2006-03-01
Skates, Must Get Skates
Roller skates
Roller skates
Roller skates.
I am hoping that if I say it enough times, they will appear at my doorstep.
Roller skates are REALLY expensive, considering my current debt ratio and my commitment to paying down the Internal-ational Debt.
We're totally going to balance the budget this year, I can feel it, but so much has been carved out of Food and Entertainment and redirected to Embarrassing Credit Cards that there's nowhere to slice in some skates.
I'm getting on track by torching the fun money and unless I quit the gym, I can't buy skates until summertime. I'm at maximum-sacrifice capacity over here. How timely of me, considering that today is the first day of Lent. Witness my sacrificing:
1. Living in a place that, while it definitely counts as shelter, isn't exactly what I dreamed of for my thirties. 300 square feet of love is not enough to hold my dreams. Seriously?
I had dinner last night with some friends and found out that one of them just built an 800 square foot studio.
Where is the justice?
He's not a wealthy man, people.
Sacrifice: My living conditions, or relative lack thereof.
2. The Grocery Outlet and Suave knock-offs of the hair-care products that I learned to love as a child.
That's right.
I said it.
Notably.... the Suave stuff is pretty good. I have pretty, pretty princess hair most of the time.
The fact that the Suave stuff works if you work it, in no way changes the innate sacrifice that's obvious to any red-blooded American narcissicist. There's no Aveda Black Malva knock-off, believe me, I have searched the land high and low.
As for the Grocery Outlet?
It's seriously getting old. Saving a dollar and a half by buying bacon and peeling off all of the fat before I cook it is just not as rewarding as buying the turkey bacon and happily frying away to make one of my Down Home Bagel Sam'miches, like the classic 'Peanut Butter and Bacon Bagel' (best on an onion bagel), or the popular 'Bacon and Cream Cheese on Blueberry (Toasted)'. It's not the same, I tell you. I want to shop, full time, at the over-priced health food store and I want to buy everything I need there.
Sacrifice: The Grocery Outlet smells like bug spray sometimes, especially over near the bread racks.
3. Driving.
Beh
Mon
Dieu
I wish I could do errands like a normal person.
I NEVER come and go from my "house" when I do errands. I pretty much truck everything out that needs to be dealt with off-site, para exampla: The Laundry and then embark on the carefully-plotted course that will be both the most fuel-efficient and the mote time-efficient. If something is out of my way for the day, like if I need to go to the Grocery Outlet but none of my other tasks will take me that far East than...
Too bad.
Grocery Outlet has to wait until Monday when I am on my way home from work.
Sacrifice: Being obsessively conscious of gas mileage is a blessing in some ways but come on....
Grocery Outlet is 3 miles from my "house".
So, as you can see, I am working under pressure here. When the dog chews up a lip balm, can I run out and get another one?
No.
Why?
Because:
A. I like the ones at Sunflower Market and that's not near enough to my "house" to make an extra trip.
B. I have to make sure lip balm is in the budget for the week. If it's not, I am working with alternative tools; alternative, moisturizing tools.
So the main thing is, "How do I get my skates during this time of cut-backs and rationing?"
Sadly, I probably don't, which is why I'm not going to be able to go out for Rollerderby until next year, or until much later this year.
That's cool but I don't want to take my eyes off that prize and let's face it, sometimes, I get....
Sidetracked.
But Auntie Maim?
I'm hoping she won't let me go and that every time I go on my huffing, puffing, fat-flabbing run, I am hoping that she becomes a voice in my head to tell me how cute I will look in my uniform and to tell me how much I love skating.
I hope she grabs me in a legal hold, shoves me to the ground and skates right over me to make her point if she has to go the physical route to keep my full attention.
That's what I would do to get my attention and that, my friends, is why I HAVE to come up with some skates.
Target: June.
I can totally get skates by June, I know it. I am masterful with my meagre budget and if I'm not skating by June, remind me to pay attention to the Auntie Maim voice in my head - she's the one who sounds really tough but also a little drunk.
Hidden Track: I can't deal with HIIIIIIIII.
Dear Diary,
I literally want to be 11 years old for 10 minutes so that I can tell him to go fist himself and nobody will be mad at me for doing it. They will look at me as a strangely wise diamond-child in the rough.
Also, I love the delivery guy from Baggins. I want to give him all of my available extra dollars so that he keeps loving his job and knows that he's important.
He makes me smile, just when he's in the lobby and I spy him and wave and he he waves back but like.... REALLY shyly.
Not love like that, dummy.
I think he's slightly special needs and he's a teenager and I know it's all kinds of weird but I always thought that a slightly special needs child and I would be very well-suited in a parent-child relationship, what with my continued problems regarding inadequacy, attachment, and immaturity.
Don't be a hater - I'm not trying to be funny. I'm totally serious. I knew another girl who thought that, too so....
Yeah.
I love that guy.
And I can't WAIT to tell you what HIIIIIII said to me the other day. Crazy-talk, crazy, uncool, not-on-board-the-corporate-train-of-corporate-at-all, effffed up smack, that's what.
Freestylin': For the love of God, I hope all of this is a different conversation in no more than two years.
Really.
Things have gone much further than I ever thought they could.
arizonasarah at 11:12 a.m.