The Hunger Games

I have generally avoided revealing intimate and extraordinarily private details of my life, but there is something weighing so heavily on my heart that I have to share it somewhere. Besides, no one is reading this anyway.

This morning as I was getting ready for work I was thinking about how I would come home and pour through the weekly ads and my coupons while doing laundry. When I asked my grandma if we would be able to do the grocery shopping today she said, much to me extraordinary disappointment, NO.

Oh.

Yeah. So in my household the bills always get paid but there is hardly ever food in the fridge. Sure we manage to eat and never truly go hungry, but the amount of money wasted on fast food is gross. According to my grandma there is a specific amount of money budgeted monthly for food but I just don't believe that. I am not seeing that amount of food in our house every month. Jeffrey used to eat like a king for half of that budget and he always bought meat. Apparently this budget includes the household toiletries. I'm still not seeing that in the house.

I told grandma that I think we should cancel the cable if it means less financial stress. We don't need television. We have literally hundreds of DVDs and with the amount of free television available on the Internet it is feasible to go without cable. Do I like having high definition channels, watching every movie channel and all the other channels we have? Of course. Would I rather not have to worry about eating canned peaches in order to have something in my stomach? You betcha.

This afternoon I am going to go over the budget with my grandma and see where we can cut things out. With my own personal finances I am going to reduce my cell phone plan from the unlimited web/data/minutes at $65 a month to the unlimited/300 minutes plan for $25 a month. We are going to have to buy Sunday papers to clip coupons and we are going to use coupons for everything we buy.

This morning I was close to tears when I heard there was no budget for food for the next week to two weeks. I kept wondering how I was going to make it. Suddenly thoughts of escaping home were filling my mind and I was wondering where I could go and who would take me in. But then I would be abandoning my family, wouldn't I? My grandma wouldn't do that to me and I won't do that to her.

My grandma has done everything she ever could for me and I long ago promised I would return the favor in kind. I'm not able to provide for her financially due to the limitations of my job but I try to help out in other ways. If killing some of the extra luxuries in our home for the sake of eating is what needs to happen, then so be it. It won't be forever. It will just force us to be extra creative to keep entertained.

...

I'm surprised by my own optimism. When did I get this way? Guess I'm doing an okay job of not letting the depression take a hold of my life again. This morning I had some coffee and grabbed some crackers, a Dr. Pepper and some popcorn to eat at work. One of the clients brought in donuts and I got to have one. I'm hungry and feeling a bit under nourished. But I think it will be okay. Fingers crossed.