100 DOLLARS A WEEK PT.2 - Day 8 (Friday) & So Close To Being Caught Up I Can Almost Taste It!!!

Wanna know what's sick? I don't remember anything about yesterday except for what we ate and doing eight loads of laundry (it was linens and beddings day). Oh, and working on the Christmas tree, and making feeble attempts to stay up to watch TV.

Do you ever look back at your college days - when you were going to school full time and working two jobs, running five miles every morning, making honor roll, and generally burning the candle on three ends if that were possible - and thinking that is the kind of shit you do when you either don't know any better or don't have a choice in the matter?

That's kind of how I look at my past life in which I was working full time (and running a part time business for some of that time), waking up at 4am so I could work out and come home in time to pack all the lunches before heading to work, cooking most of the meals, doing all the laundry, cleaning the house, picking up the kids, checking the homework, managing the finances and investments, and even trying to blog from time to time - all quite very imperfectly, by the way. We could have afforded a cleaning lady every once in a while. We could have afforded to eat out more often. We could have sent more dress shirts to the cleaners to be pressed. But I was convinced and insistent that those were all my jobs.

I didn't know better back then. I believed in the idea that *I* could have and be everything at once. This is not to say that it's impossible - I know there are still women who at least seem to have and be everything as far as the rest of us can see. But I had to learn the hard way that that was an impossibility for me. Some women can keep it going longer, but a decade of living like that - of not knowing and accepting my own limitations - caught up with me. And how.

So these days, having been duly walloped by a healthy serving of humility, I find a sense of accomplishment in things like washing and folding eight loads of laundry, cooking three meals a day and washing every last dish afterward, taking a few good pics of food every day and/or getting a blog post written to go along with them, sharing my love of food with others who love food, tweaking *a* business plan (just one), knowing when to stop, and humbling myself enough to ask for help when I need it.

Sometimes it's not just our circumstances that require change, but our perspectives and approaches as well.

Normally, Friday would have been shopping day, but with the glut of produce from last week's shopping and the leftovers from Thanksgiving (both stuff I made and stuff my mom gave me), I figured I would make some room in the fridge before going shopping again.

BREAKFAST

for the grown peeps was leftover pumpkin cupcakes. For the kids, ramen. Two different kinds, even. I don't indulge in different meals for different people so much anymore, but on these catch as you catch can leftover days, it's not such a big deal.

   1 packet Sapporo Ichiban ramen and kimchi for Mads $0.50
+ 1 packet Shin Ramyun Black for Joe $1.00
+ 2 cups of coffee for the adults $0.40

= $1.90 FOR BREAKFAST

LUNCH

was leftover oxtail stew brought home from my parents' on Thanksgiving. And since I didn't make any veg for lunch, everyone ate three tangerines, also brought home from my parents'.

So lunch was basically free.

TREAT

Dean and Mads both decided they wanted s'mores early in the day. Joe and I decided to pass.

But I already accounted for all the s'mores ingredients on Thanksgiving so treats were also paid for.

DINNER

Sometime in the late afternoon, I passed out for a granny nap and didn't wake up until well into dinnertime. Starving family at hand, I had to make something somewhat fast, so I made a 30 minute bacon and brown sugar braised kimchi and served it with some steamed rice and gihm (toasted seaweed). More tangerines all around to balance out the bacon. ;)

   half packet of bacon $1.25 (the bacon was on sale when I bought it a couple of weeks back)
+ 2 cups kimchi $1.00
+ 2 cups rice $1.00 (the gihm also from my mom)

= $3.25 FOR DINNER ($1.10/serving)

$5.15 spent on the first day of the second week with six days left to go.

I could write today's post and get all caught up, but my family and Edward Scissorhands await me.

Oh and something about accepting my limitations.

Back tomorrow,

shinae