New Glasses! & My Live Below the Line Wrap-Up

            stodge*

                 stäj

                     noun

BRITISHinformal

                     1. food that is heavy, filling, and high in carbohydrates.

                         "she ate her way through a plateful of stodge"

                     2. dull and uninspired material or work.

So very much of my food fit both of those definitions during my 5 days of Living Below the Line. I did end up with a great quantity of food, but it was all bland, boring, and... well, stodge. By the end of the week, it was frequently difficult for me to make myself eat another meal of tasteless food, even if I was hungry. It got to the point where I didn't even feel hungry, although I was certainly exhibiting other symptoms of hunger like slowed thought processes, extreme lethargy, and a hair-trigger temper.

I'm glad I did the challenge. I met my goal** and raised $150 for UNICEF, which isn't a huge amount, but is definitely something. I developed more empathy for people who live on any sort of limited food budget, even if it's not so limited to qualify as the "extreme poverty" that the challenge is designed to emulate. I proved to myself that I actually could complete the challenge, not just think that I could complete it if I tried.

(Thinking is pretty much what I did last year.)

I am definitely going to do the challenge again next year. I've already started working on my shopping list and meal plan. It's going to be rather different. There WILL be spices; that's not negotiable. I need to start fundraising earlier, and possibly more aggressively. Only one third of my donations came from other people. That needs to change, especially if I raise my goal amount. It's not at all likely that I'll be able to work next year either, and $100 is about the limit of what I can scrape out of my already tight budget in a couple of months. Yes, I could just start saving now and donate that money next year, but it's important to me to give to other charities as well. I donate monthly to Feeding America. I support the Yarn Harlot and her family and team when they do the Friends For Life Bike Rally in support of Toronto's branch of People With AIDS. Doctors Without Borders usually gets a chunk of my charity budget. So I'm going to stick to taking no more than two months of my charity budget to help me meet my goal next year.

Living on such a limited budget also gave me a couple of ideas about local giving. There's a group, Addison Switchboard, that helps people who live in my town. They run a food pantry, among other services. I'm going to make a point of eliminating meat for a few days every month. I'll take the money I save from buying beans and the like instead of meat and use it to buy food to donate to them. My other idea is that I will choose the food I buy to donate Very Carefully, because I do want to get the most bang for my buck, but I also don't want anyone who depends on Switchboard for all or part of their food to be stuck eating nothing but stodge. Because that's a really terrible feeling, when surrounded by all the choices that our society and the media make sure that everyone knows about. Maybe nothing but beans, rice, eggs, toast, and potatoes would be easier to take if that was all I'd ever had or known about, but knowing what's out there, being confronted with ads for other food... well, it was really hard to take.

In completely unrelated news, my eyes have finally settled down from their diabetic shenanigans, and I have new glasses! It's SO exciting to be able to see clearly again after over two months of not.

front(ish) view

side view

Just ignore the weird smirk on my face. I absolutely Could. Not. get a decent picture. These are the best of over a dozen.

* definition from Google
** If anyone would still like to donate, you have until June 15. Here's my donation page.