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w00t! My plan to stockpile food, thereby limiting trips to grocery and big-box stores, is already paying for itself. Ten days into the current budget cycle, I’m $425 in the black (!!!!!). Last week I spent a grand total of $55 on a few catch-up items. This week, I’ve spent $120, of which $13 went to gasoline. About $40 went to food; the rest covered OTC meds and household goods. There’s plenty of food in the house, and fresh veggies thriving in the garden.

Normally, the first week of a budget cycle would go right straight into the red. In the pre-stockpiling regime, I would regularly run out of food (and everything else) near the end of the month. So, in the first week of each cycle I would have to make a gigantic Costco/Safeway/Target run, because the cupboard would be bare. Last month, before the stockpiling strategy kicked in, I was $75 in the hole against my first week’s microbudget; the preceding month’s first week, 36 cents in the black; in December’s, $270 in the red.

Now what I’m doing is keeping a running record of things that are starting to run low. Because there’s no hurry to restock, I can wait until these items come on sale, or until I have time to drive across the city to a cheaper emporium.

A fresh set of grocery-store and big-box ads came in the mail yesterday evening. Taking advantage of the sales, I expect, will allow me to expand on the hoard without having to devote cash in savings accounts to the project.

Goal: Have six months’ worth of food and household supplies in the house by Layoff Day, December 31, 2009.

OMG. So my wonderful, talented, and incredibly competent associate editor and I drag over to the Executioner’s office this afternoon. I’m thinking maybe I should’ve gotten a wooden cart to haul her to the guillotine. We could have crowds of right-wing crazies hollering their approbation, and maybe a legislator knitting, knitting, knitting…

We’re sitting there in the waiting area waiting (what else?) for the hatchetwoman to see us. One employee walks past, recognizes us, and barely stops herself from weeping (surely her cat has died?). Another strolls by and looks grim. The word is out, no freaking doubt of it.

We’re called in, and we both think here. it. comes.

The Kid has said that if she gets laid off in June, just as she comes out of a divorce that has led to her ex- losing his job (and her and her child’s health insurance) because of a conviction for harassing and stalking her, she is screwed, screwed, ge-screwed. Her Deanship has told me The Kid is to exit on June 30. I’ve bitten my tongue so hard my ears hurt.

The Executioner starts by handing over The Kid’s notice to her.

And then says “Keep reading past the first paragraph. Don’t panic before you read the rest of it.”

Un. Freaking. Believable. They’re extending her to the end of the year. They’re pretending she’s an exempt service professional (something The Kid is fully, totally, grandly uninformed about) and saying they will renew her nonexistent “contract” to December 31.

The Kid, who has a lot more moxie than I do, eyes the Executioner and says, “Well, are you hiring me back at my current salary?”

This is a question I have been afraid to ask.

“Why, yes,” says E. “You both will continue at your current pay, benefits, and retirement.”

I express my wish to E. that she express our endless gratitude to Her Deanship for this little coup, which must have taken some major machination. She darts out of the office and forthwith returns with Deanship herself, attired in an outfit that looks like it probably cost more than my net worth.

Emboldened, I ask what about our lead research assistant, the one who handles the single most difficult academic journal on the planet and shepherds the darned thing through from beginining to end?

The Kid and I brace, microsecondwise, for the worst.

“Oh, yes. Weren’t you told?”

“Uhmmm…no…”

She’s smiling, so I figure there’s a fifty-fifty chance good news is on its way.

“We’re keeping her on through the fall semester, too.”

Then I say, This Kid needs to get health insurance. She just divorced and her husband just lost his job.

E. says, No problem. Go on over to HR and tell them you’ve had a change of life circumstances, and you can sign up for any of the health insurance programs.

Thank you, Goddess! And trust me, nonbelievers: goddesses have nothing in common with deans.

The Kid and I staggered out of the Executioner’s chamber and headed for the fanciest restaurant in lovely downtown Tempe, where we raised a glass of expensive white wine to the event that we will be canned, but not until New Year’s Eve.

Damnatiõ! Has anyone else out there actually celebrated the sheer unmitigated joy of a layoff?

Our story to date:
Ax Falls, but…uhm…Bounces
Résumés on the Wind
Staying Solvent in Penury
Perfect Retirement Day
How IT Puts Apps into Job Applications
Is This Worse than We Think, Even?
Income Stream Sighted

My friend K., who lives in Waddell (halfway to Yuma from here), came into town to visit and to shop at the city’s premier nursery, Baker’s, which at 40th Street and Osborn is halfway to Tucson from her place. It was a very pleasant day: magnificent weather, good company. She bought roses, herbs, and flowers; I bought Lillian Austin, an English rose by David Austin; we perused the show put on by an iris fanciers’ club. We spent several hours socializing and enjoying the garden-like nursery.

After she headed back to the far side of the galaxy, I harvested the first beets of spring out of the garden, fired up the barbecue, defrosted a steak. Braised the beautiful little beets with butter and nutmeg; braised the incredible beet greens in olive oil, garlic, and fennel seed; threw the steak on the grill. Awesome dinner, accompanied by dos fine cervezas (Corona!) with juicy ripe lime from the backyard tree, all of it consumed in the shade of the back patio.

The hour still being late afternoon, Cassie and I circumnavigated the nearby park, also very pleasant on a springtime Saturday.

You know… Soon, every day will be like this!Think of it.

Not having made three, four, five thirty-six-mile round trips to campus in the preceding week, I will think nothing of driving out to Waddell to hang out with my friends. We will not need the excuse of a shopping trip to get together. Driving out to Sun City to visit SDXB surely will feel less onerous, too.

Every day I will be able to garden at my convenience, to download House on Hulu in the middle of the morning, to cook a fine meal, to raise a glass to God’s creation at midafternoon, to stroll around the park whenever the dog and I choose.

Ohhh please, Mr. University President: don’t throw me in that briar patch!
😀

Over at MSN Smart Spending, Karen Datko has kindly featured my recent rumination about whether to hang onto the stocks, bonds, gold, and cash in my IRA or cash it in and pay off the mortgage in the house my son and I are copurchasing. Nice exposure… Thanks, Karen! 🙂

Here’s an old family recipe: it came from my mother’s best friend, an amazing Pennsylvania Dutch cook. What makes these unusual is the addition of egg to the batter.

You need:
2 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 teaspoons double-acting baking powder (such as Calumet)
4 generous tablespoons butter, margarine, or Crisco
1 egg
Milk to fill one cup

Time: About 20 minutes
Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Combine dry ingredients—Anna used to sift them together, but I don’t bother with that.

Place the egg in a measuring cup and beat it with a fork or wire whip until it is well mixed. Then fill to the one-cup line with milk. Mix egg well with milk.

With a pastry mixer or two knives, cut the shortening into the flour until well mixed—that is, until it’s about the texture of coarse corn meal. Make a well in the center and add the liquid. Work together gently with a spoon. Do not knead! The secret to this recipe is to handle the dough as little as possible.

Drop the dough by large spoonsful onto a nonstick or greased baking pan. If you prefer, you can turn the dough out onto a floured board, gently roll it about 1/2 inch thick, and cut biscuits with a small floured glass or orange-juice can.

Bake 10 to 15 minutes at about 400 degrees.

At the ripe old age of 8, my son was selected as a “Chef of the West ” by Sunset Magazine, which published his variant of these biscuits. His version:

Drop a small spoonful of the dough onto a greased baking sheet. Flatten it out a bit. Place a small dab of jam or jelly in the center of this. Drop another spoonful of dough on top of it. Gently push the dough around the outside edge to seal the filling inside the biscuit. Bake as usual.

…So the oak will grow, eh?

Speaking of the Make It from Scratch Carnival, as we were in the last post, this week’s edition is hosted by Feels Like Home, whose “Grace’s Kitchen” feature addresses issues of children’s nutrition. This week she begins a discussion of how to fit a toddler’s diet into the present USDA guidelines for the recommended 1,000 calories a day.

Thinking through your little one’s diet this carefully is the best favor you can do for your child. My mother, following the advice that was current in her time, kept few sweets in the house and did not serve desserts, but her refrigerator was always full of washed and prepared fruits and veggies, and her snack cupboard was stocked with things like nuts and other nutritious foods. She wasn’t wildly restrictive—I still ate the occasional piece of candy or bag of pretzels. But she quietly emphasized nutritious stuff to eat.

When I reached high school, my best friend’s mother would give her money to buy a sandwich, a drink, and a dessert. That’s what the kid bought, every day: an ice-cream sandwich, a can of pop, and a candy bar. One day she watched me eat the lunch my mother sent to school with me and asked, “Don’t you want some dessert?” When I said I had dessert—an apple—she visibly shuddered (!) and exclaimed, “You think an APPLE is sweet???”

She was already overweight. If she’s still living, she probably still struggles with the weight and health problems fostered by her childhood eating habits.

I think, however, that you can go overboard with insisting that not one bite of unhealthful food may ever pass your child’s lips. My best friend of young adulthood was one of those. The sole taste of sugary stuff her kids had during any given year was on their birthdays, when, in deference to the surrounding culture’s tradition, she would make them a birthday cake. This would be a heavy, soggy carrot cake. As soon as the party was over, the leftover cake went straight into the garbage (where, IMHO, it belonged…).

She was a wonderful cook and she did fix delicious meals at home. But she was such a lunatic about what her kids would absolutely positively not eat that they both went into full rebellion and, at every opportunity when they were away from home, scarfed down as much junk food as they could get their hands on. Interestingly, as toddlers both kids were prone to bouts of diarrhea. My son, who ate as healthful a diet as I could construct but was not forbiddensuch delicacies as pizza and the occasional Whopper, never once had an intestinal upset.

If there’s a point here, I think it’s that the middle road is best. Create a nutritional environment in your home that fosters healthy, whole foods with lots of fruits and vegetables. But don’t be afraid to let the kids have an occasional taste of what other people eat. Over the course of their lifetimes, they’ll come to prefer whatever you feed them routinely as their day-to-day sustenance.