mind was "Oh, yeah. That film you're thinking is such a big deal? Wasn't that the same one I had to listen to you scream and yell about, about how much you hated doing it and that you were ready to quit? Who was it who held your hand and calmed you down enough to think rationally about what you were doing? Who was it who talked you into staying on this project? Huh?" But then my calmer side comes into play, and what I end up thinking is this. I'm happy for his success. Truly. I think that for a person who measures his worth as a human being based on how other people perceive him and his success, this is a very necessary thing. Imagine what it would be like if he threw everything else away and then didn't even have a career to fall back on.


I'm not angry that he continues to want to talk to me. He wants to chat, he wants to gossip, he wants to shoot the breeze. Why? Do you not have any other friends to play with? Why in the world would you ask my opinion about anything that doesn't involve the children? Why do you care what I think - now - when you never did before? What's the purpose? This one baffles me. I just don't get it. But it doesn't make me angry. It just makes me scratch my head.


And here's why I AM angry.


The kids.


The kids.


And the house.


There was a comment made here a couple of weeks ago that I've carried with me since. I think it was Frances who said it, and what she basically said was that the kids had a right to be angry, because their father had deliberately chosen his happiness over theirs. Short and sweet. Devastating. And so true. I watch them all, watch the way they deal with their hurt and their anger, and I wonder. Does he see it? Does he see all the ways they compensate with him to hide what they're really feeling? Surely he does with Sasquatch, because he has the subtlety of an onion sandwich. But the other two? Does he just think that because he's okay they're okay? Or worse yet, is he so caught up in his own world that these things never even occur to him?


The house speaks for itself, too. Tonight, my saviour Kevin came over and fixed my sink and my downstairs toilet. On a work night and with one day's notice. Toting a kid along with him while the rest of the family did some holiday stuff. And wanted to charge me a whopping $15, which was exactly what he paid for supplies. (Even called me a dumbass when I argued). When I thanked him profusely, he stopped me in my tracks. "Listen," he said, "we both know this is not how this was supposed to be. You would never have bought this house if you thought you'd be trying to do this all on your own." Short and sweet. Devastating. So true. And so anger inducing.


The woman today was speaking out of love for her husband, and how much their kids needed him.


For some reason it reminded me of one of our earlier blow-ups back when we were "trying to fix the marriage". I have to put my needs first, the FX told me. Well, I replied, I have to put the kids needs first. To myself I said, Wow. Someone's needs aren't being taken into account here.


I think I'm making up for lost time.

it's my party

Surely it would be a dull world if everyone was always happy. That's what I'm telling myself anyway, as the guest of honor at my very own Pity Party. I've spent most of the day fighting it, and have finally decided to go with it, to wallow in the mood until it passes. It's a workable plan as long as the party is over by tomorrow. The only thing I'm worse at than being ill or a patient is being blue. I just don't have the knack. I'm a very happy person at heart, and these dark moods really throw me for a loop.


I'm not sure what it is that's causing this. I know what I think it isn't. It isn't my foot, although it sure could be. It isn't the holidays, because I'm going low-key like nobody's business this year. It isn't money, because I see way too many people in genuine financial crisis to stress out about my situation too much. It isn't my kids, isn't my job, isn't my health. It isn't even my house. The tub is draining, thanks to some miracle stuff that my step-father recommended, and my kitchen sink is being looked at tomorrow. All my ducks are in a row. Everything is good.


Good and blue.