Stephanie is the winner of the $20 Amazon.com gift card. Congratulations, Stephanie, and please respond to my e-mail so that I can send you your prize. This Friday’s giveaway may — or may not — be a geographically specific animal. Stuffed, not real. Stay tuned.
My hat is off to grandparents who wind up raising their grandchildren. A mere half-day spent with my niece’s kids makes me want to lie down with a cold cloth on my eyes.
The boys are funny and sweet but very, very high-energy. Bless their hearts.
That’s why today’s entry is short. By the time I got back to my host’s home last night, I wasn’t good for much besides having a bowl of oatmeal and visiting a short time before crawling up to bed. And I’m only 52.
A former coworker hosted a potluck for me on Saturday. Among the goodies we enjoyed: Alaska salmon in a ginger-based marinade, burgers (meat or veggie), dilled potato salad, baked beans made from scratch in a slow cooker, a mesclun salad with chicken and grilled sweet potatoes, rosemary bread, eggplant pate, olives, grape tomatoes, melon and several desserts, including a Ukrainian rhubarb torte that was much classier than the rhubarb cake that I made recently.
I was the guest of honor but gently urged the hostess to tell me what I might contribute. It wound up being deviled eggs and two 12-packs of Diet Coke.
Someone suggested that potlucks would be a good subject for a frugality column. I laughed. Then I realized that she’s right. If I were unemployed or underemployed, I’d be attending or hosting potlucks as often as I could get away with it.
Consider that:
It’s hot just about everywhere but here, apparently. At my nephew’s Little League game yesterday it was in the low 50s and so super-windy that I was actually cold.
Not to rub it in, or anything.
Everywhere else, it’s hot. Too hot to play sports. Too hot to watch sports. Too hot to lie by the pool (the sun’s out there, remember?).
This grimy little guy is my great-nephew, who’s almost 9 and the luckiest kid I know: His mom lets him play in the dirt. Or, in this case, the mud.
They’d gone to Kincaid Park, where Malachi and some other kids thoroughly immersed themselves in play on the muddy beach. Alison brought along dry clothes so he wouldn’t wreck the inside of the family car.
“I did have to hose off his hair at the house, before his shower,” she said.
Playing in the dirt is truly frugal fun: Give a kid a spoon and some old plastic containers and watch her go to town. What’s more, science seems to indicate dirt is literally good for our kids.
The most-read piece I ever wrote for the Smart Spending blog was an essay called “See a penny? Pick it up!” Before MSN Money switched blog platforms, the article had received more than 1.6 million hits.
The comments were also numerous, and about evenly split: People who also happily gleaned change and people who thought the idea was unbelievably disgusting. Pick up dirty, germy, dog-peed-upon coins? Eeeeewwww.
I’m fully aware that found money isn’t clean. But it’s not as though I carry it home in my mouth.
Besides: I hate to break it to those folks, but the bills and specie they get from banks and stores are probably just as revolting.
I’m the grocery store customer who challenges the scanner. Yes, it slows things up a little. But I’m not going to pay $2.89 a pound just because someone forgot to tell the computer that hams are on sale this week.
That’s me. And you? You might be the person behind me, grinding her teeth in frustration because I won’t accept anything other than the advertised price.
My apologies if your checkout is delayed by 60 seconds. But that $1.90-per-pound savings times eight pounds represents almost $16. My budget won’t let me back down.
I recently attended a barbecue that was wryly dubbed “Grill, baby, grill!” by its hosts. As I was leaving they gave me a small sack of newly cut rhubarb. Alaskans are nuts about the stuff. In the old days, rhubarb was the first fresh food of the year. To the pioneers it must have tasted positively ambrosial after a winter of sourdough bread and boiled beans.
Modern-day sourdoughs can get all the fresh produce they want at Costco, yet they maintain an ancestral fondness for this vegetable that masquerades as a fruit. Even people who don’t eat it grow it, probably because it takes no horticultural talent at all. Stick a rhubarb root into dry cat litter and by morning you’ll have enough stalks to bake a pie. (Stick it in used cat litter and you’ll have enough for two pies.)
Want to drop a bad habit or develop a good one? You need a plan. Or, rather, you need a list.
We Americans love our lists. We especially love short lists. Just check the headlines on magazines, features sites or blogs. You’ll almost certainly see ones like “Three easy steps to lose weight/stop smoking/become a millionaire.”
Having a list makes us feel we’re already halfway to achieving our goals. Lists make us feel confident and in charge: I’ve got it all figured out! Now I just have to implement it!
It’s never really that simple, of course. If three steps were all it took, we’d be surrounded by thin, rich people whose fingers were unstained.
So the economy’s not so great. That’s no reason to give up recreation.
The best things in life are free. Some of the other things are cheap — say, a dollar or less.
Just off the top of my head:
Wash your car. Use an environmentally friendly soap. It’s a good excuse to squirt each other with the hose on a sticky day.
Hit the dollar store. Buy sidewalk chalk, a kite, some bubble-blowing stuff or a generic Frisbee. Then take it to the park. OK, so you may have to add a few cents in sales tax. You’re still spending a dollar, but being charged tax. (Not to split hairs.)
Create your own “drive-in.” Weather permitting, set up a TV in your driveway and screen movies outdoors. Kids are especially delighted by anything out of the ordinary. But don’t be surprised if grown-up neighbors also walk over to see what’s on.