Rising Cost of Eating

I was asked to go shopping for our church's food pantry, since I have some expertise on knowing where to find the good buys on groceries.  What they want is "shelf food", cans and boxes that can wait until they are needed.  We all shop for our families every week, and we all know that food prices have been creeping up.  I always kept a mental list of my bargain price that I would pay for things, and when I would find it, I would buy.  So, I started out for my favorite cheapie places and hunted up the best prices on canned veggies and spaghetti sauce, pasta and rice mixes, and my trunk is pretty full.  When I came home and added up the receipts, I had only spent half of what the food pantry had allotted.  Today I will go back and spend the other half of the money--I was not able to find peanut butter at the price I wanted to pay, so will have to invest in jars on sale at one supermarket, even though they are 50% higher than the price I was looking for, and that was a sale.  Jelly also seemed to be expensive--guess I don't normally buy much jelly.  

It seems like for a lot of years food prices were pretty stable--thank heavens, because that was when I was feeding my growing bunch of five chomping mouths.  As they moved away, our grocery needs have shrunk, and the prices have gone up.  A gallon of gas was up to the price of a gallon of milk.  The gas has gone back down, but the milk has gone up even more.  And what happened to the price of a dozen eggs?  It used to rise and fall some, but all of a sudden the price doubled, and has continued to drift upward.  Don't even mention the cost of a jar of mayonnaise.  We survive on seasonal vegetables, and meat on sale that goes right into the freezer.  Soda, however, is cheaper than it ever was.  I can get a dozen cans of soda for quite a bit less than that dozen eggs.  I confess, I can only shake my head and wonder how people survive what I call the "store wars".  I see older folks who can't possibly read the fine print on the ingredients labels.  There are no individual prices on things any more, and bending down to read the shelf labels to make sure you have the item that is supposed to be on sale is nearly impossible.  Even if you can decipher the abbreviation written above the bar code, chances are that it is the wrong item above the shelf tag, since at the end of the work shift, management has the underpaid and possibly underage work staff go through the store and pull the stock forward on the shelves so that the shelves look full for the next day.  All the kids want to do is go home, so who cares if things are in the right place.

So, back to the store I go.  Then, I have to unload all this stuff at the church.  Wonder where I should leave it?  There is quite a lot, and I can't just stack it all in the hallway.  Well, I hope it helps somebody...

Las Vegas Unveiled

I didn't know what to expect from Las Vegas. I didn't know if I would enjoy it or hate it, and it proved to be a mixture of both. Our trip was great--I confess, we had a very fun time, and certainly were not bored. It is freetrade Disneyworld for adults, meaning that there is plenty of competition for your entertainment dollar, and it isn't all just going to the Disney corporation. But of course, the whole place is fake, just like Disneyworld, and it has no business being where it is.

We hit most of the big hotels, and saw about all there was to look at--shark filled aquariums in the middle of swimming pools, dolphin pools, wave pools, Italian garden pools, dancing choreographed fountains, dripping walls of water running down in restaurants and bars, coves of sinking pirate ships, Venetian canals, complete with gondals--you notice a theme here? Water, water, water, in the desert? Maybe that's their fascination, since the place is just about as desolate as the Sahara. Nobody should be living there at all, much less building this illusion of well-being.

We went out to the Hoover Dam where their water supply Lake Meade languishes in its canyon. All around the edge is a big white edge where the water level has dropped. From ground level it looks like quite a large band of white rimming the dark rocks. From the air, it is formidable. Our helicopter pilot told us the water level drop that is the white band is 120'. Nobody seems to be minding much in town--the fountains run every 15 minutes at the Bellagio, and the water walls run all the time. In the hotels there isn't any suggestion that maybe you could take a shorter shower, they serve you water in the restaurants, and there is even a place in a mall that has a rain storm falling from the ceiling every hour, for your amusement and edification. It was all a little warped.

Flying over the landscape in the helicopter really showed off the desolation of the place. It is empty rock and sand for as far as you can see. Looking down at the wild horses was a bit of a shock--what on earth do they do all day? There is nothing out there. After you leave Las Vegas, it is 20 miles of desert to the next town in any direction, and those are very small towns indeed. Coming from a lifetime of living in suburbia, where one village runs right into the next, with no visible divider, it is so hard to imagine living surrounded by all that emptiness. And I mean empty--not a tree, or a gas station, or even billboards. Not even cactus. Sand and rock. Did we really need to take it away from the Native Americans?

The hotels we visited ran the gamut from over the top luxury to pretty well used up. The least expensive was actually quite nice--I was worried that it would be ugly, but I was pleasantly surprised when it turned out to be a true bargain--low price, and a great room. That was the Sahara, located at the north end of the strip, and definitely a recommend. Skip the Tropicana--good location, but really tired, and not inexpensive. As they said to us in London, "Give it the swerve!" We moved all around, due to the wedding that we attended on the weekend. We met up with the relatives, and a good time was had by all. Thanks for inviting us Keith and Krystle! Congratulations, and best wishes for a happy life!

The Year of the Wedding

Family weddings have dribbled on one in a blue moon for the last 13 years.  Until this year--2008--who would have thought everyone would decide to get married in 2008?  This week we will be traveling out to Las Vegas for the fifth wedding of the year.  Four of them have been out of town, and we have enjoyed spending time in places we probably would not have travelled to otherwise--Germantown PA, Iowa City (got to see the flood damage) and Rochester NY (who knew the Erie Canal could be so cool!)  We're those guests that live far away, and you send the invitation thinking "Well, they'll never come!"  You bet we come!  The best revenge for them not keeping in touch!  The wedding this weekend was only across the street in the little Episcopal church that we can see from our windows, very lovely, and good to spend time with our neighbors. Now we are headed for Las Vegas.  

I confess I go with some reservations.  Well--actually a lot of reservations, since we are moving our hotel every couple of nights to accommodate our various plans for the week.  I'm not sure that Las Vegas is the place for us, since the gambling has little appeal, we prefer concerts to shows, and tend to seek out museums in the places we visit.  The only museum that I have heard about in Las Vegas (and granted, I haven't done my homework--maybe there are others) is the Liberace Museum.  I'm keeping my expectations low--maybe it will be great! There are certainly enough restaurants to keep us amused.  Wish our foodie friends were coming...

The wedding is what we are going for, and time with relatives.  I am happy for the excuse to get us off our chairs (and ladders) and take a trip to a place that we keep saying "Oh yeah!  We should go there."  We'll be flying down into the Grand Canyon, and driving out to Hoover Dam.  Meshes with our stop at the Hoover Library on our way home from Iowa City.  See--who says there is no plan for the universe!  All the best to the 2008 Brides and Grooms.  We've enjoyed sharing your celebrations.

Sudden Fall

I confess I do love summer, and for some reason I think it is going to stay that way long past its time, and so it is always a bit of a disappointment when the days get shorter, and the temps start dropping.  This year it was summer right up to the first of October, and then one night, overnight, it became Fall.  I was freezing for two days until I got my fanny up the old attic stairs and retrieved my warmer clothes.  My feet were begging for socks, but all that was in my closet were sandals.  I was so reluctant to give them up and put on real shoes with closed up toes and heels.  I lugged my storage tubs down the stairs, and emptied and refilled, switching out tanks for turtles, shorts for longs, tricot for flannel, and cottons for wools.  

What I really need to do is take to heart the notice that the Big Brother truck will be in my neighborhood on the 14th, and weed out all the lurkers in the back of the closet(s), and make them go away.  My personal dilemma with most of these neglected cases is that I sewed them myself, and I really like the fabrics.  I keep thinking that if I recut and update a bit, I will wear them again.  I have done this a number of times, since we were swathed in yardage in the 90's, and styles today are much more sleek, with shorter hems--easy to remodel.  But.....then you don't have room anything new.  See--I told you it was a dilemma!  Okay.  Reduce, reuse, recycle.  Here I go!

That Sinking Feeling

You all have experienced it--that dropping of your insides when you hear certain words spoken that you know can't be altered or recalled by anything you can do.  I got home the other night from my grandson's birthday party around 9pm, and hit the play button on the old answering machine and heard one of those sentences:  "Hi!  You left your fanny pack here!"  Oy.  Little Hemo' lives 1 hour and 15 minutes away.  What to do.  It is Saturday night, and I have to play for church in the morning.  Be there at 8am.  Wallet and keys in the fanny pack.  Worse yet, I, as my last act before leaving for the party, tucked my extra key ring with the organ key on it into the fanny pack, because I didn't want to forget it in the morning.  "As I was sinking down, sinking down, sinking down..."  My head starts to ache. Singing won't help.

 Okay, pull it together.  There is another key tucked away in the organ bench.  I can walk up to the church, since it is only up to Main Street.  And then, after church I can drive back to Westchester and hope that I don't do anything stupid that would require producing a driver's license and registration.  Little Hemo's birthday present was a ticket to see the new movie (and you know you all want to see it!) Beverly Hills Chihuahua.  He has the afternoon free, so we will go to the movie, retrieve the fanny pack, and all will be well with the world!  

I did not sleep as well as I would have liked, waking up in the middle of a dream where two other organists also showed up to play for the church service, but the service went well, and I came home and put on some warmer clothes, since the weather has decided to be appropriately Autumn, now that it is October.  MyTreasure was gracious about giving me his keys and credit card so that I could refill the gas tank, and I was on my way.  The afternoon went just fine--no traffic in either direction, Hemo' and Gracious enjoyed the movie and the popcorn, and I confess that BHChihuahua was less painful than the preview promised.  Just a little reminder that life can turn on a dime.  

Cruise To Nowhere

A couple of days ago Garden Fairy and I hunkered down in front of her computer and started to go through all the sites that list cruises to the Caribbean, determined to book a week's worth of warm weather in the end of January, when we all long for it the most. Actually, the real longing sets in towards the end of February, after enduring several months of scarf and gloves, when we look back on the summer days of just grabbing the pocketbook and heading out to the car, unencumbered by pounds of insulation. (This feeling is multiplied exponentially according to the number of children who accompany.) However, the travel companies are well aware of this, and tack on misery surcharges, so that as the season goes on, the price goes up. We thought we'd sneak in ahead of the raises by going in the end of January.

We started reading itineraries, hunting down possible ports, plane fares coming and going--all the things to which you need to commit in order to make this happen. Going out of New York was a priority for us, since it eliminates the weather factor of travelling by air in January. Unfortunately, the trips out of New York run 10 days, 3 days longer than we were looking for, which of course, adds to the cost. After a few hours of calculating, and selecting, and rearranging, the grand total for this little warm-up getaway was going to run us well over $5000 a couple. Wow! All our enthusiasm for this venture drained away, and we adjourned to the kitchen for some coffee and aspirin for our overtaxed brains.

We went back to the computer, and tried for alternatives. By then, the afternoon had drained away, and I had to head home to fix dinner for my niece and two kiddies who were coming by at 7. Next morning I pulled out a brochure for hotels on Ft. Myers Beach, and found a place that will let us stay right on the sand overlooking the beautiful Gulf from our balcony. GF concurred, and we dialled 800 and booked our week. No ship, unfortunately, and MyTreasure is disappointed, but I won't have to those seasick pills, and the birdwatching will be spectacular!