A hoarder's lament

Example of drawing on rocks. Photo was collected from this site: http://ffffound.com

My husband and I are waist-deep in water. I press my feet together like claws to grip what feels like a rock, then kick them upward to try and grab my prize.

A mussel.

I'm looking for stones at the bottom of Lovewell Pond, where we are vacationing this week. I figure the stones on the pond floor will be smoother and rounder then the jagged and broken ones you can easily collect on the shoreline. My husband dutifully dons his mask and snorkel and goes searching underwater, something I can't do because I might lose a contact and I didn't bring any spares.

He resurfaces with another mussel, half-covered in green gunk.

"Can you eat them?" I ask, thinking of the delicious steamed mussels in garlic-butter sauce we ate at a hole-in-the-wall seafood shack in Portland years ago.

"I don't think so. If you could, people would have taken them all by now."

That was true. Free seafood would not be left alone for long. Like coronet-shaped seashells and green and blue seaglass, treasures for the taking tend to go quickly. Look at me--I'm seeking to steal off with ROCKS.

Not any rock, but one that is light enough and smooth enough to draw on. It's a project I had seen on Pinterest. As I've mentioned before, that site has sucked up more than its fair share of my free time. I spend more time on that site than I do actually cooking the recipes or making the toilet-paper roll projects that I pin. But I am on vacation now and thought I'd try that simple project I had recently pinned of drawing on rocks. It might sound like a stupid way to spend my vacation time, but it was better than going into credit card debt at the nearby outlet mall. Right?

There is something in us that seeks to collect. We collect names on our Facebook and LinkedIn pages, foreign cities we've been to, restaurants where we've dined, books and music we like (though sadly as these collections become digitized, they're not as easy to show off to your friends), pictures, even spiritual acumen. It seems that there is never enough in our lives--we're always searching for that next thing to make our collections complete.

But this habit of collection comes at a cost: of time, money, living space, and especially peace-of-mind. It's hard to relax and just be content with where you are or what you already own without wondering what else is around the bend. I spend most of my vacations thinking about what I'm going to eat, do, read, buy, watch next. There is little time left for actual relaxation. If I'm lying in the hammock staring at the starlit-sky I'm also half-thinking about the leftover apple pie in the cabin, or what I'm going to do the next day. Even when I sleep I invariably have some kind of consumerist dream where I'm wandering around the same store that I dreamed about the week before. This is surely a first-world problem, but it's still something to stop and think about.

My first attempt at rock drawing. Think I'll try using paint next time.

You're nobody special

"Living in fear is recognizing that life offers no guarantees but insisting otherwise. Despite the facts we are adamant that we are special, somehow immune from life's uncertain demands."--Michael Carroll, from Fearless at Work: Timeless Teachings for Awakening Confidence, Resilience, and Creativity in the Face of Life's Demands

About a month ago, I heard a story on the radio about a commencement speaker whose speech had gone viral. The graduation was at Wellesley High School in a tony suburban town outside of Boston. The speaker was historian David McCullough's son, David Jr. The topic? None of you are special.

They played an audio clip from the speech. David McCullough's son (who, my husband quipped, probably never felt special because he was always being referred to as "David McCullough's son") made the point that these high school seniors and others graduating across the country, all harbored the feeling of being special because they grew up in a society of "Everybody wins! You all get a trophy!"

Contrary to what your soccer trophy suggests, your glowing seventh grade report card, despite every assurance of a certain corpulent purple dinosaur, that nice Mister Rogers and your batty Aunt Sylvia, no matter how often your maternal caped crusader has swooped in to save you… you’re nothing special.

In the clip the audience titters at points. I imagine that when they left the auditorium, losing their black gowns to show off the suits and ties and Lily Pulitzer dresses they were wearing to have dinner at Cafe Mangal or Alta Strada with their parents, they probably laughed about the weird speech, asking each other, who invited that guy? Why couldn't we have gotten David McCullough?

I imagine this because when I was 18 I thought I was special. Despite being nerdy in high school and not going to any of my proms, I still felt special in other ways. I thought I would be a bestselling author. My parents even placed an ad in my senior yearbook saying that they looked forward to seeing my book on the shelf at Waldenbooks. They mentioned that particular store because I was a bookseller at one in the Monmouth Mall (Waldenbooks, a subsidiary of Borders Group, no longer exists so sadly that particular dream never came to pass). I had had some early successes--two poems accepted by Seventeen magazine, an acceptance letter to an exclusive summer program for NJ writers. I was bound for publishing glory.

And isn't that what we all think when we're young? Things invariably do get better after high school (unless you spent too much time in the tanning salon like the girl who sat behind me in homeroom. She must look like a Florida retiree right now. Or that retiree's leather purse). But they also get real. That's when you start to agree with the adage that if everyone is special than no one is. Because I'm sure everyone else from my high-achieving high school thought they were special, too.

If you're nothing special, it's not actually a terrible thing. It means you can accept yourself as you are. If you want to try and be successful at something, great, but if you fail it's OK, because if you're not special then no one expects anything from you. If you do succeed than people are usually happy for you. You don't have to be special to get an essay published in a newspaper, for instance, which means if you send out more pieces for publication and they're not accepted, it's no biggie. Just send more pieces to more magazines.

One of my writing teachers at Governor's School told me that he thought I had the discipline to be a successful writer. I remember being slightly miffed that he didn't say I had the talent. Discipline sounds so boring, like making your bed. Talent, on the other hand, sparkled like a 4-karat diamond on a celebrity's outstretched finger. I wanted to sparkle, and instead his only compliment was that I worked hard.

But now I get it. Talent is a wonderful thing, but it doesn't mean anything if you're not using it. If you're told your a gifted writer or violin player or baseball pitcher it's easy to expect success without really trying. It's the work that matters, the effort and the time and yes, the failures, that make someone successful. And even then it may not be enough to be a bestselling author. It might just amount to a few published pieces over a lifetime. You're not going to be remembered the way Jane Austen and Emily Dickinson, or even, god help us, Danielle Steel will be remembered. But you'll have spent your life working at your craft, not resting on your laurels.

Mini-Mes

 I went to visit my parents for Father's Day this past weekend.  On Saturday they had invited friends of theirs to come over for a BBQ.  I had heard quite a bit about my father's friend Michael and his wife Angela, and their two daughters, Ludovica, 16, and Martina, 8. How gentile and intelligent Michael was.  What a great cook Angela was.  How beautiful and sweet their older daughter was and what a spark plug their younger daughter could be.  Despite being an irrational reaction, I sometimes bristle at the sound of my parents heaping praise on someone else's children.  It must be leftover from my insecure teenage years where any mention of another young girl's good looks or disposition would have me sulking for days, thinking, why don't they say those things about me?  They wish that other kid was theirs.

But when my husband and I met Michael and his family, I could see that my parents were right.  Michael was quiet and thoughtful.  Angela spoke very good English for someone who came over from Italy when she was 41.  She kept apologizing that she couldn't help with serving or clearing because she had to keep her swollen, post-op foot elevated. 

The older daughter, Ludovica, was lovely--tall and slim, with chestnut brown hair and the olive skin so many people try (and fail) to achieve with spray-on tans and Jergen's Natural Glow lotion.  She reminded me of the oldest daughter in the Von Trapp family--Louisa--from The Sound of Music--almost an adult, but still with a foothold in childhood, I am 16 going on 17, and all that. My husband later said, I didn't think a teenager existed who was so nice.  I kept looking for the chink in the armor and there wasn't any!  

But the family member who I liked the most was quite different from the rest.  She was a chatty, attention-seeking, boastful little girl with strands of stringy, long hair that she would often chew at when she wasn't holding forth as master of ceremonies at my parents' party.

When I get older, I'm going to own an Canadian Eskimo Dog.  

She said this with the authority that I might use when saying I refuse to argue with you anymore.

It turned out that a Canadian Eskimo Dog was just one of the many breeds she had listed on her Nook, under the assertive title "Dogs I'll Own."

Italian greyhond (sic)
Terrier
French bulldog
German pincher (sic)
Pug

Are you going to own ALL of those dogs, I asked.  NOOO, she replied, as if she couldn't believe I would even bother to ask such a silly question.  These were just options and more breeds would be added before she was satisfied.

I was flattered silly when Martina decided that out of all the guests that night, she liked me best.  She would follow me around, sit next to me on the couch, and ask me what I was doing and where I was going when I got up to use the bathroom.  I was pleased to be chosen, like she had picked me to be her partner on the school bus trip and share her watermelon Jolly Ranchers.

We watched funny animal videos on her Nook, and then she switched back to her electronic lists. Another of her lists was BFFs.  But there were no names, just the header.  I asked her if she didn't have at least one best friend (an absolute essential for girls if they wanted to get through the worst of their school years.  I always had a best friend, even in sixth grade when many of my other friends abandoned me in various tactless ways.) She said no, all the girls her age were pushy and snotty.  She stuck her hands on her hips and sashayed around with her nose pointing to the sky.  New Haven, CT is apparently home to all manner of rich and snotty fourth-graders.

But the idea that she didn't have a BFF didn't seem to phase Martina. She was the kind of kid who didn't hide the fact that she was teacher's pet--getting quarters for knowing things like which animal stalks its prey the fastest? (the mantis shrimp--who knew that, besides Martina?).  She liked American Girl dolls and was definitely girly, but also liberally used the words "poop" and "butt" in ways that suddenly made those words the funniest in the human language. She cracked me up.

They say that one of the reasons people have children is so they can relive their childhood through their kids.  But I don't think that inclination is strictly the province of parents.  I find that the kids that I like the best are the ones who encompass the same qualities that I did at their age.  Is this vanity? Egotism? Or is it a wish to still have those qualities that made us so confident and fearless once upon a time?

Martina wasn't a simulacrum of me as a child, but she was close.  The bright, flowery sundress, the way she talked like an adult yet made silly faces like a child.  Her matter-of-factness.  Her hamminess.  All of those were traits that I had at age 8, and that I still have, hidden away so deep behind layers of adult conformity and fear that I don't believe they'll see the light of day again.

But as much as I laughed at Martina's antics, she also exhausted me.  At one point when it seemed that I would be babysitting for the rest of the night instead of relaxing with my glass of Prosecco after a long week, I slipped upstairs and barricaded myself in my old bedroom, which my parents have changed into a study.  I worried that when I returned she would no longer look for me, that I would never be her BFF.  But I treasure my quiet moments to myself.  And she's not my daughter.

Looking for a few good men and women

I attended a Volunteer Appreciation Dinner last night at an American Legion in Newton, MA.  Springwell organizes this every year, but this is the first one I've attended.  Every once in a while it feels good to know that what you do is appreciated, although I already know that my client and friend Linda appreciates me.  She always says so in the birthday and Christmas cards she gives me.

Because I've been volunteering with Linda for 3 1/2 years, Wendy, my coordinator from Springwell, asked me to give a speech about my experience.  I culled this from various blog entries I've written and I share it here as an inducement for anyone who has a little free time they'd like to use wisely and for a good cause.  If you do have free time (or can find some--we're all busy), I urge you to try volunteering--with Springwell or one of the many reputable organizations out there. For more information, click here.

***

Hello, I’m Jennifer Campaniolo and I’ve been volunteering with Springwell since December 2008.  I'm what they call a "friendly visitor" (a friend asked me if they were looking for "unfriendly visitors," the kind who arrive 1/2 hour late, upturn the cat's litter box, and throw their host's purse out the window. I said I didn't think so.)

The woman I visit once a week, Linda, is in her mid-sixties, and as far as I know she has been on disability her entire adult life, and has lived in various Section 8 housing.  She was adopted as a baby and most of her family is either dead now or out-of-touch.  She started having trouble with her legs when she was young, and perhaps out of fear of what people would think or just plain denial, her family acted as if nothing was wrong, and according to Linda, never addressed the problem. The likely-treatable condition became her life sentence.

Springwell does many things to help Linda, and my weekly visits are the least of them.  Because she lives alone and is disabled, Linda has groceries delivered every Sunday and a woman comes each Wednesday to do laundry and light housework. These are all services that Springwell provides.  For someone who lives alone and doesn't go out much, every interaction she has is an important part of her day.

My friendship with Linda is not the stuff of Tuesdays with Morrie, but she is always happy to see me, which puts me at ease. My one other experience volunteering with senior citizens was with a 96 year-old woman in a rehabilitation hospital in New York City who would sometimes ignore me when I came into the room, although that could have been her bad hearing.  But sitting facing away from me on her institution-issued hospital bed, even her back seemed hostile. 

Linda, on the other hand, smiles at me when she meets me at her door. I ring her buzzer around 7PM and when I tell her who it is, she cheerfully answers "OKAY!" She meets me at the door wearing either pink or blue scrubs. She doesn't work in a hospital, she just finds them comfy. I greet her cat Maxine while Linda goes to get our two cans of seltzer water.  Every week I bring a snack for us to share, usually hummus and celery or guacamole and chips.

I thought that when I came to visit her we would play Scrabble or watch old movies or read to each other or listen to soothing music.  But she wasn't interested in any of that.  She wanted to talk.  Linda likes to talk about her love of cats (her own cat plus the many stuffed cats and cat paraphernalia with which she surrounds herself), and enjoys showing me whatever new item she has bought from a catalog or that her neighbor found for her in the basement where residents put stuff they no longer need.  

Another of her favorite topics is the arrangement of her furniture. I can always count on her to ask me if the desk lamp would look better on the table near the front door or next to the waterless electric fish tank. Would it change the aesthetic of the room to swap the display case of beanie babies with the low book shelf containing all her Dr. Phil books and John Denver CDs?

I don't think she really listens to my response. She just likes asking. Rearranging her apartment is something to do, a challenge, a never-ending project.

Because of her disability, Linda has never held a full-time job. She once volunteered at Mass General Hospital, assembling surgical tools for doctors. But that ended when she had trouble getting in and out of Boston on time.

I can see why Linda is endlessly moving her stuff around, why she changes her phone company as frequently as her bed sheets, why she quickly returns items she orders from catalogs and goes back and forth between a Verizon cell phone and a Jitterbug. These are the otherwise mundane tasks that keep her occupied and engaged. Granted, changing phone plans is one of many chores that busy people dread. Who wants to spend an afternoon talking by phone to customer service? Linda does. And if she gets a good rep on the phone it means the difference between a bad day and a great one.

"Some people have jobs to think about." She once said to me in a moment of astute self-awareness, "All I have to think about all day is my furniture and things."

When we're talking, I try to be fully present for her. I look her straight in the eye to let her know I'm interested, even when she repeats herself, which is often. Through my visits with Linda, I'm learning patience. I'm learning to listen, with no expectations or agenda of my own. I have to remember that it's her life, and I'm just there to be a witness.

We all need a witness for our lives.  Although I still fill out a time sheet for Springwell, I consider Linda a friend and assume she feels the same.  I typically leave her apartment in a good mood. Though on paper we don't have a lot in common--she doesn't like reading, watching movies, or cooking, for example, and I am not a fan of John Denver or Pillow Pets--we still find plenty to talk about and there's hardly a moment of silence when we get together.

And let's face it--there's also that little glow of the do-gooder that we all experience when we volunteer or commit some random act of kindness.

It's really true that you can get out of volunteering as much (or more) than you put in.

The Sanctity of Sox

Photo Credit: latimesblogs.latimes.com

"The peace that comes from peaceful surroundings is not
          true peace.
     Only in the peace obtained in the midst of activity
     Is found the true sphere of one's original nature.
The pleasure that comes from pleasurable surroundings is
          Not true pleasure.
     Only with the pleasure obtained in the midst of
          suffering
Can one see the true movements of the mind." 

          --From Master of the Three Ways: Reflections of a Chinese Sage on Living a Satisfying Life, by Hung Ying-ming, translated by William Scott Wilson


I've been getting back into walking lately. This comes after one handlebar-gripping turn on Cosette, my bicycle, one recent Friday.  Inspired by my husband and the fellow bike commuters I work with--who still manage to get into work earlier than me, looking fresh-faced and energetic like they just stepped off the set of a commercial for multigrain breakfast cereal--I announced on a Thursday night that I intended to start riding my bike to work.  But the reality of riding in the same lane as cabs and trucks, snaking my way to Horticultural Hall where I work, and nearly getting run over when I crossed a lane of traffic just when the light changed--and those cars hurtling toward me were not slowing down, what was a 38 year-old cyclist in a skirt doing in the middle of the street anyway--changed my mind about the pleasures of tooling around the city on my pretty bike with the baguette-ready basket as a means to get around.   

So I went back to my old standby.  I walk for the same reasons many people walk--for exercise, for the head-clearing effects, for the simplicity of it.  But there is another force that I can't leave out, one that makes walking the best option...really, the ONLY option.

The Green Line of the "T" has always been one commuter away from a sardine can, but lately it seems like it's getting worse.  I would console myself with the thought that the college students will be going back to their parents' houses in May, but even that offers little relief, because overlapping with the end of the Spring term is the start of Red Sox season.  To fans this is a blessed time of year, one of the most holy after Patriots season.  Another year of sunny afternoons at Fenway, drinking $8 beers whilst having the person in the bleacher behind you spill their $8 beer all over the back of your favorite shirt (if I was paying $8 for a Sam Adams, I'd hold that cup steadier than a surgeon's scalpel to avoid ANY of it spilling.) Or if it's raining, drinking $4 beers at any number of bars in the Fenway area, getting beer spilled on your shoes.

For me, this is the beginning of the seasonal onslaught of red t-shirts, ballcaps, jackets, earrings, watches, go cups, oversized finger forms, and every other matter of kitchsy item that can be emblazoned with those pair of white socks on a red background.  The people who wear this fan flair travel in packs and don't know (or have forgotten since the same time last year) that the doors on both sides of the train car don't open at Kenmore Square, so there is always a lot of pushing in a train car that is already filled to bursting with people and their bags, ordinary folks who have just ended their workday and want only to get home, where no one is yelling,

"It's this stop, Jon! That door don't open.  C'mere, I'm holdin' the door far ya."

Why couldn't they segregate the Red Sox fans from the rest of us non-baseball nuts?  Give them their own little red shuttle bus shaped like a pair of socks that would have interior soundproofing so the people on the street wouldn't be subject to the cacophony of a bunch of white people yelling over each other while downing their contraband hooch.  Better yet, keeping in mind how the city would burn down to the ground in riots if they closed Fenway Park, find a way to pick up and move the beloved baseball stadium to some outer suburb--maybe close down a few Walmarts while they're at it--and plop it down in an area that doesn't even touch the city borders.  They did that with The Kinsale Irish Pub, why can't they do it with a sports arena?

Of course, to say any of this while in Boston, to even whisper it under your breath, is against the law.  If a Bostonian heard that I had no interest whatsoever in the Green Dragon, or Monster, or whatever it's called (who cares, it's just a wall, right?) and that I wouldn't go to a game if someone handed me a pair of free tickets for seats located right behind home plate, I'd be carted away by the Boston Sports Authorities (BSA) and thrown into a gulag in Springfield. 

To avoid the Red Plague I might hail a cab, but it would be faster to ride on the shell of a sea turtle than trust my luck in a cab stuck in stadium traffic.  One time I tried to take a cab home and it cost me $18 to go six blocks.  I ended up jumping out of the cab after paying the driver so I could walk the rest of the way home.  Meanwhile my cabbie was shaking his head, wondering how he was going to extricate his cab from the coarse snarl of cars.

To avoid the whole scene I simply walk home.  I mark all the home game days on my small Pema Chodron calendar hanging on the bulletin board at my work desk, and on those days when there's an "X" I put on my sneakers (or if I've forgotten my sneakers, I take mincing steps in my work shoes, coming home with blisters on the soles of my feet.  Believe me, it's worth the physical pain.)

My husband says there are something like 81 home games from mid-April through early October, and that's if the Sox don't make the playoffs.  But think to hard to yourself, "Please let them lose!"and the BSA might hang you by your feet in the gulag. 

So I keep my annoyance to myself, which is the way of survival for most city dwellers trying to find their own patch of peace and quiet among the crowds.

And I consider the bonus of toned calves just in time for bare-legged season. 

Character study

"Rather than obsessively following states of mind such as anger, fear, or grasping, states that will bring harm to ourselves and others, we can let go as though dropping a burden. We are indeed burdened by carrying around habitual unskillful reactions. As wisdom reveals to us that we don't need these reactions, we can abandon them."--Sharon Salzberg, from Lovingkindness: The Revolutionary Art of Happiness

Every town has at least one "character."  If you're in New York City, there are too many to take notice, but in Brookline there is one particular woman I'm thinking of.  She's an older lady--maybe in her 70's--with a well-coiffed head of short white hair.  She is usually trailing a rolling suitcase behind her, or she's got a very vibrant-pink-colored Jansport backback on as if she were on her way to go hiking in The Whites.

I see her walking in my neighborhood, but I've also seen her get off at the same "T" stop as me at Heinz Convention Center in Boston.  Recently, I saw her get on the train as I was heading home for the day.  She sat right next to me.  I have a thing about not looking at people for more than 1/2 second because I don't want to seem like I'm nosy or rude.  This is a problem for someone who likes to write about human nature.  I did notice she was eating old-fashioned gumdrops from a bag and that she smelled of fish.

The reason I say she's a character is that whenever I run into her, it's her voice that I hear first.

"Get out of the road, you jackass, don't you see people are crossing!"  

"No turning on a red light, ass****.  Who taught you to drive?"

"Hey, Buddy, slow the fu*k down!  You're going to mow someone over."

I should add that most of the time that she's yelling at traffic, she's not actually crossing the street or in the road at all. Either she's a self-appointed crossing guard for the residents of Coolidge Corner, or at one time she was the victim of a hit-and-run and now she's the vigilante of automobile safety.

I do wonder about this woman.  Most of the time when I see other people react to her, they either step aside with a worried glance or they laugh.  I understand both reactions, even though as I get older I grow more empathetic of people who stray from the norm and wince when I see them mocked. 

What I wonder is, what really makes her so angry?  And is her anger only reserved for this one occasion?  She doesn't appear bedraggled enough to be chronically homeless.  Does she have a family?  Anyone who looks out for her?  Tries to get her to calm down, even smile once in a while?  Her anger--like many people's--is palpable and contagious.  If I'm around an angry person not only do my defenses go up, but my blood pressure increases and I start thinking about how satisfying it would be to tell someone off (which I rarely do because confrontation nauseates me.)

Some women fear being a bag lady when they're old, even if they are currently well-off.  But it seems just as troubling to be an angry old lady, mad at a world that has changed too much, too fast.

Or perhaps she's always been angry and never learned how to manage it, and so now her anger is magnified, making her into less of a character and more of a caricature of the curmudgeonly old woman.

It seems to me that if I want to grow into a happy old woman, now is the time for me to learn how to let things go.

Happiness is the sum of each moment

Photo still from the film The Descendants

"'Well, that's what life is — this collection of extraordinarily ordinary moments," [Alexander] Payne says. "We just need to pay attention to them all. Wake up and pay attention to how beautiful it all is.
'If you were falling in love and you could go back in time and relive a day and see the banal things you did that you'd forgotten about, you'd weep, looking at that day,' Payne says. 'Somewhat dramatic things happen, and you don't even always notice them — that's what life is.'
Those moments, unless you write them down or photograph them, drift off and away. They just go by."--From "The Extraordinary, Ordinary Life of Alexander Payne" by Susan Stamberg, via NPR.org 


My husband and I were walking to Shaw's to do our regular Sunday morning grocery run.  We like to go early in the morning, both of us unshowered, in sweatshirts and sneakers, my static-prone, fine hair looking like it's lost its way and is flying in multiple directions.  Once inside the store we're relieved to see plenty of carts lined up waiting for us, carts that actually move forward when you push them rather than side to side.  The few customers who are already there are mostly loners--middle-aged men in hooded sweatshirts to hide their unshaven faces, a college student in a BU tee buying a tub of skim milk, a woman with a small child negotiating about a package of cookies.  The loudest sounds in the store come from a trio of Haitian men, likely brothers, who laugh with the gusto of people who are completely free and comfortable expressing themselves when they are together.

My husband has brought The Wizard, a pocket adding machine like the sort a 1950's housewife would use.  It's hard to tell sometimes if he really enjoys being eccentric or if he just relishes the look of bewilderment that's so frequently on my face.  Actually it doesn't have to be one or the other.

We are shopping using only cash and The Wizard will help us stick to our budget.  Of course the electronic calculators on our cell phones that we carry around anyway would do just as good a job, but that would be less fun for him.  He is a fountain pen user.  He has a collection of old-fashioned, double-edged safety razors.  He enjoys reading every plaque on every statue in the park.

Although I predict a fight over whether or not we really need to buy both a sheep's milk cheese and a cow's milk cheese, or whether it's really worth buying two boxes of premium crackers to use a $1.00 off coupon,  we actually do pretty well.  Unaccustomed to looking for the price of an item--my old style being, hey, this looks yummy, I'm throwing it in the cart before I even look for a price tag because who cares how much it costs, I want it--I find that we've spent $60 in the first aisle of the store alone.  But at least we have a cart half-filled with fresh produce and meat and cheese, rather than three kinds of jarred pasta sauce, a $20 bottle of Balsamic Vinegar, and Nutello.

In fact, in our attempt to keep under our spending limit, we skip most of the middle of the store, where the majority of the processed foods live, and pick up milk and eggs on the outer periphery.  There is a nice buzz of cooperation between us, and when we walk out of the store, me pointing out that we went $8 under budget, I know that my husband is happy, which makes me happy, and it gets better when I take the extra money and buy Monkey Bread with Caramelized Walnuts at Clear Flour bakery to have with breakfast.  At $6.75, it feels like a splurge, when normally I can't walk out of that place without spending less than $20 on heavenly carbs.

Later at the kitchen table, which is half covered with sections of the Globe, we are each tearing off pieces of the sticky bread and licking the cinnamon sugar off our fingers.  It is a MOMENT.  Nothing life-altering or euphoric, just a MOMENT when all is peaceful. My husband says, "I like Sunday breakfast with you."  Right back at you, babe.