Bistro

            He was seated at one of those rickety bistro tables that try to look chic in some part of town that tries to look French, or at least multi-cultural.

            He had a pipe with him, un-lit, because he thought it might make him more distinguished, but he didn’t know how to hold the damn thing in his mouth. On the side? Sticking out perpendicular to his nose? Or at a jaunty angle to his jaw? And how did it stay in? You couldn’t press gently with your lips like with a cigarette. But pursing his lips made him look like a fish. An angry one. He tried biting down on it to hold it in place and that worked for a time – but his jaw started aching from the clenching.

            He set it down on top of the paper he was reading, and looked around the other outside tables again. The street in front of him offered people to watch and laugh at and the noise was a gentle hum – as cliché as that seemed.

            He repositioned the pipe at a more pleasing angle and picked at a stray thread on his sweater. He rumpled his hair and rubbed his face with both hands, then sighed.

            She wasn’t here yet. Did he want her to come at all? He hadn’t seen her for eight years.

            And then.

            Before he could re-live the past, as he’d done countless other times, and pondered the what ifs and if onlys, she walked up the street.

            He saw her before she saw him. A confidence he remembered shown in her walk, but her lips betrayed a nervousness that delighted him. No. But that was un-charitable. He only meant that it was gratifying to know that she was nervous, too. That she’d been thinking of him, as he had of her.

            He’d known near nothing of her life after they’d moved on from each other. And that seemed so strange to him. For, once he knew the locations of the freckles on her shoulders and of that one to the left of her right kneecap. That one killed him. He always missed it when her left leg would cross the right and the freckle would be hidden for a time.

            He knew what brand of cocoa she liked and what movie reminded her of her drunken uncle. He knew her. Ah. But she knew him well.

            It occurred to him that the café he’d picked, because of – what he considered – its Frenchness, would absurdly pale from Lydia’s reality in France. And she’d see through that gesture. It was stupid to have picked this one, and she’ll see the shabbiness in comparison and transfer it to him.

            He will now be shabby, and not as good as she remembered.

            She approaches the line of black wrought iron tables and scanning, she sees him.

            She smiles and warmth floods to his elbows. Her bag slips to the floor and she sits in the chair opposite him, all in one graceful motion. Her short blond hair swings about her jaw when she sits back up. She pulls the sleeves of her tee shirt down over her hands and wraps her arms around her legs, her knees bent up under her chin.

            “I like this place. It reminds me of France,” she says. But she doesn’t look around as she says it. She only looks at him.

            This might be a good day, he thought, and cleared his throat. His hands trembled, unseen, under the tabletop. But whether from excitement or trepidation he could not tell. But then she often made him feel that way.

            “A pipe?” She raised her eyebrows.

            Fuck. He shouldn’t have brought the thing. He didn’t even smoke it. It just seemed writerly. Like it would lend credence to his three published articles and the lone manuscript he’d edited twenty-three times and still remained agent-less.

            “Oh this?” He flashed what he hoped was a comically conspiratory grin. “It’s nothing.” And he swiped it off the table clattering to the ground. He moved it over with his shoe until he was stepping on it. Invisible now. Like it had never been.

            She tilted her head at him in question. Though this also seemed cliché. A waiter came by with a coffee cup, which Lydia nodded at, and a water goblet. He pulled a menu from under his arm, placed it on the table and then expertly disappeared.

            The man opposite Lydia – sometimes he thought of himself as Adam, but other times Matt, though neither were very scholarly – just smiled and tossed the quizzical look back.

            “So tell me. Where did the world take you?” he asked.

            Her answer was slow coming, like deciding where to start with 800 puzzle pieces spread out on the table in front of you. He really had no idea what she’d say, or why, really, she’d called. She’d shared no particulars, only that she was back from some travels in Europe and wanted to see him.

            Her finger traced the rim of her mug, and she offered another smile. A coy one this time, but he saw through that right away.

            She was terrified.

            “It’s brought me back to you,” she said.

The Woman on the Floor

The woman on the floor was young. In her thirties. Her bandana kept her brown curly hair, that was only hinting a few strands of gray, out of her face while she scrubbed the kitchen floor.  The smell of oven-roasted free range chicken from the Market of Choice grocery store down the block permeated the house and the woman’s stomach growled. But hunger wasn’t the only thing distracting her.

            Normally her two children fighting with each other over somebody touching somebody, or not sharing the computer echoed through her brain – combined with the two dogs racing across the hardwood floors and growling in their play – prevented complete thoughts. But today one was upstairs reading and the other was sick and taking a nap. The dogs were sleeping on the couch, each with a head resting on one of the arms.

            The woman scratched at her forehead with her wrist and sniffed. The dishwasher hummed its sloshy hum and she continued scrubbing apple cider and dirt-encrusted dog drool off the walnut floors.

            The other thing distracting her was her unsettled, restless thoughts. They ping-ponged and pinballed around the desire in her mind.

Unsettled because there was so much she craved that didn’t seem  available to her, at least right now, and she felt guilty for wanting more when she already had so much – she didn’t deserve any more blessings than she already had. She had enough. And she was filled with gratitude for those things. A loving husband; beautiful, funny, unique children; a gorgeous house; friends and food.

But restless because maybe she did deserve more. It was every person’s birthright to pursue his passion and happiness, right?

The woman dumped out the dirty water from the pink washtub and re-filled it with new, hot water after squeezing out the dishrag she knitted last Fall.

She thought of the French language books littering her office floor that begged perusal and the European cruise she longed for. She tallied up the number of friendships she’d started over the years that had faltered and dribbled into nothing. She craved the solitude of writing her novel and the peace and enjoyment she received from reading. And then she thought of all the responsibilities and self-imposed obligations that prevented her from any of those things.

Going to Europe by herself would be lonely, and she’d miss her family, but if they came with her it would be too costly, and afford no time for writing. Or reading, for that matter. And some of the people she felt drawn to befriend were ones that her family disapproved of. Sort-of. Actually, that was hardly fair and untrue to boot. Her husband didn’t disapprove of her friends, just the type of relationship she wanted, and how much time that it would take away from the rest of the family.

She craved closeness and intimacy from many people and worried and wondered again why it was that all her closer relationships petered out. She was sure she was the common denominator in this pattern, but what was it that happened, what was it that she’d do to pre-maturely end these friendships?

The woman sat on her butt and extended her right leg to give it a rest from kneeling on it. She struck out at the blackened floor again. Her elbow ached, too, and she wondered if the chicken were done yet and if she should start the rice yet.

Was it fear of closeness, despite her desire for it? Did she back away from the friendship right as the potential for closeness was realized? Was it too high of expectations for the friendship and when she was disillusioned by her own hand, she’d drift away and then think it was the other person that had done the drifting? Was it a craving for a characteristic the other person showed that was lacking in her own self that attracted her in the first place, and not any real common interests that could hold a friendship together, so that without any contributions of spirit and conversation, the friendship faded?

The woman dumped the water again and washed her hands. She rinsed out the sink and dried it with a polishing cloth, then checked on the children and let the dogs out, then back in again.

 She poured herself a mug of blackberry tea and turned on the movie “Anna and the King” with Jodie Foster and dreamed of travel because it was easier than answering those other questions.

She’d been asking them for many years; they could wait for a couple more hours.

My Writing Place -- a writing prompt

The house smells of brownies.

            My roommate is cooking lunch. My son and a new friend are playing video games in the living room in front of me. My daughter, my roommate’s daughter, and my friend’s son just came in from playing outside to remove the brownies from the oven.

            The sounds of my house include at this moment: water running from the kitchen sink, my son singing to himself, laughter, conversation, the oven door closing, the digital timer being set, the keyboard letters depressing under my fingernails, the kids’ feet stomping up the stairs, a fork scraping the bottom of a skillet on the range top, the dishwasher running, the oven heating up again from when the kids put the brownies back in because they weren’t quite done.

            Something just fell on the floor.

            Visually I am distracted as well. When I write, I am often drawn to what my peripheral vision conjures up: wine colored yarn, file folders, my camera, a candybar wrapper, a bag of cough drops.

            When I raise my eyes beyond the kitchen table that I am writing at, my craft table looms with clutter and other things I could be doing right now. Five dvds that need to be returned to Blockbuster, a ship my daughter made out of toothpicks and other pieces of wood and gave to me for my birthday, fingerless mittens, more skeins of yarn, a sewing machine and bins of notions. Also a basket of knitting needles.

            Beyond that the coffee table has folded clothes that I didn’t fold piled high. The video game graphics rush past and, though there is no sound turned off – a stipulation I had for the tv to be on at all – my son is supplying his own soundtrack.

            Kaya munches a raw carrot and the other children cut the too hot brownies. Steve cleans out the refrigerator, the trash can nearby for the moldy rotten food that we waited too long to eat.

            “I can sound like a goat,” my daughter informs our guest.

            “I can sound like a pigeon,” he counters.

            More laughter.

           

            My house is full of enchantment and experiences and clutter and toys and dogs and dirt and paper art on the walls. Also quotes and lists and bulletin boards. My friend says this is hard to look at. That if I took all the scraps of paper taped to kitchen cupboards down, the qi would flow better. That it would feel less scattered. That then I would feel less scattered.

            It makes sense. What she says. But I like the lists and quotes that remind me to treat my children with love and kindness and respect. That remind me of the holiness and divinity within myself and all that I meet. That remind me to eat all my vegetables and what foods have protein in them. That showcase my children’s brilliance in art – reminding them that they are loved and important and capeable of greatness. That  remind me of small things I can do to save the planet. That remind me how to build community.

            The clutter that bothers me, that affects my mood and creates those stagnancies of energy in the house, are the paper collections on horizontal surfaces. The ones that grow vertically at alarming rates. The pile on top of the stereo: Japanese flash cards and dictionaries and a sewing calendar. The pile by the back door: bills and phone numbers and scratch paper and pens and markers that are spilling out of their jar. The pile on the bar: old science dioramas, a laptop case still fresh in its packaging, laundry that is drying over bar stools, homemade candles and more paper of unknown origin.

            The dryer buzzer sounds and I wonder about the timer for this writing prompt. Only two minutes remain.

            The writing space I envision is so completely different than what I’ve just described that to say that it is laughable would be cliché and …. laughable. 

            The writing space I want is mostly silent. But how do you visualize silence? Maybe a room with the breeze blowing white gauzy curtains and no paper on the walls or flat surfaces. One where the children aren’t playing Apples to Apples with friends or squealing at the Xbox 360. One where the puppy doesn’t ring the jingle bell hanging from the back door’s knob to let me know he wants to go outside. Or where the dishwasher doesn’t remind me that another load needs to be done, or the laundry piles in the laundry room don’t remind me that I still need to pack for an upcoming trip – which then reminds me that the rest of the day holds: a counseling appointment for one of my children, a trip to the bank, a cacophony of phone calls to finalize the able-bodied friends that are helping me move a hot tub tonight and the electrician I will need to find-hire-and-pay for the hooking up of said hot tub.

            My imagined writing space will be a place of silence and harmony where distractions are minimal and where I can access the section of my soul that knows what needs to be written. The key will unlock with a delightful click and the room I enter will be fresh and new and I will write down what I see.

            Conversely, if the room the key opens – because it is different most times I go there – is alley dark with the ammonia stench of fear and shameful loathing, then the silence allows me to excavate in privacy and to take time with the slow removal of the bandaid that covers this super ouchy time in my life.

How Am I Not Myself?

"How am I not myself?" ~ I Heart Huckabees

If Art is communication -- and that makes sense to me -- what message am I trying (or what message do I want) to send? What do I want to say?

When there are no words, I go deeper. Feel inside. See in color and texture. See pictures, movements. Do I hear sounds?

Art is also self-expression, though it has been argued that even self-expression is communication. Either by receiver seeing who the artist is, or by the artist receiving as he is creating. Understanding who she is through her own artistic expression, even when no one else sees.

How am I not myself?

Cooking dinner for my family. Cooking -- for me -- is not an expression of love for my family. I don't feel love when I cook.

When I clean house, run errands, carpool and chauffeur when I'd rather be creating art: painting, writing, building with clay.

When I watch my life in a movie or read it in a book, but don't live it.

That's how I am not myself.

Grocery Scare

I'm already at the EEK! moment of curtailing our monthly expenses. The kids and Paul are distraught at losing cable, too.

I went grocery shopping Sunday or Monday and spent $90. I was feeling pretty smug about my weekly grocery bill. $600/mo? No problem.  But then yesterday I didn't know what to make for dinner and the family decided on turkey sandwiches and sweet potato fries. We stopped at the store on the way home from a doctor's appointment for Joey (Robert introduced himself as Joey for the first time in three years!). We bought a bunch of bananas, a bag of grapes, two nectarines, three yams, a box of tangerine fruit popsicles on sale for $2.50, a bag of cotton balls because I've been out for months, a pound of Diestel turkey ($10), a loaf of gluten-free bread ($5), and a bag of frozen sweet potato french fries also on sale. We spent $60.

$60 on dinner.

Ok, there was some fruit in there. Let's call that breakfast.

So $60 for dinner and breakfast for four people.

We could've eaten out for dinner AND breakfast for less than that.

Maybe eating out IS cheaper.

I don't know what to do about this. I don't know what to believe. And at $150 spent this week already (actually more because I went to Costco, too! and I don't know where the receipt for that is) ... I shouldn't be able to go shopping for another week AT LEAST but realistically two because of the Costco trip. And that feels impossible.

We have no meat in the house. No gluten-free bread. The fruit certainly won't last us two weeks. (Try four days.) Almost out of yogurt. No cheese (non-dairy or regular) because I forgot to buy any. I think we are low on gf pasta, maybe one more bag of it.

And we're traveling next week. I'm going to have to go shopping when I get to Massachusetts. I'll need to stock up Fernanda's (the kids' Portuguese gramma "Vavo") pantry with gluten-free, casein-free foods for Joey to eat while he stays with her. And when I'm at the conference I'll have to eat out for dinner at least three times, maybe four.

The eating out will have to come off my allowance, but the shopping for Joey will be more grocery money spent, so that for the rest of August I estimate we'll only have ... oh wait! Whew. This is still July. In August I'll get a whole new $600 to spend on food. August might actually be ok. The kids'll be gone for 18 days of it, so Paul and I can get away with eating lightly and cheaply. Rice and beans for us is just fine. We actually LIKE to eat that. And I can do a big shopping trip right before they get home.

Ok. I can do this.

And I'm sure the kids'll not be traumatized without cable. We have Netflix, You Tube and Saturday morning cartoons. Paul will not parish without his news. He can get it all online anyway. Even his favorite news shows, like the Rachel Maddow Show. But he will lose his boxing channels. And I'm sorry for him there.

Next up:  Should we cancel the land line? Should we cancel the internet? Both Paul and I can receive emails and send them from our phone (albeit MUCH slower), but Aubrey can't chat with her friends. And neither can Paul or I for that matter. And we totally use it. Almost every day. Plus those news shows he now has to get on the internet because we don't have cable? That'll be gone, too.

(And we've got three cars. One isn't used all that much. We can cancel the insurance on it and park it out at Paul's mom's house in the country to be used whenever one of our other cars goes belly up and we don't have the funds to resuscitate it. That'll save a few dollars.)

Bicycle Power

Bicycle-Powered Blender!!!

I love it!

I want one.

We went to Bite of Eugene at Alton Baker Park yesterday and lots of local food vendors showed up. It was an interesting break from the almost constant tv/computer viewing my children have been coercing me into.

These smoothies were free to passersby but have yogurt in them. I asked if it was possible to just make the next batch with apple juice and the fruit and leave the dairy out so Robert could drink some. They were totally game, and even rinsed out the blender to make sure there wasn't any yogurt residue.

Shortly after they started doing it, another woman walked up asking the same thing. :) Serendipity.

Robert quite enjoyed helping to prepare the smoothie.

Then some free jumping!

Even Aubrey partook.

       And here is my non-sequitor photo.

I had planned a solid week of sewing last week. All the children and myself are short of summer clothes and I have all the fabric and notions at my fingertips. So on day one I sat down and sewed up these shorts for Robert within two hours. They are completely huge. But he still wants them.

Alas, I haven't sewn since (and that was seven days ago.)

Money Drudgeries

Today I'm crunching numbers and trying to get creative about low-cost (read: free) activities and entertainment. And how in the world to half my grocery bill.

My garden is a bust this year because ... well, of all the reasons a garden might go bust: forgetting to water, not planting in time, etc. And plus, my uber-responsible Master Gardner roommate moved out and I haven't gotten into the swing of things regarding garden mentality.

So no free food there.

There's a Grower's Market in Eugene that I can take advantage of. I can donate a couple of hours there every week and then I can get 15% off my groceries purchased there, as I understand it.

And I can talk to a friend of mine that does really interesting things with her food budget, like: buying all her grains online wholesale, and shopping at Costco for certain things and picking fruit all summer long and preserving like mad.

I think I'm a little behind in the season for preserving all the things I could preserve, but I've already frozen blueberries and raspberries for smoothies, and canned strawberry jam. I'm interested in picking apples and making applesauce and apple butter, and picking peaches for canning and freezing. That was a big hit last year; they went fast. But honestly, I doubt I will have the energy or know-how for much more than that.

I could start buying produce at Farmer's Market and just put that into my schedule (for instance, tomorrow is Saturday's Market/Farmer's Market ... I could go and see if there was a type of food that the family would eat and buy something there instead of at the wonderfully convenient and shiny Market of Choice down the street from me.)

And I'd need to start buying produce more often, because oftentimes it whithers before we eat it and I just compost it.


OK.

Disclosure time.

Paul and I are extremely serious about cutting back our expenses this year. So serious in fact that we are going to (most likely -- still leaving a loophole) sell our huge house. It's been a good house, but the mortgage is just too high. We knew the house was too expensive for us when we bought it, yet still we did. It was just the right decision at the time. But now. We don't need it so much. And we especially don't need the ginormous mortgage.

So, we'll take a few months to work out the details ... like, do we want to buy a smaller house here in Eugene? Or rent an apartment and try to save even more money? And I anticipate making this change by the end of the year.

We'd like to be able to subsist on my income only, leaving Paul's for extravagant things like paying off credit card debt and paying for the girls' tuition. Aubrey wants to go to the Eugene Waldorf School and Aniela's getting into a private fashion school in Portland and needs some help with the living expenses that will evolve because of that. And he'd also pay the rent/mortgage at the new place.

So ... my income will pay for everything else. For a family of four. I get $2483/month from the VA and Social Security Survivor Benefits. (This will go away when the kids reach a certain age.)

Let's take groceries for a minute. I just added up the receipts I could find for the last month (and a few days), and I spent $1093.37 on groceries. I'd like to take that down to at least $600/month.

(insert blank stare)

I'm not sure where to even start.

And that's just groceries. We've allowed for me to have $200/month for allowance for me and the kids to use for everything. Everything. Last month I spent $359.14. (A little bit on underwear and socks, a gift for someone, a few drinks at Starbucks, a game for Family Game Night, and ordering a pizza on a day I couldn't fathom cooking dinner.) Oops. That didn't include all the money I spent on babysitting. I guess that'll have to come out of my allowance from now on, too.

Then there was $178.99 emergency vet bill for Kiya's hives, and the hundred dollars I spent in supplements for us yesterday.

I'm not trying to be one of those people that complain about having to give up their Gucchi allowance, and I don't get a latte everyday -- more like once every week (or even two!) But I am concerned about how to make this huge change. I grew up maybe not "poor," but I remember my mom deciding which of the bills to pay that month, and I learned from her that even if the bill is $63 and you only pay $10, you can't get sent to a collection agency or have your service shut off because you've at least paid something.

And when I got married the first time, we lived pay check to pay check and sometimes had $16 to last us until pay day. And when I was married to Rob (2nd husband), we lived with his mom the whole time and rarely went out to the movies or on dates or ate out. And still, sometimes Fernanda (Rob's mom) provided a buffer between our paychecks and reality. So when Rob died and I got some cushion, I stopped having to count my quarters to buy a few gallons of gas (or cigarettes depending on which time you're talking). Some might say that I chose not to worry about money at that point, some might say I didn't have to.

Either way, the result is ten years of not concerning myself with what things cost and allowing my values to dictate where I spend my money, thereby creating a dynamic where I don't know how to live frugally anymore.

Allowing values to dictate where you spend your money is not necessarily a bad thing. But when I go to the grocery store, I automatically throw the organic canned beans in the cart and don't even look at the difference in price for the conventional ones. Or sometimes I'll notice that organic peppers are $freaking-three or four ninety-nine EACH and the conventional ones are 88 cents. Bugger. So then I go through the huge conundrum of Do I Choose To Poison My Family This Week? Which pepper should I buy?

Shopping takes a long time for me and my conscience.

Or the DOG FOOD.

Damn. That one took me years to settle. Raising cattle is so destructive to our environment and I've watched so many documentaries about the hideous living conditions they live in, not to mention the antibiotics and hormones that are injected into them. And that the diet they are given kills them slowly and painfully. So if I don't want to support that industry and buy dog food with beef in it, then I need to go with lamb, chicken or turkey. Lamb doesn't agree with one of my dogs, so "no" for that, which leaves poultry.

Can you say "battery cage?"

I can't go down that road either. Paul and I were on our honeymoon in Mexico and happened to be driving down the highway behind a big truck FULL of stacked battery cages stuffed with white chickens. I could tell by looking that a third of those birds were already dead -- or wished they were -- from pure mistreatment.

So I've tried making my own dog food, which is spendy when you add in all the supplements that I've been told need to be added for their health and so I don't give them a deficiency in their diet, making them sick.

I've tried buying dehydrated raw food from my vet. Just add water and mix with your kibble to cut the cost in half. Still spendy.

And I've found one source in Eugene that carries organic dry dog kibble. So I'm currently feeding them that. But it's $50 for a 25 lb. bag. And I only knew that because I just went into the garage to look at it.
So, I identify two problems. One, that I can support my value of only buying organic meat products and pay $50 for 25 lbs of food, or not, and buy a 40lb bag of a FAR inferior product with god knows what in it (I've read those reports, too) for $20. And Two, that I didn't even know what the bag cost, because I just buy without checking in .... and that I think will save us the most money this year, if I can manage to not do that anymore.

I'm stopping. I feel like this post has turned into a rant. And I'm sorry for that, Dear Reader.

But I still don't know what to do about my budget. :)

Any suggestions for ways to cut back on spending? What has your family done for this past recession?