A Tall Girl's Adventures in a Tiny World

Fridge full of goodness We're just back from the Newark (DE) Farmers Market, where we bought one of everything. I spent a lot more money than I'd intended, but I wanted to be sure we have enough of the grainy staples, as well as some new spices, nuts, and vinegars. And of course, cheese. I think my entire family (myself included) is clinging to cheese as the great hope in this vegetarian experiment. We now have an entire crisper drawer full of cheddar, mozzarella, colby jack, more cheddar, American slices, and goat cheese. Also ricotta cheese, for the yummy vegetarian lasagna recipe I hope to make tonight, and cottage cheese because I love it no matter what you say it looks like and because I don't get enough calcium. I'm nervous about this vegetarian thing today...mostly because I feel a lot of pressure to make fabulously delicious food so my family doesn't whine and moan about the lack of animal protein. And I don't want them to be hungry (even though w...

As you may have heard, there's a baby coming this way. Soon. In approximately 10 weeks, to be precise. Which is awesome and blessed and amazing and exciting. But really freaking expensive. Which makes it also scary as hell when we're just about getting by financially in our current family state. But scary makes us think, right? Scary makes us evaluate what's important, consider what we can live without, brainstorm creative ways to make it work. So over the last couple months, Big Daddy and I have been contemplating all the many ways we can cut our expenses in order to afford another child in daycare (and all the diapers and clothing and food that comes with another person) but without causing too much personal hardship or lifestyle change. There are the obvious things, of course -- no more eating out, suspending the gym membership that we so rarely use, putting vacation savings on hiatus, paying off small debts to free up monthly cash -- but we live pretty lean anyway so it...

Once upon a time, Big Daddy and I lived in a two-bedroom apartment on the second floor of a large apartment complex. A quiet building full of retirees who looked after us and doted on us like their grandchildren. We would call maintenance when the washing machine overflowed and flooded the kitchen, or when the window leaked and stained the wall, or when the air conditioner unit froze up, or even when we locked ourselves out. They would come within 24 hours, fix the problem, accept a cold beer as a thank-you tip, and be on their way. We lived there for four years. Yet I complained about it every week -- hated that we had nothing to call our own, longed for a backyard and garden, felt sad that we didn't have enough space to store the bread machine we received as a wedding gift. Then we moved to a condo, a nice little place with three bedrooms and three levels, a pretty little balcony on the living room level and a patio through French sliders on the ground level. Nice big rooms, but...

No, not that time of the month (but I got your attention, didn't I?) -- The time of the month to which I refer is that time of the month in which our mortgage check has been cashed, we've paid the preschool bill for the month, we've had a costly car maintenance appointment, we've socked extra money away into our savings account because I'm afraid my job will be gone any minute, we've purchased all the groceries and gas we need to get through...and pay day is still a week away. The balance in our checkbook is ridiculously low. I'm talking double-digits low. I've put up the Spending Embargo sign. Anyway, this week, instead of calling Big Daddy in my usual low-balance panic on Friday morning and saying "no more spending!" I called and presented him with a challenge: Let's see if we can get through this next week without spending any money out of our joint account. This means, eat only the food we have in our house; we entertain ourselves only ...

I just spent 2.5 hours at Shoprite. You read correctly: 2.5 hours. With a three-year-old "driving" one of those horrendously huge carts with the car on the front. Wearing big boy pants for the first time in public. Yelling "Honk! Honk! I want to go home now! Honk!" the entire time. Have I mentioned that we were shopping for groceries for 2.5 hours ? I hate grocery shopping. Hate it! For some reason I have always felt some sort of weird grocery entitlement, like standard food items, such as chicken and milk and bread, should be just delivered to our homes each week, no charge. We need this stuff to live, after all. Sure you can pay for fun stuff like Twinkies or ice cream, but the basics should just arrive at my door, kinda like the water just arrives in my tap (I know I pay for that too, but you get my drift). So you can imagine my annoyance about paying over $4 for a gallon of milk! Or $5 for a bag of grapes! Or $7 for a friggin' frozen pizza! The good news, I ...

Remember my electric bill rant from last month? Turns out I am not alone. Take a look at yesterday's front-page story here in Delaware. I'm no expert, but it looks an awful lot like Horizon Power and Light is price gouging. Read this little segment of the article, and you'll recognize some similarities in our electric experience: McGinnis had agreed in October to a contract with Horizon Power and Light, a competitive provider in Delaware offering a discount to Delmarva Power customers. Her rate was a lean 11.01 cents per kilowatt hour -- below the 11.16 Delmarva was charging, a monthly savings of about $1.50 if she used 1,000 kwh per month. All was fine until this summer, when her bills started to go way up. She said she didn't see a rate increase on her bills, just an oversized bottom line. The company told her the rate had increased after May 31 to 19.8 cents per kwh -- an 80 percent increase just in time for summer air conditioning season. "They are ripping peo...

Time for me to spew some rage about the state of things in my pocketbook: I just spent 45 minutes on the phone with Delmarva Power and Horizon Power, our "third-party energy supplier," trying to figure out why my electric bill went from $250 in July 2008 (which is already about $100 higher than July 2007) to $400 in August. WTF?! In this time bouncing between Delmarva and Horizon, on hold and trying to decipher multiple accents and speech problems, I received quite an education about what all that babble on the three pages of our bill actually means. So here's the deal: Our usage is up about 500 kwh in August for some unknown reason (faulty, old, inefficient a/c is most likely culprit), so that's nothing that the power companies can control. However, I learned that Horizon, the supplier (Delmarva just owns the lines and acts as our electricity distributor) charges a variable rate each month per kwh. This past month's was 19 cents/kwh...compared to Delmarva's ...

For months now, I have been ranting to anyone who will listen (and really that's only my husband, who has to share my bed, and my coworkers, who have to sit in an adjoining cubicle for 8 hours a day) that our forefathers would never have allowed what's happening in our country these days. We're all sitting around griping -- myself included -- about gas prices and grocery prices and wars and idiot leaders...but who's going to start the revolution? Who's going to throw the tea in the harbor ? I was delighted to learn today that we've rediscovered a little bit of our revolutionary roots. Tonight ABC News reported that Americans drove almost 10 billion fewer miles in May 2008 than in May 2007. And guess what? The average price of gasoline has dropped 11 cents in the last week. YES! (Did you ever think you'd see the day that I danced over $3.87 a gallon?) Keep up the good work, my fellow gas guzzlers. And if the price of gas keeps falling, please don't forge...