I did quite well yesterday at a local festival at which The Girl danced in her first recital as a very cute pink cloud. In the midst of all of that Festival Food, all the kids wanted were Blow-pops (.25 each). Nice! Much cheaper than ice cream, etc. (and I had brought lunch for them). As for me, I passed on the Philly Cheesesteak and the bratwurst and the fish and chips and all of the other the things that smelled SO good (instead I ate an apple and some rice chips--no lie!). I did buy one churro that I split with the kiddie-poos. I also spent some money on bouncy house types of activities, which were a bit pricey. BUT the kids didn't ask for any of the chotchkes offered by the many vendors, and I was pleased about that. All and all, I made it out having only spent $16 for three people in four hours in the midst of a festival of consumption.
But at the farmer's market today, I went overboard. I bought organic golden raspberries that the kids love. I bought big cookies for the kids. Lots of figs (for The Boy). An organic cantaloupe (for The Girl). Lots of apples and tomatoes (but that seems okay). Some organic strawberry juice because the girl was crying that she was thirsty (should have taken a juice box with me).Hmmm. And we're only six days into the month? This isn't going to be easy.
1 comment:
When you start thinking about not spending money the extent to which the game is rigged against you comes into sharp focus.
The primary drive of capitalism in the wild is to automate a process you could do yourself (smoothies being an excellent example), make it convenient and then gloss it up so it looks so much sexier and more enticing than your feeble efforts- even though it is generally much lamer than what you'd turn out if you put your mind to it.
The penultimate expression of this infantilization of the consumer is a current burger chain ad where a 20-ish everyman fails absolutely at making guacamole.
Scooping out the flesh and mashing it up with a fork is beyond him, he needs corporate America to rescue him from his macho feebleness in the kitchen.
This is the underlying message of a lot of consumer culture- you'd just fuck things up, let US handle it!
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