Thursday, March 26, 2009

It's a good thing I wasn't really set on the idea

Right. So awhile back I did the dollar a day thing for about two weeks. I know that it can be done, but it sometimes isn't a lot of fun. It would be even less fun if you had to do it for real. But if you are doing it just as an experiment, the most annoying thing is that if you decide to do it for a set amount of time you can't go out to dinner with friends and such until after it is over.

Having only gotten to the two week point last time, and having the membership dinner to go to in the middle of that, I was going to see if I could do it again. I was thinking that I did not have any social commitments for almost a month, and that it was unlikely that anything would come up until the middle of April.

So I ate less than a dollar's worth of food on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, and I'm planning on that again today. But now on Friday I've been invited to go to lunch with my husband and some of his co-workers who want to meet me. They do that sort of thing once in a while, and I don't want to be unfriendly.

Anyway, they picked Friday lunch, because my husband told them I didn't have anything to do on that day. That isn't exactly true, since Friday morning I have an appointment at the clinic to have some blood drawn and some other things. He just didn't remember. Anyway, you can never know how long you are going to be waiting when you have some sort of medical appointment, so I might not make it. But I'm guessing that for something that should only take half an hour or so that I'll actually be there for two hours. So I think that I'll be done with it just a bit after eleven and should be able to get to the restaurant by 11:30 or 12:00.

If I don't make it by then they'll just have to assume that I'm not coming. I won't be able to call him to say I can't make it. My husband still doesn't have even the little emergency cell phone like I have.

Maybe I don't want to do this dollar thing right now anyway. I had planned to eat kale for several days, and the kale wasn't that good. Also, it looks like I'm being asked if I want to go with my husband for a couple of days in Texarkana or overnight to middle of nowhere. Or maybe he just left me this note to let me know that the hoped for trip to Houston wasn't going to happen. Or at least, it isn't going to happen at the beginning of next month like he hoped.

Business temporarily picked up a bit. He had three good weeks at work, which translates into one good check that we've already spent, and half a good check coming next week. Since then it hasn't been great. This week and next week we were hoping that it would be good, and they expected so much business that they got another photographer to work with him. Only it really hasn't been that busy or that good. The salespeople are doing okay, but not great, and what work there is gets split between more people than usual. And my husband works faster than the other guy, so he is getting more money than the other guy, but still not a lot. So that means that my husband both has less money than he would like, and also having to feel a bit guilty that he's making more than the other guy. But we need money too, and there's only so long that you can expect people to wait on the other guy, so my husband ends up with twice as many customers, and he still isn't that busy. If they had know there wasn't going to be a full schedule, they could have left the other guy off the schedule. But maybe the other guy is having a tough time of it too, and would rather go to work for the minimum pay rather than have two weeks off with no pay.

Maybe I didn't want to go to Houston anyway. It is starting to look like we wouldn't have had enough money to do anything.

7 comments:

dmarks said...

All I know of Houston anyway is a very shabby airport, and a nice Texan in it who gave me a free chili-dog.

DD said...

I hope business picks up for you, things are hard everywhere right now.

Houston always makes me think of Space.

dmarks said...

"Houston, we've got a problem. It's something about that chili-dog..."

Ananda girl said...

All I recall of Houston is that it was big. I was in third grade and well, everything was big, so it may not be a reliable comment.

I squirm in situations where I have to meet new people. I usually have fun, but stress out over it. Good luck with that.

Anonymous said...

houston rocks. come here. i saw your comment on the one dollar a day diet project blog. you could totally be a vegetarian. its such a beautiful lifestyle change. come to houston and we can talk about it!

laughing said...

Welcome Jen.

I don't think that I will going to planet Houston anytime soon, but maybe. Things change around here. My husband's work area was recently expanded to include Houston, so it looked like we were going there in a couple of weeks, but now I've seen the schedule and we're not. Probably by the time he does get scheduled there I'll be busy with something else and won't go, but maybe. He used to work in Houston a lot when he worked for a different company, but I don't think that we've been there for a few years.

Anyway, what I was saying about not being a vegetarian is that sometimes food feels like an addiction, and it would have been nice if I had been kept away from certain foods when I was younger and couldn't decide such things for myself. If you want to read more, I wrote the rest of what I was thinking here:
http://insidioustruth.blogspot.com/2007/10/thoughts-on-not-being-vegetarian.html

Slick said...

No way I could do that...

I eat like a dollar a bite!