a cautionary tale

Called "Never Set Your Laptop On the Floor".

My roommate and I are playing a game. It consists of seeing how long we can go without buying food.

Buying a $430 laptop, inexpensive though it is, has wiped my savings nearly clean. It's like paying rent 2 weeks early. I am financially fragile; I'm feeling the quick, sharp sting of a $7 dinner in Pilsen, even when the leftovers serve as tomorrow morning's brunch (and $7 covering 3 meals is pretty decent.)

There still exists food at home; therefore, we theorize, we needn't shop. There is pasta & sauce, which was both last night's dinner and this morning's breakfast. (This is, by the way, a new talent I've developed--making one big meal cover two.) There are something like three bags of rice. There are a few eggs left. Some tortillas. Orange juice. Thai red curry. No milk. No cereal. No soup. No tofu. It forces creativity.

T. has lucked out--he works in a bakery and gets one sandwich per 7 hour shift, which he turns into lunch or dinner, depending on the shift. If working the afternoon shift, he also brings home a few of the day's unused baguettes. We still have olive oil, so it works.

Worrying--nay, even thinking about money is a new & exciting exercise for me. That isn't to say I've been richly spoiled.. I've been buying my own clothes and entertainment since mid-high school & my needs aren't really outlandish. But switching from public education to the University of Chicago, as snooty as it gets in the Midwest or anywhere short of the Ivies (and even snootier due to the current administration, who happens to be so concerned with basically making us Harvard that it will increase tuition by $5,000 apparently for the hell of it) has hardly been an entirely smooth financial transition.

Suddenly, I am dealing with guilt. I am expensive. The guilt is bearable for a few reasons; at least one-half of my parents believes the price tag is worth it, and I will be overtaking the loans in tolerable but everlasting payments in a few short years.

Of course, my darling alma mater still has some beliefs (delusions?) about money that I am at a loss to correct. Like that I should be making circa $3,000 in summer money toward tuition. The fact that I have to make rent & feed myself sadly are not factored into the equation. Perhaps they want me to go home.

How can I explain that I could never find a full-time, $10-an-hour summer job in Hastings? Or, more importantly to me, more extraneous to them, that I simply don't want to spend almost 4 straight months in Hastings..?

And so... pasta for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I was a bit more lavish earlier in the summer. I ate chocolate mousse once or twice in Greektown. I saw a couple movies. I carefully started revamping my wardrobe. But for the next month, prior to my rent being subsumed by my parents, post entire-paycheck-spent-on-laptop, ..PASTA.