Lemons

When life hands you a lemon you are supposed to try to make it into lemonade. Currently, my lemonade would be more like a small glass of water, no ice and a lemon slice! It seems that no matter how hard I try (and I really do try... feverishly!) nothing seems to go the way I meticulously plan.

I have two vices: 1) I take my morning bowl (I say "bowl" because my favorite cup is roughly 20 oz.) of coffee extra strong with fat free French vanilla coffee creamer. In a pinch I will use regular, in desperation, I will use milk and 2) I smoke. These two things have been my way of taking a few minutes for myself for going on 15 years. I enjoy my coffee and I enjoy smoking, which some may find hard to believe. I don't get my hair cut or get mani/pedi's on the weekends. I don't go on vacations. I don't go out with friends for a night of fun. Hell, I don't even go to the movies. So my two things are quite important to me! Needless to say as the cost of gas is still $4.00 a gallon where I live and my family relies on me to make all meals at home from scratch, gluten free when I can, my vices are slowly becoming less frequent and enjoyable! I remember when I could go to the grocery store and spend $150 and have enough food to feel my family for more than two weeks. Now when I spend the same amount I can usually only make it 6, maybe 8 days, tops. The rising cost of living does not match up with the amount made working.

Wages are down, promotions are declining and becoming less frequent, taxes and medical insurance are up and there is no end in sight for the drastic gap that is making life more difficult every day. My husband works for a great company. He has fantastic benefits, which we have not had since his departure from the military, and he thoroughly enjoys his job. He works near 40 hours a week and commutes ten more on top of that. While his pay is decent he has worked relentlessly to prove himself in a new company, a new life, and is slowly, slowly making a name for himself. While I applaud and encourage him to keep doing his best every day it is becoming increasingly frustrating as well. Without his military disability every month, we would not be able to survive as a family on his salary alone. A family of four just cannot live on $21k a year! And yet this is the issue facing so many families in our country. We are not alone and we are certainly not at the bottom.

With the rising cost of, well everything, how are families supposed to choose between celebrating a birthday or holiday and putting gas in their car? Between their heating costs and groceries? What makes it even harder is that we are bombarded by images of what we should have. Even if you don't have a TV, you are still being marketed by companies for a faster, sleeker and more functional phone, the bigger, better, lighter HDTV, the hybrid SUV. In our culture of keeping up with the Jonse's, the Smith's and the Friedman's, it is quite difficult to feel content and secure. If you are a family with young children, you have to decide if getting a second job is really going to be the better option- if you make only $7.50 and hour and you work 30 hours a week, after taxes it is around $190 a week. If childcare costs are $100 a week and gas is $50 a week, you have made $40. That is a hard pill to swallow when you think of all of the time that you are spending away from your child(ren) to have them in room with twelve other screaming kids learning basic colors and numbers. Is it worth the $40 a week? And what can that actually get you? Two gallons of milk, a few boxes of cereal (on sale with a coupon) maybe some chicken breasts and pasta, a bag of apples and some bananas. Yup, that's about all you can get at a store if you are not an extreme couponer with a cache in your basement.

My two vices are starting to take a back seat. I spend $1500 a year on the two things that I have just for myself. It sounds like a lot, but if you take the average woman who spends $60 every six weeks at a hair appointment, $40 every two weeks on their nails, a new outfit or pair of shoes every month or so and a date with their boyfriend/husband/girlfriend every weekend, six small lattes from the Starbucks drive-thru every month, that adds up to roughly $4000 a year (or $330 a month), not including eating out or bottled water. Now my $1500 a year on nicotine and sweet caffeine doesn't sound so crazy, does it! The point is that even though we have to make sacrifices as our economy is taking a shit, at what point do we cross the line from "luxury" wants to simple "feel a bit better about all this" items? In ten years will we be making the decision between eating breakfast or dinner? Drinking water or showering? It is not only a scary thought but it is also depressing as hell! For now I am going to figure out how to make do with what I have and savor each drag off of my cigarette and enjoy each hot, sweet sip of my morning coffee. If that is all I have to make me feel human, so be it ... and if life is handing me a lemon, it's not going to be enough to make lemonade, I can fucking guarantee that!