Turn Your Lights Down Low

Not my s'more: Flickr user Eric Dickman's (Creative Commons)

I ate two s'mores last night.  With dark Hersheys chocolate--caffeinated chocolate!  Hooray for the end of Consume Less Caffeine June!  That said, I haven't really jumped back on the caffeine wagon just yet.  I think it took the whole 30 days without a trace of it for me to finally feel normal without it, so I know caffeine has super powers over me.  I'm reluctant to let it waltz back into my life and take over control of my energy again.  So you'll just have to appreciate the little time we have together, caffeine, and stop bugging me for more.  Coffee, I mean YOU.

Meanwhile, Operation Consumption Liberation has moved into the month of reduced power and water usage.  Before I dive any further, please note the "reduced" in that last sentence.  Nope, this is not "consume NO power or water" month.  I am not going all "Little House on the Prairie," cooking all my meals over a fire, reading by candlelight, washing my dishes in rainwater and water pulled from my well.  

Reading by candlelight... Not so good on my eyes.

A Love Letter

A love letter:

Coffee, you haunt my mornings.  Your tantalizing scent beckons me from the endless coffee shops in this city of Espresso, tickling my nostrils to awake a deep yearning to feel you warming the mug in my hands, pleasing my taste buds with your robust flavors.  I want to savor your aftertaste on my tongue long after you’ve entered me to penetrate my digestive tract with your caffeinated powers.  Oh, Coffee.

Coffee, my coffee: you are not unlike a lover who has been called away from me for business in Hungary or Cairo.  I want to be with you so badly, but I can’t.  Okay, technically I can, but I won’t.  Because I’m a masochist?  Maybe, but it’s more than that.  I need to prove to myself that I can be as happy and fulfilled without you as I am with you, and that, in the future, I can enjoy your company without such attachment.  It isn’t healthy to crave something as badly as I crave you, Coffee. 

Coffee, all the yogis say you’re no good for me, but they don’t understand what a special relationship you and I have.  To pass the time until we’re reunited, I’ve been seeing Rooibos Tea, who is quite nice.  But as much as I enjoy Rooibos’s company, nothing compares to you.  Without you, the world seems a little foggier, sleepier, blander.  I walk through my days a pale imitation of myself when I’m with you; I’ve little of my usual pep and vibrancy.  Poor Rooibos probably thinks I’m a total square but you know better, Coffee.

Good god, Coffee, you really have a hold on me.  It’s closing in on four weeks since I quit you, but you know as well as I do that I haven’t *really* quit you.  I may have put some physical distance between us, but I can’t stop thinking about you.  Every morning, I call your name, I swear, I do.  I’m counting the days until we are reunited, when I can again touch my lips to you, and drink you in.  Oh, Coffee, my Coffee.

The world's tiniest violin

So when I announced that I was giving up caffeine for June the other day, my friend SW sent me a note, telling me that she was playing the world's tiniest violin for me.

And here it is...

Okay. Maybe I deserve a little ribbing for my woe-is-me-I-want-caffeine 'tude.  SW, like many of my friends, chose to give up caffeine during her first pregnancy and lived through 8-9 months of limited caffeine intake without any major whining. The idea of forgoing caffeine for that long truly makes me shudder and shake, so I realize that my month of going without caffeine is a relatively small sacrifice.

Still, when I caught the fragrant aroma of CW's coffee yesterday at breakfast, I felt this wave of melancholy wash over me as I thought nostalgically, Remember when you had a cup of coffee at breakfast too?  And last night, at my monthly writing group meeting, when the host cracked out the Vosges chocolate bar, I was nearly overcome by the beauty of those rich, dark chocolate squares.  Cue the tiny violin.

If I can put my chocolate and coffee coveting aside, I am actually faring rather well without the caffeine.  Sunshine helps, and Seattle was blessedly sunny over the weekend.  Today is more of a struggle, with blah overcast skies. It is almost 2 PM and I don't feel like I've really waken up yet, despite doing my AM yoga, doing my 10 daily hops, going for a run, showering, and working.

The sleepy-day situation is not helped any by the fact that it's pledge drive week on KEXP.  (Give, y'all!)  Pledge drive means less music, and rocking out sometimes helps me wake up.  So I need some tunes, some really great wake-up tunes.  I'm asking for your support: please send me fantastic, fun wake-up song suggestions for my Who Needs Caffeine? playlist.

Put your song suggestions below, or email them to me.  Please do not send me song suggestions in the following categories: death metal, Katy Perry-style pop, anything with Auto Tune, or country.  It isn't that I don't occasionally enjoy songs in those categories, but they're more likely to annoy me, and they just don't get my engine going first thing in the morning. I'm looking for happy, upbeat, feel-good songs, a la John in the Morning's Friday song selection, "Show Me" by Mint Royale:

Isn't that a happy upbeat song?  I will post my compiled wake-up song list later this month, so you all can get your spunk on without the caffeine too!

Now that I've moaned about not consuming caffeine this month, let's talk about what I'm adding more of this month to my life.  It's cold, it's sugary, it melts... Yup, I'm talking about Ice Cream.

My first notable frivolous purchase after my budget-focused May was this: 

Now is an electric ice cream machine really, bought off of craigslist for $10 really a frivolous purchase?  Given the fact that I already have a beautiful old-fashioned hand-crank ice cream maker with a robin's egg blue-painted tub, yes.  Given the fact that said old-fashioned hand-crank ice cream maker won't turn right now, and getting it fixed will likely cost more than $10, maybe not.

So I ran out and nabbed this big, loud, electric baby to keep me in ice cream through the summer Friday morning and whipped up a batch of custard-style strawberry ginger ice cream for dinner that night.  I referred to the ginger ice cream recipe in David Lebovitz's cookbook, The Perfect Scoop, which is much like this one from his website, except without white chocolate. Meanwhile I let the strawberries macerate in lime juice and sugar--I added those right before mixing the whole thing in the machine.

This is a "Day After" photo.  Look how big that 4-quart can is!

The results were DELISH.

This bowl was for breakfast on Saturday.

My goal is to make ice cream every week this summer, when I'm not on vacation.   After looking at Lebovitz's cookbook and website, here are a few flavors I'd like to try: 

Salted Butter Caramel Ice Cream

Roquefort-Honey Ice Cream

Candied Bacon Ice Cream

Dried Apricot-Pistachio Ice Cream

And the list goes on and on.

So would you like to eat ice cream with me this summer?  Perhaps, if you suggest some super awesome wake-up songs for my playlist, you can! From your song suggestions, I'll select my 3 or 3 favorite, most wakey-wakey-helpful songs. If you live in the greater Seattle area, and your song makes me twist and shout in the AM hours, I'll make a batch of ice cream in a flavor that tickles your fancy to share with you. You ask: "Is this a bribe?"  Why, yes, it is.

But I LOVE Caffeine!

I write to you on No Caffeine June Eve in my Operation Consumption Liberation.  And physically, I'm good to go for a month without coffee, tea, colas, Barq's root beer, Mountain Dew, chocolate, Excedrin, NoDoz, and any other caffeinated-energy drink/concoction.  When I say "physically," I mean that I have been cutting down my caffeine level semi-steadily over the last five weeks to the point where today I went completely caffeine free.  Now going without caffeine for a day does happen from time to time in my world.  But going without caffeine for thirty days straight--Ha!  Are you crazy?  (Answer: clearly!) 

My May 12 morning cup of coffee, fully loaded of regular

Unlike this past month or, say, No Alcohol March, I've been actively preparing for this month of my OCL, "training" if you will, since late April.  I've had caffeine-deficit migraines before.  I had a few this month while cutting back.  They suck. So for my morning cup of coffee, I slowly started mixing decaf coffee beans with my caffeinated beans in the coffee grinder.  I gradually increased the decaf and decreased the regular.  About two weeks ago, I stopped regular beans all together.  I sucked down decaf and its approximately 13mg of caffeine for a week, and then for the past several days, I drank Yogi Tea's Mayan Cocoa Spice tea (5mg per cup).  And today I drank Provence Vanilla Rooibos tea, which someone generously bought at The Teacup to have on hand at his place for me during No Caffeine Consumption month. 

My May 12 morning cup of regular poses with a regular-sized cup of coffee.  Sniff.

I wasn't quite so conscious about cutting my consumption of chocolate.  Dear GOD, I love chocolate.  I wasn't going to include chocolate in my No Caffeine month.  Then, while I was researching the various amounts of caffeine in coffee and decaf, I saw that a 1.45-oz serving of a Hershey's Special Dark Chocolate Bar has 31mg of caffeine, and a regular Hershey's Milk Chocolate Bar has more than my Yogi tea (mind you, I like REALLY dark chocolate best).  So I decided that I better quit chocolate this month as well, to make sure I'm not secretly feeding my caffeine addiction.

Espresso Dark Chocolate--caffeine frenzy!

This leads me to ask: Am I really addicted to caffeine?  Answer: I don't know, I'm not a doctor!  I can tell you that when I smell coffee in the morning, it makes me smile. Except for the last few days when I've had to decline, and then the smell of coffee makes me want to whine and kick things.  Seriously. I can also tell you that the prospect of eating good chocolate makes me feel a little funny in the stomach; it is similar to how a gal feels upon reflection the morning after she kisses a super awesome someone with super awesome kissing powers for the very first time.  I LIKE that feeling.  A LOT.  

Only hot cocoa can make me smile like that.

So giving caffeine the boot this month may feel at times like I'm mutilating a part of my soul.  I expect suffering.  Please, send me Celtic sea salt caramels (these ones, please) and Fresca.

To counterbalance the withdrawal of my favorite drug, I'm adding a few things to my month.  1. More Ice Cream (without chocolate or coffee, of course).  2. 10 hops in the morning (to help wake me up, and according to my yoga teacher, to build bone density).  3. 30 minutes minimum of yoga in the mornings (to make me dewy-eyed and strong and pliable).

And now I'm off to bed, so that I'm not too desperate for coffee in the morning!

Money, money, money.

Breaking news: I managed NOT to spend money in this candy shop.

My apologies for being an inconsistent blog writer.  It happens.  But holy cow, May is almost over already and I really had meant to write more this month. Recap: May has been Operation Consumption Liberation's official month of Reduced Frivolous Spending, the unessential goods and service month, and I laid out in this length post here what constitutes frivolous spending in my book, and committed to spending no more than $132 on frivolous things this month.  And as the month winds down, I can report that I've done pretty well with this whole budget thing (though not as well as I thought I had ten minutes ago--math is not my strong suit).

My frivolous spending since I checked in with $32 spent on May 6:

• $3.25--hot cocoa @ SeaTac Dilletante
• $2.87--coffee and donut @ EWR's Dunkin' Donuts 
• $40--dinner in Astoria, NY w/ JC and WR
• $2.50--coffee @ Chappaqua Station
• $7.70--pizza @ EWR
• $2--bagel @ Eltana
• $2--coffee @ Bean City
• $9--movie @ NW Film Forum w/GM
• $3--cupcake @ Cupcake Royale
• $9--3 tomato plants @ U-District Farmers Market (though is this really frivolous...
• $1.99--pint of Honey Cinnamon frozen custard
• $2--half of an elephant ear at Folklife w/CW.

*May 7-May 30 Total Frivolous Spending: $85.31

*May 1-May 30 Total Frivolous Spending: $117.31

*Remaining Frivolous Spending Budget for May 31: $14.69

Expense worthy: $2 Eltana wood-fired bagel

 

While the no-spending thing has been challenging at times, I have not suffered too much this month. Which is good, because as someone who is under-employed at present, I really NEED to have a tight budget. Which is tricky because right now, it feels like every single valuable thing I own is falling apart.

Example A: the car mechanic tells me that my car needs an est. $2774 worth of repairs and you know that auto mechanic estimations are always low, because they're sure to find two more parts that must be replaced in the process. Considering that I bought said-car two years ago for $4300...  It seems like I'm better off spending that money to get a newer car.   Wait, what money?  Do I need a car that bad?  I could live without it, but it would compromise some things, like my volunteering and where I seek employment.  Plus, I like the freedom of having my own car.  It IS a luxury though.

Car, why do you make me suffer so?

Example B: I noticed this week that the laptop which I'm typing this on now is splitting along the seam of the screen.  If I close it, it gaps open a quarter of an inch at one corner.  Note that I purchased said laptop in early 2006.  I've added RAM, updated this and that, replaced batteries, but let's face it, this thing is kind of a dinosaur.  It weighs 17 pounds.  I've been debating a replacement for a full year.  It needs to happen soon.  Frivolous spending?  Well, no, I'm a writer, I can even write it off on my taxes, I suppose.  But I do have a second laptop though it has less RAM, less stuff on it, and I bought it used--it's probably older than this one.  It does weigh less though...  I should probably dump both of them for a new, super-light, super-fast machine. 

Money-worries face.

Example C: Half of my regularly-worn long sleeved shirts have rips or holes in the arms.  Some have been mended once or twice already. As of yesterday, both of my wear-everyday-fall-thru-spring boots' zippers are broken.  My socks are holey.  I need new clothes.

And so on. 

Given these expected expenses and my under-employment, this month's practice has certainly made me think more about money and its role in my life.  I hate that making money and spending money preoccupy so much of my thoughts and energy, be it taking crap writing jobs for crap pay so I can pay for home Internet service (sadly, a must-have) or using that Internet service to search for less crappy jobs with less crappy pay.

I am taking steps to remedy my situation, but I am also trying to be patient and to take actions that honor my aspirations and values.  Yes, there are days when I think to myself, "you just need to buckle down and take any  job with benefits that will have you."  And then there are days when I think about how unhappy I used to be, and what I changed to make my life more peaceful and happier.  On those days, I know that, while taking the first full-time job with benefits I can find may settle my money worries for the time being, it likely will be at the cost of the balanced and content life I've worked so hard to have.

As this month comes to a close, I think I'm going to continue to set myself a frivolous spending budget.  I like these questions from And Then She Saved to help me determine whether or not something is frivolous or, as she puts it, "expense worthy."  I'll be applying these questions soon in my car, clothes, and computer decisions!

No expense NY fun: walk the Brooklyn Promenade on a sunny afternoon.

 

Oh yeah, recap of my efforts to add more outdoor outings this month! Though the weather has not been terribly cooperative, I've managed to squeeze some nice outings in: a park outing in NY with my sister-in-law MR, my 7-month-old twin niecews, and their dog; a Greenlake walk with CI and daughter S; strutting the Brooklyn Promenade and visiting the Astoria Sculpture Park with JC; playing corn-hole BBQ at MO & QH's; and a few runs, walks, and a 36+ mile bike ride out to Redhook with CW. If you want to go for a pedal or a walk with me, summer is just around the corner!

I'll be posting again tomorrow as NO CAFFEINE MONTH kicks off....

Adventures in (not) spending.

So.  Here I am on day 6 of my super budget May. Today, I walked past many bottles of nail polish and hand lotion in Bartell Drugs without buying any of them.  I did plunk down a small amount of money for a birthday card, and a small fortune for my prescriptions. (Though the cost of one prescription has gone down monthly from $141 to $76 so far this year--health insurance, I just don't understand ye.)  But I escaped without any foo-foo beauty crap, or chocolate.  Praises be.

I know I could have made a birthday card.  I am, in fact, halfway through the process of making some very sweet and very amateurish Mother's Day cards for my mother and the other mother-like figures in my life.  They don't look store-bought, that's for sure--but it is the thought that counts, right???

See, I made a tulip out of dried, pressed tulip petals!

Still, I think I've blown my artsy mojo on the mums' cards this week, so I decided to dip into some of my precious frivolous spending money for the birthday card.  In addition to the card, last night I met up with my book group and I bought a beer.  These two items totaled $8.00.

Then I went to get my hair done today.  The good news is that I bought a Groupon last month for my haircut and color, and it was a steal! The bad news is that Groupons don't include tip and that "Groupon customers tip on the full amount of the pre-discounted services."  Of course they do.  Good news for my colorist and stylist today: I'm a good tipper.  So that was $25.00 in tips.  Ouch.

*A pause for the Hair Report! The good news is the color looks great--my colorist is awesome!  The bad news is the cut... well, it isn't awful.

I know, it isn't that bad.  It isn't red either, as the lighting here suggests.

The stylist (not my regular gal) was nice and she was competent with the shears.  But you know how when you describe what you want (an inch shorter in the back, longer in the front, more of an angle, less poofy, lighter...), a stylist will sometimes really latch on to one or two parts of that and kind of forget the rest of that? Yeah, let's just say it's lighter and probably not so poofy, but I don't know where she heard "layering."  The lesson: you get what you pay for. End of Hair Report.*

But it DOES have a bit of a "she-mullet" feel, right? Stupid choppy layers.

Okay, back to money matters: so in six days, I've managed to blow... $32 of my 132 frivolous spending budget.  Eek!  Oh, and I'm going to New York on Wednesday.  Guess who IS NOT going to be going to any Broadway shows this time around?

This not-spending thing is not easy, yo.

In other news, I biked to my office all week.  And it was lovely, except for yesterday, when I was positive that every person or car I saw on the street was trying to make my ride more hellish.  I had some MAJOR bike rage.  Really, I was yelling the f-word like a crazy lady.  I got to thinking that maybe I need a specific outlet for my bike rage, somewhere to air it where I don't run the risk of getting hit by an angry driver. So, I have this silly twitter feed, and from here on out, that's where I'll be putting my bike rage. If you use the twitter, follow me! I will try to keep it rated PG-13, and I also use it to notify folks of new blog posts here! FYI, I have haiku aspirations for the future tweets...

In other OTHER news, I'm running a 10K this Sunday morning.  May my new biking muscles and regular running routine power my booty across the finish line faster than my race companion, CW, who has gone on a total of TWO training runs! Wish me luck!

Stop buying frivolous stuff, doofus.

Today, on top of a 6-mile bike ride and a 4-mile hike, I drove my car recreational for the first time since March!  Because it is May! 

May marks my second Reduce Frivolous Spending month, the unessential goods and services edition. (See The Eating and Drinking Out edition here.) Now, I’ve been very tempted this week to rearrange my Operation Consumption Liberation (OCL) Challenge schedule to make May my month of spending less time on the internet, due to the unhappy fact that my ISP/phone company lost the order for my new modem and I’ve been going without the internet at home since Tuesday night.

The other reason I’ve thought about swapping months around is that I intended to do more investigation into my finances and spending habits to find out how much I waste on unessential goods and services, etc.  I sort of feel like this type of challenge calls for more research than I’ve done.  However, I haven’t exactly been monitoring how much time daily I waste on Facebook and tooling around on the internet either.  So… I’m sticking with the plan and I've done a hack research job of my spending habits over the last month.  Unessential goods and services, here we go!

Due to the economic situation in the last few years, an awful lot of people have undertaken a “Spending Fast” and blogged about it.  One of the most notable examples would be Anna Newell Jones and her “And Then She Saved” blog.  Check out her spending fast and her spending diet guidelines.  Inspiring to say the least. 

Now I am not going on a total spending fast.  I’m undertaking something more like the spending diet, but I don’t like using the word diet for anything.  What I’m going to be doing is limiting my unnecessary expenses.  I am not going to put my Netflix on hold, skip yoga, or make my friends suffer another month of Absolutely No Drinks or Eats out.   But I am going to be working with a limited amount of money for nonessential expenses this month. Thus, once that money is gone, for the rest of the month, I’ll be spending my free time at home reading, playing Mah-Jongg solitaire online, and watching stuff on Netflix.  Maybe I’ll reorganize my kitchen cupboard finally.

So, the key question is: how do I define unessential goods and services?   

First, I need to define what expenses ARE essential:

-Shelter (gotta pay rent)

-Internet and phone services are essential.  Plus, I’m locked into contracts for both.

-Health insurance, auto insurance, medicine, toothpaste, and doctor visits (no one should have to go without any of these!)

-Soap for laundry, dishes, and the body

-Food and drinking water is essential (dessert, however, is not). 

-Gas for my car to go volunteer 

 Now here are some examples of nonessential things I’ve spent money on this month:

-$55 Groupon for haircut and color at my salon (Great bargain, sure, but…)

-$49.50 registration for a 10k race next week 

-$16.99 gym membership (haven’t been there in almost two months, but the cost to join was ridiculous, so I keep paying it)

-$10.94 Netflix

-$39 debit charges at restaurants

-$120 cash purchases (Although I do pay for some smaller grocery purchases with cash, most of my cash generally goes to nonessential bar tabs, restaurant tabs, movie theater tickets, and small miscellaneous trinkets and sweets)

-$68.50 of miscellaneous non-medical Bartell Drug purchases (yes, some of those purchases were for other necessities—toilet paper, laundry detergent, and toothpaste—but all those lotions, bath salts, almonds, nail polish, chocolate, As Seen On TV gadgets…  Fact: I get a little bonkers in the drugstore)

But I really need some more hand cream!

And so on...  I’ve done my best to calculate my unessential expenses last month, and it came to about $420.  That is more than half my monthly rent.  Out of control!

So do I seek to half this amount in May?  $210 is still a lot of money to be wasting on that kind of stuff every month, so let’s knock off another $50. That gives me a nonessential spending budget of $160, which is cushy, but considers expenses from my upcoming travel. From that $160, I’m subtracting my anticipated bills for Netflix and the gym (~$28, auto-paid).  That’s $132 to spend on nonessential goods and services as I choose for the month.

FYI: I will not be buying a $300 gong this month.

To help me track my $132 nonessential budget, I have a $50 American Express prepaid card for most card purchases and I am withdrawing $70 cash from my checking account.  And yesterday, I pulled out $2 from the lingering “April” cash in my wallet for May--for clean record keeping, I put the remaining April cash in my loose change jar this morning.

Two exceptions:

-If someone wants to buy me dinner or take me to, I’m not trying to curb his or her spending so that is allowed.  However, I’m not terribly comfortable freeloading, and I will not be soliciting you to purchase meals, movie tickets, or new clothes for me.

-I can spend gift cards and previously purchased Groupons as I am wont to do.  But any new prepaid/gift card or Groupon purchases will be deducted from my nonessential budget.

That's it.  I will do my best to spend my $132 wisely!  I may be taking a few hints from this here site... And of course, I will be reporting regularly here at OCL on my nonessential expenditures and my budget balance!  If you have any budget suggestions, or want to join me, I welcome both.

Oh YEAH: To counterbalance the cruel feeling of depriving myself, especially when I’m denying myself lots of nice, trivial, feel-good purchases, I would like to add more outdoor social activities to my life this month.  Free or low-cost activities, that is: park play dates, bike adventures, hikes, backyard BBQs….  This part of my month is off to a great start (65 degrees and sunny in Seattle-woo woo!). Even if the weather does not cooperate, I’m not totally adverse to rainy day adventures either. So who wants to play?