the Diva Platform

Yesterday I mentioned that I was really tired and didn’t go to bike with Phil Keoghan.  Why?  Because I drove all day on Friday (so it seemed).  The 50 miles to Joliet wasn’t bad.  Tooling around Joliet wasn’t bad.  The 50 miles home wasn’t awful, but traffic was starting to build up, it being a Friday afternoon.  The 30 miles to Lansing was a nightmare.

We could’ve taken Metra to and from Joliet, but seeing as how I thought the afternoon would run long, I rented a car for the entire day.  I’d planned to drop the Boy off at the Metra and head east to a different suburb for the German Party.  However, we finished up pretty early, and I had time to drive back into the city and relax for a little bit.

When we first got into Chicago, I noticed that traffic heading south on Lake Shore Drive was backing up a bit.  This would be how I’d normally get back out of the city.  After listening to some traffic reports, I thought it’d be quicker to cut west through the city and hop on a different expressway.

Wrong.

I got on the Kennedy and crawled.  I’d hoped to make it back to the ‘burbs to buy gas there, but by the time I hit the Loop, the gas light was coming on.  With traffic this bad and me not knowing how long my tank would last, I exited and drove around the West Loop until I found a gas station.  Of course, it was pretty far south in the Loop, and I couldn’t hop right back on the expressway because it was too close to the Circle Interchange, where several expressways meet.  I ended up getting back on at Chinatown, which was a couple of miles away.

Traffic flowed fairly smoothly for a little while, but it started to slow down again as I got further south on the Dan Ryan.  Once I merged onto the Bishop Ford Expressway, everything slowed further to an absolute crawl–until ~130th street, where I found out that a couple of news trucks on the frontage road filming a gaggle of people in front of a new strip club had created this enormous delay. After that, traffic flowed pretty smoothly.

All told, it was the absolute worst day I’ve ever had in traffic.  I’d budgeted over 1.5 hours to get to the party on time (and maybe even early so I could talk to people), and I got there 20 minutes late.  Two HOURS to go 30-some miles.  That’s just insane.  The gapers blocks are absolutely asinine–if you see a news truck, watch the news later.  You’re not going to figure anything out by seeing it from inside your car.

Friday was also one of the better weather days we’ve had so far this year, so everyone poured outside (hence my reasoning for budgeting 1.5 hours for what’s usually a 30-40 minute trip).  The traffic turned into an instant nightmare, and it immediately grated on my nerves.  It’s one of those things that makes me wonder if I can survive another summer living where I do–if I can, I’m certainly going nowhere!

The suburban excitement isn’t over yet, folks!  On Friday, the Boy and I trekked to Joliet to see Phil Keoghan, host of my favorite show “The Amazing Race,” who made an appearance at Harrah’s Joliet casino while he was on his bike ride across America. You might ask why we rented a car and drove the 50 miles each way just to see Phil, when he was going to be just a couple miles away the next morning, but I had Dark Lord Day and didn’t want to try to cram in too much (I seriously thought about it but hadn’t gotten much sleep on Thursday night.  Friday wiped me out from this trip and the trip to the German party, and although I woke up early on Saturday morning intending to ride bikes with Phil, I felt a little sick at that point and decided that another couple hours of sleep would mean a happier Jill for the rest of the day.  I was right).  Oh, and there were auditions for the next season of the show too.

I’d love to be on “The Amazing Race.”  I love to travel, I love the excitement of this show, I’d love all the new experiences.  So, after some discussion and a long time writing up the application, we went down to Joliet.  Auditions were from 10-2.  The Boy didn’t think we needed to be there especially early–we could wait in line and be fine.  I figured there’d be a bunch of people, but it was Friday, and the audition was announced fairly quickly.  How many people could show up?

Apparently a lot.  We got there pretty much at 10 AM and found out all the slots were taken (they could only fit in so many auditionees during the allotted time, a fact that wasn’t mentioned).  They were gone so quickly because people had started lining up at 9 PM the night before.  All the spots were gone by 3:30 AM. We were a bit flabbergasted, but oh, well.  We were still there, so we might as well make the best of it.

We hung out and watched all the couples around us.  People in combat gear, Moms with homemade sashes that declared them “Brownie Buddies,” folks in matching Cubs t-shirts and pajama pants (Sox fans were there too).  Apparently a team from “The Biggest Loser” showed up to audition as well, but I don’t watch that show, so that didn’t really resonate with me (I’d be curious to see if a team from an NBC show can get on a CBS show though).

Phil Keoghan did indeed come out and say hello to everyone.  He pimped his bike ride and his NOW One Square Meal bars (not bad, but a bit bland–they come in packs of two bars.  You’re supposed to eat both, but you get pretty full after just one).  He looked good and was pleasant in that “yes, I’m well-known and will be nice and everything, but don’t fool yourself into thinking we’re going to be buddies after this one chance meeting” way, which I always find impressive.

Hey, Phil!

Phil was only around a few minutes, so once he left, we were done too.  We wandered around the casino for a little bit–it actually has a fairly small gaming floor, with a lot of slot machines, including “Village People Party” and “Dean Martin’s Wild Party”–though the people tethered to the machines didn’t look like wild partiers.  Another machine was called “Lucky Lemmings.”  Oh, the irony.

I thought it was interesting that the Race had auditions in a casino.  After all, the Race is all about adventure and exploration, and when you went into the gaming area you saw mostly senior citizens with canes, in wheelchairs, or dragging oxygen tanks alongside them.  They didn’t look much like adventurers, unless by “adventure” you mean “try the next slot machine over.”

After our spin through the casino, we nosed around for lunch and ended up at The Department, a pretty nice place in downtown Joliet (motto:  “If it’s fun, it’s in Downtown Joliet!”) that’s dedicated to police officers and firepeople.  Then we wandered over to the Joliet Area Historical Museum, which for being a little city museum, is put together really nicely.  They’ve got a bunch of cool artifacts from the past (but then, I like looking at old clothes and kitchen gadgets), and the look of the place is really professional.

Our last stop was the jail where “Prison Break” was filmed (we don’t watch the show, but I got confused between this prison and the one where “The Blues Brothers” was filmed.  I don’t know many places where that would be a problem).  We marvelled at the barbed wire and warning signs around the building, and then we piled in the car and headed back to Chicago.

Impressive barbed wire

State your business.

So even though we didn’t get the adventure we’d anticipated, we had an adventure of a different sort, and one that we really enjoyed.

I’m going to mix up the timeline in my suburban adventures a bit because I’m working through the list-o-stories.  This one’s from Friday evening–part high school reunion, part Kuturelles Erlebnis (cultural experience, in German), part giving thanks.

This year my high school German teacher is retiring.  Every year Frau (yep, that’s what everyone calls her.  People will call her husband “Herr Frau”) and her German students put together a little dinner with German food and skits, and the evening is a way to celebrate the year and showcase what the students have learned.  Since this was her last one, all German alumni were invited as well.

And we showed up!  It was great to see a lot of my classmates and former teachers (also scary to look at some people and realize that even though they’re my age, they may not be alums; they may have kids in high school).  It was great to celebrate Frau–she was seriously one of my best high school teachers, and that’s saying a lot because I was lucky enough to have a lot of great teachers.  I took German for three years and was so well-grounded in grammar and vocab (thanks to daily quizzes) that I was one of three incoming freshman at my college to get into 300 level German courses.  She also cared a lot about me (and all of her students, really) as a person, and as a wacky, nerdy, emotional teenager, it was helpful to have another sounding board around me on a daily basis.

All-around, it was a good evening.  Tasty food, cute skits, got to see friends….and then the weirdness of high school came back.  Yes, I was excited to see a lot of these people, but I had no idea what to say to them after a few minutes of small talk.  It’s not like I see them at church or community functions, like some people do.  I see a handful of high school friends regularly, and I’m Facebook buddies with a bunch more.  And I think I like having that Internet separation.  It’s hard to explain, but I went to a Christian school of the Dutch Christian Reformed type.  I am neither Dutch nor Reformed (nor conservative), so there was always a bit of me that didn’t quite fit in.  Oh, it wasn’t totally horrible or completely traumatizing.  I don’t mean to be dramatic.  I had plenty of friends, I was good in school, and teachers liked me for the most part, but I also felt I didn’t quite belong.  An incident in junior high (at a Dutch Christian Reformed feeder school) probably explains my feelings well:  We took a mock vote in social studies for the 1984 Presidential election:  23 of my fellow classmates would’ve voted for Reagan.  Only I would’ve voted for Mondale.  So I wasn’t overtly different, but different enough that I could feel it from time to time.  Since high school, I’m sure my ways of thinking have gotten even more different from the Reformed tradition, and I don’t even want to see how different I’d be now.

Being back at high school actually brought back some of those anxieties in what’s probably a typical high school reunion feeling, and sadly, I could make small talk, but after saying hello and chit-chatting, I didn’t know what else to do.  So after a while, I snuck off and walked up to the German room just to see it once more.  Frau’s room is ablaze in murals–this started a couple of years before me when the seniors in German 3 painted the Berlin Wall on her back wall.  I was in German 3 when the Wall fell, and on that day we all got to paint ourselves dancing on top of it.  Since then, each class has gotten to paint a mural in the room.  Some get painted over, but our dancing stick figures are still there–I’m still dancing on the Wall (the title of this entry)!  It was cool to see that and makes me happy that a little piece of me is important enough to still exist there, in a place where I didn’t always quite fit in.

Part of the Berlin Wall mural in the German classroom.

I'm dancing! My German name was Anne.

This past weekend I spent a lot of time in a car and a lot of time in the ‘burbs, two tasks I am not prone to do.  However, I did get a few stories out of the deal, so let’s get started on them.

Saturday was the focal point of the weekend: Dark Lord Day at Three Floyds Brewery.  This is the one day of the year you can get Three Floyds’ Dark Lord Russian Imperial Stout.  I’m not much of a stout drinker, but I recently had a taste of last year’s, and it’s something else.  If you like your beer to be the consistency of used motor oil, this is the beer for you!

At any rate, Three Floyds now has a big festival around the whole beer release, and it’s a pretty big deal in the microbrew world–people drive and fly in from all over to attend.  Astrochick and Eddie Glick came down especially for this occasion and made a full weekend out of it, and it was pretty awesome to be able to hang out with them again.  This was the first Dark Lord Day for all of us–they’d planned to go last year, but that trip got cancelled (just as well, because the line for beer was long, and some people just didn’t get any after waiting in line for hours).

This year Three Floyds insistuted a “Golden Ticket” policy.  One person could buy up to two Golden Tickets, which guaranteed that you’d be able to purchase a set number of bottles (and get a taste on the side).  Yeah, I know it sounds weird to buy an opportunity to buy a product, but I thought it would be fun, and we’d be able to get our hands on this beer (which some people are trying to sell on ebay for $50-60/bottle).  Besides, proceeds from the Golden Tickets went to the Anti-Cruelty Society, so that was at least something.

Having a Golden Ticket also meant we had a long window for buying beer, so we didn’t have to get there really early.  And even though we got there after noon, that was probably still too early because of the massive lines for everything.

We parked at Ma & Pa Jaracz’ and Ma drove us over (smart, since there wasn’t much parking).  The place was mobbed–people had brought RVs and coolers and chairs.  We hadn’t known what to expect, but we didn’t expect this.  You had to get in line to buy food, to get into the brewpub, and to buy Dark Lord.  When we got there, we couldn’t even tell how long the Dark Lord line was, so we bought beers to drink while we found the end and waited.

And then we walked.  And walked.  The line ended two buildings down from the brewery and started spiraling in a parking lot.  We thought we’d be there for hours.  At this point I figured out why it was called a Russian imperial stout: We had to wait in line like commies in order to buy it.  In fact, #2 and her family were supposed to join us, but we called and said not to come because the kids would get too impatient waiting in line, and there wasn’t much room to really run around.  They did, however, save us by bringing a bucket of KFC with all the fixins, which we desperately needed by the time we got to the front of the line (other people had pizzas delivered.  It was insane!).

Surprisingly though, the line went fairly quickly.  I was sure we were going to be in it for a good three hours, but it only took half that long (”only”).  Helped by the soothing power of beer, we enjoyed the process.  Beerfest-goers are pretty fun to hang around.  They appreciate good beer, so you have something to talk about.  People also bring beer to share and trade, and they’re more than happy to pour a taste of something phenomenal in your glass (thanks to the guy who shared the Alaskan Smoked Porter).  Plus, the Boy likes to talk to people, so he went off and made friends (a shout out to our new friends at Lush Wine & Spirits!), and we all just had a good time.  Yes, it rained on us (and our chicken dinner).  No, we didn’t really hear any of the bands we’d hoped to see.  No, we didn’t get any BBQ.  No, we didn’t buy any t-shirts or any other paraphernalia.  Yes, we did spill beer on everything (I spent part of yesterday mopping beer off my wallet–including credit cards–and purse)–including this classic by the Boy, which I don’t quite know how he managed:  In one hand he held two cups, one with a pretty full Robert the Bruce, the other with a taste of Dark Lord.  He went to drink the Dark Lord and tipped both glasses, spilling a lot of Robert the Bruce down his front.  It was pretty amazing.

Once we were done hanging out and eating, we called Ma Jaracz to come pick us up, and then we brought some beer to #2 and hung out with them for as long as they could stand these people who reeked of beer (Hey, kids!  Don’t be afraid of Auntie Jill and Uncle Boy–they’re just wearing some hop perfume….Yeah).  Then it was time to turn Eddie’s Gremlin back toward the city and put the Dark Lord on ice.

How does it taste?  Well, I’ll be honest–I’m not a big stout person, but even I can tell this stuff is pretty damn good.  First off, it’s definitely a sipping beer because at something like 13-15% ABV (alcohol by volume) it has the power to put you under the table quickly.  But you don’t want to drink it fast because it also has a lot of complexity–chocolate and coffee notes–and a long finish.  Savor it, share it, but definitely sip it.  And then hold on until you can get a taste of it again next year.

I realize a lot of posts this week have been about the shitter (though better the shitter than a shity life, no?), but let me get this post out, and I can lay off the bathroom topics for a while.

I saw an ad in a magazine that said, “Let _______ (company) turn your bathroom into a peaceful retreat.”

Dude, that is so not possible in my world!

A peaceful retreat in Jill’s world includes food.  As we talked about yesterday, food does not go into the bathroom.

You ever see those articles about relaxing with a bath?  I don’t get how that works.  I’ve only tried a few times, and they’ve mostly turned out miserably, so if I want to relax with water, I have to plan a little trip to the nearby day spa where I can sit in a hot tub, a steam room, and a sauna, and finish it off with a nap.

Maybe I can’t have a relaxing bath because the tub is too small to really stretch out in.  I also really have noplace safe to light candles.  Any sort of reading material that goes into the tub with me should be waterproof, which it never is.  The water gets cold too quickly, and I seem to spend more time fussing around with the bath than enjoying the bath itself.

Then again, maybe I should strive to work more and earn enough money that would be able to buy the proper-sized house that could afford the space for a relaxing retreat bathroom (without a whirlpool spa tub, because even though I like them, I refuse to clean them…another reason to go to the day spay).

Nah….even then, the retreat would need to include food, and that’s just not going to happen.

One home project I’m working on involves going through cookbooks to see if I use them enough to warrant keeping them (or if there’s just a couple of recipes I use, then I’ll copy them onto notecards for my recipe box and put the cookbook in the “donate bag”).  I’ve just gone through an old Marshall Field’s (now Macy’s) employee cookbook.  Over 500 pages, and I wanted 10 or 11 recipes out of it.  I need the shelf space more than I need this cookbook.

One of the recipes I wanted to keep was for puppy chow (coat cereal with chocolate and peanut butter, shake in powdered sugar), which is a tasty snack for a party.  This particular recipe added, “Just for fun, serve puppy chow in a new dog dish!”  Um, no thank you.

In my mind, there are certain places food should never go.  A dog dish–even if it’s new and clean–is one of them.  The bathroom is another.  I know some toilet seats are cleaner than desks, but I will never stop being grossed out by the image of going into the office bathroom and seeing someone’s salad sitting on the sink.  Hey!  There are reminders to wash your hands on the mirrors!  Granted, they’re put up so you don’t spread the bird flu, but there are enough germs floating around here that we need to clean our hands before we leave!  You think that salad is going to be safe?  Yes, I know it’s in a plastic container, but it is in super-close proximity to where people shit!  And you eat that?

Am I the only one who thinks like this?  Is there anywhere else we really shouldn’t bring food?

For the Doctor’s birthday, I got us tickets to see A Chorus Line.  She’s never seen it, I’d like to see this revival, and we get to have a fun experience for her birthday.  It works out.

Whenever I get theater tickets though–and this is even when I had money–I tend to go for the cheap or next-to-cheap seats, simply because some of these big touring shows can be astronomically expensive to go to.  Tickets for this go up to $85.  I can understand–big cast that you have to pay, sets, lighting, maybe some cool effects, etc.–but I can’t pay it and go out regularly (yeah, there’s half-price tickets, but those are usually available day-of, so if you’re planning to go to x show on y day, you can’t assume you’ll get the deals).  It just doesn’t work like that in my little world.

And that’s my theater-ticket-buying philosophy.  Sometimes shows are so hit-and-miss that if I’m only going to it once, I’m sitting cheaply.  If I like it enough to go more often, I might buy a better seat.  Concerts are a different story.  I’ve had no problem shelling out $75 a ticket for Duran Duran, because I can justify that by saying $15 per Duran (if there’s 5; when someone drops out it’s a little more/Duran, but you’ll have that).  Or I’ll pay for Kathy Griffin tickets because I know I will laugh for most of the show.  I do have my limits though–over a hundred bucks for anyone?  You’ve gotta be crazy!  Or filthy rich…

When I bought the tickets, I said to the guy at the ticket booth, “Cheap seats.”

He understood.  I thought.  “$50?” (and these would probably be in the balcony).

“How about cheaper?” I asked.

“$25?”

“There we go!  My wallet likes that!” I said.

“I hear ya,” replied the guy.

Meanwhile, the woman next to me is buying tickets for another show and asked how much she saved by buying them in person instead of online.  Answer?  About $12/ticket.  Yeah.  Ticketmaster is out of control.

Mostly though, I’m in the balcony because that’s where I tend to feel comfortable.  I’m not a socialite trying to be seen.  I’m just a chick who wants to get some culture every now and then.  Yes, I like to taste the expensive life when I can, but when it’s the good life all the time, I worry about getting too accustomed to it.  If it all goes away, will I be able to live like the peons again and enjoy it?

Or should I be striving to sit on the main floor?  Driving myself toward more success?  Not willing to sit in the balcony forever and working just enough to get by?

Last week I was trying to get in and out of the grocery store as fast as possible–partly because I didn’t have time to spend there (nor did I remember to place an online order), but partly because I needed a little aerobic exercise, and I like to think that dashing through the grocery store raises my heart rate enough to count.

Things were going well, and then I got to the toilet paper aisle.  When did toilet paper get so complicated?

I realize you can say this about any number of product categories–just look at the numbers of toothpaste you can choose from.  Or shampoos.  Or detergents.  Or types of bread.  Sometimes I can deal with all the choice.  A lot of times I just get paralyzed by it all.

While I was mesmerized in the toilet paper aisle, I had these things to consder:

1. One-ply or two-ply?  (Two. Always two.  And I’d take three if they had it.  Companies can make razors with four blades.  Why can’t they make three-ply toilet paper?  Wait a second!  Quilted Northern does!  I’ll have to look for this next time, though I do live in the land of small grocery stores, which means it may not be on the shelves there)
2. How much per roll is it?
3. How much paper do you get per roll?
4. Single roll, double roll, or megaroll?  (Single roll seems hard to find anymore.  Double roll takes up less packaging, and megaroll was a new twist for me, which involved comparing a few brands for points 2 & 3, not really considering that a megaroll might not fit on my toilet paper holder (it does.  Barely).)
5. Do I buy Quilted Northern (which I love) even though it’s more expensive because I can get Upromise money to pay off the Boy’s student loan?
6. If I’m buying private label, do I buy the private label that mimics Angel Soft (Quilten Northern’s poorer cousin), or do I buy the private label that mimcs Quilted Northern?

And if we didn’t have some personal restrictions (no one-ply, no Cottonelle-type paper), we’d have to make even more decisions.

This time around I opted for the homelife (TM) brand Soft Choice–nine megarolls, which equals 24 regular rolls.  Homelife is one of Supervalu’s store brands (Supervalu owns Jewel).  I bought it because the shelf tag said it was comparable to Quilted Northern, which I could’ve used right about that point.  It was also cheaper than Angel Soft, which is what we usually get.

Needless to say, my ass is displeased.  I’ve got  nine megarolls of scratchy toilet paper.  Comparable to Quilted Northern?  Only if you think QN is sandpaper!  But we’ll use it.  And then I’m on the hunt for that three-ply.  Knowing that’s on the market will help me get through this bad purchase decision.

So I’m currently having an internal debate (soon to become external, since the Boy reads this) about how much cereal I should stock up on.  I like Kashi Go Lean, which I’m currently out of (and which I would like to purchase because I have milk in the house.  Milk in our house is a rareity–I don’t drink it too much, and when we buy milk, it has to be lactose-free.  So I bought some milk, which means a mad rush to make a lot of milky stuff so we don’t pour most of it down the drain.  Cereal is helpful in this situation).  Jewel has it on sale this week for 2/$6.  I also have a coupon for $1 off  2 boxes at Whole Foods.  I could very well end up with four boxes of cereal in the house.  We do have shelf space–we’ve gone through the umpteen boxes of pasta and probably six cans of oatmeal.  But the cereal will take up a fair amount of room, meaning not much space to stock up on anything else.

This is kind of what Angela was saying in her comment on Friday.  Who has room to store all this stuff?  If you have a house, you have more of an advantage than those of us in apartments/condos, though vintage places do sometimes have walk-in pantries.  I did have friends who were looking for a condo at one point, and one of their criteria was having a pantry.  The real estate agent said that new places don’t have pantries because nobody cooked in those fancy kitchens.  Needless to say, they didn’t buy.  I wonder if people in these types of condos are cooking more now.

But I think you have to have a basement and/or a decent-sized garage to be able to take full advantage of this.  Or a lot of kitchen cabinets.  And are those home prices out of reach for regular folks?  Sometimes yes, sometimes no, I think.  What do people with crawl spaces do?  Or those who don’t have room to freeze five million pounds of chicken at a time?  Well, you struggle with space and making trade-offs for what you’ll save on.  And if you’re lucky, you don’t get trapped into a coupon obsession (which at some point your friends will laugh and say, “Remember when you were in that couponing phase?  Oy!”).

I’ll also speak a little to dollar sales versus volume sales.  I don’t know all the nuances of this (and if you do, please chime in), but sometimes manufacturers would prefer to sell a lot of volume, rather than dollars.  You sell more volume than your competitor, and you can claim a higher market share based on volume.  Sell the “We’re #1″ fact (based on volume) to customers, and they may buy more.  Sometimes having a greater market share is more important to a company.  Plus, as you sell more volume, items may become cheaper to manufacture.  Your cost per item is less, and you can get more profit out of it.

At any rate, I’d love to continue the couponing conversation.  Let me know what you think and how you’re doing.  Do you have the ability to remember prices of certain items at each store?  Can you memorize the sale papers and know what you’re buying this week?  Or do you just throw up your hands and say it’s not worth the time and effort?

As I’ve mentioned before, my folks get about five newspapers a day.  One of these is the Times out of Northwest Indiana.  On Sunday while we were waiting for Easter dinner to cook, I grabbed the front section of that day’s paper, and the top story introduced their new columnist Jill Cataldo, who writes and teaches classes about couponing.  The story included this little bit:

Earlier this month, Cataldo presented her workshop to a full house at the Glenwood-Lynwood Public Library.

“Super-couponing combines buying items when they’re at their lowest prices with efficient couponing to further reduce the price,” Cataldo told her audience.

Cataldo showed the class what she calls “anatomy of a cereal deal,” in which it’s explained how she bought 58 boxes of cereal and 40 boxes of granola bars for $5.15.

“Then we ’shop’ at home from the pantry instead of running back to the store,” she said.

I put that “58 boxes of cereal and 40 boxes of granola bars” tidbit into my brain and let it fester.

After dinner the Boy also saw the story, held up the paper, and innocently asked, “Did you see the new coupon column?”

“You mean ‘58 boxes of cereal and 40 boxes of granola bars’?” I replied.

“Oops.  I’m sorry I said anything,” he said, after which I launched into a tirade of how much room it would take to store that much food in your house.  And I understand that I’m a little out of touch with what’s probably her target audience–I’m sure a family of four goes through at least a couple of boxes of cereal a week.  Still, you’re talking about storing a good three or four months worth of cereal alone.  If you do that with every product, how much room does that take up?  How can you possible go through everything in a timely manner?

My mother responded, “Do you want to go shopping in the basement for some Tide or canned goods?”

Go figure.  We didn’t “shop” in the basement on principle.  And also because our carsharing car was downtown, and I wasn’t about to haul leftovers and Tide and canned goods on the bus while I was wearing high heels.  Besides, I’m too old to pilfer from my parents’ stockpile of food and cleaning supplies in order to save a buck.  I came to this conclusion a few weeks ago, when my mom told me to bring laundry home on Easter so we didn’t have to spend the quarters doing it in our apartment building.  I’m too old to drag laundry to another state to save a buck twenty-five a load (or $2.50, if I’m drying it too).  I’m also too old to sleep on the floor (unless I’m camping or in a country where that’s the culture), and I’m too old to live in a garden apartment (”garden” is fancy for “basement”).  At this point in life I should be at a place where I can provide basic things for myself.  Granted, things may get desperate around here, and I may have to eat those words, but for the moment, I’m driving myself to earn money so I can live up to this “I’m too old” philosophy.

Anyway, I didn’t want to rant about the Super Couponer solely on the basis of 58 boxes of cereal and 40 boxes of granola bars, so I checked out her sites and read her column.  She’s got an interesting philosophy that you should sometimes buy things you don’t want or need in order to get something you do want for cheaper, which is something I’ve never considered, mostly because I don’t have space to store stuff I don’t want until enough of it stockpiles to warrant a donation to the food pantry.  Still, it’s an interesting twist and different from the same old tips and tricks you read about.

On the other hand, she’s offering a third class in her Super Couponing series that talks about “stockpile control” and “spousal resistance.”  I can only imagine what this is like, especially since it’s going to be taught by her 13-year-old daughter, who might have just a thing or two to say about that stockpile and what daddy thinks of it.

I told the Boy about “spousal resistance,” and he warned me, “I’m going to be that spouse.”  Guess I’d better get through those three bottles of eco-friendly cleaner that I got for five bucks (as opposed to $3.79/bottle) because with those, our little stockpile shelf in the closet is overflowing.